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Harlem Shake JavaScriptifed
- newnewnew 14y agoThe Harlem Shake is not just harmless fun: http://soulfoodandtea.tumblr.com/post/43116034487/reclaiming-the-harlem-shake http://soulfoodandtea.tumblr.com/post/43116034487/reclaiming...
- pizza 14y agoI'm not sure I follow some of their claims. Are they saying that the whole genre of trap music (which I consider a hybrid of hip-hop and electronic music) is just a way of "stealing Black culture and morphing it into a form that serves an outlet for your sexual fantasies"? Does that mean that a style of music belongs to a culture, and that its enjoyment among others means it is a ridicule of the culture it belongs to? If it's the case that that's their argument, then I just don't buy it.
- stuffihavemade 14y agoHe/she is referring to that this fake Harlem shake from youtube has nothing to do with the real Harlem shake, a dance that's been around for 30 years. Also, the term "trap music" for that electronic music isn't the original trap music either, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfPjYdef1lg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfPjYdef1lg
- nhebb 14y ago"you're a man who can find an insult in a bouquet of roses" - Nucky Thompson to Gyp Rosetti, Boardwalk Empire
- geetee 14y agoI wish I had nothing better to do than be ~outraged~ by YouTube memes. Must be nice.
- newnewnew 14y agoThat statement is easy to make from a position of privilege. His point is that a very different dance of the same name from black culture has now been replaced in the public consciousness by a parody of itself on YouTube.
- bromang 14y agothe only people who have the time and mental energy to get "offended" about this sort of thing tend be privileged
- meej 14y agoIt's like I'm sayin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cyJNOH8kX8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cyJNOH8kX8
- gruseom 14y agoHell yeah! That entire Mr. Show episode is a classic.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThat's not the way culture works, has worked, or should ever work. Cultural interchange and osmosis is the name of the game, without it we'd be stuck with isolated, provincial, outmoded cultures. In this case I don't see any aspect of the recent so-called "harlem shake" meme lessening the culture or the name of harlem. A better argument would be that the "new" harlem shake isn't dancing, it's just spastic upper body movements. P.S. If anything I'd say that more people are going to learn about the real harlem shake due to the popularity of the faux harlem shake than if the latter had never existed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5m6sJCbZEk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5m6sJCbZEk
- n2j3 14y agoI think Charlie Brooker's crew nailed it on last night's episode.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRXb2SesfE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRXb2SesfE
- dasil003 14y agoI'm sensitive to institutional and cultural racism, and therefore I realize that it's not for a privileged group to decide what is and isn't racist and what black people should or should not be offended by. Granted. However, equating the Harlem Shake meme to blackface performances is ivory tower nonsense that belies a willful ignorance to what Internet memes are. No one is profiting from this and it's not diminishing black culture in any way. If you put it back in context then you don't have a viral video because the stupidity and brevity of the whole thing is what made it viral. Just because it got huge and it annoys you doesn't mean that it's part of the problem of racism. It's just an idiotic meme that people watch when they're slacking off at their dead-end white collar jobs. If you actually care about improving societal racism you need to address more important issues like why aren't more black people getting hired and why don't they have more political power, etc. If you get all riled up and insist that anything black needs to be represented in context and everyone always needs to stop and think about how unfair it is that white people can listen to black music without actually suffering the pain of a racist society that led to the creation of that music all you will do is make people want to stay the fuck away from you because being white in your vicinity is like walking on egg shells. It doesn't matter how morally justified you are if you turn off all empathy and refuse to recognize their fundamental humanity simply because they are "privileged" and therefore need to recognize their role as oppressor at all times.
- orangethirty 14y agoYou know you are getting old when stuff like this does not make any sense whatsoever.
- peter_l_downs 14y agoDoesn't make sense to me (19 years old) or any of my friends either. The point is that it's ridiculous. I think largely in part to the internet, absurdism may now be part of our youth culture. It may always have been, but it's pretty easy for weird things done by close friends (original Harlem Shake video) to become hugely popular over the internet.
- andreyf 14y agoJust because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean you can call it "absurdism".
- skcin7 14y agoIt also has to catch on as a popular thing in society. I like the term "absurdism".
- andreyf 14y agoYou may like how it sounds, but if you think it means "being popular and making no sense", you don't understand what it is.
- sixbrx 14y agoWell you prompted me to check whether I understand what "absurd" and "ism" mean because it seemed pretty apt to me. Still does after checking, at least for the standards of a comment on an article, as opposed to say a language semantics journal. Being popular gives us the "ism" part, by definition 3 at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ism http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ism : "a tendency of behaviour, action or opinion belonging to a class or group of persons; the result of a doctrine, ideology, principle, or lack thereof" The "absurd" part also fits pretty well: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/absurd http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/absurd "stupid or unreasonable; silly in a humorous way"
- E_Carefree 14y agoAWESOME!
- jedp 14y agoOh my god. This is the best thing ever. Thank you.
- bowmessage 14y agoThis goes fantastically with the "How Search Works" google.com link posted today! :) http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/ http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/
- Osiris 14y agoAt work today we were discussing ideas for a hack-a-thon we're having next month and I suggested a website that would take a URL and make any website do the harlem shake. Looks like I got beat to the punch.
- dangrossman 14y agoThis has been around for a few weeks: http://hsmaker.com/ http://hsmaker.com/
- nej 14y agoThis just made my day, great job.
- Alterlife 14y agoInteresting... For some reason, the hacker news home page does not shake!
- justplay 14y agoAnyhow its awesome .