Left Right Challenge

Submission 1,108

Part of a series on Internet Challenges. [View Related Entries]

About

The Left Right Challenge is a TikTok challenge set to "Follow the Leader" where participants jump and kick their feet in the air, turning their bodies to the left and right in time with the song's lyrics, which repeat, "left" and "right." The challenge became popularized on TikTok in February 2023 throughout March.

Origin

On February 10th, 2023, TikToker^[1] @smoothjasmine posted a video captioned, "My downstairs neighbors just upset the right person on the wrong day." In the video, she does a dance to "Follow the Leader" where she jumps and kicks her legs out as the singer sings "left" and "right," garnering over 47.9 million views in a month (shown below).

The trend began to spread that day. For example, on the same day, TikToker^[2] @treclements posted a video captioned, "upstairs neighbor activities" where he kicks his legs out to the song, garnering over 7 million views in the same span of time (shown below).

Spread

The trend became notably popular on TikTok throughout February 2023 . Some of the most popular videos to follow the trend were posted by TikTokers^[3]^[4] @itsyaboyaustin4 and @ayesebastien on February 20th and 22nd, 2023, gaining over 44 million and 25 million views respectively in two weeks (shown below, left and right).

On February 22nd, TikToker^[5] @grazianodiprima posted a video doing the challenge and encouraging viewers to duet his video, garnering over 14 million views in two weeks. In the following days, TikTokers began duetting his video to replace the top half of @grazianodiprima with their own top half. For example, on February 28th, TikToker^[6] @crazyauntieann posted a video that gained over 6.8 million views in a week (shown below, left). On March 5th, TikToker^[7] @officialfabiojackson posted a video that gained over 9.1 million views in two days (shown below, right).