YouTube recently had to deal with a minor yet unique problem caused by Psy’s “Gangnam Style†music video.
The South Korean popstar’s 2012 single and accompanying dance craze managed to literally break YouTube’s view counter.
On December 2, 2014, Psy’s video was on its way to hit 2,147,483,647 views which is the highest number YouTube’s 32-bit algorithm would count. If you hover over the video counter now, the numbers flip slot-machine-style until they end up showing the negative end of the 32-bit integer range. It’s the latest clever trick from YouTube in a long line of fun little Easter Eggs.
“Gangnam Style†is the most-viewed video in the entire history of YouTube. At the time of this writing, the music video shows 2,152,320,758 views, meaning Google’s online video site’s view counter algorithm is all up-to-date and well.
But we’d love to see the day when a video comes close to breaking a 64-bit algorithm, too. In order for that to happen, an upload would need 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 views.
If “Gangnam Style†keeps racking them up at a rate of 2.15 billion views every 871 days, it’ll only be another 11,740,047 years or so before YouTube has to update its view count algorithm again.
“I can’t compare it to anything else!” Psy told MTV when his video hit that (once impressive) number two years ago. “Because it all began with YouTube, and to have [the video] reach 1 billion views … I don’t think even I can break that record!”
By Wednesday morning, the “Gangnam Style” music video had racked up about 5 million additional views, with no sign of slowing down. Keep it up, Psy.
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