Shooting Stars

2016Video remix / music memesemi-active

Also known as: Shooting Stars meme · Bag Raiders meme · falling through space meme

Shooting Stars is a 2016 video meme pairing footage of people falling with the 2008 Bag Raiders synth-pop song, edited to show them tumbling through space.

"Shooting Stars" is a video meme format built around the 2008 song by Australian electronic duo Bag Raiders, where footage of people falling is edited to make them appear to tumble through space set to the track's infectious synth-pop beat. The format exploded in early 2017 after a video titled "Fat man does amazing dive" went viral on Reddit, spawning thousands of edits and earning recognition as the first major video meme of the post-Vine era1. The meme saw a TikTok resurgence in 2024 when creators paired the audio with dance videos3.

participatory video memesviral song memesbait and switch memes2017 memes

Overview

The Shooting Stars meme follows a specific template: a video clip shows someone (or something) falling, tripping, or launching into the air. Right at the moment of liftoff, the beat from Bag Raiders' "Shooting Stars" kicks in, and the subject is edited to float, spin, or tumble through a psychedelic space backdrop filled with planets, galaxies, and retro synthwave visuals1. The purple-tinted, vaguely futuristic aesthetic comes directly from the song's original 2009 music video1.

What makes the format work is the contrast between the mundane setup and the cosmic payoff. A guy belly-flops off a diving board. A cat slides off a table. Lady Gaga jumps off a stadium roof during the Super Bowl. Then suddenly they're all drifting through the infinite void, scored by one of the catchiest electronic tracks of the late 2000s2.

"Shooting Stars" was originally released as the B-side to Bag Raiders' "Turbo Love" EP on October 8, 20084. The Australian electronic duo, Jack Glass and Chris Stracey, had met years earlier in the Cranbrook School orchestra practice room in Sydney5. An instrumental version first appeared on YouTube on October 1, 2008, played during a game of Audiosurf3.

Bag Raiders released "Shooting Stars" as a standalone single in 2009 after signing with Modular Recordings4. It peaked at number 62 on the ARIA Singles Chart and placed 18th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 20095. The song's official music video, uploaded July 22, 2009, featured heavy retro synthwave aesthetics and a key sequence around the 2:15 mark where the band members fall through a crumbling void before landing on space vehicles1. That visual became the direct inspiration for the meme format.

The track got a second wind in 2013 when contestant Tommy Franklin used it on Australia's Got Talent, pushing it into the ARIA Top 40 at number 384.

The first known meme use of the song was a crude animation uploaded to YouTube by user Glaceygirl on December 29, 20153. Through mid-2016, the track appeared in scattered YouTube edits without much traction. On July 30, 2016, TheN00bNinja uploaded a video pairing the song with CGI gorillas dancing as a tribute to Harambe, which picked up over 150,000 views3.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (meme videos), Reddit (viral spread)
Key People
Bag Raiders, Glaceygirl, All Ski Casino
Date
2016 (meme format), 2008 (song release)

"Shooting Stars" was originally released as the B-side to Bag Raiders' "Turbo Love" EP on October 8, 2008. The Australian electronic duo, Jack Glass and Chris Stracey, had met years earlier in the Cranbrook School orchestra practice room in Sydney. An instrumental version first appeared on YouTube on October 1, 2008, played during a game of Audiosurf.

Bag Raiders released "Shooting Stars" as a standalone single in 2009 after signing with Modular Recordings. It peaked at number 62 on the ARIA Singles Chart and placed 18th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2009. The song's official music video, uploaded July 22, 2009, featured heavy retro synthwave aesthetics and a key sequence around the 2:15 mark where the band members fall through a crumbling void before landing on space vehicles. That visual became the direct inspiration for the meme format.

The track got a second wind in 2013 when contestant Tommy Franklin used it on Australia's Got Talent, pushing it into the ARIA Top 40 at number 38.

The first known meme use of the song was a crude animation uploaded to YouTube by user Glaceygirl on December 29, 2015. Through mid-2016, the track appeared in scattered YouTube edits without much traction. On July 30, 2016, TheN00bNinja uploaded a video pairing the song with CGI gorillas dancing as a tribute to Harambe, which picked up over 150,000 views.

How It Spread

The meme's breakout moment came on January 23, 2017, when YouTube channel All Ski Casino uploaded "Fat man does amazing dive," pairing the song with footage of an overweight man doing a diving belly-flop. The video racked up over 530,000 views and hit the front page of Reddit's r/videos with more than 1,600 upvotes that same day. Daily Dot called it "easily the most viewed 'Shooting Stars' video" and credited it with defining the template for the entire format.

