Fandangoing: Newest Social Media Craze Started by the WWE?

On the lighter side of news today we have a new social media craze: Fandangoing! Let’s face it, we are pretty good these days at cramming in a new dance fad and in the receding tide of a sea of Harlem Shake videos we needed something new, something fresh, something created… by wrestling?

Well, yes. Fandangoing is named after relatively new World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Superstar Curtis Hussey, better known by his current ring name as Fandango. Fandangoing is defined on KnowYourMeme, the popular meme cataloguing site, as “a dance move in which participants point up their index fingers while humming the entrance theme song for the WWE wrestler Fandango.

Source: http://www.wwe.com/superstars/fandango Copyright WWE 2013

It was sparked primarily by a ruckus crowd in New Jersey’s Izod center on the 8th of April of this year, during an episode of WWE’s Monday Night Raw. Rumored to be the work of a combination of American and European fans– according to the potentially suspect source that is Youtube commenters– an eruption of humming broke out during a match between Fandango and Kofi Kingston, which continued throughout the match and culminated in the original Fandangoing. In the week that followed Fandangoing spread so rapidly that the WWE devoted time to it on the following Monday Night Raw, with Jerry Lawler declaring “everyone in the world has been Fandangoing.” They list some impressive statistics including Fandango’s theme song itself reaching #3 on the US iTunes chart, and more than 100,000 instances of the term “Fandango” on social media. They back-up these facts with clips showing newscasters, the Houston Texas cheerleaders, and even a version featuring members of PETA in costume– all Fandangoing away, designed to make us think Fandangoing is going truly viral.

Will Fandangoing join the ranks of something as iconic as the Macarena? Probably not, especially if Fandango remains a heel, a ‘bad guy’ wrestler who ignores the fans, but for now Fandango takes his place in the WWE spotlight as someone bringing wresting beyond its fans: Fandangoing exists as a  reminder that everyone can dance.