Thomas Middleditch was performing in Chicago’s Second City. Just before a show, he and one of his fellow comedians Fernando went to a McDonald’s.

They were eating Chicken McNuggets.

Several minutes later (in true comedic form) they began free-styling a southern-style-crunk rap devoted to the McDonald’s chicken-product item.

And later that night, they opened their show at Second City by tossing McNuggets into the audience while showing off their new “Mick Nug Gets Mick Nug Gets” rap.

A teacher said “You should make that a video. You’ll probably get a hundred hits”

So they did.

And as of today, the Tom Middleditch “I’m Into Nuggets, Yo” YouTube video has nearly two million views. The McDonald’s commercial version has over five hundred thousand. And the re-uploaded third party additions to YouTube have been watched an additional several-hundred-thousand times.

Add to that, there are the knock-offs. Six teenage girls made a version which has garnered a hundred and fifty thousand views…and hundreds of (absolutely brutal) comments dissing their knock off.

There’s a Christian version. “I’m into Jesus, y’all. I’m into Jesus y’all” with “who is my SAY vior” replacing “ketchup and MAY yo”.

Mom and Son. Trios of teenage girls. Close-as-possible recreations with a tall, skinny white kid accompanied by an Hispanic guy in front of various McDonald’s locations all over the globe.

Even prior to a Boston based advertising agency pitching the forty seven second video to McD’s honcho’s, the video was an instant YouTube hit.

After getting his name from a friend of mine who worked for a division of the agency which initially sold the clip to McDonald’s, I tracked down Tom Middleditch via Facebook. We arranged a meeting at a bar on 13th street in New York City on an unseasonably warm February afternoon to talk viral videos, Chicken McNuggets, life in Brooklyn and surviving a gig working on a cruise ship filled with Long Islanders immediately following the debut of the clip.

“…it took, like twenty minutes…we went over to a McDonald’s outside of Wrigley Field and we edited it down to thirty seconds …cause, we thought, hey, this is actually pretty catchy and maybe it could be a commercial…so we made it like, thirty seconds…or maybe it was thirty two?”

Middleditch remarked over a Diet Coke (he had a party to go to that night)

“And then we put it up on the internet. We didn’t even put it on YouTube at first, it was just on our MySpace. And it totally got a lot of hits. At one point, these people who were like, ex-marketers, wrote this book about Citizen Marketing and featured us in it, so that was pretty cool. And we were on Maury, which I guess is pretty weird…in a weird way I can say that I was on Maury”

“Tom Middleditch…you ARE the baby’s daddy” I attempted to joke.

“Ha, yeah…the baby daddy of McNuggets”

Viral videos have become something of a Holy Grail for new-media marketing. Finding that right blend of spontaneity, cleverness and perfect timing has become a sought after science by marketers and ad agencies in recent years.

“I think anyone can see right through a purposefully made viral video. You can just smell it. It just reeks of it. I think that’s how videos get viral. They’re totally unintentional and honest in a way.” said Tom.

Take, for example, “Charlie Bit My Finger Again“- which was, presumably, shot by Charlies Mom or Dad. What Mom and Dad could never foresee, however, was that cute, chubby little Charlie would soon be viewed by nearly one hundred million surfers. Completely not staged and absolutely innocent, this is the kind of thing that marketers drool over.

Of course, there’s probably the granddaddy of unexpected viral video success with Ok, Go’s “Here It Goes Again” (or, more commonly referred to as The Treadmill Song). This simple video- shot with a single camera and six treadmills- made OK, Go a household name- rocketing their tour calendar from dive bars and small clubs to big festivals and breaking into the thousand-seater venues.

And who’da thunkit that a Panda Bear caught sneezing in a sixteen second clip would garner thirty-four million views?

But no viral-video post would be complete without mention of the fat German kid lip-syncing to Numa Numa (now with over twenty five million views)

Tom Middleditch laughed (a little) when recalling his time working a gig on a cruise ship shortly after the McDonald’s campaign first aired “…and it was right when it hit so on the ship there were all these Jersey and Bronx, you know, like, blue collar folks and they all were like [in a New Yawk accent] “Yo, yo…it’s the McNuggets kid…yo, yore fuckin hi LAH ree yus! Do your rap!”

Did you ever do it?

“No, no way..it’s like ‘dance, monkey dance’” he sighed.

So, here we are…two years later sitting in a bar on the lower east side of Manhattan on a warm February afternoon. Has the “I’m into nuggets” fame helped or harmed Tom Middleditch?

“I started testing for Saturday Night Live, it went really well…but I got a holding deal with CBS…they essentially pay you to work for just them for the season. So, that’s cool. That was like my gateway to New York City. And I made my way to New York. And then the writers strike happened.”

Shortly after this interview, Middleditch traveled to Austin, TX to pitch a film, Splinterheads, at the South By Southwest Film Festival. He says “It’s about a young guy…my age (26) who is kinda lost in life, and a fair comes to town and this no rules kind of girl shows him how to let loose a bit.”

Whether you’re a fat German kid lip-syncing his way through a dance song, a sneezing Panda bear at the zoo or just Tom Middleditch crunk-rapping about Chicken McNuggets, YouTube has defined itself as a way for virtually anyone to bust through the internet clutter. What one does with that fame once it’s happened is entirely in their hands.