Can Cuki Save Hungary's Honor From Speak the Hungarian Rapper?

With thousands of new items being posted on global video-sharing website YouTube each and every day, users can spend hours surfing through short films, gags, vintage television commercials and music videos others have rated as being good enough to bother watching - or bad enough. Falling into this second category is the (English-language) music video up top, identified only as "Speak the Hungarian Rapper," and which is so frightfully, relentlessly bad it has been viewed more than 50,000 times since being uploaded in late September, and now appears poised to become a YouTube classic. In fact, so bad is the video that, judging from the comments attached to it, there is some question among Speak's growing international fanbase whether he could possibly be serious, or whether the whole thing is a "Borat"-like parody.

You must be joking: A music video by actor/rapper Tamás Deák - a.k.a. "Speak the Hungarian Rapper" - posted on file-sharing site YouTube has left thousands around the world wondering if Hungarians are a bunch of clueless blockheads, while a lesser-known effort by "Cuki" proves that they aren't, at least not, you know, totally.

Well, we've done a little research, and can now report to the world that the man behind what may be history's worst rap video is both Hungarian and deadly serious. According to various items in the local press, Speak is actually a struggling Hungarian actor named Tamás Deák, whose biggest screen role to date has been playing a bad guy on the TV hospital drama Jóban rosszban. Personal details on Deák are sketchy, but apparently he has had two dogs, both of which were run down by trains. Hence the seriousness.

What's so disturbing about the Speak phenomenon is that, thanks to YouTube's rapidly-developing technology, people around the world who watch Speak's video are likely to be prompted to watch other Hungarian music videos, which many will undoubtedly do, in hopes of finding something else as bad, or even worse, than Speak. And when they do, they are likely to end up watching the second video embedded above, entitled "Cuki Vagyok," and similarly wondering whether the young pop singer in it (Cuki; it's short for cukor, or "sugar") is being serious, and if so, what the fuck is going on in Hungary.

The good news here is that we've looked into Cuki, who is 16 and from the town of Tatabánya, and we're almost 100% positive that she is not being serious, or at least not entirely serious. Instead, the video is a "Valley Girl"-like riff on the habit a lot of girls in Hungary have of speaking in cutesy-wootsy baby talk, with the goal of making themselves seem even cuter than just plain cute (cukinál cukibb). The song is all about being cuki and being liked by the nagyok (grown-ups), lallalálálállalalal. And actually, it is pretty cute, even if it's a joke, and even though most cute 16-year old girls from places like Tatabánya spend their evening getting banged by baldheaded galoots like Speak.

So there you have it, big world. Have a laugh at Speak, and at Hungary, for being cheesy enough to spawn something so cheesy. But remember, for every Speak (or at least every dozen Speaks) there is a Cuki, who is clued in enough to know what cheese is. Lallalálálállalalal.