Let’s let our imaginations run free for a moment, shall we? Let’s imagine an awful, awful “what-if” scenario in which Barack Obama did NOT win the presidency on election night. Imagining it? No… you’re not doing a very good job. Just imagine the absolute worst moment in the history of humankind… and then multiply it by a kajillion.
Still having trouble imagining it? Well, the following video comes close to what that horrible, horrible moment might have looked like. Behold: six teenagers discovering that David Archuleta did NOT win this year’s American Idol.

There but for the grace of God, go we.

64 replies on “The Absolute Worst Moment in the History of Humankind”

  3. I would KILL for a video like that from any random GOP election watch party.

    On a side note, both contestants on American Idol were named David?

  8. That was more satisfying than watching 8 year old figure skaters cry after losing their chance at the gold…

    I’m a very bad man sometimes

  11. When that one girl fell to her knees in tears I burst out laughing. Kids crying is almost always funny.

    Also, I think I heard one of them saying something about “everybody’s going to make fun of us at school”.

    Indeed.

  19. I bet they all have livejournals with blinking icons of LOLcats and start cutting their wrists the wrong way because their world just doesn’t make sense anymore while listening to some James Blunt and thinking the world will be fine because it was all a dream.

    Then they go up to become prostitutes and strippers with coke habits.

  21. Wow…I seriously thought that nobody actually cared about American Idol. I thought it was just a hoax or an urban legend. Thanks for setting me on the path toward enlightenment. BTW…if this is enlightenment, it’s hilarious.

  30. That’s totally adorable. My favorite bit is how some of the girls are genuinely distraught, and the rest kind of work up their disappointment into distress upon seeing that it is expected of them from their leader.

  33. The scary part is I know a 48 year old woman who acted like this when he lost and still brings up that he was robbed when the subject is brought up.

  34. You think thats bad, I had to bare witness to the news reaching my sisters whole Brownies troop assembled in our living room that Bobby was leaving New Edition. I simultaneously almost went deaf and gay.

  36. Cute and terrifying. Oh man, I could watch this over and over again. Bless their little hearts. Now I’m off to Planned Parenthood to get my tubes tied.

  39. Thank you, Jude Fawley @37, for continuing that proud internet tradition of calling “fake” on every video that has ever been posted online.

  43. This is the greatest day of my life.

    There is so much academic food here at The Stranger that it beats the “relief tab” on the “Imagine a sports story you’ve never read symposium special debrief program in the libraries help section” ….

    A possible highlight point for

    “Cloning of the Bad Ideas for Questions Here” on

    “How to Market Success in Politics”

    and all of the people waiting for the overflow from the KOMO Problem Solvers, and the

    “Steven Humphrey Fund for Protection Against Gateway Porn Watchers at the Library” is…

    Will the public really hold it against the conservative tele-evangelists who avert their gaze from The Stranger Slog

    (translation: they never look at the slog)

    in prevention of leading the youth down the wrong garden gate to a “different” form of t.v. heaven?

    I’m sure there must be some others like me out there in “Humphrey Land” who wonder what kind of “protection” the “networks” of cable broadcasters sell to large subsribers of advertising dollars and commercials on channels designed to feed the spiritually immobile, there-bye providing them with the means to send in much needed lucrative franchise donations to re-capture the futures market derivitives…

    ( note to my ballard guru.. thanks for the buzz word..)

    In other words the people who NEVER BUY OR QUESTION about PROFESSIONAL GRADE NETWORK SATELLITE SECURITY…

    ( translation: the kind you can’t buy as a consumer for another 2 to 5 generations )

    Can you imagine a world in which Preachers on T.V. don’t ride out of town with a pretty girl calling after them to come back and make her an honest woman?

    JESUS would ride back to earth on a cloud right now if the greediest holographic designers weren’t making “YOU” the best visualization programs with which to train your gaze to the heavens in anticipation.

  49. Yeah, great and all — but whose idea was it to record this? Did the girls know they were being filmed? (Older sister who never turned to face the camera, I’m looking at you.) I am suddenly reminded of that moment in Drop Dead Gorgeous when the — ahem — “slow” guy gets his overall strap trapped in a car door. He turns to the camera crew and begs for their help, leaning there, pathetically supported by a slender thread of denim — and the cameramen do NOTHING.

    And @47: awesome. 🙂

  50. Imagine if the presidential election results were withheld until all the votes were counted, and then announced by Ryan Seacrest. You know, with some voters looking at the election as if it were American Idol (“I just really feel a connection to Sarah Palin.”), maybe that’s how we should do it next time.

  53. I have a friend who is a big David Cook fan who says that he is aware of this video’s existence and has said he watches it sometimes when he starts to feel too full of himself. I’m not sure how that works, exactly, but make of it what you will.

  54. This reminded my of some movie I saw one time and I can’t remember what it is and it’s driving me crazy a little bit.

    I think it was some sort of teenage pageant documentary from the 70’s or 80’s and there’s this one scene where they unveil the finalist list to the girls. The camera is mounted on the ceiling looking down and there’s this great mix of despair, joy and rage as each girl figures out where she stands.

    That scene was so cool…I wish I could remember where it came from – anybody know? I’ll rent it and post that scene myself if I find out.

  60. Funny? I have a new baby daughter. This shit is terrifying! After watching it eight times with renewed horror, I called Comcast and cancelled our cable.

  61. @ 60, isn’t this on Fox? If so you can still get it… at least until the Hi Def switchover in a few months if you don’t have a hi def TV or a signal converter box for an older TV…

  62. I think most of the posters here have forgotten what it’s like to be in the 6th-7th grade. No doubt due to the many embarrassing things they did, wore, said, etc. For all those haters out there: thank your lucky stars your stupid pubescent antics weren’t caught on video and didn’t wind up on the internet.

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