It’s not everyday a school assignment goes viral, but that’s exactly what happened to a video put together by a student at Garden Spot High School.
The video was posted on YouTube just before Thanksgiving and now had more than 700,000 views as of Thursday night.
Intended to be a parody of the pop song by Korean rapper Psy, the video promotes school spirit, with students, staff and even administrators showing off their best dance moves. But not everyone appreciates their efforts.
After getting picked up by internet sites Reddit and the Huffington Post, to name a few, hundreds of thousands of views online have also led to harsh criticism.
“Some people have stated they thought that this was a failure. They’re calling it the worst video ever. But at the end of the day, we said, ‘No. This is good!” said El Cox, dean of students at Garden Spot High.
The person who posted the video to YouTube wrote that he did it to get people to make fun of it. Principal Matthew Sanger said the man is not a current student, so administrators can’t do anything about it. But they’re choosing to ignore the negativity.
“You’re always going to have folks out there that poke, make fun, but again our approach is, she’s spreading and promoting the Spartan way and that’s what we want to focus on,” Sanger said.
Sanger is not identifying the student who made the video because she’s underage.
Though the school is proud of the video, it has also served as a lesson.
“Anytime you post anything online, you can’t remove it, because other people get a hold of it and then it’s out of your hands,” Cox said. “I think that’s a valuable lesson to learn here.”
You can watch the full video here.