Broken Video Engagement Bait

About

Broken Video Engagement Bait refers to a genre of engagement bait on X / Twitter that involves users including glitched-out videos that won't properly load in their posts with the purpose of baiting users in attempting to view them multiple times, thus increasing post's engagement metrics and making it appear more for other users. The trend achieved virality on X / Twitter in June 2024, particularly the Broken Finger Gun Video, and led to public annoyance over the trend.

Origin

On April 7th, 2024, X^[1] user @yang_mady uploaded a video of a young woman cooking barbeque at a market in Xinjiang, China. The video (shown below) failed to load properly for the viewers, resulting in the first frame of the video being immediately followed by a green glitched-out frame and the loading animation playing indefinitely. Despite only gaining 190 reposts and 900 likes, the upload garnered over 33.7 million views in three months (shown below).

新疆阿克苏温宿县巴扎
卖烧烤的姑娘 pic.twitter.com/0EeYdRKFNM

— Mady Yang (@yang_mady) April 7, 2024

On April 9th, 2024, @yang_mady then made a properly working upload of the video.^[2]

In the following months, the broken upload was exploited for engagement purposes, as short duration and multiple attempts to watch the video led to the posts containing the video being promoted by the platform's algorithm (example seen below).^[3][4]

How is this possible pic.twitter.com/7zkBhryqot

— SouLBeeast (@itsmepra_veen) April 13, 2024

Spread

In the following months, more similar broken video uploads went viral on X / Twitter as they were used for engagement farming. For example, on May 19th, 2024, X^[5] user @cyhpersona uploaded a glitched-out clip of a couple dancing to "Begin Again" by Taylor Swift that was then used for this purpose by other users, which received over 21.6 million views in two months (example^[6] shown below).

The like button animation has changed.
Hit the like button & see the Magic. REAL#Config2024 pic.twitter.com/fewn6aTIJK

— 𝙍𝙎𝙆 (@RSKTheMonsters) June 26, 2024

In June 2024, a broken clip from the music video for "Once Upon A Time" by Indian composer Anirudh Ravichander, known as Broken Finger Gun Video, went viral (example shown below).

Life hack: Buy Twitter Premium and Share this video to get that money back
pic.twitter.com/PUmkCpLmDH

— Homelander (Bad Manners) (@aham_brahmasmi_) June 22, 2024

The influx of these types of videos was followed by users discussing the trend and criticizing it on X / Twitter in late June and July 2024.

Various Examples

So sick of seeing this video on X
Stop it guys pic.twitter.com/9PjOceldmb

— Madhur Singh (@ThePlacardGuy) June 23, 2024

What kind of videos this ? pic.twitter.com/LQ4NA1DcBA

— PRASHANTH CB (@ThePrashanthCB) July 4, 2024

Search Interest

External References