The Internet Bullied Charli D’Amelio into crediting the original Renegade dance creator: Jalaiah Harmon
Original story/ Image credit: Instagram.com/charlidamelio
At the end of 2019, 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio blew up on Tik Tok primarily for dancing a routine, she called renegade dance. While she never claimed credit for inventing the dance, she became known mainly for the dance and was often invited to award shows and red carpets to give tutorials on the dance.
She even joined a TikTok “hype” house (which is a new Team 10 house) with her friends and as of today has gained almost 40 million followers across all social media.
After months-long of Charli and her sister riding on this wave of popularity, the truth came out.
On February 13 2020, nytimes published the article on the original creator of the dance Jalaiah Harmon. The Atlanta based dancer created the dance with her friend in her bedroom and uploaded it to Instagram. There, her dance got less than 10k views (supposedly 1 being Charli).
From here, her dance was stolen by Charli and popularized on TikTok, while Jalaiah was left in the dust.
The publication of this exposé kicked off the discussion of appropriation of black talent by white media and theft from smaller creators.
The backlash was brutal across social media.
And she never gave Jaliah Harmon her credit for it either. Thievery!!!!!!
— ♈fitchic (@alexisnaniya) February 16, 2020
So you mean to tell me I was doing the gentrified version of the renegade dance and this whole time the original had this much flavour? I hate it here… pic.twitter.com/i5A2gdWcdO
— 💦💦 (@fandxms) February 15, 2020
Finally, after this, on Monday 17th 2020, Jaliah uploaded a video on her Instagram alongside Charli and another TikTok star Addison doing the “renegade” dance. After which, Charli credited Jalaiah for her dance, as she should have done from the start!
View this post on Instagram
Like we hit the lottery 🔥🆙🐐 !! W/ @charlidamelio @addisoneasterling 💕 I know we snapped 🔥🔥
For someone else, the internet is trying to bully to do the right thing, read about Kaithlyn Bennet here
