About

Chandler Dances on Things is a GIF animation series of one of the main cast members from the popular American TV sitcom Friends, Chandler Bing (played by actor Matthew Perry) dancing awkwardly atop a variety of objects or in humorous contexts.

Origin

The single topic blog Chandler Dances on Things^[1] was created by a Tumblr user known as Isle of Indecision^[17], a female college student from Michigan,^[2] and launched on February 10th, 2012. The site was inspired by the GIF animation of Chandler Bing dancing she had created for a personal project and also in part by an unrelated single topic blog Legolas Does Things^[4], which posts photos of a life-size cardboard cutout of the Lord of the Rings character in various places. The original dancing GIF utilized a clip from the Friends episode “The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS^[6],” (shown below, right) which originally aired on October 15, 1998. The first post^[5] on the blog featured a GIF animation of Chandler dancing on President Barack Obama’s shoulder (shown below, right), which received 891 notes by September 2012.

Spread

The online coverage of the single topic blog began nearly two months later with internet humor blog Pleated Jeans^[13] featuring a dozen of dancing Chandler GIF animations on April 6th, 2012. Three days later, several news sites and internet culture blogs highlighted the Tumblr blog, including the Huffington Post^[8], Buzzfeed^[9], Uproxx^[10], Gawker^[11] and Videogum.^[12] Throughout April, the blog was also featured on Mashable^[14],MSN^[18], Portland Pulp^[19], Hip in Detroit^[20] and BuzzLOL.^[21] By April 30th, the blog had gained more than 20,500 followers. On July 17th, the creator opened up the blog to submissions^[22], providing the Photoshop document files^[23] of both dances for GIF makers. The official Facebook fan page for "Chandler Dancing on Things" has 1727 likes as of September 2012.

Chandler Style Advert

In late December 2012, the UK version of the American television channel Comedy Central began showing a comedic advert for Friends, featuring the familiar gif of Chandler dancing in various scenes from the show to the sound of the hit song Gangnam Style. The creator of the Tumblr blog replied to questions about the advert, stating they did not mind the use of the "homage" too much.^[24]

Notable Examples

Alternative Exploitable

On April 17th, 2012 the blog introduced^[15] a second Chandler dance GIF taken from a scene in the April 16th, 1998 Friends episode "The One With All The Wedding Dresses.^[16]"

Search Interest

Though search for "Chandler Dancing" picked up in November 2007, there is a large spike in April 2012, corresponding with the appearance of search volume for "Chandler Dances."

External References