Fantasy Challenge

About

Fantasy Challenge is a short viral dance to Mariah Carey's 1995 song "Fantasy"^[1] that includes dropping it low, a butt slap and quick arm gestures to the right and left. The dance first went viral in December 2018 on Instagram. The original post was shared again on TikTok in October 2019 and made the dance trend popular on TikTok that month.

Origin

On December 17th, 2018, Instagram user hey_its_denden posted a video of himself and his brother performing the first iteration of the "Fantasy" viral dance. The video gained over 159,000 views and 20,600 likes in 11 months (shown below).

Spread

On February 2nd, 2019, YouTuber Islander Challenge posted a compilation video of people mimicking Instagram user hey_its_denden's Fantasy dance (shown below). The video garnered over 5,900 viewers. The YouTuber commented that "This is a challenge that a lot of Polynesians in New Zealand do."

On October 23rd, 2019, hey_its_denden's TikTok account @_Oj_Juicees reposted the video and accumulated over 376,800 likes in a month. Many TikTok users began performing the dance. On November 3rd, TikTok user @kaycebrewer received over 726,900 likes and 12,400 shares in nine days for her video (shown below, left). On November 10th, Mariah Carey uploaded a fantasy challenge video to TikTok (shown below, right). The video garnered over 849,700 likes and 12,200 shares in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References