Harlem Shake

For those of you who are unaware, or for those from the future who forgot the extremely temporary internet craze that was the Harlem Shake, let me briefly explain.  In a video, groups of people get together going about their normal day-to-day business.  One person, usually wearing a helmet, is dancing wildly along with a song (in all the videos the same song is used).  When the music in the song changes, the video cuts to everyone wildly dancing and doing random crazy things.

I think the Harlem Shake proves just how fast news and trends travel today.  After the first video was made, parodies came flooding in, ranging from the elderly in retirement homes to college sports teams.  The most interesting part, however, is that within a week, versions of the Harlem Shake came out that made fun of the whole process, telling people that the joke is old and no more videos should be made.  As of today, I can say with a fairly high amount of confidence that no more Harlem Shake videos are going to gain significant traction.

Besides news traveling fast, stories, events, people, and trends are rising and dying quicker than ever.  Because of the internet, the availability of video-recording devices, and faster networking, people can learn about way more things than before.  As a result, people gain and lose interest in events on an almost day-to-day basis.  The phrase “that’s so last month,” while usually meant to be a joke about fashion trends, seems more and more to be the case in many different areas.  Even a few months ago watching all sorts of 2012 recap videos, it was shocking to remember events that even happened in the summer, let alone January (remember balloon boy?).

As technology advances, it is becoming more and more important to get on the bandwagon before something takes off, because before you know it, it will be old news.