I can’t stop thinking about this video (warning, if you have a terrible workplace, this may not be safe for work):

Carly Rae Japsen - Call Me Maybe (Chatroulette Version) from ePlay TV on Vimeo.

Lots of people have linked to it and even written about it. But my mind keeps tracing back to it as the weeks go by. I love the obvious things about the video: the confidence, freedom, and kind heartedness of the dancer, the sheer joy of the viewers, and even the music, which if we’re honest is very hard to dislike even if it doesn’t run toward my usual tastes.

What really has its hooks in me, though, is the way it so crisply reminds us of the fullness of human nature. The guys, many with shirts off, are almost surely online for reasons they’d not discuss with their mothers. And the dancer plays to this prurience, makes a kind of mockery of it. Just as we’re repulsed by the viewers’ intentions, they smile and are won over by the dancer. As that smile crosses the face, we see a kind of openness in them, and we’re won over as we see a fuller picture of them. There’s such optimism in this. People aren’t just creepy, just hateful, just professional, just deviant, just straight-laced, just addicts, just conservative, just liberal, just angelic, just gross, just clean, just thoughtful, just thoughtless. We’re this whole, wonderful bundle of contradictions, and I’ve rarely seen it expressed so succinctly, in a way that makes me feel such unabashed happiness. Kudos internet.