Schools
Rock On: Viral Green Machine Video Continues to Wow Internet Fans
A video of George Mason's "Doc and the Green Machine" pep band that went viral three years ago has re-emerged as an Internet sensation.
A video of George Mason University’s pep band, Doc Nix and the Green Machine, rocking out to their cover of hits by the band Rage Against the Machine, continues to be shared en masse via the Internet—three years after it first went viral.
A George Mason alumnus who just happened to visit band practice recorded the band’s medley and posted the video on YouTube back in 2011.
The video—which went viral shortly after it was posted—is experiencing a rebirth of sorts, says, Michael Nickens, better known as “Doc Nix,” the gregarious director of Mason’s pep band. Over the course of two days this September, the video, which had largely been dormant, garnered some 300,000 new views—all without the band doing anything to promote it.
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The video now has more than 2.4 million views on YouTube.
The band performs the medley at almost every basketball game as part of its normal music repertoire. Nickens, the band’s director since 2006, says he is still not sure what caused interest in the video to reignite, but he has some ideas. He surmises it appeals to a whole new generation of Mason students who have enrolled at the college since 2011.
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The video also recently surfaced on Reddit, which could have given it new life. Reddit is a social media site commonly used by college students.
People watch the video several times and keep noticing new things about it, Nickens says. “There’s this one girl who’s dancing more than anyone else,” he says. “They notice other things in the background they never noticed before; people just look at the video differently.”
Or perhaps just enough time has passed for the all people who loved the video in 2011 to buy new computers and watch it again. This would cause several new computer IP addresses to be counted as new views by YouTube, Nickens says.
In 2013 Mason’s Green Machine was named the “Most Entertaining Pep Band in College Basketball,” by BleacherReport.com, an online news website that covers hundreds of sports teams around the world.
A good time to be wowed by a Green Machine live performance will be during on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. The official start of Mason’s basketball season, Mason Madness is held in the Patriot Center on the Fairfax Campus.
Story originally appeared on gmu.edu, George Mason University’s official website. Write to Jamie Rogers at jroger20@gmu.edu
