Whaling

Submission 34,170

Part of a series on Vine. [View Related Entries]

About

Whaling is a Vine video fad in which participants mimic a whale’s breaching behavior by thrusting their bodies backwards with their legs hidden behind a tabletop fixture or an object.

Origin

On March 7th, 2014, Viner Worldchamp Santwon uploaded a video with the caption “I think there’s a whale in McDonald’s,” in which a man is shown mimicking a breaching whale while positioned behind counters and tabletops at a McDonald’s restaurant (shown below).

Spread

On March 8th, Viner TreyLaNetta DAbricksha Jenkins posted a video in which he is shown whaling in several public locations, garnering upwards of 43,000 revines and 42,000 likes in the following four days.

On March 9th, 2014, Viner StarsCHI_nHutch uploaded a video of himself diving backwards inside a grocery store under the hashtag #whaling (shown below). In the next 72 hours, the Vine received over 1,600 likes and 1,400 revines.

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the new Vine trend, including The Daily Dot,^[1] IBI Times,^[2] CBC News,^[3] Today^[4] and Refinery 29.^[5] Within the first week, the Vine "#whaling" list accumulated upwards of 400 Facebook shares and 340 tweets.