How many views did “Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise” get?

Neil Cicierega · published 2007-03-23 · TubeCount #45, played 2026-07-26

Why this one

Neil Cicierega posted a 116-second Harry Potter puppet sketch in March 2007, and the Harry Potter internet decided collectively that every fan had to watch it and send it forward. That relay compounded for eighteen years. The channel has 821,000 subscribers and has never made anything close to this again; the 210 million views on 'Mysterious Ticking Noise' are the statistical residue of being the perfect spreadable object at the exact moment the social-sharing graph was learning to spread things. Quotable on demand, two minutes long, no prior knowledge required beyond knowing who Dumbledore is — it hit every distribution criterion the 2007 internet rewarded.

How everyone did

9 players called this one. The average score was 32 out of 100, and on the thumbnail alone people were typically 14× off.