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Type numa numa into Google Video’s search box, and you’ll get well over 400 hits; in YouTube’s, you’ll get over 1,500. Virtually all of the results are cut from a single template.

Brolsma’s video singlehandedly justifies the existence of webcams. His squarish head and shoulders are in the center of the shot. He’s got a short haircut, glasses that are slightly too small for him and reflect his computer’s monitor, and cheap headphones; he’s sitting in a dismal-looking suburban room. And he is going for it: rolling his eyes back in his head, shaking his face, shooting his hands into the air with the beat, saluting along with the word salut, gesturing grandly, lip-synching the whole thing with his grand opera of a mouth, flirting with the camera, utterly given over to the music. It’s a movie of someone who is having the time of his life, wants to share his joy with everyone, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.

they start to look less like an infectious joke than like a new cultural order. These kids aren’t mocking the Numa Numa Guy; they’re venerating him. They are geeks honoring the King of the Geeks, and they’re beautiful to see, because they’re replicating and spreading his happiness. They’re following a ritual that’s meaningful if not yet venerable: learning the dance, lip-synching the song, documenting their performance just so, making it available for the world to see.