When one thinks of "viral videos", the immediate and obvious meaning of the phrase is that it refers to videos that grab a lot of attention very quickly.  Therefor, the most viral videos of the year might just be those that grabbed the most attention, or views, in 2008.  But we here at TheDailyTube are about quality more than quantity, and so our list of the best viral vids of the year contains some off-beat picks.  We submit for your approval:

10.

Popping Popcorn with a Cell Phone

This is the original hoax that started a craze of imitations across the entire globe.  It also caused a lot of people to freak out about radiation and cancer and cell phones, which was pretty funny for the rest of us.

9.

How to Fail Hot Mic 101

When internet doesn't entertain you, you should entertain the internet.  I got creative one day and decided to throw these newcaster gaffes together in a funny mashup.  Definitely more popular than I ever would've thought!  But this covers "Do it Live", with a bunch of great bonuses.

8.

Zeitgeist: Addendum

As the economic crisis was getting heated up by a meltdown on Wallstreet, the sequel to the original Zeitgeist was released with perfect timing, and rocketed up the viral charts to everyone's surprise.  It's feature lengthed and definitely worth the watch.

7.

Burger King Employee Bathes in Sink

When a viral video makes it to the actual news, you know it's having an impact.  "Mr. Unstable" here got all the attention he was looking for, as well as getting every employee in the video fired.  He was then followed up by something strange about Beyonce.

6.

Amazing Elephant Paints Self-Portrait

If this is your first time watching this video, you will be amazed.  So was the rest of the world, briefly, until it was revealed that this is a typical trick done to amuse tourists.  Supposedly the man standing next to the elephant is controlling the trunk with covert gestures, but it's still freakin' amazing.

5.

Totally Awesome 360 Degree Immersion Video

What's great about this video is that you can watch it a zillion times and it's basically different every time.  Click and drag around the screen to change the camera angle.  We're surprised there hasn't been more of these this year.

4.

Mario Saves Princess, Remains Celebate

This video introduced us Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, which is a long ridiculous name for a web series, but McFarlane continues to put out genius comedy, nonetheless.  You knew it wouldn't be all peaches and cream for Mario even if he DID save the day.

3.

Remembering Hurricane Katrina

Also a DailyTube Exclusive, this photo mashup of the catastrophic damage of hurricane Katrina was released this year on Katrina's anniversary.  A sobering look at what remains of New Orleans reminded us of how much we love Bruce Springsteen.

2.

Dancing with the Stormtroopers

This fantastic video was taken from inside Disney's Hollywood studio, where they do something like this every year in honor of "Star Wars Weekend".  Star Wars characters in a dance competition making it to the internet.  We rest our case.

1.

Lil' Bill O'Reilly

Lil' Bill O'Reily proved to us that even a kid could do Bill O'Reilly's job.  At points, he's even better than his older counterpart.  How could we not include this adorable shouting head in this year's greatest?

So there you have it.  There's been so many great videos this year, it was really hard to pick just 10 of the best, and we probably could've just as easily picked a slew of others, but enough about us.  What do you think?  Tip us off on what you think should've made the list, and forward the ones you like to your friends before 2008 ends!

It may only be November, but the Daily Tube Blog is kicking off its recent launch with a bang: a countdown of 2008's sexiest online videos. And when you think "sexy", I know you think about a website-coding TV nerd with a kink for robots and 19th century American literature, so NEVER FEAR. I'm just the right blogger to bring this countdown to you.

ADDENDUM: With some feedback from the rest of the Daily Tube crew, the list has grown a little longer since yesterday. See if you can spot the additions! (Hint: They are sexy.)

15. Sarah Palin in a swimsuit

People tell me she was a Hockey MILF. I never saw it personally, but for you devastated conservatives out there, here's something to cheer you up. Yes, that's real footage of young Sarah Heath in her beauty pageant days. (The voiceover is not so real.) It's a shame they don't make this part of the vetting and campaigning process, because she could've totally kicked Biden's ass.

14. Lil Wayne - "Prostitute 2"

The summary on YouTube and Technorati calls this the "sexiest video of the year." Who am I to disagree (except for the part where it's almost at the bottom of my list)? I myself need a little more than a weird black-lit outline of somebody's booty to get me going, but that young woman's outfit certainly captures Ho Couture better than Julia Roberts ever did. (Ask your parents.)

13. Maggie Gyllenhaal and the Hot Chick Guild of America

A short online film from the very beginning of the year, when the Hollywood writers' strike -- wow, that was this year? Really? *awkward cough* If you remember, many striking writers and actors (unable to contain their brilliance/desperate need for attention) started making crazy viral videos. This was by far the sexiest. Sure, the implied girl-on-girl-on-girl threesome cuts away before any action, and the whole thing's a tortured analogy for union negotiations, but I still prefer this gritty art-film look to "I Kissed a Girl" with its annoying, hot pink, Moulin Rougey glow. Eat your heart out, Katy Perry. You did not invent fishnet stockings or fake bisexuality in a vaccuum. So there!

