Viral Videos - they range from quirky, to funny, to just plain outrageous. Most of the time they are utterly useless and provide 15 minutes of fame to whoever produced them.

Yet at the same time, we as a public feel the need to fuel these fires by constantly promoting such things. Just like with the buying and selling of stocks, if you mis-time your information, you might have just let the jackpot go.

Feel like you're lagging behind lately in the viral video scene? Feel like everyone's talking about some new video posted on Youtube that you missed out on? Feel like you're missing out on the next Susan Boyle? If you feel that you haven't getting your latest dose of "viral-ness" lately, here are some sites to check out.

Buzzfeed

The name says it all. It's what the web is abuzz about, with a slight twist on things. Buzzfeed, the so-called "viral web in real-time," incorporates something of a badge system in which people can tag certain issues, whether it be news articles, viral videos, or images and the such with exclamations that capture the essence of the viral issue.

Let's take a look at an example.

These are the top viral issues over a certain period of time, as voted on by people who visit the site. In response to certain posts, users can also follow up with their own "badge" emoticons and tag their comments with other related images or videos. In a sense, it is a forum of weird and interesting things that are currently going on all around the web.

Just like any other blog, there's archives, different categories (ranging from geeky to lol to omfg to cute), and a social network in which you can build a widget and request to link your site to Buzzfeed. Then again, if you're really lazy (or you don't know how to read), here's another one:

Viral Video Chart

The concept behind Viral Video Chart is rather simple. Aggregate search or viewing data over a certain period of time and compile which videos garnered the most page views. In short, they count the number of times each video is linked to and the number of times each video is embedded, and make lists of the top videos over various periods of time.

So, whether you want to see the top videos of the past year, month, or week, Unruly Media's Viral Video chart will most definitely satisfy your need of figuring out what exactly everyone is watching.

Remember, these sites are for your time wasting viewing pleasure only. If you're interested in a more consolidated database of what's hot on the web, check out these sites:

popurls.com - Lists the current popular headlines circulating around the internet on one single page.  Sites are sorted according to original medium (Youtube, Digg, Yahoo).

alltop.com -  Updates popular headlines every hour and sorts them based on categories (fashion, technology, gaming).

Wikirage.com - Displays which Wikipedia webpages were updated or edited over a certain span of time. Most likely, if the page was edited multiple times within a time period, something's up!

Still not satisfied? Then check out our article on 21 sites to find out what's hot online.

What do you think? Have any better sites than the ones I listed above to get your daily dose of what's hot online? Shout it out in the comments!