{"id":294,"date":"2016-03-14T14:19:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T18:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/03\/14\/launched-into-web-stardom\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T20:59:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T01:59:14","slug":"launched-into-web-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/launched-into-web-stardom\/","title":{"rendered":"Launched into Web stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JANUARY 13, 2012<br \/>\nby John Roberts, Newspage Editor<\/p>\n<p>Brian Highsmith \u201910 thought he would surprise his bride, Emily Patterson Highsmith \u201910, with an atypical wedding gift.<\/p>\n<p>So before his January 7 wedding in Orange Park, Florida, he and his groomsmen, all of whom have a Furman pedigree, toiled into the early morning hours, polishing and preparing. At the reception, they\u00a0gave Emily her present \u2014 a hilarious, high-energy, lip-syncing routine to Justin Bieber\u2019s \u201cBaby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the fun didn\u2019t end there. On Wednesday, the 3:43-minute <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sF9XBYHrwtk&amp;feature=g-logo&amp;context=G2f7170dFOAAAAAAASAA\">video<\/a> was posted on YouTube by Jason Avery Films, the company that filmed the wedding. And suddenly the Highsmiths and their friends were Web sensations.<\/p>\n<p>Since Wednesday the video has appeared on the Web pages of CBS News, the Huffington Post, the <em>Chicago Tribune<\/em>, MSN, the Today Show, and countless others. It even prompted a Tweet and a re-post from the Biebs himself: \u201cJust got sent this. Congrats Emily and Brian. Nice song. Nice moves. Haha.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bieber, by the way, has 16.3 million followers on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>At the latest check, Highsmith\u2019s version of \u201cBaby\u201d had surpassed three million views on YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>A native of Springfield, Virginia, Brian was a double-major in economics and political science. Emily also majored in political science. They live in Washington, D.C., where Brian is a research assistant for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.<\/p>\n<p>And to give credit where it\u2019s due, his backup dancers are Luke Howerter \u201910, Jonathan Cote \u201910, Myles Surrett \u201909, Corey Hopkins \u201910, Quinton White \u201908, Cameron Tommey \u201910 and Miller Yoho \u201910.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JANUARY 13, 2012<br \/>\nby John Roberts, Newspage Editor<\/p>\n<p>Brian Highsmith \u201910 thought he would surprise his bride, Emily Patterson Highsmith \u201910, with an atypical wedding gift.<\/p>\n<p>So before his January 7 wedding in Orange Park, Florida, he and his groomsmen, all of whom have a Furman pedigree, toiled into the early morning hours, polishing and preparing. At the reception, they\u00a0gave Emily her present \u2014 a hilarious, high-energy, lip-syncing routine to Justin Bieber\u2019s \u201cBaby.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}