#OkayMovement

About

#OkayMovement are a series of Vine remix videos featuring a clip of a grinning man timidly saying “okay,” which is often used as a comedic device in conjunction with various footage from TV shows, music videos and films.

Origin

On December 29th, 2014, Viner Lilianna Hogan posted a Vine clip taken during her vacation at the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, which begins with a panoramic view of the vista before panning over to her Rwandan tour guide who replies “okay” with a smile after she says “hi” in greeting (shown below). In the first three months, the video received over 25 million loops, 520,000 likes and 294,000 revines.

Spread

On February 21st, Viner xpacNino uploaded a mashup of the music video for the 2012 hip-hop song “Mercy” by Kanye West with the man saying “okay” (shown below). In one month, the video accumulated upwards of 23 million loops, 529,000 likes and 373,000 revines.

On February 22nd, Redditor blackshad-o submitted the Vine to the /r/videos^[4] subreddit, where it gathered more than 5,200 votes (91% upvoted) and 1,200 comments in the first month. The same day, YouTuber TheVinetopia uploaded a compilation of notable #Okaymovement Vines (shown below).

On February 25th, the @OkayMovement^[2] Twitter feed was launched. On March 5th, the Best Celebrations Instagram^[3] feed posted a video of a football player scoring a touchdown with a song using a sample of the “okay” audio clip playing in the background (shown below). Within two weeks, the clip gathered upwards of 19,000 likes and 680 comments.

A video posted by Best Celebrations (@bestcelebrations) on Mar 5, 2015 at 4:18pm PST

On March 17th, the pop culture blog Fusion^[1] published an interview with Hogan about the Vine meme, in which she revealed that the Rwandan man’s name was Jackson and that she found it “flattering that someone so sweet was attracted to me.”

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References