Memes Gone Wild: Do You Even Lift and the Harlem Shake

One of the weird things about the day and age we live in is what happens when you suddenly go off the grid for a few weeks, and (just as suddenly) you are thrust right back into the grid. This is no more apparent than the world of Internet memes, where the ones that go most viral actually have the shortest shelf lives. Perfect recent examples are “Gangnam Style” and “grumpy cat," where they got so popular so fast that the originals as well as any recreations or parodies quickly began to bludgeon everyone with their own ubiquitous-ness. So, this week when I was thrown back into the world that I used to know, there were 2 memes that I caught a whiff of just as they were dying out. The 1st was “Do you even lift?” And the 2nd was “The Harlem Shake.”

“Do you even lift?” has apparently been a fledgling picture meme for a couple of months now, but it never really gained the notoriety of “grumpy cat” or “you mad, bro?” until this video hit YouTube…

I was just stunned how many of the guys’ 1st instinct was to punch the dude in the face. Is that really all it takes to get a guy that angry that fast? I guess the moral of the story is to not pick on a dude about the size of his muscles as he’s walking in or out of the gym…he’s too pumped up on his own testosterone and adrenaline to laugh-off some douche-prankster. (In contrast, the majority of the guys he approached who just seemed to be standing around somewhere and not necessarily by the gym had much calmer reactions.) Just a weirdly funny social experiment...

“The Harlem Shake” was a little more confusing for me (and therefore took a little more research, as you could tell by my YouTube history this morning). The basic premise is that the song starts, 1 person starts to dance (usually with a motorcycle helmet or mask on) while everyone else in the background is going about their business. Then, the beat drops, and insanity ensues. When we get to around the 30 second mark of the song, the clips all end.

That's pretty much it. So stupid and simple, yet hypnotizing none of the less. I still have so many questions…how did this start? Who came up with the idea? What made the 1st person that saw the 1st video of it say, “I want to do my own version of that?” Like so many things that go viral, the question of why is almost impossible to answer, but when it happens, it happens, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it to keep it from spreading. And do the Harlem Shake…