A clip of Ed Miliband endlessly repeating the same soundbite about public sector strikes has suddenly got a new lease of life on Facebook.
It's outperforming almost any other political video in the country during election time, and reaching an audience that most parties would do anything to attract.
And it's doing far better than almost all the professional clips put together in-house by the political parties. On Thursday morning, Labour released its new attack advert to highlight David Cameron's "record in office". It had been viewed just 9,400 times on YouTube at the time of publication – a tiny fraction of the Facebook clip's social reach.
The video, an edit of a clip first broadcast in 2011, shows Miliband repeating the same words in a different order, regardless of the questions being asked.
At the time of publication the video had been viewed on Facebook more than 1.3 million times in just five days.
The footage was originally shot almost four years ago, when Miliband was asked his opinion on public sector workers striking over pension changes.
Damon Green, the ITV News reporter who conducted the interview, said at the time that he was furious at being used as a "recording device for a scripted soundbite".
The clip attracted a fair amount of attention when it first went on YouTube in 2011. But this edit – clipped by Facebook user Jason Moon from a compilation video by conspiracy theory website Rich Planet – adds colour-coded text keeping track of the repetition on the right of the screen.
It appears to have hit the sweet spot that sends things super-viral – especially given the added reach given by Facebook's recent embrace of video, and in particular the fact that such clips will be brought to the immediate attention of any Facebook user whose friends have shared them, because they will play automatically in their newsfeed.
Jason Moon, who posted the clip on Facebook, told BuzzFeed News that voters were fed up with "scripted bollocks".
Moon, a 42-year-old cinematographer and security specialist from north London, wrote under the video: "Watch this display of unrehearsed sincerity /cough, before you decide who to vote for..."
He said the clip revealed the true nature of politicians better than polished party political broadcasts or attack ads.
Moon said the captioned video had captured people's attention because they were sick of "slick" politicians.
He told BuzzFeed News: "I think it's misleading to think people are apathetic, it's not that. It's just that people are just totally fed up and completely disenfranchised because they know its all scripted bollocks. You see how desperate it's getting now that the election is getting close.
"So people are so thirsty for some kind of truth from politicians that even when they're revealing truth in a backfire way, when it's not what they're meaning to do, people are really interested and engaged and looking at it.
"And I think ironically, they base their decision on who they're going to vote for more on things like that than they do on the official line from a party political broadcast or what they say on the news. Because no one trusts any of that any more, it's just white noise to them."
UKIP's Nigel Farage resonates with people because he doesn't stick to a script, Moon added.
He said: "This is why UKIP do quite well, because it's almost the other parties' fault – people say, 'You know, I hate his policies but at least he's saying what he really thinks for once.'
"People are really magnetised to that because the other politicians are so slick and just talk so much bullshit."
Moon said he would probably vote for the Green party next month. "I know it's kind of pointless and they'll never win but it just encourages the whole system to think, 'Hmmm, people care about green issues, maybe we should lean a bit more in that direction,'" he said.
"I can't vote for a party that makes wars, I just can't. If they use my money to drop bombs somewhere it's just a flat no."