Brazilian Kid Dance Battles / Tubarão Te Amo

About

Brazilian Tween Dance Battles refers to a series of viral videos featuring young children participating in TikTok dance battles in Brazil. The videos began to gain virality in the fall of 2022, with the dance set to the song "Tubarão Te Amo" going viral on TikTok in November 2022. The videos are often characterized as "awkward" or "uncomfortable" by commentators, due to the participants often looking "pissed off."

Origin

On September 18th, 2022, TikToker^[1] @gsapollosalles posted their first video of a dance battle between two young Brazilian kids. The video gathered over 75,000 plays and 4,000 likes in over two months (seen below, left). On September 20th, the TikToker^[2] posted a more viral video of a dance-off, gathering over 4.3 million plays and 180,000 likes in over two months as well (seen below, right).

Spread

The video format soon went viral, with the most popular recordings being posted on TikToker @gsapollosalles and their partner @dessa_up's TikTok accounts. Notable viral TikToks of the battles include one posted on September 30th, 2022 by TikToker^[3] @dessa_up, where it gathered over 23.7 million plays in nearly two months (seen below, left). The first viral instance of a dance battle to use the song "Tubarão Te Amo"^[4] by DJ LK da Escócia, MC Ryan SP, and Tchakabum was posted by TikToker^[5] @gsapollosalles on October 21st, in a post that gathered over 12 million plays and over 1 million likes in over a month (seen below, right).

The video format and the dance set to the track "Tubarão Te Amo" soon went viral, with several creators parodying the dance battle style in subsequent weeks. On November 21st, TikToker^[6] @twochickmunks posted a video mimicking the aforementioned videos alongside a text overlay that read, "POV: you're a Brazilian kid in an intense dance battle." The video gathered over 1.2 million plays and 230,000 likes in nearly a week (seen below, left). Other creators began to challenge their Brazilian family members to dance battles, with TikToker^[7] @valeriayraa posting a video that gathered over 2.6 million plays and over 400,000 likes in nearly three days (seen below, right).

Tubarão Te Amo Viral Hit

After the viral trend on TikTok and other social media, the music "Tubarão, Te Amo" was also a hit in the United States on early December 2022. The funk occupied then third place in the Viral Top 50 of Spotify USA.

Brazilians fans on the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar showed did the dance trend while competing in a friendly dance-off in Qatar. The creator's @cristianbellk and @jeffbala__ video posted on November 28th, 2022, received 1.6 million likes in two weeks.

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Uma publicação compartilhada por Cristian Bell (@cristianbellk)

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References