Jamiroquai Grab / Virtual Insanity Grab

About

Jamiroquai Grab or Jamiroquai Slide refers to a clip from the music video for Jamiroquai's song Virtual Insanity in which the singer Jay Kay slides towards the camera wearing a large top hat, his hand reaching outward prepared for a grab. The clip has been used as source material for GIF caption memes since 2019, regaining virality in 2023 following the spread of the Dancing, Walking, Rearranging Furniture meme.

Origin

In September 1996, a music video for Jamiroquai's song "Virtual Insanity" premiered. In the video, singer Jay Kay dances in a bright room with a grey floor as walls and furniture move around him, creating the illusion of a sliding floor. On October 25th, 2009, the music video was uploaded to YouTube,^[1] where it gained over 223 million views in 14 years. On September 9th, 2021, a 4K resolution version of the video was uploaded (shown below), garnering over 11 million views on YouTube^[2] in two years. In one part of the video, Jay Kay "slides" toward the camera, holding his hand at chest level as if ready to make a grab for something.

The clip has been used in GIF caption memes on iFunny at least since January 2019. On January 10th, 2019, iFunny^[3] user Moon_moon posted the earliest found GIF caption meme based on the clip, a Street Fighter joke, which gained over 60 smiles on the app in four years (shown below).

Spread

More GIF caption memes using the clip were posted on iFunny, Reddit and Twitter in the following years. For example, on May 23rd, 2020, Redditor HELPIBROKEMYCAPSLOCK posted a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate meme that gained over 11,000 upvotes in the /r/SmashBrosUltimate^[4] subreddit in two years (shown below, left). On June 6th, Twitter^[5] user @MrAgentStrange posted a Doom Eternal meme using the GIF (post no longer available, shown below, right).

In November 2021, the Dancing, Walking, Rearranging Furniture meme, a Family Guy parody of the "Virtual Insanity" music video, gained virality on iFunny, later spreading to TikTok and other sites and achieving viral status in January 2023.

The viral spread of the format helped reignite the popularity of the Jamiroquai Grab in early March 2023, this time as a video caption format. For example, on March 2nd, iFunny^[6] user schlennon posted a meme that gained over 16,500 smiles in two weeks (shown below, left). Later that day, iFunny^[7] user Anticksss posted an SCP-173 meme that gained over 700 smiles in the same period (shown below, right).

The format maintained virality across Twitter, iFunny and other sites through early March 2023.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References