# What is Love? 'What is Love?' is Haddaway's 1993 eurodance hit that found a second life as internet comedy when YTMND users paired a looped GIF of the Saturday Night Live 'Roxbury Guys' head-bob with the song's chorus in June 2005. The combo kicked off one of early YTMND's defining fads, spawning more than a hundred remixes and later YouTube montages that pulled the gag well into the next decade. ## Origin Haddaway, a Trinidad-born eurodance artist, released 'What is Love?' in 1993 as a club single[2]. The clip that fuels the meme comes from Saturday Night Live, where the first 'Roxbury Guys' sketch aired on March 23rd, 1996, with Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell as the Butabi brothers joined by guest Jim Carrey, all three nodding to the song in a car[4]. The meme itself was born on June 2nd, 2005, when YTMND user ligamentx uploaded a page titled 'What is love' that paired a GIF of the car scene with a looped audio clip of the Haddaway chorus[3]. The page became one of YTMND's most-trafficked uploads of the era, drawing well over a million views over the following years[3]. - **Platform:** SNL (source clip) / YTMND (viral spread) - **Creator:** ligamentx (YTMND user who posted the first viral pairing) - **Date:** 2005 ## Overview The meme pairs the chorus of Haddaway's 1993 eurodance single 'What is Love?' with a looped clip of Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell bobbing their heads in sync inside a car, taken from the Saturday Night Live 'Roxbury Guys' sketches[1]. The audio drop on 'Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more' lines up with the head-bob, which is what sold the joke for a generation of early-2000s web users[3]. On YTMND, users ran the format through every costume change they could think of, with pixel art remakes, chiptune covers, and crossover edits dropping the Roxbury head-bob into unrelated games, movies, and TV scenes[3]. The humor is in the loop itself, the song never ends, the heads never stop, and the joke sits somewhere between the sincerity of the original SNL bit and the absurdity of its endless repetition. ## How to Use The template is simple: take the Roxbury Guys head-bob GIF, loop it, and play Haddaway's chorus underneath. Common variations swap the background scene, replace the song with a chiptune or genre-shifted cover, or recut the GIF so the head-bob syncs to someone else entirely[5]. The joke typically works best when the new context is wildly incompatible with eurodance, which was the whole point of the YTMND remix wave[6]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is What is Love?? It's a long-running internet joke pairing Haddaway's 1993 eurodance chorus with a looped GIF of the Saturday Night Live 'Roxbury Guys' head-bob[1]. ### Where did What is Love? come from? The source clip is from the first SNL 'Roxbury Guys' sketch on March 23rd, 1996, and the meme format started on YTMND when user ligamentx posted a GIF-plus-audio page on June 2nd, 2005[4][3]. ### What does What is Love? mean? There's no deeper meaning, the joke is the infinite loop of the Roxbury head-bob set to the Haddaway chorus, often transplanted into unrelated scenes for absurd effect[3]. ### How do you use What is Love?? Pair the Roxbury head-bob GIF with Haddaway's chorus and swap in a new background or song style, which is the template YTMND users ran with for more than 125 remixes[5]. ### Is What is Love? still popular? It's a classic that stays recognizable through SNL reruns, the 1998 'A Night at the Roxbury' film, and the archived YTMND and YouTube montages that keep the gag in circulation[4][6]. ## References 1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etEQz7NYSLg]() 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haddaway]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/what-is-love]() 4. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_Saturday_Night_Live_characters_and_sketches_introduced_1995%E2%80%931996#The_Roxbury_Guys]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vf9vUAVQeI]() 6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vVkrpOAFEM]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/what-is-love Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library