Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ Is So Popular It Breaks Youtube’s View Counter

Psy, the South Korean pop star, has created a timeless smash hit in Gangnam Style. The video to the song, from 2012, is so popular that it has surpassed 2,147,483,647 views on YouTube, maxing out the site’s view counter.

“We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met Psy,” said a Google representative.

Google owns YouTube and in its blog this week it posted, “Gangnam Style has been viewed so many times we have to upgrade!”

YouTube’s view counter was based on a 32-bit integer, which is a unit of data in computer programming languages. The number 2,147,483,647 is the counter’s maximum positive value.

The programmers who created YouTube nine years ago never imagined that any single video on their new platform would be viewed over 2.1 billion times. Back when the counter was created, several million hits was considered a mega hit, reports CNN.

Psy’s Gangnam Style breached the barrier late Wednesday morning, as it reached more than 2,152,512,000.

The engineers at YouTube saw the issue coming so they recently updated to a 64-bit view counter on the site. Matt McLernon, a Google spokesman, states that the YouTube counter can now go to 9 quintillion views.

Now we will see have to wait and see if Psy’s Gangnam Style can break this new counter as well.

“Nothing actually broke. There was never anything that actually went wrong. It’s just people having fun with the language,” McLernon shared.

Broken system or not, what Psy has achieved is impressive. Who would have thought Psy’s trademark horse-riding video that is just short of three years old could achieve such a feat?

Gangnam Style was first uploaded in July of 2012 and it has become the most watched video of all time. Last summer, the video ranked number 5 in views, reports the Atlantic.

“People still play this video an absurd number of times,” McLernon shared.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, YouTube has added a new wrinkle: ‘If you hover your cursor over the Gangnam Style view counter, the numbers spin backwards and forwards!”

“Eh Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style / Eh Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh / On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby / I’m a man who knows a thing or two / On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby / I’m a man who knows a thing or two / You know what I’m saying / Oppa is Gangnam style.”

Psy is right — he is on top and the running man has definitely run up the numbers to prove it! Congratulations to Psy — his 2012 Gangnam Style video is the official King of YouTube!