Humming along….

Lately, I’ve been curiously humming the tune of “Sunny D and Rum” a lot. I’m guessing she never knew how big it would get, the woman who first came up with the baseline of the song. Here’s the more stylized version from the “Auto-Tune the News” guys:

This is the same woman who made a video of herself singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama”, and in the last month, she has removed every single video from her account. The only items left are some favorites and several channel comments begging her to put the videos back up.

More or less nothing is known about this woman, who is heavy-set, speaks in a Southern USA accent, has very few teeth (two are visible at most times in her videos, but I believe I’ve caught glimpses of one or two teeth further back in her mouth), and is not exactly beautiful in the classic sense (although some people might find her attractive – we all have different tastes, thankfully). Nobody seems to know her name or location, but many have seen her. What she lacks in looks and singing voice, she makes up with enthusiasm and the guts to (inititially) not care what the world would think of her, and I admire her for that.

One starts to wonder: Who is she? Why did she remove all her videos? What does she really think about all this attention? The auto-tuned version of her “Sunny D and Rum” song created by The Gregory Brothers has almost 3 million views on YouTube at the time I write this, and they’ve also put this up on iTunes.

I’m quite heavy-set as well, and I haven’t dared to put as many videos of myself up on YouTube, even though I have several ideas for videos. I’m mostly introverted, but I’ve at least managed to put my own face up on YouTube a few times. And I do mean a few (most videos in my YouTube account are clips from others – at this point, only the videos showing my face are the ones I’ve made myself). I admire the woman who professed her love for her favorite beverage (SunnyD, or Sunny Delight, a type of orange lemonade, mixed with rum – mixing quanitities unknown) in a song, as she puts herself out there in a way I wish I could dare to do.

If I had to guess on the reasons for her disappearance, I might chalk it up to a big load of nasty comments about her appearance. There’s a lot of mean-spirited people out there who seem to be excited about hurting others’ feelings, and I’m guessing this took a too big of a toll on her self-esteem, prompting her to simply give up and remove all her videos (although this is complete guesswork on my part).

I honestly hope she will return to the YouTube world, and keep up her video posts. She’s an inspiration to those who are reluctant about posting videos of themselves.