About

INTERNET YAMERO Dance refers to a dance trend set to "INTERNET YAMERO," the second theme song for the 2022 indie video game Needy Girl Overdose, known as Needy Streamer Overload^[1] in the West. Inspired by a dance by the game's main character KAngel in a music video for the song, many internet users posted dance covers and animated parody videos on YouTube, Twitter, Niconico, and TikTok. This dance trend led to the song becoming a viral hit in the spring of 2023.

Origin

On March 17th, 2023, Tokyo-based South Korean artist Aiobahn^[2] published the animated music video for the song he composed, "INTERNET YAMERO," on YouTube (shown below). The game's publisher, WSS Playground, reposted it with English subtitles on the same day.^[3] These video posts had played over 24 million times aggregately in its first three months.

Precursors

This song's title gets inspiration from the Japanese internet slang "Internet Yamero" (Japanese: インターネットやめろ, lit. "Quit the internet"). Nico Nico Pedia explains that the fans and creators around the Japanese online music label, Maltine Records,^[4] started using this phrase and provided a sticker featuring it with Parked Domain Girl (shown below) at their club events circa 2012.^[5] Online parodies of this sticker started around 2017, and its spread made the original phrase popular among Twitter users after 2019.

In October 2019, Natsuki Aoya published a Vocaloid song with the same title (shown below, left). The Touhou Project arrangement song, "Internet Survivor," released by COOL&CREATE^[6] at Reitaisai in May 2022, featured this slang with many other internet memes and catchphrases (below, right). Virtual singer Yumeoi Kakeru^[7] from Nijisanji^[8] release the song "Stop The Internet" in the following month.

Spread

KAngel's dance, which started at 2:59 in the music video above, soon became the subject of parody on YouTube,^[9] Niconico,^[10] Pixiv,^[11] and Twitter,^[12] as well as dance covers among TikTok users.^[13] For example, on May 6th, 2023, Twitter user DOWNDEXP^[18] posted an animation of Embla from Fire Emblem Heroes doing the dance, gaining over 320 retweets and 1,200 likes (shown below, left). On May 27th, 2023, Twitter user @entiqua^[17] posted an animation of Link from The Legend of Zelda doing the dance, gaining over 1,600 retweets and 9,400 likes in six weeks (shown below, right).

Some VTubers posted singing covers with their original animations. This dance trend pushed the song into Spotify's viral chart in Japan and Billboard Japan's weekly top user-generated songs chart^[14] in late April. Japanese online news media articles and interviews with the composer mentioned this viral hit in May.^[15][16]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References