After months of pop dominance, Psy's K-pop hit "Gangnam Style" has our nation's weary bloggers on the brink of collapse. Whenever a late-to-the-party celeb does the signature horsie dance on some crap morning show, the web's exploited blog slaves must crank off yet another 500 words of joyless, compulsive content. They can't help it; if they don't milk the latest cultural novelty for every last pageview, they'll be out on the streets.While the rest of America gallops carefree to the jaunty tune, frustrated bloggers are doing their best to put an official end to the Gangnam phenomenon. Among the first to crack was E! Online's John Boone, who prematurely tried to declare Psy "officially over" back in late September:
"We're so inundated with Gangnam galore that it'll take something seriously out there to grab our attention. We need glitz! We need controversy! We need Amanda Bynes and Lindsay Lohan Gangnaming with a slew of LAPD and NYPD officers! [. . . ] And since that doesn't seem like it will be happening anytime soon, we're calling it: 'Gangnam Style' has officially jumped the shark."
Of course, that didn't work; E! has covered nearly every celebrity Gangnam moment since, and the song's profile only continued to skyrocket. As desperation set in, even gentle CNN took a run at Psy with a wooden stake. Blogger Jarrett Bellini declared the craze "officially no longer a thing."
"Now it's time for all of us to come together and stop the madness. Thus, let it be known that I hereby declare October 12, 2012, as the day 'Gangnam Style' died. [. . . ] Psy seems like a really good dude, and I hate to have done this to his song, but this morning I slowly walked 'Gangnam Style' out into the backyard, thanked it for the good times, and shot it."
But Psy still had a twitch or two left in his corpse. After some NFL players horsie-danced in the following weeks, a Deadspin headline declared "Gangnam Style . . . Officially Dead" on October 21. Days later, the ladies of The View brought Psy out for a performance and dance lesson; Gawker's Rich Juzwiak tried one more time to smother it ("officially," of course):
"It may still be No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, but 'Gangnam Style' is officially dead. It's over. There is no life left to suck from it in a vain attempt at youth. It has outstayed its welcome."
As I write this, "Gangnam Style" is officially still a chart juggernaut, holding steady at #2 on the Hot 100; it's also on top of Billboard's Digital Songs, On-Demand Songs, and Rap Songs charts, and lingering in the top 20 of Pop Songs, Dance Songs, Radio Songs and — in astonishing crossover fashion — Latin Airplay.
How long can this novelty sensation — this "Korean 'Macarena,' " as every single blog in the goddamn universe has cleverly called it — possibly last? The conventional answer is 15 minutes — even the writers who aren't declaring it dead are impatiently watching the hourglass. On October 17, for example, the Inquisitr filed this report:
"Just when you think that the viral phenomenon known as 'Gangnam Style' is on the downward slope of its 15 minutes of fame, Hugh Jackman puts on his Wolverine claws and does his own Gangnam dance with Psy."
