Some | The Vantaa boys’ dance video exploded into worldwide popularity

From Vantaa Helsinge school’s ninth graders Albin Westerlund, Robin Lindlöf, Jonne Ekström and Milton Gothóni experienced a big upheaval at the beginning of April when their dance video started trending on Tiktok worldwide.

The user Majr_dance, made up of the first letters of boys’ names, now has more than 140 thousand followers. Almost 8 million likes have accumulated.

The most successful one, shot on a plane, has 1.7 million likes and almost 20 million views. The group has four videos with more than 10 million views. In addition to Finnish, the videos have comments in Russian, Hungarian, German and Japanese, among others.

The figures are very hard even on the scale of Tiktok.

When looking at the content of the group, the question arises: Why do videos that seem quite simple and sometimes even simple gain so much popularity?

The videos repeat a clear pattern: the boys show the same dance moves one by one to the same song. Also, the dance order is always the same: Milton, Albin, Jonne and Robin, i.e. MAJR.

With dance videos the song playing is a Chinese song called 时過槍 放過羊, which is one of the most popular songs on the app at the time of the interview.

The song originally entered Tiktok with a Chinese dance group. In their videos, the group in question does exactly the same moves in line as Majr_dance.

Freely translated, the title of the song means in Finnish: I’ve carried a gun, I’ve herded sheep. The boys didn’t know this themselves, but they burst out laughing when they heard the translation.

“Sounds great!” Robin Lindlöf exclaims.

Videos their popularity may be due to a certain kind of surprise. More often than not young men star in internet dance videos.

“We are teenage boys doing these kinds of dances.”

In the dances, attention is awakened to their carefreeness, which is also conveyed in the process of making them. At first glance, the performance of the teenagers seems a bit “shy”, although they do their dances with pride. The contrast is interesting.

The group says they don’t spend time planning or producing videos. They publish the Tiktok filmed in an interview situation in a few seconds.

Thanks to the videos, the boys have already been recognized on the street. Recipients often show a dance move known from videos, the finger gun, as they walk by.

At the latest publicity became a reality for the boys, when people came to take pictures with them and ask for autographs at the Skolmusik event of Swedish-speaking schoolchildren in Finland.

“That’s when you probably noticed how viral the videos have become.”

In addition, the attention has brought the group requests for cooperation, which they have happily accepted.

“We have also received a little money, but really little,” Jonne Ekström points out.

They have has a subscriber feature in the application, where subscribers to the group pay to see unprecedented behind-the-scenes content. At the time of the interview, the group has a modest 22 subscribers.

Fan users have also been created for Poruka, where they are admired. Fan users take clips from the group’s videos and edit them into new tiktoks, as is typical for fan culture.

Majr_dance has gained visibility at school as well. The boys say that their principal follows the user and likes their posts. After the first videos were published, teachers could ask when the next video will be.

Social media typically does not leave its celebrities completely without hate comments, and you can also find them in Majr_dance’s comment fields. However, the amount of negative feedback is currently almost non-existent compared to other comments.

“There are one or two hate comments per video,” says Albin Westerlund.

“Some people make comments like ‘How can people watch this’ or ‘Why are you even doing this'”, adds Milton Gothóni.

What then in the future?

Tiktok is known for its fast trend cycle, and sticking to the same video model certainly won’t go far. The goal is to stay in the spotlight, but there are many ways. There are plans to activate at least the already established YouTube channel.

“At Tiktok, we are going to follow trends and practice more new dances.”

The boys reveal that they may be seen dancing in the halftime show of the Stafettkarnevalen relay race in mid-May. Does this excite them?

“It’s a bit exciting when there’s such a large audience.”