Harlem Shake, the new rage on the net

 On February 15, ‘Practice PN’ uploaded a 30-second meme on YouTube - the Harlem Shake style.

Mirnali Kamat uploaded her version of the Shake four days later, Aravind Suresh, posted his version on February 19, while R Blank and Kirti Kalyandurmat posted theirs on February 21 and 27, respectively.

These are just a few examples of Bangaloreans going viral with their versions of the Harlem Shake, which has taken the Internet world over by storm, competing with Gangnam Style videos that had rocked the virtual world last year.

While all the aforementioned videos typically start with a lone masked person dancing to Baauer's Harlem Shake, many others seem apparently disinterested enveloped by their work and ignoring the person dancing. They all eventually join in by shaking, wiggling or doing random things to end the video.

Sumanto Mondal, one of the persons featured in Kirti Kalyandurmat’s video, said: “There is a huge following for this on YouTube and when my friend decided to make a video, we said why not. There are already so many comments.”

The popularity of the Harlem Shake has reached such heights that programme writers at YouTube have made even the website do the Shake. All one has to do is type ‘Do the Harlem Shake’ once you log into YouTube and wait. First, the logo begins to throb. Then, all the videos that are visible on the screen begin to move (read dance) to the song that plays.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Sleepwalkers Productions was looking at. On Sunday, they were busy shooting videos at prominent spots in the City, including Vidhana Soudha.

While all the other videos posted online promote themselves and Harlem Shake, Sleepwalkers Productions’ video, which will be uploaded by Monday night or early Tuesday, is part of their promotion for the Start-up Festival 2013, being organised for entrepreneurs by The Indus Entrepreneurs.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Varun Kumar of the Sleepwalkers Productions said: “We are video partners for the event and given the kind of response Harlem is getting, we thought we can use that to promote the event online. With whatever work that is completed, we think it will have a huge impact.”