2017 – The year of the dab

2017 was a really bad year from so many perspectives.

Global politics was in flames. New conflicts surfaced and gasoline was pured on some old ones.

Heroes left us, like Tom Petty and Malcolm Young.

On a personal level there were several disasters that made life heavier than normal.

So what defined this crappy year? Probably…The Dab. It was everywhere and it was a move as rediculous as the entire year.

Dabbing, or the dab, is a simple dance move in which a person drops the head into the bent crook of a slanted arm, often while raising the opposite arm in a parallel direction but out straight. Yeah? So whuäy did everybody havevto do it? Everywhere?

Jesse Lingard properly brought the ‘dab’ dance craze to the British public consciousness when he scored in Manchester Uniteds 3-3 draw with Newcastle last January.

He’s certainly not the first sports star to celebrate with the dance move, as his now-teammate Paul Pogba had already popularised the dab in Serie A with Juventus. Even newspapers started ask what is going on?

Perhaps unsurprisingly the dab is an import from the United States, where it first emerged in their professional sports in the autumn having originated on the hip hop music scene.

Now children everywhere are dabbing – including Cristiano Ronaldo’s son, as he congratulated his dad on winning a fourth career Ballon d’Or award ss the best soccer plsyer in the world 2017.

But The Dab madness went way beyond sports. We saw filmstars, police officers, firemen, nurses and even politicians – like the always cool Canadian PM Justin Trudeau – dabbing everywhere.

In the history of oscillating limbs, “the dab” has ascended to prominence like no other. Starting out as a movement embedded in Atlanta’s rap scene, in the last year or so the dance move has become one of the great cultural ticks of our time. Like Snapchat, hoverboards, outrage, and the ability to bone, eat, and order a ride through the mobile phone, “the dab” is one of this generation’s defining features.

However as all trends grow and come to pass, the moment has come for the dance move to be laid to rest, cremated in a funeral pyre, and left to fester in the backpages of time.

Let’s agree thst 2018 can do better than The Dab. We can do better. So bye bye dabbing. Welcome a new move for the future!