About

The Band of the Bold, also known as #JoggingManChallenge, is a series of videos in which comedian Marlon Webb jogs through neighborhoods with a group of friends while the songs "Take On Me" and "Stayin' Alive" are heard playing in the background.

Origin

On June 12th, 2016, Webb posted a video titled "The Band of the Bold" to his Facebook page,^[1] in which three men are shown jogging with a wide gait to the tune of the 1984 synthpop song "Take on Me" by A-ha. Within two months, the video gained over 11.6 million views, 200,000 shares and 39,000 comments. The following day, the video was reuploaded to the Ready to Monday YouTube^[2] channel (shown below), Two days later, it reached the front page of Reddit's /r/videos^[3] community.

Spread

On June 28th, Webb posted a sequel video featuring the same group of joggers running down a street to the 1977 disco hit single “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees (shown below, left). On July 5th, Webb uploaded a third video in the series, which shows the group fleeing from a police officer with “Take On Me” playing in the background (shown below, right)

On July 23rd, YouTuber Impact Props uploaded a parody video titled “The Band of the Spartans,” wherein several Halo cosplayers recreate Webb’s video at the RTX convention in Austin, Texas (shown below, left). In less than a week, the video accrued nearly 240,000 views. The next day, a GIF from the video reached the frontpage of the /r/gaming^[6] subreddit. On July 26th, YouTuber ThePruld uploaded a Dark Souls-themed parody video, which accrued over 300,000 views within 48 hours after reaching the front page of the /r/gaming^[5] subreddit later that same day. (shown below, right). On July 27th, Redditor gnarledout submitted a post asking about variations of the jogging dance to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[4]

Search Interest

External References