About

Distraction Dance, also known as You Have Been Distracted, refers to a dance from the video game series The Henry Stickmin Collection which the titular character Henry Stickmin uses to distract two guards. In August 2020, the dance gained popularity as source material for memes, including bait-and-switch videos, as a part of the larger The Henry Stickmin Collection meme trend.

History

On November 12th, 2015, developer Puffballs United released Fleeing the Complex, the fifth game in the video game series The Henry Stickmin Collection, on the entertainment website Newgrounds. ^[1] The game follows the story of Stickmin as he attempts to escape from The Wall, a Serbian prison complex. In one scene of the game, Henry and another inmate Ellie attempt to get past two guards, with one of the options being to distract them with a dance. Upon choosing the option, Stickmin dances to the track "Dance Mr. Funnybones," with guards and Ellie joining in. The option results in a fail.

On August 7th, 2020, the remastered The Henry Stickmin Collection was released for Steam,^[2] which significantly boosted the meme popularity of the game online. The collection included a new game "Completing the Mission," in which the Distraction dance appears again, with the scene also containing references to Emo Peter, the Dab and the Torture Dance. On August 8th, YouTube^[3] user ZT Spacer uploaded the scene to YouTube, where it received over 138,900 views in two weeks.

Spread

Starting on August 9th, 2020, the Distraction Dance has gained popularity as a subject of parodies; for example, on that day YouTube^[4] user J-Bug posted a Roblox version of the dance, with the video gaining over 427,900 views in two weeks (shown below).

On August 11th, iFunny^[5] user RonaldUlyssesSwanson_ posted an ironic demotivational poster meme based on the scene captioned "You have been distracted, repost this to distract someone else" (shown below). The post received over 34,700 smiles in ten days and received viral spread online, with multiple reposts on Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube and Discord in the following days.

The video inspired further use of the dance a source material for memes, including bait-and-switch memes. For example, on August 19th, 2020, content creator Foekoe posted^[6] a Why Do Women Only Like Stupid Jerks Who Treat Them Like Shit? meme that received over 17,600 views, 830 retweets and 3,700 likes on Twitter and over 913,000 views on YouTube^[7] in one day (shown below).

On August 18th, YouTube^[8] user Boogie Toes posted a green screen template of the dance that gained over 112,000 views in two days.

Various Examples

pic.twitter.com/ey6hwCeVOs

— Ültra (@Ultrashroomz) August 16, 2020

pic.twitter.com/JOh4fRI6Or

— shut up (@conkface) August 19, 2020

Template

Search Interest

External References