About

Cha Cha Real Smooth refers to an image macro series featuring an image of a Barney the Dinosaur statue with the a phrase from the song "Cha-Cha Slide" as a caption. The image has been used as a shitpost.

Origin

On August 2nd, 2000, the song "Cha-Cha Slide" by American recording artist DJ Casper was released in the United States (music video below, left). The song features the lyrics "cha cha real smooth."^[1]

On October 28th, 2015, VICE ^[2] published an article entitled "​I Tried to Relive My Youth And All I Got Was Sad." The article featured a report about a trip to Storybook Glen, a children's theme park in Maryculter, Scotland. The park features various statues and models of children's media characters that have been considered bizarre by critics, including Barney the dinosaur (shown below, right).

Precursor

Prior to its connection with the Barney photograph, the phrase "cha cha real smooth" has appeared on various other images, videos^[3] and social media posts. For example, on January 29th, 2018, Facebook account Cats on Catnip posted an image of a cat with the phrase as a caption. The post received more than 5,600 reactions, 1,400 comments and 1,900 shares (shown below).

Spread

On August 8th, 2017, Tumblr ^[5] user knockoffs-and-bootlegs posted the Barney image with the caption "Would you hug him for one billion dollars?" The post received more than 31,000 notes in less than two years (shown below, left).

The earliest available version of the Barney image paired with the lyric was posted on Twitter ^[4] by user @clingcling2001 on December 4th, 2018 (shown below center).

On April 22nd, 2019, Instagram ^[6] user @the.gay.mellophone posted the image with the caption "Me coming in a measure early and derailing the whole song." The post received more than 10,000 likes in less than one month (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References