Frank Kogan

Except the first and third come well before the recent surge, and also I really doubt the first anyway (that there are enough of them or that many of them even know about Crayon Pop; anyway, it's not even certain [to me, at least] that Ilbe got anything even remotely like an endorsement from Crayon Pop; my guess is that the "controversy" was netizens picking up on the language of a single or a couple of tweets and having a netizen spasm; but I don't know Korean or the situation). As for number two, that would seem to be more a symptom than a cause, though it can be both, of course, in a feedback loop; but also, from what I can tell, so far it's only been SHINee, Heechul (of Super Junior), and Girl's Day, the latter two being only spontaneous miming and not getting a lot of YouTube views (the Girl's Day thing occurred during rehearsal). And Led Apple danced to "Dancing Queen" three months ago, but that's three months ago (I suppose it could be getting new YouTube views now, but there's only one recent comment).

I assume there will be a lot more, the dance being unique but copyable.

I do assume the nonstop self-promotion, and the creativity of it, laid the groundwork, made the breakthrough possible (but hardly guaranteed the breakthrough; you should see my article on cumulative advantage, about fame being rare and needing to build on partial fame but also about there being an irreducibly random element to that partial fame in the first place — though this doesn't mean that fame is entirely random). In any event, Crayon Pop have become something of a thing (I don't know how much) in the last two weeks, without much help from the major media. I also think that what makes "Bar Bar Bar" different (non-r&b-based song, strange dance, matching sports rather than glamour outfits), and what therefore probably worked against it at first, now will work in its favor, nothing else like it so it's instantly identifiable. That also means, though, that they'll have a problem thinking what to do next, to keep them from being just a novelty one-hit wonder. I hope their back catalog gets a lot of attention.