FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

"Wild Donkey Fight On Grand Turk Island" Is the Best YouTube Video

I have no idea why street fights make for such compelling online video.

The Best YouTube Video is an occasional series where Motherboard searches for the best YouTube video ever made, usually on Friday afternoons right before the margarita alarm rings. Previously The Best YouTube Video: I Thoroughly Enjoy Swords.

I have no idea why street fights make for such compelling online video. My good internet friend Brian Hickey, who's an expert in these things, told me that "They're so animalistic you can't tell who's worse: The people fighting in the street or the people recording instead of helping." And from Bum Fights to Hick Fights to Convict Brawls to Kimbo Slice to World Star, YouTube and other streaming video sites are powered by an underexplained, context-free sucker-punched underbelly that makes the world seem like some violent comedy designed by DJ Assault, if he were god.

I found "Wild Donkey Fight On Grand Turk Island" while searching YouTube for "robot fights donkey" just for shits, and I love it because it raises far more questions than it could ever answer. (Were it not a video on the internet, of course, where answers, correct or not, are omnipresent.)

First, why the hell are these donkeys fighting? (Donkeys actually have fairly complex territorial behaviors.) Where the shit is Grand Turk Island? (It's the largest island in the Turks islands, and I'm embarrassed to have not thought of that. Did you know that Grand Turk Island is known for a cactus that looks like it's wearing a fez? Thanks Wikipedia!) Most importantly, what kind of a psycho does this cameraman have to be to jump into a pack of fighting asses to get the killer angles? And how can we thank him?

Because of these questions, a video of a pair of equine creatures nipping each other on the side of a rural road while an oblivious car is elevated into Video, capital V, that inspires one to use his dormant imagination to simply marvel at this Earth, which for all intents and purposes is populated by billions of creatures doing interesting things at every moment, a truly shocking truth to think about.

But the part that makes this video The Best YouTube Video? The excellent surprise reveal at the end, where a bunch of frightened tourists are shown right before the brawling donkeys run off into the great unknown.