About

Dancing Spider-man refers to an animated GIF image of the classic Marvel superhero character Spider-man performing a dance set to a blank white background.

Origin

The original GIF file was uploaded via London-based blog Pants On Head^[1] sometime in June 2002. This image became very popular on the site and brought a significant boost to the site's traffic, according to its subsequent blog article^[2] posted on July 12th, 2002.

The choreography was modeled after the CGI animation of a dance routine originally used by the Korean pop group C.L.E.O for the single titled "Illusion." The video was found and uploaded by YouTubers Bbjenks on May 1st, 2009 (account now closed) and sergiu521 on September 25, 2010. (Gif animation from about 0:35 to 0:48 on the clip.)

The dance moves were animated with dance simulation software D-Player by Korean software developer SpaceIllusion, which has a free downloadable Spider-Man character model.

Spread

In the following months, the GIF file was adapted into two popular flash animations; the first instance, titled "Spiderman Baila Aserejé"^[3] featured disco lighting and the song "Aserejé" by the Andalusian-Spanish pop group Las Ketchup.^[4]

The other flash animation titled "Spiderman Will Make You Gay"^[5] was created and uploaded via B3TA forum by Rob Manuel in September 2002. This instance featured a dubbed audiotrack with the lyrics "I'm not gay, I'm not gay, but I dance around in a gay, gay way. I'm not gay, no, no way, but watching me dance will make you gay!" before the animation fades to the text "SPIDERMAN has made you GAY."

The GIF continued to circulate throughout various discussion forums and BBS communities in the early 2000s, eventually reaching the GIF-sharing community YTMND on September 13th, 2005 with the site titled "Work It Spidey"^[6] uploaded by user SuperORB. At least 20 "Dancing Spiderman" YTMND sites have been created between 2005 and 2008, with the highest viewed instance being Crippled Spiderman VS Dancing Spiderman! What.^[7]

Notable YTMNDs

• Crippled Spiderman vs. Dancing Spiderman
• Work it Spidey
• Dance Spidey, dance!
• Spidey Does the Daft dance
• Napoleon Spiderman
• Spider-man dances on dogs!
• Dance If You Want

On YouTube

Over time, the animation reached the video-sharing site YouTube where it spawned dozens of derivative videos set to various audio tracks. For more video examples, please browse the video gallery.

Search Interest

As the Google Insights graph shows, search queries for "Dancing Spider Man" has been gradually waning over the past years.

External References