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Who won the weekend: Kanye West or Duck Army?

Who won the weekend: Kanye West or Duck Army?

Who won the weekend: Kanye West or Duck Army?
01 September 2015

Autumn arrived this August Bank Holiday Weekend, with a welcoming embrace akin to a damp handkerchief. 

As we struggled to find another four-star film to watch on Netflix (we couldn't) and wondered if we'd really made the most of the summer (we hadn't), momentary relief to our introspective gloom was offered by two markedly contrasting sources: Kanye West, and an army of plastic ducks.

We assess each of these remarkable 'viral' moments on their respective merits, in an attempt to see who won this gloomy public holiday.


Tale of the Tape


Who: Kanye West and his VMA acceptance speech

On Sunday night, in the cavernous surrounds of the Microsoft Theater of Los Angeles, California, MTV lit the fuse on a potentially lethal PR stunt at their annual Video Music Awards: Kanye West was to be awarded the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, handed his trophy by none other than Taylor Swift.

Genius. A reuniting of the twinkling princess and the pantomime villain; a collision of the forces of pop culture good and evil, played out in front of millions of adoring tweenaged tweeters. But West had other ideas.

Kicking the obvious stunt to the curb ("You know how many times they announced Taylor was going to give me the award. Because it got them more ratings. Listen to the kids, bruh!"), West proceeded to wax lyrical about... well, all sorts. 

Every other syllable of West's speech was a finely-tuned 140-character missile - an elegant demonstration of how to create a clutch of headline-grabbing moments in a little under five minutes. The front-page story? This...

Cue the Tweets, Vines, status updates, gossip columns, and a general internet orgasm over the stunt. 

So long as it gets kids interested in the American political process, it can't be bad thing. Right?


Who: The Duck Army

We're not sure where to begin with this.

The now apocryphal story goes that one Kevin Synnes was shopping with his girlfriend, bored stiff and looking for any opportunity to embarrass her. He found a bin of duck chew toys that emitted a soul-chilling scream on being squeezed.

One duck: a minor chuckle. A bin of ducks: a viral sensation that's racked up more YouTube and Vine loops than any of West's antics. 

Two internet sensations, one crowded weekend of retweets and looped Vines - who won the weekend for you?