By Clare BruceWednesday 25 May 2016TrendingReading Time: 3 minutes
Star Wars Image: ScreenRant
The infectious joy of Candace Payne, the Texan mum famous for laughing hysterically in a Chewbacca mask, has spread the world like wildfire.
So for those interested in numbers, we’ve prepared a statistical analysis of her viral Facebook video, which has reached almost 144 million views at the time of writing. Since Candace is clearly a Star Wars tragic, let’s start by looking at that internet-breaking figure in intergalactic terms—with a comparison to the Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens stats.
A Comparison With Star Wars VII At The Box Office
During its 2015-16 season in US cinemas, The Force Awakens took in $936.6 million at the box office. In Australia, the corresponding figure was $67.2 million, and in the UK, $183.8 million.
Chewbacca Mum’s video has had more views than cinema viewings of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens in the US, UK and Australia combined.
Dividing the dollars by the average price of movie tickets, we find that Chewie and Hans Solo’s heroics were viewed 108.8 million times by Americans sitting in the cinema, getting popcorn hulls stuck between their teeth.
Add to that the number of big-screen viewings in Britain (18.4 million) and the number of watches by Aussies cracking into Jaffas and choc-tops (6.7 million), and you still only have 133.9 million views!
Did you get that?
Let’s put it this way: the video of Texas mum Candace Payne, laughing her face off in a wookiee mask, has been viewed 11 million more times in its opening week, than J J Abrams achieved in his entire Star Wars VII season in the US, UK and Australia combined.
Chewbacca Mum Versus Other World Statistics
Above: The Chewbacca Mum video has been viewed almost as many times as the entire population of Russia
Delving deeper into ancient history and recent world events, we find that the number of views Candace has so far achieved (did I mention it’s 144 million) is…
- Greater than the number of people who were alive – that’s the entire population of planet earth – at the time of Socrates, Aristotle, Nehemiah, Queen Esther and Alexander the Great. (There were an estimated 100 million people living in the year 500 BC)
- Bigger than the whole population of Japan (currently 127 million), and only slightly smaller than the number of people living in Russia (146.6 million)
- More than the number of people signed up to Facebook in India, which tipped the 142 million mark just a couple of months ago
- Equal to the number of miles that astronaut Scott Kelly travelled in space during his recent #YearInSpace (144 million)
- Forty-four percent bigger than the number of people who watch the American Superbowl (100 million)
- A million more than the number of Americans who are at risk from earthquakes (143 million)
- And if we had a global flu pandemic today as bad as the incorrectly-named Spanish Flu of 1918 (it was terrible), then 142 million people would be killed. Thankfully, that’s not quite as many as the number of views on Candace Payne’s Chewbacca video – what a relief!
A Final Note:
Fellow Aussies, please accept our apologies for the copious references to American statistics. But let’s face it, we only have 24 million people in this country—which is about one sixth of the number of views Candace’s wookiee-mask video has reached at the time of writing.