Purpdrank’s “Yo Yo Yo” Dance

About

Purpdrank’s “Yo Yo Yo” Dance refers to a a viral dance video “When Guys Get 11+ Likes” by Viners Purpdrank, King Bach and Anwar Jiwabi. Originally posted in 2014, the clip gained popularity in edits on Instagram in August 2019, and then again in a TikTok and Instagram trend in September 2020.

Origin

On February 17th, 2014, Viner Purpdrank posted a humorous dance sketch “When Guys Get 11+ Likes” made in collaboration with Viners King Bach and Anwar Jibawi. The Vine received over 508,200 likes and 11.2 million loops in three years (shown below).

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The video did not see use in memes until on August 2019, when it gained popularity in edits on Instagram. On August 16th, 2019, content creator vw.mp4 posted the earliest found edit based on the video, a Minecraft meme that received over 100,000 views and 24,000 likes in one year, crediting content creator joshua.likes.salsa for inspiration (shown below, left). On August 19th, 2019, joshua.likes.salsa posted an AVGN meme based on the Vine, gaining over 13,600 views and 3,400 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

In late August and early September 2019, the Vine reached significant popularity in edits on Instagram, with notable examples posted by pampam.mp4 (shown below, left), bepis.man (shown below, center), igotsilver (shown below, right) and other creators. A green screen template was created by content creator @ins.step (post no longer available).

The popularity of format significantly diminished until a year later TikTok user mayathemild posted a meme in which the Yo Yo Yo Dance was superimposed over Mafuyu’s Song from the 2019 anime series Given. The post received over 317,000 views and 96,400 likes in two months (shown below, left). The post started a TikTok trend in which users superimposed the dance over intros and outros of various anime series and music videos in general. For example, a September 1st, 2020, meme by TikTok user .songtaekyung received over 66,900 likes (shown below, center). A same-day meme by TikTok user levismissingcumsock received over 37,400 likes (shown below, right).

The meme format maintained notable popularity online in the following weeks, with multiple viral edits posted on TikTok and Instagram.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References