You know when your parents start mimicking some new thing all you kids have been doing? They do it horribly and are just patently bad at looking cool or interesting while wobbling their bodies, or gyrating their hips, or making weird slack-jawed faces, yet this doesn’t stop the enthusiasm from giving them a boost of confidence that seems unquenchable? Yeah, well, this happened on The Today Show this morning in a Valentine’s Day segment that mashed all of the above. This is when you know it’s over, folks.
This has just got to be the last we’ll see of the brand new and totally not the bastardized version of the late 1990’s-early 00’s P. Diddy hyped Harlem Shake. Over the last week we’ve heard little else in the world of “dance crazes” than about this thing that’s caused what looks to be the majority of hoodie-wearing dudes in dorms, apartments, and open-space offices to flail their limbs spastically to the pops and gurgles of some sort of supped up wheeze-a-chirp Casio player. There have been videos with each one claiming to be the best most Harlem Shaky extra special dancefabulous version that anyone in the entire world has ever seen!
It’s mostly been a ride into the mind and world of the goofy timewaster who has oodles of minutes to create live action Gumby cartoons or to turn oneself into WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE PEOPLE!
BUT! With the new Today Show version we can finally say that this craze is over, yes? Like this thing is really, really, ready to be stowed away into the annals of “Stupid things from 2013” that we’ll all review toward the end of the year, when someone will say, “Hey! Remember that Harlem Shake thing? My bro got like 30,353 views back in February before the Didgeridoo Deuce DubStomp became a thing in June!”
This will probably happen. For now though we should probably thank The Today Show, especially Matt Lauer’s stiff heart-holding uprocking and Al Roker’s pelvic thrusts.
