"Obsessed" Dance Challenge

About

"Obsessed" Dance Challenge is a series of short dance videos originating on TikTok in June 2019. In the videos, TikTok users typically use the same choreography to the 2009 song "Obsessed"^[1] by Mariah Carey. Several of the videos became individual viral hits, including Reese Hardy Crying which was a variation of the dance challenge performed while crying.

Origin

June 24th, 2019, TikTok user @kayliicocio^[2] uploaded her own choreography for Mariah Carey's song "Obsessed." The video gained over 407,400 likes and 4,400 comments in a month.

Spread

On July 2nd, 2019, TikTok user @zoelaverne uploaded a video of herself using @kayliicocio's dance to the song "Obsessed" (shown below, left). The video quickly became popular gaining over 815,300 likes and 54,200 shares in a month. On July 13th, TikToker @Reesehardy_ uploaded the video of herself dancing and crying which gained over 1.3 million likes and 93,100 shares in 12 days. The video became popular on Twitter which sparked a surge of TikTokers attempting the dance. On July 18th, TikTok user @sophiplate uploaded a video of several fans performing the dance in a hospital which garnered over 889,1000 likes and 38,800 shares in two weeks.

On July 31st, 2019, Mariah Carey uploaded a video of herself attempting the dance to Twitter caption, "The freaking car broke down on the way to Camp Mariah 🤬 so I decided to participate in the Tik Tok #Obsessed challenge… I lost!" (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 19,000 likes and 4,200 retweets in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References