History of the Entire World, I Guess

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Part of a series on Bill Wurtz. [View Related Entries]

About

"History of the Entire World, I Guess" is an animated viral video created by Internet musician Bill Wurtz in which he narrates an abridged history of the universe in his signature style of non-sequitur humor, catchy melodies and colorful video effects. Upon its release on May 10th, 2017, the video instantly went viral, garnering over 3.2 million views within the first 24 hours.

Origin

On May 10th, 2017, Bill Wurtz posted a tweet saying how he was about to "explain the entire world, i guess," which received over 4,300 likes and over 1,200 retweets. Later that same day, Wurtz released the video to his YouTube channel. Within 24 hours, "History of the Entire World, I Guess" received more than three million views, becoming the #1 trending video of the day on YouTube.

Precursor

Prior to the release of "History of the Entire World, I Guess," Wurtz has experimented with historical narratives in a similar style, most notably through his first breakout video, "History of Japan", which went viral upon its YouTube debut in February 2016.

Spread

On the day of its release, Redditor t17389z submitted Wurtz' video to the /r/videos subreddit, where it was met with raving reviews and upvotes numbering in hundreds of thousands. Within 24 hours of the submission, the /r/videos post became the most upvoted YouTube video link in Reddit history. As of May 14th, the post has accrued over 153,000 points (85% upvotes). Meanwhile on Tumblr, many viewers began sharing dozens of animated GIFs excerpted from the video.

Media Coverage

In the following days, several internet news sites reported on the sensational reception of Bill Wurtz' "History of the Entire World" video, including the Huffington Post, New York Magazine, TubeFilter and What's Trending, among others.