How social media spawned the legend of Sharknado

When we first saw the trailer for Sharknado, it didn’t even occur to us that it could garner such great attention on the Internet. We should have known better. There are very few people who won’t gobble up the chance to watch sharks hunting humans. This obsession has spawned a legion of shark-eating-man films ranging from classics like Jaws to spin-offs like the forgettable Piranha 3D movies. Call it collective consciousness or the workings of the hivemind, there are some things every one wants to see or at least to be seen as seeing. Royal weddings, for example, or potentially-disastrous comebacks like the one Tara Reid made in Sharknado.

The show-stopper scene

If you are unfamiliar with Sharknado, we don’t blame you. It’s one of the thousands of made-for-TV movies aired every year. In this instance, it aired on US network SyFy. Produced by The Asylum, the makers of other cult favourites like 'Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus' and 'Mega Python vs Gatoroid', Sharknado is obviously about a tornado of sharks (duh!). We won’t spoil it for you by going into details (mostly because it’s too twisted to put in words), but suffice to say when there’s a swarm of sharks swirling to bite the actors’ faces, there’s not a dull moment to be had.

So when Sharknado caught on like wildfire on Twitter, it was only mildly surprising. An AP report on the movie says Sharknado was the most social television programme on the night it aired, clocking in at around 5,000 tweets every minute at peak popularity (see table). Admittedly, that’s not a lot, but a lot more than anyone would have expected from Sharknado.

SyFy says the film was mentioned 387,000 times on various social media and nearly 1.37 million viewers tuned in to watch the bite-fest. Of course, many of those millions would have watched Sharknado just on a lark, which is quite evident from tweets on the movie.

I guess I don’t know what *anything* means anymore, living in this crazy post-sharknado world.

— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) July 13, 2013

Sharks protest against the movie

We venture a lot more than the first few millions will be itching to get their hands on it. As for us, we are dreading (read: eagerly awaiting) the next instalment. Because let’s face it, now that Sharknado has been broached, "Orcanami" and "Bearricane" cannot not be too far along.