About

Microwave Challenge is a series of TikTok parody videos in which people spin slowly as if they were in a microwave to a sound clip of American artist Joji's song "Slow Dancing in the Dark."

Origin

On September 12th, 2018, 88rising uploaded the music video for Japanese pop singer Joji's song "Slow Dancing in the Dark," released as the second single from his debut album BALLADS 1 (shown below). The video has gained over 46 million views and one million likes in five months.

In February 2019, Tik Tok user @djtaylortot uploaded a sound clip of "Dancing in the Dark" and called it "DJTaylortot Microwave Chain" which has been used in 39,800 videos as of February 28th. @djtaylortot created the first microwave challenge video which has 33,400 views and 2,579 shares as of February 28th (shown below).

Spread

On February 26, 2019, YouTuber Rainz Tiktok uploaded the microwave challenge video to YouTube which gained 150 views in two days (shown below).

Most videos were made simple by placing one hand on the ground to cause users to turn as shown by Tiktok user @fortniteproperty (shown below, left). Other TikTok videos feature users using alternative methods (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest