Illustration of the TikTok application. – Hollandse Hoogte / SIPA
This is the big trend phenomenon of the moment on TikTok. Those last weeks,
dozens of videos and tutorials to learn the “Crip Walk” have been posted on the Chinese social network. It is a very particular movement of legs which consists in making Z with the feet, that it is very quickly appropriate the teenagers on the platform. The “Crip Walk” videos listed under the hashtags and
#CripWalk or #Cwalk have generated more than 130 million views on TikTok.
Most users perform this dance step, all smiles, on the song Fuck it up, performed by rapper Kamaiyah and rapper YG. But most of them don’t know where it comes from
this dance step, or what it actually means.
I am MISERABLE who taught them this pic.twitter.com/E2cHjGyO2z
– ?Taye? IG: Tayeakira (@TayeAkira) December 10, 2019
This explains the, “How to crip walk” on my YT search history pic.twitter.com/kbOUq679BP
– Arelly (@arellyyasel) December 23, 2019
A macabre ritual
Far from the playful videos posted on the music platform, the “Crip Walk” is in fact a dance step created in the 1970s by the members Crips, a gang from Los Angeles considered one of the most violent in the United States. It was a ritual observed by the members of this gang after having murdered or “beaten up” a member of the Bloods, the opposing gang.
According to the online dictionary Urban Dictionary, this dance “can only be performed by members of the Crips”. “Keep in mind that the Crips don’t like to have their dance done, they can hurt you,” he said.
Warning videos
Several warning videos have been published in recent weeks by Internet users who explain that performing this dance movement is not trivial. ” Hi the white kids, I love you (…) but it worries me that you are doing the Crip Walk without really knowing what it is all about. If you did it in front of real Crips, gang members, they would kill you, “warned one of them on TikTok.
“Ignorance on the InternetHas reached its climax, we now have white teens making tutorial videos of Crip Walk, “also reacted a Twitter user. “It’s a gang! Do you really want to get shot at a party in Los Angeles because you learned this dance? “
Tiktok got Crip Walk tutorials now yall. Just sayin??♂️? pic.twitter.com/vCH2J5ojKP
– ☁St.PatrickCloud☁ (@PatsOnYaBack) December 14, 2019
This is not the first time that the “Crip Walk” has been controversial. Tennis player Serena Williams found herself at the heart of a scandal in August 2012 for having sketched this footwork. At the end of a victorious match at the Olympic Games, she indulged in a “Crip Walk”, a scene at the time very strongly criticized for referring to the very violent American gang of Crips.
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