Bus Uncle
In 2006, Hong Kong experienced Bus Uncle. A six-minute video recorded on the top level of one of the city's public double-decker buses leaked to the Internet and rapidly went viral. It showed an exchange between a disgruntled middle-aged man and the 23-year-old sitting a row behind him who had asked the elder man to lower his voice while talking on a cell phone. What follows is an excruciatingly cagey and eventually vulgar argument, conducted mostly by the shouting, gesticulating Bus Uncle — as the senior came to be known. To Americans, the blowup may not seem like much, but the episode soon dominated headlines in Hong Kong — a city notorious for its merciless pace and cramped quarters. Soon, T-shirts with Bus Uncle's repeated line "I've got pressure, you've got pressure!" were on sale across the city; Bus Uncle–isms spawned ringtones, karaoke hits and rap songs. Previously on state welfare, Bus Uncle got a job in p.r. for a chain of steak restaurants, appeared on TV shows and was interviewed once by a celebrity beauty queen. The run of good fortune ended later in the year when three unidentified masked men rushed into the restaurant where he was working and pummeled him, fracturing bones in Bus Uncle's face. Talk about pressure.