How does a meme start? It has less to do with craft and more to do with who you know and where you find them. In this case, some second-degree acquaintance pays attention to CollegeHumor, introduces me third-hand to the “Dramatic Chipmunk” thread — and even though, as Bryan Veloso discovered, it’s a Japanese TV clip of a prarie dog and not a chipmunk, everyone’s already hooked. The CollegeHumor subtitle pretty much nails it: “Best five second video on the internet.”

Nick Douglas (video maker and lifecaster), Veronica Belmont (who makes lots of video for CNET), Drew Olanoff (of Scriggity) and Justine Ezarik (a.k.a. iJustine) have already joined the circus, filming themselves watching the dramatic chipmunk’s fateful head-turn, and fatefully turning their heads too.

Genus rodentia aside, it’s all a little much for this old man to wrap his head around. Not that I didn’t make my own video and upload it to Vimeo. That’s where the cool video kids hang out these days, apparently. But I’m thinking, “I can’t set up three-point lighting, much less a measured zoom or tracking shot, without time, a budget and a crew!” As reactions go, just a tad anachronistic, no?

The point is that you have five seconds to create a single reaction, and the audio track has been created for you, if you can figure out how to download and split it.