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In case you have not yet had the misfortune to watch it, Harlem Shake is a new worldwide video meme which is TOTES FUNNY OMG. The meme is a series of 30-second clips. Each begins with one person dancing alone (and badly) to an electronic tune. This person is surrounded by people who, instead of doing something logical like calling the police, driving stakes through the dancer’s feet, or devising elaborate plans to bury the dancer alive, are ignoring him/her. Evil flourishes while good men do nothing.

When the bass drops, at around the 15-second mark, the video cuts to everybody dancing in “crazy” ways. Almost invariably, one person thrusts his hips repeatedly in the air, in a move that can only be described as “trying to pop a helium balloon with my pin-shaped appendage.” One person rubs some sort of fabric on his/her genitalia. People wear “strange” costumes. LOL.

Harlem Shake is one of the most repetitive, unfunny, annoying, prole memes ever. It requires zero originality (which, admittedly, is approximately 0.01 less originality than most memes). On YouTube, there are numerous Harlem Shake “best of” compilations. The people behind these compilations should be broken on the wheel for crimes against the English language; “best” is not an adjective that can EVER be validly applied to Harlem Shake. There is no variation between clips save in location, putting it on an artistic par with shitting outside the toilet bowl (totes subvers!). One of my colleagues proposed a Harlem Shake in the office. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

To understand this meme, let’s have a look at fourth-century BC Athenian philosopher Plato. (In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a column on philosophy and pop culture. Yep.) Depending who you ask, Plato was either a proto-feminist, a communist, or the father of totalitarianism. Most people agree that he was probably the greatest philosopher of all time – so, more than a match for the nunces behind Harlem Shake, then.

In Plato’s book Republic, he outlines his blueprint for an ideal society. In this society, some forms of artistic expression are harmful to the harmony of society and the proper development of humanity. The rulers of the Republic therefore need to suppress certain musical genres and styles of dance. Only this will allow people to properly flourish.

Plato was absolutely right. Harlem Shake is a travesty, representing a new nadir in human creativity and a new zenith in our ability to abuse the freedom our lax taskmasters afford us. First “Gangnam Style,” and now this.

It needs to stop.