Briefly Noted: Hidden Video

If the secret to being hip is to keep abreast of the entertainments that no one else has heard of, then no site could be hipper than 0 Views (zeroviews.biz), the blog that bills itself as "The Best Of The Bottom Of The Barrel." The site's curators have a simple mission: They scour YouTube for videos with a view count of nada, then embed them on their site.

The result is a cornucopia for aficionados of the ephemeral: a mix of primitive F/X, inexplicable silliness, and moments so banal they become surreal. Mike Wise of the CBC calls the clips "anti-viral videos"; the historian Rob MacDougall dubs the site "the very long tail." I'll call it as good a window on America in the early 21st century as anyone could ever find.