There is always an argument whether or not innovation is an acceptable art form.
Hapless Reader: But Varun, what the hell does that mean?
Well my faithful patrons, I am talking about the remake and spoof-of-spoof videos that make up the hours we all spend on YouTube pro-crastinating (I only recently stopped amateur-crastinating).
There was the genius "My New Haircut" short that spawned the equally good Asian and Jewish spin-offs. Duke University Improv has already received major props from me for their version that starred Lawrence Chen, which got a shout out in a New York Times Magazine online post.
The latest viral video to go through the do-over treatment is Sarah Silverman's "I'm F-ing Matt Damon." The two response videos that have surfaced since the clip and took the interwebs by storm are Jimmy Kimmel's response, "I'm F-ing Ben Affleck," and the Kevin Smith-directed, Elizabeth Banks-sung "I'm F-ing Seth Rogen."
The Kimmel version is actually better than the original and features a flock of famous faces from Brad Pitt to Cameron Diaz to Huey Lewis. However, the Seth Rogen video is poorly made and has less replay value.
So overall, the question we must ask is whether homages of clips add or detract to the viral phenomenon? IMHO ("In my honest opinion" for the non-net-savy), it is better to have access to the genuinely funny stuff (e.g. Kimmel and DUI's mini-masterpieces) and suffer the not-so-good stuff than to not have the videos at all. This is better known as The Facts of Life rule ("You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both...").
That said, we must resist the urge to go overboard with remakes. It would be horror to go through another Soulja Boy-pocalypse.
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