Earlier this week, a friend sent me this video and asked if I understood it.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJiSSAMNWw[/youtube]

(can also be viewed here, since the videos don’t seem to be embedding properly right now)

Admittedly, I did not. I didn’t find it funny or creative, I didn’t see what it had to do with the dance the Harlem Shake (except that the words are in the song playing in the background), and I certainly had no idea why the internet had suddenly exploded into copycat videos of people gyrating in their office cubicles.

Like most popular things on the internet, it frustrated me. Here we have this wonderful–dare I say utopian?–resource to spread ideas and cultural resources around the wired world in the blink of an eye, but a lot of this gets lost among the cat videos. “Memes” develop and evolve so rapidly that they quickly lose all provenance, all coherence, and all awareness of any cultural roots. The Root does a much better job than I could of discussing both the origins of the Original Harlem Shake and the Meme Harlem Shake. I also came across THIS video (a much better use of our time, I should say) asking Harlem residents what they think of this new fleeting YouTube trend:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IGH2HEgWppc[/youtube]

(can also be viewed here)

The consensus? These videos are insulting. Not only would Harlem residents not be caught dead dancing so poorly in their pajamas in public, BUT ALSO these videos belie Harlem’s role in Americans’ consciousness as a primary hub of rich African American culture and history dating back to at least the turn of the last century.