12. The trailer for Iron Man

Oh, don't look at me like that. Guys, you know you love big phallic missiles. And ladies, you know you love Robert Downey Jr. Surprised? I know. Robert Downey Jr. is thisclose to being the new Johnny Depp. Sure, you knew who he was. You knew he was kinda too old for you. You knew he'd done a bunch of respectable movies that nobody saw. But you never stopped to consider how unbelievably made of sex he is UNTIL NOW. Now he's all charming and smirking in a suit, and he's all vulnerable with the terrorism and the kidnapping, and he has dirty, glistening arms because the terrorists hate people having sleeves. He also has a glowing cyber-thing in his heart. This is important, because he has to open his shirt for us to see it. Robert Downey Jr. is an action hero. I'm very okay with that.

11. Paris Hilton doesn't know how to belly-dance 

But she makes up for it in looking cute, striking model poses, and being... Paris. I gotta say, I'm discovering a new and frightening appeciation for Ms. Hilton ever since she hilariously fired back at the McCain campaign for, uh, implying she is a shallow celebrity who does nothing. Paris can do LOTS, you guys. She can be a judge for the Miss Turkey 2008 beauty contest. That's a skill! She can wear a slinky dress. And as this clip shows us, she can stand adjacent to a belly-dancer and do an impromptu White Person Groove hotter than you've ever seen it before.

10. "I'm F*cking Ben Affleck"

What it lacks in sex appeal, it makes up for in being the most awesome viral video of the entire year. In case you live under a rock and you've never seen this bit (I'm looking at YOU, Natalie DiSantis of Burlington, New Jersey), it all began on Jimmy Kimmel Live when the host's girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, confessed her ongoing affair with Matt Damon in the most insensitive way possible -- a rockin' music video. Not to be outdone, Kimmel found the perfect way to hurt BOTH of them. I submit that Kimmel won and created the hotter version, for the Brad Pitt cameo alone.

9. Mariah Carey sings something-or-other in a bikini

I can't be bothered to listen to anything Mariah Carey recorded since I was in middle school and she released that awesome Christmas album, but that's not the point. The point is: there is a bikini, Mariah is inside it, and the director found about thirty loving angles from which to film that. You're welcome!

8. Obama gets that dirt off his shoulder

In a surprising stump-speech moment that surely would've had more play if conservatives knew what the hell he was talking about, front-running presidential candidate Barack Obama responded to his various critics with... the internationally recognized gesture for "feelin' like a pimp"? Yup, looks like it. And that was when I realized, as a great patriot once said, I've got a crush on Obama. Enjoy the remix. (Note to my liberal lady friends: Yes, deal with the Hillary Clinton-bashing toward the end. Bitches get stuff done anyway.)

7. Political Sex Scandals: The Music Video

First my state's governor, Elliot Spitzer, made one little mistake buying prostitutes for the better part of the last decade. Then my congressman had a secret love child. Even my new, blind governor is not immune to adultery. Is there something in the water? Or is the C in C-SPAN short for Cinemax? (Oh snap!! Nailed that joke.) BarelyPolitical.com, the same people who gave us Obama Girl and her ilk, brings us this little ode to a year when politics and porn collided. No, this year.

6. Realistic Hollywood Sex Scene

Coming in at #3 is CollegeHumor's funny take on what a love-making scene should really look like in the movies. Oh, they leave in the beautiful young people and the burning, forbidden desire. But they also leave in... the awkward parts. (One quibble: The guy actually took his socks off? I always thought that was just a romantic fantasy.) As Daily Tube contributor Nadia wondered then and now: How exactly does the human race continue as a species? Easy. We turn on the sweeping orchestral music, light some candles, and aim for the towel.

5. Stephen Colbert vs. Korean Pop Star Dance-Off

4. Rihanna's "Disturbia" video

This song spent several weeks as the number one music video on YouTube last month, and there's a reason. Like some kind of whacked-out version of "Thriller" for the sped-up camera Saw generation, Rihanna plays multiple characters inside a freak show -- a fan-waving dominatrix, a white-eyed demon in a cage, a woman being set on fire for still wearing a belt as a collar in 2008, etc. The bottom line is this video is WEIRD, but weird Rihanna is still hot enough to seduce a plastic mannequin.

