Seahawks lose Super Bowl, but Left Shark wins the Internet
In life, unlike in football, sometimes when you lose you really win. Such is the case with one of the halftime show dancing sharks, which turned in a truly meme-tastic performance.
A failure in the play-calling and passing departments in the final seconds of Super Bowl XLIX may have cost the Seattle Seahawks the game, but the failure of a dancing guy in a cartoon shark outfit to give a single damn during Katy Perry's halftime spectacular has won the Internet.
Somewhere in between riding in on a large, robotic-looking lion or tiger thing and flying around the stadium as fireworks erupted over Glendale, Ariz., Katy Perry did a number surrounded by a flock of dancing beachballs and flanked on either side by two cartoonish-looking sharks. It was a lot of visual stimuli to take in at once, so you'd be forgiven for failing to notice that the shark dancing on the left side of the screen was not entirely bringin' it, to borrow a phrase from Hollywood's most popular cheerleading movie franchise.
But the Internet most certainly noticed, and today, "Left Shark" has blossomed into a full-blown cuddly, clumsy and carnivorous meme machine.
First, to really appreciate Left Shark in all its glory, check out the below viral Vine of the actual performance. Compare the sharks' performance to see what the Web is chattering about:
The world quickly went to work on Photoshop, instantly raising Left Shark's profile, and often to hilarious effect...
All praise be to Left Shark pic.twitter.com/Ae3eWN0dqY
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) February 2, 2015
ALL LEFT SHARK EVERYTHING
http://t.co/8P0Ade3hhc pic.twitter.com/TFHrWigtJ3
— SB Nation (@SBNation) February 2, 2015
The 18 best internet reactions to Katy Perry's confused shark dancer http://t.co/sNLHdcKFIj pic.twitter.com/G2EAvdXcIJ
— DailyEdge.ie (@dailyedge) February 2, 2015
He's the candidate we need but not the one we deserve right now. #leftshark pic.twitter.com/yGz1ic1vNC
— Bryce Seifert (@bryceseifert) February 2, 2015
...and that's just the beginning. But who is this Left Shark? What mystery man wears the plush representation of a cartilaginous carnivore with such distinction? A Katy Perry dancer who goes by the name Bryan Gaw , it would appear. He retweeted this breakdown of the shark lineup without making any corrections, leading us to believe he could indeed be the most famous shark on the Internet at the moment.
Well played @katyperry sharks aka @BryanGaw (shark on the left) and
@Scott_Myrick (Shark Right) http://t.co/fVrCoy4bs6 via @DailyMailCeleb
— Sara Nathan (@saraknathan) February 2, 2015