Stock photos are notable mostly for their weirdness and second-mostly for their blandness. They exist to capture, in the most benign and/or striking and/or hilarious way possible, the most universal features of life: love, adventure, joy, heartbreak, sickness, stress. Their depictions are often trivial. They are often trite. And that is the point.

The thing with cliche, though, is that it can be pretty powerful when it's made collective. In an ad for its services, Getty Images gathered 873 different depictions of life's stock-friendliest scenes: weddings, births, sunlit walks, stormy skies. It joined those images into a video that speeds along at fifteen stocktastic shots per second. 

I've now watched the thing four times, and still can't see it without getting chills.

It's a nice metaphor: Take a bunch of commonplace moments. Join them together. And get something amazing. 

Via @interactivate