[MJR]

I think the article brings up a lot of great points and analysis, but misses the mark on one of the key foundational elements that makes these videos so different. Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake are different types of media. Gangnam Style is a 3:40 music video by an actual artist with a dance. Harlem Shake is a dance to a 30 second song clip. They both include music and dance, but the length and other factors make them very different and in some cases unworthy of comparison.

So from the beginning you're looking at two different lengths and types of content. Is 30 seconds more "shareable"? Probably. Does a pop song climbing the charts earn the music video more publicity? Probably. Can you then compare lifetimes of these two memes against each other and draw conclusions? No probably not. It's apples and oranges.

Maybe it's just a bad infographic, but I feel there are a lot of valid conclusions that could have been drawn from this type of analysis. But instead of that you get comparisons without explanation of why these memes are different and have different characteristics. I think they could have looked at two long-form music video memes or two short 30-second video clip memes, drawn better comparisons and put together a more complete and accurate analysis of these memes.

[kachnuv_ocasek]

>video by an actual artist

PSY is a joke from the beginning, as is LMFAO et al. Harlem Shake was originally just a song which got somehow mixed up with a crazy dance and that went viral.