You can probably guess what happened when Tunisian officials tried to clamp down on something as irreverent as the Harlem Shake. When the Islamist-led government reacted badly to a local manifestation of the global dance craze, it backfired in a big way. First, students in Tunis who had initiated the country's renditions of the YouTube dance hacked into the education ministry's website, making it wobble in time to the Harlem tune. And then, inevitably, where there was just one Tunisian Shake, hundreds more followed.
International media have pounced on this story, presumably because the symbolism is just too good to miss. The Harlem Shake, for those who haven't sifted through the viral video clips, is a 30-second meme with myriad riffs on one theme: a sole dancer is surrounded by disinterested friends who then erupt and join in with the wild gyrations, all set to a trap music track courtesy of the Brooklyn DJ Baauer. There are thousands of versions, but the Tunisian rendition is palpably politicised, with the dancers dressed as ultraconservative Salafis and Gulf emirs, and a few of the men appearing in their underwear.