Numa Numa
One of the internet's first viral megahits: a webcam clip of a New Jersey teenager lip-syncing and flailing joyfully to a Moldovan pop song. Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa Dance" spread to hundreds of millions of views — and it happened before YouTube even existed.
The song came first: "Dragostea Din Tei," a 2003 Eurodance hit by the Moldovan group O-Zone, sung in Romanian and nicknamed the "Numa Numa" song after its chorus. It topped charts across Europe and sold millions before ever making a dent in the US.
Then, on December 6, 2004, an 18-year-old named Gary Brolsma posted a webcam video to Newgrounds — just his face and shoulders, lip-syncing and bouncing with pure, dorky exuberance. Crucially, this was two months before YouTube launched: "Numa Numa" spread the old way, forwarded across hundreds of websites, racking up an estimated 700 million views by 2006 and landing Brolsma on Good Morning America and The Tonight Show.
It became a template for the viral video — an ordinary person, a webcam, and a moment of unselfconscious joy. VH1 later named it the number-one internet superstar of its era, and it was immortalized in Weezer's 2008 "Pork and Beans" video, a reunion of the web's early famous faces.
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