What's gone viral this week

I return with my weekly look at what has taken over the web. This week we have scares, questions over crowd funding and home videos that put most parents to shame.

Lights Out

Award winning film director David F. Sandberg has created a two minute horror film which has sent Twitter into a flurry, with one poster describing it as 'traumatising'. Describing the film would spoil the story but believe me it is not for younger viewers. Although being dialogue free, it is genuinely jumpy and the director uses classic horror techniques to ramp up the tension.

If you don't like horror films, I strongly advise you don't watch this as you won't be able to switch you lights off for a very long time.

Oculus Rift gets bought

One piece of tech that has had every talking has been Oculus. The VR machine might be the step into virtual reality that the world has been looking for. After raising nearly $2.5 million dollars on KickStarter many people were extremely excited to see were this could go.

But before mass production of these fancy binoculars have even happened, the CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg swept in and paid a cool $2 billion for it. I can see why he would want to acquire this leap forward in connecting the world, Google has been acquire all various types of robotic companies and the social network needs to show it's a major player in the online game.

Now many people are question why they bothered backing Oculus in the first place if it was just going to sell out to the highest bidder. Some of the comments are pretty damning about the company have gone about there business.

• "Well, I'm kind of horrified. I'd never have backed this if I'd had an inkling this might happen. Very happy I didn't preorder the second devkit; I'm going to wait and see what competitors might pop up." — Svein Ove Aas

•  "All I can say with absolute certainty is I absolutely do not like, use, nor trust Facebook as a company. While my funds are yours fair and square, at this moment in time, I regret backing this. I sincerely hope I am wrong." — Brad'li

• "Wow I am in shock...VR was soo close... Now I feel we are back in 1993 again. What a setback. I had so much hope for this project. You really need to give us a proper explanation for this move..." — Mathias Hagstrom 

• "Wow, I misjudged you... sorry to hear I was backing Facebook in the end... thanks for that." — Tim Pettigrew 

• "I too want my $10 back. I don't want my VR experience in the Facebook mall." — Avram Eisner "Horrible... HORRIBLE decision. I want my donation back." — Mike Yoo 

• "I would have NEVER given a single cent of my money to Oculus if I had known you were going to sell out to Facebook. You sold all of us out. I hope this backfires horribly for Oculus and Facebook. I will personally discourage absolutely anyone I know from buying what was once an indie dream and is now a soulless corporate cash cow. God, I want a refund so badly." — John Wolf

This now leaves us with a dilemma about the future of crowd funding. Could this be that people will have to question the nature of why they should donate there money. Only time will tell on this one.

Light-saber boy

A dad has turned his young son into a lightsaber-wielding, telekinesis-mastering pyromaniac on YouTube. His secret? He works as an after effects artists for DreamWorks. Posting a series of 10-second videos featuring his son, seeing him shooting fire in the kitchen, causing mayhem with a lightsaber in a toy store, operating a grappling gun and even blasting off in a space rocket at a playpen. The LA-based animator put his impressive CGI skills to use for them, to the delight and in many cases jealousy of YouTube viewers.





'Til the next time
James xo