From there, the meme spread fast. YouTuber Grandayy, known for "We Are Number One" remixes from LazyTown, pivoted to Shooting Stars edits and became one of the format's top creators. His version featuring President Trump dropped in February 2017 and immediately revived interest, bringing the meme to a wider audience. Other popular edits featured Valve's Gabe Newell, Gabe the Dog (of "bork" remix fame), and the inevitable Hitler version.

On February 14, 2017, Australian outlet Pedestrian.tv interviewed Bag Raiders about the meme. Chris Stracey admitted he didn't get it at first: "At first we were like, ok this is funny I guess, but I didn't really get it so I thought 'alright whatever.' Once I started seeing a common theme though, such as the big guy jumping off the bridge into the river, that was the first one of the more recent stuff that really got me". He also mentioned the Lady Gaga Super Bowl halftime edit as a personal favorite.

The song hit number 11 on Billboard's Dance/Electronic Songs chart and number 9 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart in 2017. On August 24, 2017, Katy Perry's "Swish Swish" music video directly incorporated the Shooting Stars format, gaining over 38 million views in 72 hours. The meme was also featured in YouTube Rewind: The Shape of 2017 on December 6.

On March 26, 2020, Know Your Meme interviewed Chris Stracey as part of their editorial series following up with people featured in major memes. A month later, on April 8, 2020, Instagram user @cousinskeether (Mufasa) posted a video of himself dancing alongside a slow-moving car to the song while @thehypeman_ cheered him on, earning over 1.4 million views.

The meme hit TikTok in spring 2024. On March 30, TikToker @notoriouscree posted a dance video to the track that pulled in over 1.5 million likes in two months, kicking off a wave of new Shooting Stars content on the platform. Creators began pairing the audio with dance clips and anime edits, like TikToker xdetos' Jellyfish Can't Swim In The Night edit which got over 350,000 likes.

Platforms

YouTubeRedditTwitchTwitterTikTok

Timeline

2019-01-01

Shooting Stars reached mainstream popularity and media coverage

2020-01-01

Brands and companies started using Shooting Stars in marketing

2022-01-01

Shooting Stars entered the broader pop culture conversation

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

The classic Shooting Stars format typically follows this structure:

1

Start with a video clip of someone or something falling, jumping, or being launched into the air

2

At the moment of liftoff, cut to the subject floating against a cosmic or psychedelic space background

3

Sync the visual to the beat drop of "Shooting Stars" by Bag Raiders

4

The subject often rotates, tumbles, or flies through various surreal backgrounds (galaxies, underwater scenes, cityscapes)

5

Some versions include multiple scene transitions before a final landing or punchline

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

New York Magazine called Shooting Stars "the first big post-Vine meme," noting that the death of Vine had created a drought in video memes and this format filled the gap. Daily Dot's Brian Feldman compared the format to Neil Cicierega's 2010 viral video BrodyQuest, which similarly featured a cutout of a person traveling across various backgrounds.

The meme sat in an unusual spot between "dank" and "normie" meme culture. As Daily Dot noted, it was immediately appealing with no complex inside joke to decode, yet video memes are harder and more time-consuming to produce than image macros, which kept casual Facebook users from flooding the format.

For Bag Raiders, the meme was a genuine career boost. Stracey told Pedestrian.tv: "It's pretty cool that people who have never heard the song are now going 'what's this song?'. Like someone commented after the Lady Gaga video saying 'what is this music, this is better than anything I've heard lately'". The official music video on YouTube has since passed 164 million views.

The song was sampled by Troye Sivan in his September 2023 track "Got Me Started" and was also featured in Madeon's 2011 mashup "Pop Culture" and the soundtracks for NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K26. In 2021, "Shooting Stars" was certified platinum in Australia, and in 2025 it placed 46th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of Australian Songs.

Fun Facts

Jack Glass said the song inspired Bag Raiders' entire debut album: "People loved Shooting Stars so much and we liked that direction of songwriting and developing a pop sensibility ourselves, too".

The band used to play only half the song in DJ sets until they realized "people liked it and wanted to hear the whole thing".

The song is composed in E Lydian and G-sharp minor (both modes of B major) at a steady 125 BPM, with the chorus only appearing at the very end of the track.

When asked if they'd incorporate the meme into live shows, Stracey joked: "I don't know about like, suspending ourselves from bungee cords and having some crazy projections".

Flume and Toro y Moi covered "Shooting Stars" for Triple J in November 2022.

