Harlem Shake (meme)
[13] The Washington Post explained the meme's instant virality by referring to the jump cuts, hypnotic beat, quick setups, and half minute routines.
[16][17][18][19] The "Harlem Shake" meme was first featured as the opening segment in a video by Japanese comedian and artist Joji Kusunoki Miller under his viral Pink Guy persona as a skit on his YouTube channel "DizastaMusic".
[26] Its popularity has spread in many countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Russia, and much of Europe,[9][27] China,[28][29] India,[30][31] Latin America,[32] the United Arab Emirates,[33] and Jamaica.
Matt and Kim organised the record, which was performed at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Houston Field House arena in Troy, New York, on 11 February 2013.
This marked an important recognition that YouTube now plays a vital role in shaping cultural trends, defining hit songs ahead of radio programmers.
With the exception of a takedown notice issued when artist Azealia Banks tried to upload her own version of the track,[40] Baauer and his label, Mad Decent records, instead made use of YouTube's Content ID database to assert copyright over the fan-made videos and claim a proportion of advertising revenue in respect of each one.
[9][40] Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company in the UK, described "Harlem Shake" as a "phenomenon", the first ever "crowd sourced video" to significantly drive the sales of a song.
[42][43] Ad Age later identified sixty advertising agencies exploiting the meme, calling it "played-out" after Pepsico released a Harlem Shake video featuring dancing soft drinks.
[48][49][50] Various groups that shot videos of themselves doing the Harlem Shake included the staff of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,[51] a squadron of the Norwegian Army;[52] Swedish police,[53] basketball players from the Dallas Mavericks,[1] and the Miami Heat[54][55] whose version was called perhaps "the best ... [o]r at least the most irreverent" by Matt Eppers of USA Today;[56] IMG Academy American football players,[57] the Nebraska Cornhuskers football[58] team and LSU Tigers football team,[59] the Canterbury Crusaders[60] and Auckland Blues rugby union sides,[61][62] football clubs from Manchester City,[63][64] Swansea City,[65] Fulham,[66] Juventus,[67] Crystal Palace,[68] SC Cambuur,[69] and the colleagues of CNN newsanchor Anderson Cooper[70] Other participants in the craze included the University of Georgia swim team, whose video received at least 38 million views,[71][26] music producer and international DJ Markus Schulz,[72] "a senior community,"[73] NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon[74] and Jimmie Johnson,[75] musicians Matt & Kim,[52] musician Azealia Banks,[76][77][78][79] the staff of The Daily Show,[80] Ryan Seacrest, Stephen Colbert,[14][81][82] Rhett & Link,[83] members of the WWE,[84] EastEnders actors Himesh Patel and Ricky Norwood[85] and Playboy Playmates.
[86] A video titled "Harlem Shake (Grandma Edition)", in which a man and his two octogenarian grandmothers dance, received over a million views online within three days.
[87][88] On February 20, 2013, the cast of American reality television series Splash including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Katherine Webb, Ndamukong Suh and Louie Anderson also uploaded a video of them dancing on the clip.
[90] On Valentine's Day (February 14), developers at Moovweb released an open source bookmarklet that replicated the Harlem Shake online by making the items on any web page move.
In February 2013, a New York boys' ice hockey team was forced to forfeit a first-round playoff game as a result of a Harlem Shake video uploaded to YouTube.
Three of the college students who organized the event said in an interview that the flight attendants and the purser approved their permission before the performance began, saying it was a great idea and the participating passengers also found it fun.
The case was finally solved when Kate O'Malley, a spokesperson for the airline, said that "all safety measures were strictly enforced and followed and that the seat belt sign was turned off during the course of filming".
[115] By way of contrast, Professor Roger Ainsworth, Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford, praised his students for their version of the meme, which he described as "the best example of the genre, at least in the UK".
[116][117] A religious education teacher at Caldicot Comprehensive School in the United Kingdom was suspended after a Harlem Shake video was posted online which allegedly showed him dancing with a lifesize cardboard figure of Pope Benedict XVI.
[123][124] In Tunisia, after students in a wealthy suburb of Tunis filmed a Harlem Shake video in which they parodied Salafists and Gulf Emirs, the school director was suspended by the Ministry of Education.
[123][124][125][126] In the United States, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's re-election team uploaded their own Harlem Shake video as part of his campaign to win a sixth term in the chamber in the 2014 midterm elections.
However, for the first time in the history of the usage of the meme, Baauer and eventually the record label he is signed to, Mad Decent, took legal action against Pai for unauthorized use of his music.
