The Savage Challenge

"The Savage Challenge” is based around the song “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion. However, the real star behind this challenge is Keara “Keke” Wilson, a 19-year-old from Ohio who came up with the choreographed dance to the song. She encouraged others to film themselves recreating her original choreography, which birthed “The Savage Challenge.” Celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, and even Megan Thee Stallion herself have learnt Wilson’s dance moves and recorded their own takes on this challenge.^[1] After the song “Savage” was remixed with Beyoncé, Wilson actually created new choreography to go along with Beyoncé’s verse. WIlson has created tutorials for learning both of these sets of choreography. Though the Beyoncé remix is slightly more complicated, both sets of choreography are easy enough for someone with little to no dance experience to learn. Wilson’s tutorials make it easy to learn without needing to watch the original videos over and over again.^[2] This challenge has gone incredibly viral, especially on TikTok. Celebrities and even some kids have learned how to do this dance. This challenge is so successful because it is fun, upbeat, and relatively easy to learn. Though this challenge is quite easy, it still involves enough of a challenge (memorizing the choreography) that it’s not just something you do for a few seconds and then you’re done. This still has a level of difficulty that many other challenges have completely foregone. Thus, when you complete this challenge, you actually feel like you’ve accomplished something you can be proud of. For this mix of ease and challenge, along with its massive public and celebrity popularity, “The Savage Challenge” is the most successful social media challenge.