Probably reason #1 for why we don't commute is the lack of any public transit in Metro Detroit — but this has got to be another one for us to add to the list of reasons why we prefer having our own vehicular transportation. It's a little video from Hong Kong that's apparently been downloaded over five million times from YouTube and has become such a sensation that the Wall Street Journal profiled it, which is where we found it. Since the Journal charges, we've dropped a couple paragraphs on the video after the jump:
The video may seem tedious at first — but it gets pretty funny when you think about how hilarious the situation is:
HONG KONG — While riding public bus 68X on the night of April 29, Elvis Ho tapped the shoulder of a passenger sitting in front of him who was talking on a cellphone. The 23-year-old Mr. Ho asked the man to lower his voice. Mr. Ho called him "uncle," a familiar way of addressing an elder male in Cantonese.
Instead of complying, the man turned around and berated Mr. Ho for nearly six minutes, peppering his outburst with obscenities.
"I've got pressure, you've got pressure!" the older man exploded. "Why did you have to provoke me?" A nearby passenger who found the encounter interesting captured most of it on video with his own cellphone, and it was posted on the Web.
"Bus Uncle," as the older man is now known, has since become a Hong Kong sensation. The video, including subtitled versions, has been downloaded nearly five million times from YouTube.com, a popular Web site for video clips.
Teenagers and adults here sprinkle their conversations with phrases borrowed from Bus Uncle's rant, such as "I've got pressure!" and "It's not over!" (shouted when the young man tried to end the conversation several times by saying, "It's over"). Also, there are several insults involving mothers. Web sites peddle T-shirts with a cartoon of Bus Uncle and the famous phrases. They are also available as mobile-phone ringtones.
So apparently, Hong Kong youth are so bored that a video of an old guy yelling on the bus is enough to make them giggle like school girls. Remind us to head over there the next time we do something like this — we could make a fortune!
A Six-Minute Tirade On a Hong Kong Bus Rides Into Vernacular (subs. req.) [WSJ]
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