An advertisement for smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry has turned into an unexpected viral hit and sparked a number of memes thanks to Reddit users' love of the 'huh' guy. The unexpected viral hit is an AT&T commercial for the BlackBerry Torch 4G; it depicts the boss of an office telling his staff that they can do more now that they are using the smartphone. However the humor in the advert comes from the fact that the boss is telling them to perform tasks such as playing games and uploading videos rather than sending emails for example.
Despite this twist, the advertisement's humor is not the reason why it has become a viral sensation; rather that can be attributed to an actor playing one of the staff who, when the boss states "Matt ignore me and continue updating your fantasy team," utters the now-immortalized line "huh." The actor in question is Nate Dern, a writer and performer with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and former finalist on TV show Beauty and the Geek.
Nate turned to Reddit to share the news that after three years of auditioning he was finally appearing in a commercial and uttering the line "huh" and provided a link to the video in his post. Reddit users, with their irreverent sense of humor, quickly jumped on the post leading to it getting over 3,000 comments in 24 hours and Nate becoming christened ‘the huh guy'. The video's fame quickly spread from Reddit around the internet, gaining over 500,000 views on YouTube after being uploaded on November 7 and being featured on prominent tech blogs such as Mashable.com. The video has also sparked a series of memes including a ‘huh guy' variation of the established internet meme Rage Comics and various image macros of Nate which have been featured on sites such as knowyourmeme.com, and memebase.com.
The video has proved an unexpected hit for BlackBerry whose videos, generally speaking, do not generate the same amount of interest as other smartphone manufacturers such as Apple for example. For comparison the video "BlackBerry Bold 9700 vs BlackBerry Bold 9900" uploaded by BlackBerry on October 12 has attracted around 29,000 views whereas "Apple's introduction to SIRI" uploaded October 4 has well over five million views.
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