The internet in 2013 was a lawless, fever-dream landscape. We had Vine loops, the birth of "doge," and, most notably, a 30-second dance craze that possessed the entire planet. But tucked away in the darker corners of that era lies a piece of media so bizarre it sounds like an urban legend: the harlem shake poop original video.
It isn't a myth. Honestly, it’s one of those "once you know, you can’t un-know" moments of pop culture history.
Most people remember the Harlem Shake as a harmless office bonding exercise. You know the drill—one person in a motorcycle helmet thrusts their hips while everyone else works, then the beat drops, and the whole room turns into a costume-clad mosh pit. But the specific video we're talking about here involves a very famous face, a toilet, and a level of gross-out comedy that would make a 2000s-era shock site blush.
The Blippi Connection Nobody Saw Coming
If you have kids, you know Blippi. He’s the guy in the blue and orange suspenders who gets excited about excavators. Stevin John, the man behind the character, is currently a multi-millionaire children's entertainment titan.
But before the suspenders? He was Steezy Grossman.
Under this alias, John was a "shock comedian." Think Jackass but with a much lower budget and a lot more bodily fluids. In early 2013, right as the Baauer track was exploding, John uploaded his own contribution to the trend: the harlem shake poop original video.
The premise was simple and, for most adults today, stomach-turning. John sat on a toilet, the music built up, and when the drop hit, he... well, he followed through on the title. He defecated on a naked friend.
It was "gross-out" humor in its most literal, visceral form.
Why did he do it?
Back then, the barrier to entry for "viral" fame was just how far you were willing to go for a click. Stevin John has since gone on record—mostly through statements issued after investigative reports by BuzzFeed News in 2019—admitting that at the time, he thought it was funny. He was in his early twenties, the "Harlem Shake" was the biggest thing on earth, and he wanted to do the most extreme version possible.
He’s since called it "stupid and tasteless."
The Great Internet Erasure
You might find it hard to track down the harlem shake poop original video today. That isn't an accident.
When Blippi became a global brand, having a video of you performing a scatological "art piece" on the internet was a massive liability. Stevin John didn't just delete the video; he went to war with it.
- Copyright Takedowns: John used DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices to scrub the video from YouTube, Vimeo, and even Russian hosting sites.
- The HarlemShakePoop Domain: He originally hosted the video on its own dedicated website, which has long since been nuked from the live web.
- Legal Pressure: When journalists began sniffing around the story in 2019, cease-and-desist letters were flying.
It’s a fascinating case of the "Right to be Forgotten" meeting the reality of the digital footprint. In the U.S., we don't really have a legal right to be forgotten, but we do have copyright laws. By claiming the copyright to his own embarrassing video, John was able to legally force platforms to remove it.
It worked, mostly. You can find "reaction" videos of people watching it—the 2010s version of the 2 Girls 1 Cup reaction trend—but the raw file is rare.
Filthy Frank and the Real Origin
To understand how we even got to a "poop version," we have to talk about George Miller, now known globally as the musician Joji.
Before he was a lo-fi melancholic pop star, he was Filthy Frank. On January 30, 2013, Miller uploaded a video titled DO THE HARLEM SHAKE (ORIGINAL). It featured him in a pink bodysuit (Pink Guy) and three friends.
This was the spark.
The meme wasn't actually about the "Harlem Shake" dance—a real, rhythmic dance created in 1981 by a man named Al B. in Harlem. It was a total bastardization of the name. It was just chaos.
Because the original "creator" (Miller) was a practitioner of "filth" comedy, the community he built was naturally inclined toward the extreme. This created a vacuum where creators like Steezy Grossman felt the need to "out-edge" the original.
The Cultural Impact of the Video
Is it just a gross video? Or does the harlem shake poop original video represent something bigger?
It’s actually a perfect case study in "Internet Pivot."
We see creators reinvent themselves all the time. But the jump from "guy who poops on people for views" to "the most trusted face in preschool education" is perhaps the widest gap in entertainment history. It teaches us that the internet never forgets, but the public often forgives if the rebranding is thorough enough.
The video also highlights the shift in YouTube’s "Golden Age." In 2013, you could be a "shock" creator and still hope for a future. Today, the algorithm is so sensitive that a single strike for "harmful or dangerous content" can end a career before it starts.
What most people get wrong
A lot of people think the "poop video" was the actual original Harlem Shake. No. George Miller (Filthy Frank) holds that title. Stevin John's version was just one of the 4,000+ versions being uploaded per day at the height of the craze in February 2013.
Actionable Insights for the Digital Age
If you’re digging into this for more than just morbid curiosity, there are real-world lessons here about digital legacy and brand management.
- Audit Your Archives: If you are building a professional brand, anything you did "for the bit" ten years ago is a potential landmine. Stevin John's cleanup was effective because he was aggressive and used legal tools early.
- Understand DMCA: You can use copyright to protect your image. If you own the footage, you own the distribution rights, even if the footage is embarrassing.
- Context Matters: The "Harlem Shake" meme is often used as an example of cultural appropriation because it took a Black dance from the 80s and replaced it with white kids in Morphsuits. When you add "gross-out" elements to that, the controversy only deepens.
The harlem shake poop original video remains a ghost in the machine. It’s a reminder of a time when the internet was smaller, weirder, and much more disgusting. Whether you view it as a hilarious relic of a bygone era or a shameful mistake, it’s undeniably a part of the DNA of modern viral culture.
To see how the internet has changed, compare the chaos of 2013 to the polished, ad-friendly "challenges" of today. We moved from "how gross can I be?" to "how aesthetic can I be?"
It’s probably for the best.
Next Steps for Research:
- Investigate the history of the "Right to be Forgotten" in Europe vs. the US.
- Look into the "Streisand Effect" to see why trying to delete the video made it more famous.
- Explore the evolution of George Miller from Filthy Frank to Joji.