Derivatives & Variations

Variations with different songs used instead of Shooting Stars

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Mashups combining Shooting Stars with other meme sounds

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Reverse versions playing the song backward

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Speedup and slowdown versions

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Combinations with other 2017-era meme formats

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Frequently Asked Questions

Shooting Stars

2016Video remix / music memesemi-active

Also known as: Shooting Stars meme · Bag Raiders meme · falling through space meme

Shooting Stars is a 2016 video meme pairing footage of people falling with the 2008 Bag Raiders synth-pop song, edited to show them tumbling through space.

"Shooting Stars" is a video meme format built around the 2008 song by Australian electronic duo Bag Raiders, where footage of people falling is edited to make them appear to tumble through space set to the track's infectious synth-pop beat. The format exploded in early 2017 after a video titled "Fat man does amazing dive" went viral on Reddit, spawning thousands of edits and earning recognition as the first major video meme of the post-Vine era. The meme saw a TikTok resurgence in 2024 when creators paired the audio with dance videos.

participatory video memes viral song memes bait and switch memes 2017 memes

Overview

The Shooting Stars meme follows a specific template: a video clip shows someone (or something) falling, tripping, or launching into the air. Right at the moment of liftoff, the beat from Bag Raiders' "Shooting Stars" kicks in, and the subject is edited to float, spin, or tumble through a psychedelic space backdrop filled with planets, galaxies, and retro synthwave visuals. The purple-tinted, vaguely futuristic aesthetic comes directly from the song's original 2009 music video.

What makes the format work is the contrast between the mundane setup and the cosmic payoff. A guy belly-flops off a diving board. A cat slides off a table. Lady Gaga jumps off a stadium roof during the Super Bowl. Then suddenly they're all drifting through the infinite void, scored by one of the catchiest electronic tracks of the late 2000s.

"Shooting Stars" was originally released as the B-side to Bag Raiders' "Turbo Love" EP on October 8, 2008. The Australian electronic duo, Jack Glass and Chris Stracey, had met years earlier in the Cranbrook School orchestra practice room in Sydney. An instrumental version first appeared on YouTube on October 1, 2008, played during a game of Audiosurf.

Bag Raiders released "Shooting Stars" as a standalone single in 2009 after signing with Modular Recordings. It peaked at number 62 on the ARIA Singles Chart and placed 18th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2009. The song's official music video, uploaded July 22, 2009, featured heavy retro synthwave aesthetics and a key sequence around the 2:15 mark where the band members fall through a crumbling void before landing on space vehicles. That visual became the direct inspiration for the meme format.

The track got a second wind in 2013 when contestant Tommy Franklin used it on Australia's Got Talent, pushing it into the ARIA Top 40 at number 38.

The first known meme use of the song was a crude animation uploaded to YouTube by user Glaceygirl on December 29, 2015. Through mid-2016, the track appeared in scattered YouTube edits without much traction. On July 30, 2016, TheN00bNinja uploaded a video pairing the song with CGI gorillas dancing as a tribute to Harambe, which picked up over 150,000 views.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (meme videos), Reddit (viral spread)
Key People
Bag Raiders, Glaceygirl, All Ski Casino
Date
2016 (meme format), 2008 (song release)

"Shooting Stars" was originally released as the B-side to Bag Raiders' "Turbo Love" EP on October 8, 2008. The Australian electronic duo, Jack Glass and Chris Stracey, had met years earlier in the Cranbrook School orchestra practice room in Sydney. An instrumental version first appeared on YouTube on October 1, 2008, played during a game of Audiosurf.

Bag Raiders released "Shooting Stars" as a standalone single in 2009 after signing with Modular Recordings. It peaked at number 62 on the ARIA Singles Chart and placed 18th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2009. The song's official music video, uploaded July 22, 2009, featured heavy retro synthwave aesthetics and a key sequence around the 2:15 mark where the band members fall through a crumbling void before landing on space vehicles. That visual became the direct inspiration for the meme format.

The track got a second wind in 2013 when contestant Tommy Franklin used it on Australia's Got Talent, pushing it into the ARIA Top 40 at number 38.

The first known meme use of the song was a crude animation uploaded to YouTube by user Glaceygirl on December 29, 2015. Through mid-2016, the track appeared in scattered YouTube edits without much traction. On July 30, 2016, TheN00bNinja uploaded a video pairing the song with CGI gorillas dancing as a tribute to Harambe, which picked up over 150,000 views.

How It Spread

The meme's breakout moment came on January 23, 2017, when YouTube channel All Ski Casino uploaded "Fat man does amazing dive," pairing the song with footage of an overweight man doing a diving belly-flop. The video racked up over 530,000 views and hit the front page of Reddit's r/videos with more than 1,600 upvotes that same day. Daily Dot called it "easily the most viewed 'Shooting Stars' video" and credited it with defining the template for the entire format.

