YouTube has admitted that Psy's 2012 hit song Gangnam Style broke it. Or at least broke its counter that records how many times a video has been viewed.

The breakage occurred because the video's been viewed more than 2,147,483,647 times. As YouTube explains, that's larger than a 32-bit integer, which mean the hit's hit-counter messed up for a while.

Google's fixed the problem – probably by flicking the switch to 64-bit integers – and 'fessed up to the mess by replacing the hit-counter with a wee animation you can view if you really want to hear Gangnam Style again.

Or perhaps the EMC parody version is more to your taste. It's been viewed just 92,000 times since its January 17th, 2013 posting date.

Psy's version landed on July 15th, 2012. And no, we're not going to do the math on how many times a day the song has been watched since, or how many hours of human attention it has occupied.

Knowing that the song broke YouTube is commentary enough on human foibles. ®