Gangnam Style

The peak year should be 2013, not 2012. Search interest, archive frequency and my own logs all agree; 2012 is when the early adopters peaked, which is not the same thing.

Sighting, 15 July, a laminated menu in a chain pub. Gangnam Style appearing as a menu option. Someone in a meeting proposed this and nobody stopped them.

1 yr. Not bad for something that started in officialpsy, YouTube and had no plan. The cause listed is “Overexposure”, which is another way of saying it got too big to be the thing it was.

Half the disagreement in this thread is between people defining Gangnam Style by what it meant in 2012 and people defining it by what it meant at its peak. Both are right. Neither is the current meaning.

In 2012 I could not have imagined explaining Gangnam Style to anyone. It did not need explaining. Now I have a note on my phone with the explanation ready, for when the young ask, and they do not ask.

Logging a live specimen: a railway platform departures board, overridden by staff, 8 January. Gangnam Style, offered as an explanation to an audience that plainly did not need one.

A definition that survives its own explainer is rare and this is not one. Gangnam Style means what it meant; what changed is the number of people who could hear you say it.