Harlem Shake
You might remember it as Harlem Shake meme origin
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2013·The social era
Thirty seconds and a jump cut, copied four thousand times a day at its peak.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Harlem Shake meme origin
- Spread in
- 2013
- Format
- Phenomenon
- The song
- Harlem Shake by Baauer, released in 2012
- Record
- Number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 21 February 2013, the first chart to count YouTube views
- Origin
- Origin not yet established
- Available
- Playable from the source
What this wasThe story
Thirty seconds, one jump cut. Somebody dances alone in a helmet while everybody around them ignores it; the bass drops on Baauer's 2012 track and the room is suddenly full of people in costume losing control. George Miller posted the format on 30 January 2013 and an Australian group copied it three days later. By 10 February people were uploading four thousand versions a day, and it passed a billion views on 24 March — forty days from the first one.
Why it matteredWhat changed
It changed how the music charts were counted. Billboard began including YouTube views in the Hot 100 in the week this meme peaked, and a track built into thirty seconds of other people’s videos went straight to number one.
TimelineIn order
- Made
George Miller uploads a comedy sketch, as his character Pink Guy, set to the track.1
- Remixed
Five Australian teenagers, posting as The Sunny Coast Skate, upload the version that sets the format.1
- Took off
Versions are being uploaded at a rate of four thousand a day, one every 21.6 seconds.1 What else happened on 10 February
- Record
About forty thousand versions exist, watched more than 700 million times between them.1
- Mainstream
The song enters the Billboard Hot 100 at number one.2
- Record
The versions together pass one billion views.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asThe dance in the videos is the Harlem shake.
ActuallyThe Harlem shake is a hip hop dance from Harlem in the 1980s. Nobody in the meme is doing it, and critics at the time said the meme was burying the real one.1
LegacyWhat it left behind
- Baauer and his label mostly claimed advertising revenue on the versions through YouTube’s Content ID rather than having them removed.1
- An estimated hundred students in the United States were suspended from school for filming versions.1
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Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast
This is the copy ViralWorld can show you. Whether it is the first is not established.
Where it came fromWhat we know
Original source uncertain. This is the earliest copy currently known.
No original upload has been established for this record. The index is showing the earliest copy it currently knows about, and says so rather than guessing.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- When
- The sources below date the original to 2013-01-30. ViralWorld records this as a cited claim rather than an established publication date, because it holds no copy to check it against.
More from the social eraMore of the archive
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things