The “Harlem Shake” is the newest YouTube video craze, but in typical Internet fashion, its two-week existence has already made it feel ancient.
The videos feature a song of the same name by a Brooklyn artist Baauer. In the videos, generally one individual dances with a mask or costume on while people near the dancer go on with life as usual. When the music drops, dubstep style, suddenly a much larger amount of people start dancing randomly and separately in their own crazy outfits.
Most of the videos are only about 30 seconds long, something that only adds to how addicting the craze originally was, since you can click through 10 different videos in just five minutes.
Although the song itself is from 2012, it seems as though the viral videos started about two weeks ago.
And unlike many other YouTube sensations, there isn’t really one specific video that began the “Harlem Shake.”
When I first watched some of the videos Saturday, I found them hilarious, as I’m sure many people and fellow Ohio State students did. The simple edits that are done to the videos to make them appear as though randomly outfitted people coming out of thin air are funny the first few (OK, maybe 20) times you watch the different videos.
But the craze quickly lost its humor for me, and considering the fact that I had waited about a week after I saw several tweets about it to finally watch one, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.
Many are just now catching on and beginning to create and post the videos, and that bothers me in a way that it could only bother someone of my generation: they’re behind. And it’s only been about two weeks.
The “Harlem Shake” became old news as quickly as it became news.
Perhaps not surprisingly, OSU hasn’t been immune to the craze. So far, Park-Stradley Hall, the wrestling team and Tau Kappa Epsilon have posted their own videos, and an OSU football team video is supposedly in the making.
The first three videos were among the first that I watched over the weekend, so they were among the ones I found creative and funny.
But that OSU football is now making one seems silly and outdated.
Sunday night, rising-senior running back Carlos Hyde tweeted, “Ohio State football team Harlem Shake coming soon! Lol,” from his Twitter handle, @king_hyde34.
Monday, rising-sophomore wide receiver Frank Epitropoulos tweeted from his Twitter handle, @F_Epitropoulos, “Too hyped to make this Harlem shake video OSU football edition Wednesday lol Got my costume ready.”
Despite the players’ apparent excitement about their video, I think this is just an attempt for offseason attention that falls in the wake of an already archaic YouTube craze.
