Baby Shark

About

Baby Shark is a nursery song about a family of sharks which spawned the #BabySharkChallenge viral video fad in Indonesia, featuring footage of participants performing choreographed dances to the song.

Origin

On June 17th, 2016, the PinkFong YouTube channel uploaded the "Baby Shark Dance" song, which received upwards of 245 million views and 6,800 comments over the next 15 months.

Spread

In August 2017, the hashtag #BabySharkChallenge began trending among Indonesian internet users, along with videos featuring people dancing to the song. On August 11th, several female officers female of the Mojokerto City Police uploaded a video of themselves performing the challenge (shown below).

On August 23rd, the TonightShowNet YouTube channel uploaded a #BabySharkChallenge video featuring American actress and model Amanda Cerny (shown below, left). On September 8th, YouTuber SSundee uploaded a video Minecraft-themed version of the #BabySharkChallenge (shown below, right).

Billboard Chart

On January 8th, 2019, "Baby Shark" cracked the Billboard Hot 100 charts, entering at number 32.^[4] Billboard reported that in the week prior, it was streamed over 20.8 million times.

The news confused Twitter users. For example, user @HoWeBeenKnew tweeted angrily about the news, gaining over 160 retweets and 630 likes (shown below, left). John McAfee tweeted his confusion, gaining over 40 retweets and 200 likes (shown below, right).

Dispersal of the Homeless in West Palm Beach, FL

On July 17th, 2019, it was reported by CBS News^[5] that the city officials of West Palm Beach, Florida have been using 'Baby Shark' as a solution to the increasing number of homeless people occupying the Lake Pavillion waterfront park event space. City officials had taken notice to the universal feeling of annoyance associated with the song and have decided to blast it on a loop in hopes of driving out the homeless population. Leah Rockwell, West Palm Beach's Parks and Recreation director, had told CBS News; "People are paying a lot of money to use the facility. Thousands of dollars. We want to make sure people paying this money had a facility that was clean and open and continue to use it in the future.^[5]" The event space brings an annual amount of an estimated $240,000.

West Palm Beach officials have faced backlash for their tactics. In a statement to USA Today^[5], Megan Hustings, managing director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said; "There's been many other places that have played music of some sort to drive folks out. It's awful that we have so little respect for the humanity of our homeless neighbors. When you hear things like songs being used, it's turning a blind eye to people who are a part of our communities."

Various Examples

Search Interest

References