Remember this moment: the smell, the look, the sound. Like the seconds before you first danced the "Macarena" or were asked "Who Let the Dogs Out," this moment is an endpoint of a phase of your life. Because you, my dear reader, will shortly click play on the video, above, and listen to "Pen-Pineapple Apple-Pen" (or "PPAP"). You will voluntarily allow the ear-worm to wheedle its way into your brain, where it will, for the foreseeable future, make a cozy bivouac.

Why will you do this? Because "PPAP" will be inescapable. If you don’t hear it here, you will hear it somewhere else: on auto-playing Facebook videos, on a Vine embedded on Twitter, on the rowdy morning show that you don’t really like but play on the way to work, or on the episode of This American Life or Reply All or CBS Sunday Morning that explains how "PPAP" became SOTY (song of the year, obviously).

The song is by Piko-Taro, a fictional character played by Japanese musician and comedian Kazuhiko Kosaka.

PPAP Song