From cultural phenomena to unbelievable annoyance in a matter of days, most viral videos seem to suffer the same sudden and irreversible demise. A video is posted with an easy to follow formula — it’s hot, it’s new and then, suddenly, there are hundreds upon hundreds of versions and responses. For a time, the formula is embraced, the videos are modified and made extraordinary … and just as swiftly, the magic is gone. Parodies of “Call Me Maybe” and “Gangnam Style,” once so popular, now reside in Youtube purgatory. Internet fads are short-lived, and accruing likes or views is entirely dependent on the hour or minute in which the video is posted. What is cool one moment is dead the next.

The latest fad to make waves online were dances done to Baauer’s “Harlem Shake.” The craze lived a life of just two weeks before being considered majorly overdone, but before that time, many residents of Davis were able to create and submit their own versions of the video.

Each video begins with a masked individual dancing alone in a group of apathetic bystanders before suddenly cutting to a wild dance party featuring the whole group. As the fad grew, so did the quality and creativity of the videos, with some groups utilizing outrageous costumes, entire crowds of people, outlandish props and strange dancing patterns.

The UC Davis Law School’s rendition of the Harlem Shake was especially bizarre. Michael Murza, a third-year UC Davis Law School student and creator of “Harlem Shake (Law School Edition),” pointed out the girl using her dachshund as a fake gun and someone else lying on a table in a sleeping bag.

“The idea behind Harlem Shake is so simple. There are little variations in the crazy things that people can do, but to a certain degree, you can only do so much. We tried to be a little more unique with having Professor Tanaka lecturing in the beginning of the video,” Murza said.

The video currently has over 50,000 views, due in part to the narrow time window that Murza was able to exploit.

“We were the second law school to post a rendition, and we were only behind the first by an hour,” he said. “By the end of that same night, however, there were five or six more law school Harlem Shake videos out there. Because we were in the top three, we were featured on the Above the Law website, which was really a cool thing to see.”

Timing is everything with this type of viral video, a fact that UC Davis graduate and intramural sports customer service coordinator Greg Fulks found when making the UC Davis Athletics Harlem Shake video.

“We were all planning it a week before we filmed, but I started to feel that the Harlem Shake was getting old. We were thinking of rescheduling for later, but because everyone had already done it, we knew that we had to make it as fast as possible,” Fulks said.

The video, which features athletes from many of the UC Davis sports teams fist pumping, grinding and running in various stages of undress, contains an alternate ending in reference to the awareness that the fad was dying. UC Davis mascot Gunrock kicks a dancer offscreen and stops the video as the words “Gunrock kills the Harlem Shake” appear onscreen, as a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement to the end of the trend.

Even though it was released a matter of days following the first incarnation of the video, Fulks went on to explain why the fad went out of style so quickly.

“If you hear a song on repeat for a long time, no matter what, you’re going to get sick of it. It’s human nature. It’s just like popular songs, after hearing it over and over, you’re not going to want to hear it anymore,” Fulks said.

While Fulks was late to creating the viral video, he’s prepared for the next round of internet phenomena.

“I’m waiting for the next big thing. We have an [online group with all the participating athletes] already going, so as soon as another video comes up, I’ll just send a message to everyone asking if they want to do another one. We had a lot of fun [making the Harlem Shake].”

While both Fulks and Murza said that the best part of the process was getting together and doing something silly with colleagues and friends, others see viral videos as a means of competition.

Alex Krasnoff, a fourth-year food science and technology major, decided on a whim to make a Harlem Shake video with the rest of his staff one Sunday shift in the ASUCD Coffee House Kitchen. The spontaneous endeavor turned into a face-off between the CoHo out front staff and kitchen staff, who have always had a friendly rivalry.

“[The video] became a rivalry point because the kitchen staff liked it a lot, but the out front staff thought they could do better, so they planned for a week and made their own to spite ours,” Krasnoff said. “They say that it’s more popular, but I don’t know where they get their stats from—last time I checked we had twice as many likes on the CoHo page.”

There is a long standing practice of one-upping other schools and groups through viral videos. Last year, the UC Davis baseball team released a video of a bus-dancing routine set to LFMAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” in response to the Harvard men’s rowing team’s video bus dance to “Call Me Maybe.” Earlier this year, the UC Davis Dining Commons produced a video to the then-viral “Gangnam Style,” in an effort to throw its hat into the ring.

What high-profile viral video competitions lie ahead? In response to San Diego State’s men’s basketball team’s video “Montezuma’s 55th,” the UC Davis men’s basketball team recently shot and is planning on releasing their own, similar video with the hope of it going viral.

Kristine Craig, a first-year economics and political science double major and UC Davis Dance Team member, expressed excitement for the video’s release.

“I think it will definitely be more popular than State’s video,” she said. “It has the potential to go viral because it is a direct response to their video.”

The UC Davis men’s basketball video airs on March 7 to coincide with the ESPN televised game against Long Beach to stir up excitement and fan support for the team.

“It’s encompassing school spirit and showing that we have a lot of pride. There’s Band-Uh!, Aggie Pack, Cheer and the dance team, all behind the basketball team in the video, so we are featuring different types of student life. I’m really excited for it to come out.”