From there, the meme spread fast. YouTuber Grandayy, known for "We Are Number One" remixes from LazyTown, pivoted to Shooting Stars edits and became one of the format's top creators. His version featuring President Trump dropped in February 2017 and immediately revived interest, bringing the meme to a wider audience. Other popular edits featured Valve's Gabe Newell, Gabe the Dog (of "bork" remix fame), and the inevitable Hitler version.

On February 14, 2017, Australian outlet Pedestrian.tv interviewed Bag Raiders about the meme. Chris Stracey admitted he didn't get it at first: "At first we were like, ok this is funny I guess, but I didn't really get it so I thought 'alright whatever.' Once I started seeing a common theme though, such as the big guy jumping off the bridge into the river, that was the first one of the more recent stuff that really got me". He also mentioned the Lady Gaga Super Bowl halftime edit as a personal favorite.

The song hit number 11 on Billboard's Dance/Electronic Songs chart and number 9 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart in 2017. On August 24, 2017, Katy Perry's "Swish Swish" music video directly incorporated the Shooting Stars format, gaining over 38 million views in 72 hours. The meme was also featured in YouTube Rewind: The Shape of 2017 on December 6.

On March 26, 2020, Know Your Meme interviewed Chris Stracey as part of their editorial series following up with people featured in major memes. A month later, on April 8, 2020, Instagram user @cousinskeether (Mufasa) posted a video of himself dancing alongside a slow-moving car to the song while @thehypeman_ cheered him on, earning over 1.4 million views.

The meme hit TikTok in spring 2024. On March 30, TikToker @notoriouscree posted a dance video to the track that pulled in over 1.5 million likes in two months, kicking off a wave of new Shooting Stars content on the platform. Creators began pairing the audio with dance clips and anime edits, like TikToker xdetos' Jellyfish Can't Swim In The Night edit which got over 350,000 likes.

Platforms

YouTubeRedditTwitchTwitterTikTok

Timeline

2019-01-01

Shooting Stars reached mainstream popularity and media coverage

2020-01-01

Brands and companies started using Shooting Stars in marketing

2022-01-01

Shooting Stars entered the broader pop culture conversation

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

The classic Shooting Stars format typically follows this structure:

1

Start with a video clip of someone or something falling, jumping, or being launched into the air

2

At the moment of liftoff, cut to the subject floating against a cosmic or psychedelic space background

3

Sync the visual to the beat drop of "Shooting Stars" by Bag Raiders

4

The subject often rotates, tumbles, or flies through various surreal backgrounds (galaxies, underwater scenes, cityscapes)

5

Some versions include multiple scene transitions before a final landing or punchline

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

New York Magazine called Shooting Stars "the first big post-Vine meme," noting that the death of Vine had created a drought in video memes and this format filled the gap. Daily Dot's Brian Feldman compared the format to Neil Cicierega's 2010 viral video BrodyQuest, which similarly featured a cutout of a person traveling across various backgrounds.

The meme sat in an unusual spot between "dank" and "normie" meme culture. As Daily Dot noted, it was immediately appealing with no complex inside joke to decode, yet video memes are harder and more time-consuming to produce than image macros, which kept casual Facebook users from flooding the format.

For Bag Raiders, the meme was a genuine career boost. Stracey told Pedestrian.tv: "It's pretty cool that people who have never heard the song are now going 'what's this song?'. Like someone commented after the Lady Gaga video saying 'what is this music, this is better than anything I've heard lately'". The official music video on YouTube has since passed 164 million views.

The song was sampled by Troye Sivan in his September 2023 track "Got Me Started" and was also featured in Madeon's 2011 mashup "Pop Culture" and the soundtracks for NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K26. In 2021, "Shooting Stars" was certified platinum in Australia, and in 2025 it placed 46th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of Australian Songs.

Fun Facts

Jack Glass said the song inspired Bag Raiders' entire debut album: "People loved Shooting Stars so much and we liked that direction of songwriting and developing a pop sensibility ourselves, too".

The band used to play only half the song in DJ sets until they realized "people liked it and wanted to hear the whole thing".

The song is composed in E Lydian and G-sharp minor (both modes of B major) at a steady 125 BPM, with the chorus only appearing at the very end of the track.

When asked if they'd incorporate the meme into live shows, Stracey joked: "I don't know about like, suspending ourselves from bungee cords and having some crazy projections".

Flume and Toro y Moi covered "Shooting Stars" for Triple J in November 2022.

Derivatives & Variations

Variations with different songs used instead of Shooting Stars

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Mashups combining Shooting Stars with other meme sounds

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Reverse versions playing the song backward

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Speedup and slowdown versions

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Combinations with other 2017-era meme formats

A variation of Shooting Stars

(2017)

Frequently Asked Questions