Thailand does the 'Harlem Shake'
Can "Harlem Shake" beat "Gangnam Style"?
In just under one month, the latest viral dance craze sweeping the Internet has become a global phenomenon. Even in Thailand, there are more than 1,000 versions on YouTube, where a search for “Harlem Shake” turned up more than 100,000 videos – 1,100 of them from Thailand.
Among them is the US Embassy Bangkok, which made a “Harlem Shake” video in observance of this week’s Social Media Week. The video features embassy staff in costumes of iconic American characters. Posted to YouTube on Monday and shared on US Ambassador Kristie Kenney’s Facebook page, as well as the embassy's official Facebook page and Twitter account, it’s been viewed up to 28,400 times.
Others doing the “Harlem Shake” include the Manchester City football club – the first Premier League team to join the craze. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and supermodels at London Fashion Week have also made videos, prompting more than 40,000 imitators to record their own takes and getting more than 175 million views worldwide.
The Sunny Coast Skate, a collective of five teenagers in Australia, posted the original “Harlem Shake” dance video to YouTube on February 2. They danced to the 2012 song by of the same name by Baauer, an electronic musician from New York. The video has since been viewed more than 14.1 million times.
The dance itself is a simple two-step move with a shoulder shake that adds pelvic thrusts and flailing about. As with the original clip, virtually all participants in the copycat videos dress in outlandish costumes.
The previous dance craze, “Gangnam Style” by South Korean rapper Psy, began in July 2012. The original music video is YouTube’s most-watched clip, with more than 1.3 billion views. A search for other “Gangnam Style” videos on YouTube turns up around 675,000 clips – 4,800 from Thailand.
