What Is The Harlem Shake?

… and why is everyone and their dog doing it?

A couple nights ago I was on reddit and on the front page there was a video of room full of teenage boys just hanging out and one of them was wearing a motorcycle helmet dancing to a catchy song.  15 seconds into the video the beat dropped and the video cut to everyone in the room with their shirts off and shaking/seizing in random places around the room.  I have to say it was dumb but the kind of dumb that made you laugh.  At this point the video had around 50K views.

The comments on the video led me to find two other short clips with similar content. But that was it.  This video I saw was the third one made and they were all made within the week.  I thought to myself, “I should make one with the kids.  That would be fun.” The next day a thousand other people got the same idea.  The first video I saw was now over 1 Million views.

The way it played out was a guy named Filthy Frank made a 30 second video dancing to the song with his friends while wearing spandex suits. Then a channel called TheSunnyCoastSkate made the second video where they added the feature where the first 15 seconds only one person is dancing with a helmet on. The video I saw was the third video and has almost 3 times as many views as the first two.

I had witnessed a movement.  An internet meme forming right in front of me.  By the end of the day yesterday a new subreddit had been made and you could watch families, firefighters, offices, the peanuts characters, carlton (fresh prince of belair), a banana and MY DOG doing the Harlem Shake.

The Harlem Shake is actually an old dance move and you can find instructional videos for it.  The song that everyone is making the videos to is called Harlem Shake by Baauer.  The song is over 3 minutes but the meme is only the first 30 seconds.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.