“Welcome to the new season of my show ‘More Bad News,’ brought to you by Camel Cigarettes.” 

Dr. Barry Mehler began his classes last week with this statement, similar to the way he has started his classes for decades. However, this time the unexpected happened and the video went viral. 

On Sunday, Jan. 9, Mehler shared a 14-minute, unlisted YouTube introduction video with his new students for the spring semester. 

“I sent this private URL to 120 students on Sunday afternoon. By Monday afternoon I saw that there were 500 views, which I thought was strange,” Mehler said. 

Now, a week later, the YouTube video has almost half a million views. It has surpassed two million views on TikTok and gone viral on both Twitter and Reddit.