Harlem Renaissance

Why something becomes a meme or goes viral on the internet is a question without answers. But these videos can revolutionise the world of advertisement,consumer outreach,social engagement and cultural production. There has been an increasing lament that our state of hyper-connectivity on digital platforms is leading to a dramatic reduction in social contact and closeness. Friendships are now mediated through Facebook. Conversations have been replaced by texts and chats. Real life engagement is essentially in the service of producing spectacles on video sharing sites. Increasingly,people prefer interface-time over facetime,resulting in being ‘alone together’.

This narrative of despair needs to be countered by memes like Harlem Shake that address the idea of human proximity as well as the joy of being connected. A meme is a reminder because our older ideas of being together are transforming doesn’t mean that our necessary human and social conditions are redundant. In fact,digital memes have helped in creating new flows of information,traffic and relationships that were unprecedented three decades ago. The Harlem Shake is like a digital flash-mob which helps in changing the logic of the spaces it happens in. The living room,an army training camp,an office work space – the production of this meme in these spaces of everyday interaction,helps us realise the new modes of connection,affect and sociality that is often forgotten in the functional imagination of these spaces. Digital memes like The Harlem Shake help us to connect not only to the places we live in but the people we share them with.

Memes are often funny,ridiculous and capture the absurd and the silly in equal measure. Often,they’ll include subtle political commentary and reference cultural trends with a sense of irony. They appear as short,nonsensical clips that don’t ‘do’ anything and yet,they’re instruments that help us connect with the world. The Harlem Shake is another meme that has made us smile and realise that the here and now are worth celebrating.