Delta Airlines' meme-filled safety video might be trying too hard

Delta released a new airline safety video brimming with internet memes new and old, and while it's attracted thousands of views in a day, commentators panned the airline for trying way too hard to be cool.

The video, posted on Delta's YouTube channel on Wednesday, has already attracted more than 800,000 views. Flight attendants guide the viewer through the requisite instructions for properly fastening your safety belt, finding the emergency exits on the plane and so on.

It's the guest stars that make the video however: in this case, a parade of 22 memes invade the cabin. A man dumps himself with water replicating the Ice Bucket Challenge from summer 2014, while at one point the '90s computer-animated Dancing Baby does its awkward jig in the airplane's aisle, wearing an infant life vest. Characters like the screaming goat and Christopher Torres' Nyan Cat round out the cast.

The video includes many of the people who made these memes popular in the first place, such as Paul Vasquez packing his double rainbows into the overhead compartment.

Delta even got meta with its inclusion of Katherine Lee, the presenter for the airline's 2008 instructional video who became known as "Deltalina," seemingly for little more than her full lips and sassy "smoking is not allowed" finger wave, which she replicates in the latest video.

All the memes are cited in the video's description. As an added bonus, short remixes of the video are linked to at the end, each featuring YouTube celebrities such as the crew from Epic Meal Time and 15-year-old Anthony "Lohanthony" Quintal.

An instructional video about how to properly fasten an oxygen mask in an emergency probably has little to no value to a non-passenger — i.e. just about anyone watching this video on YouTube.

But wacky or unusual safety videos have been a thing for quite some time, a trend that arguably began with a clip by Virgin America in 2007, featuring an all-animated cast in the style of a newspaper editorial cartoon.

Some are wondering if Delta has its latest viral masterpiece or is just trying too hard.

Consider that Delta named its video The Internetest safety video on the Internet. Fresh off the heels of Air New Zealand's The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made and Virgin's astonishingly elaborate song and dance number from 2013, it's a wonder that they leave the safety instructions at all, in what are essentially long-form commercials.

Newsweek's Polly Mosendz called the video cringe-worthy. "I look forward to watching this video on a plane with my grandmother, and all other people who don't obsessively look at internet memes, to see their looks of absolute confusion," she writes.

Kotaku's Nathan Grayson called the video "the audiovisual equivalent of an airplane septic tank," pointing out that taking the memes out of their original context strips away what made them go viral in the first place.

"This is yet another instance of major companies not understanding how to engage with a new generation of humour, of culture," he writes. "It's obnoxious, painful to watch, and a bit insulting."