Butt Racing

About

Butt racing is a stop-motion activity depicting a race without cars.

This film was shot in 1965 on an 8mm camera. The film was then uploaded to Youtube in 2007. Whether or not this film influenced the practice of Butt Racing online, or if the idea occurred to other people independent of one another.

Elsewhere.

YTMND

On YTMND, Butt Racing became something of a fad when user joshawow created his first
butt racing site on August 12, 2005. As of September 2010, the site has 37,596 views.

Six days later, joshawow created a followup, entitled Butt Racing Grand Prix The site has 430,530 views, making it the most-viewed butt racing YTMND of all time.

Today there are 135 iterations, many of which are set to “Speedy Speed Boy” by Marko Polo.

Youtube

There are another 244 “Butt racing” videos on Youtube. Whether or not their creation was inspired from YTMND or is an independent phenomenon remains to be seen.

Search

Searches for “butt race” on Google have remained relatively stable for the entire 6 years since Google Insights first launched, meaning that there has been no singular event responsible for kickstarting the meme. Rather, it seems likely that Butt Racing could be the natural conclusion of a mind looking for an easy stop-motion project.