Harmonica Beatbox

Submission 811

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About

Harmonica Beatbox refers to a viral video of a bearded man beatboxing with a harmonica. Originally posted in mid-2021 by TikToker Dan Murphy (@murphantastic), the video became a TikTok meme in September 2023, following multiple videos that object labeled Murphy with seemingly nonsensical captions, relating his obscure, musical performance to human subjects that were portrayed as unbothered and oblivious. The most common person that Murphy was labeled as was "the homeless guy." In turn, the Harmonica Beatbox video became an exploitable with many using a greenscreen template, inserting Murphy into different settings.

Origin

On July 2nd, 2021, TikToker^[1] @murphantastic posted a video of himself beatboxing with a harmonica, gaining roughly 1.9 million plays and 245,900 likes in two years (shown below). Murphy also posted the video to YouTube^[2] where it received similar engagement. In the days after its upload, the video gained a few duets ^[3]^[4] with viral engagement.

Currently, the first-known meme made with the video was posted by iFunnier^[5] @TheFoulTarnished on July 19th, 2022. The video captioned Murphy's harmonica beatbox with, "Me getting mauled by a bear on the Oregon Trail in 1847 / The random ass homesteader in the backround:" and it received roughly 20,200 smiles in one year (shown below).

Spread

The aforementioned "The random ass homesteader" video received viral reposts on YouTube^[6] and Reddit^[7] in August and September 2022. The caption format of the video also inspired variants, such as a video posted by iFunnier^[8] @speedweedz on September 3rd, 2022, which captioned an old man playing a guitar with, "Me in Texas the year 1890: *chasing after a dangerous outlaw and his posse* / That random old man from the saloon who followed us for some reason:" receiving roughly 52,600 smiles in one year (shown below).

The harmonica beatbox video originally posted by iFunnier^[5] @TheFoulTarnished was reposted by TikToker^[9] @quanzinguel on August 11th, 2023, receiving roughly 1.4 million plays and 275,900 likes in one month.

The viral repost inspired a slew of TikTok memes using the video going into September 2023. For instance, on September 12th, 2023, TikToker^[10] @zenozxz posted an iteration which labeled Murphy as "the random homeless man" gaining roughly 45,300 plays and 5,300 likes in 13 days (shown below, left). On September 19th, TikToker^[11] @rax.y8 posted an iteration about "the random ass guy That lives in a cabin," gaining roughly 271,100 plays and 39,000 likes in six days (shown below, right).

Viral videos following the format persisted on TikTok^[12] going into late September 2023.