Everybody has done the Harlem shake -- absolutely everybody, from the kid next door to the army to even the Uzbeks. Math brain Nate Silvers joked at the tech conference SXSW in Texas last week that 90% of the data in the universe has been produced only in the last decade, and 75% of it comes from Harlem Shake re-mixes. Just kidding!
But to do the Harlem Shake in Turkmenistan, you really have to be a mover and shaker -- Youtube is banned, the government blocks it, and you'd have to even hear about it first in order to devise your own, pull it off under the watchful eye of all sorts of government minders who have cracked down on students in particular in recent years. Then you'd have to upload it -- well, it's a lot to go through.
Even so, Rusten T. reports on his blog that there is now a Turkmen Harlem Shake, that somehow has been put on Youtube. And not from inside the country -- because of all those obstalces -- but some Turkmen students studying abroad -- from the looks of it, the fairly near abroad.
And it's already managed to piss off some in the community and apparently some watchful Turkmen Embassy minders abroad because it seems to "denigrate" the Turkmen nation when the dance is done in a room with the Turkmen flag in the wall -- it "shames" the nation, you see. That it shames the nation more to shut off Youtube seems to escape such minders.
You can also get a glimpse of the flowery Central Asian pododeyalnik (I love those) and see how these particular students improvise -- which seems to be with a lot of sheets in a zombie theme with some plastic bags -- and the shelves of a refrigerator. No shaggy Turkmen hats were used, more's the pity.
