It occurred to me the other day that I’ve been talking about Internet culture this entire time, and have yet to properly go over flash fads. This is most likely because Internet flash fads so rarely overlap with sexuality, most having to do with silly things like laying down in places where you’re not supposed to lay down or making fun of Tim Tebow.
Then I remembered that twerking, the butt-shaking dance trend that is now on its way out, is both extremely sexual and an excellent example of a flash fad. As such, I feel it only appropriate to use twerking as a framework for examining the lifecycle of the typical Internet fad.
Phase 1- Origin
Internet fads usually originate from something that was only moderately popular for most of its lifetime. Twerking is a prime example of this. The term originated in the southern hip-hop scene in the mid-90s and for the next ten years or so, remained largely a regional phenomenon. It only rose to national popularity around late 2012 and early 2013 thanks largely to the efforts of the Twerk Team.
Phase 2 – Internet Success
The Twerk Team is exactly what it sounds like. It’s two women who make videos of themselves twerking and post it on YouTube. The Twerk Team started their YouTube channel in 2009 and gained a sizable following over the next few years. The appeal of these videos is easy to see. I speak from experience when I say that the YouTube community’s approach to sexuality tends to be to blindly flock in the direction of boobs. Every year, videos with no interesting content and a picture of boobs in the thumbnail get millions of views from users trolling YouTube for a quick rise. Just swap out boobs for butts and deceptive thumbnails for thumbnails that accurately reflect the content of the video (in this case, butts) and you’ve got Twerk Team. It’s a recipe for Internet fame! But the Twerk Team alone could not turn twerking into a true flash fad. This required…
Phase 3 – Mainstream Attention
Things from the Internet usually gain fad status only after they get mainstream media attention. With twerking, this came in the form of everyone’s favorite ex-Disney Channel Star and Teddy Bear enthusiast Miley Cyrus. Cyrus first mentioned twerking in the lead-up to the release of the music video for “We Can’t Stop”, a song that drew massive attention almost immediately. Cyrus asked her fans to submit homemade twerking videos for inclusion in the music video for “We Can’t Stop.” This contest, announced in June 2013, correlated with a large spike in Google searches for twerking, as shown in this graph.
Source: Google Trends
From there, the search numbers only went up. That was, of course, until august, when Miley performed at the MTV VMA’s and propelled twerking from “popular Internet craze” to “inescapable cultural phenomenon.”
Phase 4 – Moral Outrage
Once an internet fad reaches a certain level of popularity, the news media will find a way to paint it as “harmful” in some way shape or form. In the case of twerking, that meant criticizing Cyrus on all fronts. Most notably from a sexuality standpoint, Cyrus was attacked for giving a racist performance. As explained in this article, Cyrus’ performance used racist ideas about black female sexuality for shock value, exploiting the “jezebel” stereotype of black women as uncontrollably sexual. While not a critique of twerking itself, this nonetheless fits the bill for moral outrage.
Phase 5 – Rapid Decline
Once the public has both heard of the trend, and been angered by it, there’s only one direction it can go. Down. Twerking has steadily declined in popularity since August and will most likely continue down that path. This is because once a fad reaches the point of oversaturation (i.e. everyone is sick of hearing about it) there’s nowhere for it to go but a steady slide into irrelevance. The Internet, after all, is a fickle beast, and not even bouncing butts can change that.
Sexuality And Internet Culture 