3. The Wii Fit Hula Girl

A Nintendo fitness game is just a Nintendo fitness game. Until you throw in an imaginary hula hoop and no pants, and suddenly it's a surprise lap dance. A young man uploaded this innocent but risqué clip to YouTube and titled it "Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit." I prefer "Why no one should buy their boyfriend a digital camera," but whatever. It's a mystery why this stick-skinny girl with a totally junkless trunk was playing Wii Fit in the first place, but seven million views and dozens of copy-cats later, does it matter? FYI, the original hula hooper (a.k.a. Lauren Bernat) was CAPSLOCK FURIOUS to find out what a perv she was dating. But all is forgiven now, and she stuck around to shake her cute, glasses-wearing, ponytailed hips with him another day.

So this Saturday YouTube is rolling out its live channel, and has enlisted all of yesteryear's biggest video micro-celebrities to help promote the event.  Starting at 8pm at YouTube.com/live, you're basically going to get what you've been getting from YouTube for the past 4 years:  weird people acting weird.  Take this viral ad for the event as an example:

Now Charlie the Unicorn is all fine and good, if you like that sort of thing.  We got a kick out of him like a year or two ago when he first came out.  But, given the fact that Charlie the Unicorn has blossomed into an actual representitive for the commercial-ridden YouTube Live event, we almost find this ad discredits the event and makes us not want to watch it, in any capacity.

This nonsense from Tay Zonday, of "Chocolate Rain" notoriety, is even worse:

Now, we can understand that YouTube has exploded as the most recognizable name in social media, and that's respectable.  The next step for them is further monetization, which is inevitably going to lead to advertisements and sponsorships of all kinds.  But what happened to that innovative kind of thinking that had its last gasp when the YouTube contests channel gained all sorts of corporate sponsorship?  That was the most appealing thing about YouTube when it first got big, and there have been endless attempts to further monetize a formula that has resulted in a disappointingly stigmatized MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR WEBSITE.  Guitar Hero 3 commercials during YouTube Live?  You really think people are going to clear their Saturday night for that?  C'mon, YouTube.  Terrible servers, sad attempts to make internet media look more like regular, boring television, and an asinine userbase are really starting to take their toll on you.

I don't know if anybody else is having election day fatigue (and by "fatigue", I mean "only checking that FiveThirtyEight site once a day) but this was a lovely pick-me-up. Remember citizen journalism? How the young people with their blogs and their YouTube are gonna close every newspaper in America, by getting to the Real Stories the mainstream media is afraid to touch? Funny update: Amateur internet reporters may not always bring us the most respected news, or the most non-fraudulent news, but they can bring us the most ADORABLE news.

All this report is missing is baby pandas and kittens who can't keep their eyes open. Underneath the surface, the video's maker has lots of serious thoughts about the contrast between the kids' purity and innocent decision-making ideas and their shallow, uninformed criteria for president. "My hope was to unmask how people choose and possibly put more effort into making a choice," he says. But honestly, after two years of this scary, relentlessly wanky presidential race, I will take a kindergartener voting for Obama "because he's looking good in picture" ANY DAY over somebody talking about ACORN and abortion rights. But that's me.

And check out the five-year-old Hillary/Nader fan. I'm very conflicted, because she's clearly just repeating the beliefs and prejudices of her parents, which is Deeply Wrong, but... she also appears to have an IQ of 180, so it all evens out.

As a sidebar (and because I think the Daily Tube folks will kill me if 70% of my posts are cute children being cute), meet Damon Wheeler. He's a 10-year-old reporter covering the election for his school, and he has a YouTube channel. You may think you know the answer to the question "Is Joe Biden smarter than a fifth grader?" but when it's THIS fifth-grader you might change your mind. I'm pretty sure Damon Wheeler is the greatest thing to come out of the internet since... I don't know. Since Google.

I'm a pretty sophisticated lady. I watch Mad Men, you know? I like my TV when it's all about dialogue and style and the Cuban Missile Crisis. There's a smart, classy Nicole who thought the Don Draper's Guide To Picking Up Women sketch was the best thing on SNL last week. She chuckled along with the other 80 people who know where to find AMC on their cable box. She loves Jon Hamm in his sexy ad executive, leading-man mode.

And then there's another, less classy Nicole. Who laughed out loud three times during this sketch:

That's a higher laugh-per-minute quotient than Tina Fey ever gives me. Oh my god, WHY is this so funny? Am I seven years old? Am I sort of homophobic? My world is askew.

(Come on, his face! I love how he gets this dawning realization of what he's saying right before they cut to the jingle every time. Dear Jon Hamm/Don Draper: Next time you come back from the Korean War and steal somebody's identity, please make your new name a double entendre for butt sex. You'll get all the viewers and the Emmy you deserve like that. *snaps fingers* Your friend, Nicole.)