Could this be the end of the Running Man Challenge’s cool streak? For those unfamiliar, The Running Man Challenge is the latest dance craze sweeping the nation. It has nothing to do with this Running Man or this Running Man, but rather consists of one or more people dancing to the Ghost Town DJ song “My Boo” from 1995. Similar to The Harlem Shake, which was inescapable a few years ago, the challenge is to do the dance in as creative a way as possible. Whether that involves props or just being super dorky is up to each person but the results have been pretty entertaining. But now police departments from all over the world are participating and it kind of seems like that time when your uncle wanted to learn how to whip/nae nae so he could impress some teenagers with his hipness.
Police departments from the world over are challenging each other to do this and some videos are much better than others. Each is awkward in its own way, but some have a bit of heartwarming dorky-ness to them that is very endearing. Mostly though, they should leave this to the kids. Especially a California police force who pretended to pull someone over and then had the local cheer squad participate. That seems perilously close to wasting taxpayer money.
New York City’s might be the best of the bunch (the NYC resident says with not an ounce of bias) if only because they embraced the fact that most of their precinct absolutely cannot dance. By incorporating local kids into the video, who are actually very good at doing the running man moves, it turns into a nice community outreach post and smartly hides the cops’ lack of skills behind talented teenagers.
Your mileage may vary when bagpipes get involved, but Scotland incorporated a bagpiper, a Scottish Jig, and the beautiful Edinburgh Castle into their video so they get some brownie points for using stereotypes to their advantage.
Some police departments just gave up completely by the end, which is worse than just doing the dance poorly and owning it.
Leave it to the kids everyone. And get back to work!
(via The Huffington Post)
