Destripando la historia: analysis of the influence of intertextuality and rule breaking in double-addresee's viral videos

Abstract

The first Destripando la historia video was posted in YouTube in February 2017. Since then, its creators, Álvaro Pascual and Rodrigo Septién (best known as “Pascu y Rodri”), have seen how their videos exceeded the 42 million viewings in all. Apparently simple drawings, catchy music and funny lyrics seem to collude in these videos, which have gone viral in a short period of time, generating a “universe” that goes beyond the songs’ contents, from live broadcasting to the publication of a book. In this paper we aim to briefly analyse the main factors that interfere in the Destripando la historia success; this will be achieved by studying the videos pattern (the target audience, music, picture, etc.) and the broadcasting platforms. The main objective is to establish the extent to which the intertextuality and the use of unexpected elements that generate rule-breaking interfere with those videos’ virality.