"Harlem Shake" meme is kind of offensive

I'm off today, but I leave you with this video about the Harlem Shakes meme, which I don't really understand. I haven't watched any of the videos; it takes up too much memory on my phone. That being said, from my limited understanding, it sounded a little bit racist. But then again, that might be me being racist because the only people I see talking about this are white people who border on hipsters. My office mate maintains that the people making the meme videos are probably unaware or the implications of their actions, but I'm not sure that matters. Because participating in a broken or offensive or racist or sexist system isn't ok just because you didn't know your actions were contributing to the offensiveness, racism, sexism, etc. Then I saw this video on Colorlines, and it is offensive. Vindication!



These are two of my favorite quotes:
"That's weird," said one woman.
"I know the Harlem Shake, but that's not the Harlem Shake," says one man.

There are so many more. It is clear though the residents of Harlem don't appreciate this meme.  Colorlines also has a post about why the Harlem Shake meme is more complicated than people would like to think.