It started with a guy in a pink bodysuit.
If you were on the internet in February 2013, you couldn’t escape it. Your office did one. Your local swim team did one. Even the Norwegian Army joined in. The harlem shake meme original format was simple: 15 seconds of a lonely person dancing while everyone else acts normal, then a sudden bass drop where the whole room explodes into absolute, costumed chaos.
But honestly? Most people have the history totally wrong.
The meme didn't come from Harlem. It didn't even use the real "Harlem Shake" dance. It was a bizarre accident involving a future pop star, a group of bored Australian skaters, and a song that was never supposed to be a hit.
How Filthy Frank accidentally broke the internet
The spark wasn't a marketing team or a big studio. It was George Miller, known then as the chaotic YouTuber Filthy Frank (and now as the global artist Joji).
On January 30, 2013, Miller uploaded a video titled "FILTHY COMPILATION #6 – SMELL MY FINGERS." The very beginning featured four friends in spandex suits—including the infamous Pink Guy—gyrating in a small room to a track by an EDM producer named Baauer.
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It was weird. It was short. It was quintessential early-2010s "random" humor.
A few days later, a group of teenagers from Queensland, Australia—TheSunnyCoastSkate—saw Frank’s video and refined the formula. They added the "jump cut" structure we all remember. One kid in a helmet dancing alone, then a sudden cut to the whole group flailing. That specific edit is what turned a weird skit into a global template.
Within two weeks, the internet was uploading 4,000 versions of the video per day.
The harlem shake meme original song and its legal nightmare
The track itself, simply titled "Harlem Shake," was produced by Harry Rodrigues, better known as Baauer. He’d released it almost a year earlier in May 2012. It was a solid trap record, but it was basically dormant until the meme hit.
Suddenly, Baauer had the #1 song in the country.
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But there was a massive problem. The song was built on samples Baauer "got somewhere off the internet." He hadn't cleared them. He didn't think he needed to; he was just a kid making beats in his bedroom.
The two main samples were:
- "Con los terroristas": A line from Héctor Delgado (Héctor el Father).
- "And then do the Harlem Shake": A line from Jayson Musson of the rap group Plastic Little.
When the song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100—largely because Billboard changed its rules to include YouTube views specifically because of this meme—the owners of those samples came knocking. Baauer later admitted in interviews that he didn't see much of the money from the initial craze because the legal settlements swallowed the royalties.
The "Real" Harlem Shake vs. The Meme
Here is the part that actually matters: the meme had nothing to do with the actual Harlem Shake dance.
The real Harlem Shake dates back to 1981. It was started by a man named Al B at the Rucker Tournament in Harlem. It’s a technical, rhythmic dance involving a specific "shimmy" of the shoulders. In the early 2000s, it went mainstream through music videos by G. Dep and P. Diddy.
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When the 2013 meme took over, residents of Harlem were... not thrilled.
"That's not the Harlem Shake. That's just humping," one resident famously told filmmaker Chris McGuire in a "Harlem Reacts" video. For the people who grew up with the culture, seeing a bunch of people in Power Rangers suits flailing around and calling it the "Harlem Shake" felt like their history was being erased by a punchline.
It was a classic case of cultural appropriation meeting the "move fast and break things" energy of the early social media era. The name was taken because of a vocal sample, but the soul of the dance was nowhere to be found.
Why it died so fast
The Harlem Shake remains the "gold standard" for how a meme burns out.
It was too easy to make. Once your grandma and your local news anchor are doing the Harlem Shake, the "cool" factor is officially dead. By March 2013, just two months after it started, search interest plummeted.
It left behind a changed industry, though. Because of this meme, the way we measure "what is a hit song" changed forever. Without the harlem shake meme original madness, we might not have the same chart recognition for viral TikTok hits today.
Actionable Takeaways for the Nostalgic
- Watch the Source: If you want to see where it actually started, look for "Filthy Compilation #6" on the DizastaMusic YouTube channel.
- Learn the Real Dance: Search for "Al B Harlem Shake 1981" to see the actual technique that the meme accidentally overshadowed.
- Check the Charts: Look at the Billboard Hot 100 history from February 2013 to see the exact week the "YouTube View" rule was implemented—it changed the music business for good.
The meme was a fever dream that lasted about six weeks. It made Joji a legend, Baauer a household name (even if his bank account took a hit), and it left us all with some very embarrassing videos we hope our bosses never find.