About

Gigabyte Dance (rus. Танец Гигабайта or Гигабайт Танцует) refers to a viral video of a Dagestani wedding entertainer Shamil Arabov dancing by rhythmically stepping to the left and the right while bobbing his bent arms. The video went viral among the Russian TikTok audience in January 2024, inspiring parodies.

Origin

On March 10th, 2018, YouTuber^[1] Rasul Gitinaev uploaded a video of a young singer performing the song "Lyubimaya" by Челси at a wedding (sound removed due to copyright). In the video, Dagestani wedding entertainer and dancer Shamil Arabov is dancing to the song by stepping from to the left and to the right, bobbing his bent arms and occasionally clapping. The video garnered over 14 million views in six years (shown below, left).

On July 6th, 2018, YouTube^[2] user Sasun Shamshiyan reuploaded the video, with the upload gaining over 1.6 million views in six years (shown below, right).

In mid-January 2024, the video went viral among Russian users on TikTok via a supercut of Shamil Arabov, dubbed Gigabyte by users, which was set to various songs. For example, on January 14th, TikTok^[3] user @guggnam posted a clip of Gigabyte set to "Tequila" by Maco Mamuko that received over 390,000 views and 7,100 likes in three months (shown below, left). On January 17th, TikTok^[4] user @tsg_danya posted a version set to "Asia-Evrazia" by AGAS which received over 407,000 views and 7,800 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

Spread

On January 17th, 2024, TikTok^[5] user @themmahub reposted the latter version, captioning it with a joke about a popular MMA fighter. The upload gained over 860,000 views and 16,500 likes in three months (shown below, left). On January 20th, TikTok^[6] user @weangala posted an edit set to "Virtualnaya Lyubov" by Tanin Jazz that received over 5.6 million views and 377,000 likes in three months (shown below, right).

On January 17th, 2024, YouTube^[7] channel Meme Expert posted a video reviewing the meme that received over 350,000 views in three months.

Gigabyte Dance saw more use on TikTok in February and March 2024 as the clip was combined with various songs, parodied and referenced. Notably, some users posted other clips of people dancing in a peculiar manner, referring to the dancers as "Megabyte," "Terabyte" and other units of data (examples^[8][9] shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References