BTS, Bollywood and the Nineties: A Recipe For Viral Success

How a small group of content creators became responsible for one of the most unexpected viral videos on Indian social media

- Riddhi Chakraborty

Early one morning in June, a video made an appearance on my extended family’s WhatsApp group. It was a clip of South Korean megastars BTS dancing to the song “Chunari Chunari” from the 1999 hit Bollywood film Biwi No.1. The track was edited and perfectly synced onto a section of BTS’ choreography video for their hit 2019 single “Boy With Luv.” The seven members seem to hit every beat on the Hindi track and it makes for a rather amusing tableau, usually shared among Indian fans who grew up on Nineties music. These kinds of edits make regular rounds on desi K-pop social media, so it wasn’t the content of the video that was surprising–it was its presence on my family WhatsApp group that really shocked the hell out of me.

Over the course of the day, around six acquaintances and relatives had sent me a link to the video, having come across it on their own via various WhatsApp or social media links. The first instance had me giving it a small laugh and moving on, but as the number of links being sent to me with the text, ‘Isn’t this BTS? It reminded me of you!’ increased, as did my excitement that this was leading somewhere big.