Stop Pretending the Viral Dance Trend Is Actually Good

There's a dance trend circulating right now—you know the one, the intricate footwork thing with the arm isolations that requires your shoulders to do something they weren't designed to do—and it has accumulated somewhere north of 400 million views across platforms. Everyone is doing it: teenagers, celebrities, that one TikTok account that's literally just a golden retriever. And I'm here to say what everyone's thinking but won't: it's boring as hell, and we're all lying about it.

Look, I get the appeal. The choreography is genuinely difficult. Watching someone nail the timing takes a certain technical skill. But "difficult" is not the same as "interesting," and we've gotten very confused about this. We've built an entire culture around sharing things that are impressive in the most sterile, spreadsheet way possible—things that look good in a 15-second clip, perform well in the algorithm, require zero emotional investment from the viewer.

The real problem is this: we're celebrating execution without asking whether there's anything *being* executed. The dance doesn't say anything. It doesn't feel like anything. It's a series of movements that could be performed identically by a very determined robot, which is kind of the whole point now, isn't it? We film ourselves doing it. We post it. We get validation. Repeat. It's cultural content as a slot machine.

Compare this to actual dance trends that mattered—ones where the movement *meant* something. Remember when people were doing the Harlem Shake and it actually required personality? You watched a hundred versions and each one was genuinely different because people were interpreting it through their own chaos. Or think about how choreography by artists like Michaela Jaé Rodriguez or James Blake's collaborators uses dance to communicate something that words can't reach.

The viral dance we're collectively performing right now? It's the opposite. It's a test of compliance. It's "can you follow these exact instructions perfectly?" And sure, there's something satisfying about that—the same reason people watch oddly-calming videos of satisfying clicks and sorts and organized closets. But satisfying isn't the same as meaningful. Satisfying is a sedative.

Here's what bothers me most: we have all this creative energy, all these millions of people willing to learn something new and share it. We could be seeing genuine choreographic innovation. Instead, we're all doing the same five moves, over and over, like we're collectively warming up for something that never actually starts.

So yes, it's technically impressive. Go ahead and learn it if you want. But maybe ask yourself first: Am I excited about this, or am I just following instructions? Because there's a difference, and we should start noticing which one we're actually doing.