Whether for notoriety, view count or to express dominance, competitive or recreational remakes of viral videos is a trend that doesn’t seem to be dying out fast, even if the specific crazes themselves do.

“There are new memes coming out all the time, and most of them are dead within a week,” Murza said. “Everyone that I talked to about the Harlem Shake said it was so much fun to participate in, and we got nothing but positive feedback. So yes, I’d definitely participate in making another video.”

HANNAH KRAMER can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

Political events of the last decade have put the Middle East and South Asia firmly in American students’ minds. However, according to some, academics concerning these regions are surprisingly lacking, with UC Davis’ program only recently established and only one of four in the entire nation.

Twelve years ago, there were barely a handful of Middle Eastern and South Asian courses at UC Davis. Now, after the founding of the Middle East/South Asia (ME/SA) studies program, the original two-member faculty and 300 students have grown to 22 and 2,000, respectively. With the leadership of founding director anthropology and women’s studies professor Suad Joseph, pressure from UC Davis student petitions and support from local Middle Eastern and South Asian communities, ME/SA has grown to offer both a major and a minor.

It is also a resource for non-majors, as the program hosts two lecture series and many guest speakers throughout the year. The lectures are free, open to everyone and aim to offer richer understandings of Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs.

“These days it is impossible not to be interested in [Middle Eastern/South Asian] affairs, because we as the United States are involved,” said Baki Tezcan, history professor and ME/SA director. “We were in Iraq until recently, and we are involved in Afghanistan, so it is in our news every day.”

Tezcan said that though students must be aware of Middle Eastern affairs, they may not always have the best sources for information, making it important for ME/SA to provide multiple and different perspectives.

According to Gurgit Mann, ME/SA coordinator, there are two lecture series, the Suad Joseph Lecture Series in Iranian Studies and the Faris Saeed Lecture Series in Arab Studies.

It took over a decade of petitions, networking and applications to make the ME/SA program and these lectures a reality.

In 2001, when Joseph was in Egypt, several students approached her for help. Though Joseph had already tried to create such a major in the 1970s, and again in the 1980s, she agreed to help, and upon returning home, worked with students to begin founding a program.

The next year, Joseph formed a research cluster with three new faculty members and submitted the proposal for the minor in 2005, which was accepted immediately. Three months after this, the program was officially created, which, according to Joseph, is the fastest any Davis program has ever been established. Riding this momentum, a proposal for the major was submitted in 2006, and two years later it was approved.

The Middle Eastern community in Davis also played a large role in ME/SA’s creation and growth.

“The Iranian Community of Davis and Sacramento has been incredibly helpful,” Joseph said. “They helped organize the other communities in 2004 to support our efforts to found the program, and they have continued to help us with donor development and with their own funds.”

According to Tezcan, Javad and Shirin Rahimian from the Iranian-American community support ME/SA’s Suad Joseph Lecture Series in Iranian Studies.

The Arab studies lecture series is also supported via donations, and is named for its benefactor Mr. Faris Saeed. Saeed is a businessman in Dubai, and after visiting UC Davis, he was inspired to develop a place in Dubai based on Davis’ West Village. In the meantime, he supports ME/SA financially.

Currently, ME/SA is beginning to talk to the local Sikh community, and Tezcan stated that they’re waiting to see what will happen.

Tezcan felt that it is important to raise awareness about the problems faced by the Sikh community in the United States, especially after the Wisconsin massacre this past summer, when six worshipers were gunned down at a Sikh temple by a white-supremacist.

“One thing everyone [is familiar with] is your classmates,” Tezcan said. “Your classmates come from very different parts of the world, and they come from very different traditions. We live here, in the United States, which is an immigrant nation, and it’s not just Middle East and South Asian studies — I think our university students should learn about all the world’s history and cultures, from East Asia to South Asia to the Middle East to Latin America to Africa. Learning about this is not just learning about the world. It is learning about each other.”

Tezcan also said that Middle East and South Asian affairs directly affect UC Davis.

“If we had resources that could go to public education instead of defense, perhaps we wouldn’t have to increase [university] fees as much,” Tezcan said. “Being better informed might help us make better decisions with our tax dollars, and that might actually have an impact on how much we pay for college tuition here.”

As far as informing the community goes, however, ME/SA is a rare and useful resource for students, according to Joseph.

“We are one of only four such programs nationally,” Joseph said. “I am regularly approached by faculty in other universities asking how we built this program. Even our dean has been asked by other universities how this program was built.”

Joseph said the answer is simple: commitment from and the collaboration of students, faculty, the community and the administration, working together with a common goal.

Though it receives very little funding from the university and relies heavily on donations, ME/SA continues to bring valuable educational opportunities to students.

Just this past quarter, the program brought many fascinating lecturers to campus, including Moroccan Prince Moulay Hicham Ben Abdallah, who spoke about the third year of the Arab Spring.

Upcoming events include a seminar this Friday with guest speaker Ali Yaycioglu on “Wealth, Power and Death in the Ottoman World.” It will be held at noon in 1246 Social Science and Humanities.

“[The lectures] are meant for the community and students, so everyone is welcome,” Mann said. “It’s always free and we always have food.”

NAOMI NISHIHARA can be reached at features@theaggie.org.