Harlem Shake: Tracking a meme over a month

This is an interesting tracking of an online meme and rather funny for BBC News to be musing over what makes something cool. The article certainly considers this to be a global and cultural phenomenon, and highlights the importance of making your own video (rather than, as in Gangnam style, mainly consuming the video or its spin-offs)…does that mean there is a Harlem Shake community?

It was apparent that this couldn’t have been possible without corporate backing, however obliquely. YouTube is pretty ubiquitous, but it was a combination of the original song’s producer and collegehumor.com that actually got the meme started. And the article argues that mainstream media attention tends to feed rather than kill ‘grassroots’ fads.

Case to consider: the Guardian posts a video of the English National Ballet’s attempt…