You've probably seen at least one version of the "Harlem Shake" making the rounds online. In the video above you can watch Tunisia's version, which is quickly becoming a new form of political protest.

The New York Times Latitude Blog writes:

"The Arab revolutions are going through a rough patch, from political uncertainty in North Africa to daily massacres in Syria. Egypt appears, at times, on the brink of either economic collapse or a military coup. Tunisia is still reeling from a political assassination and may face prolonged instability, as negotiations for the formation of a new government unfold with little chance of a consensus emerging. Many ordinary citizens in both countries are depressed and disoriented.

But at least they haven’t lost their sense of humor.

The latest meme to take over both Egyptian and Tunisian social media involves filming a silly dance to the Harlem Shake, an electronic tune by the American D.J. Baauer, and uploading the result to YouTube. The trend started in Australia, but it has spread to the Middle East, with a twist: It is getting people arrested or in trouble, turning it into a new genre of political protest.

Maybe a Global Harlem Shake Day...you in?

Although protesters across the globe stand up and speak out often for very different reasons, today are united in recognition as Time Magazine's "Person of the Year."

Ladies and gentlemen, young and old, take a bow:

"My son set himself on fire for dignity," Mannoubia Bouazizi told me when I visited her.

"In Tunisia," added her 16-year-old daughter Basma, "dignity is more important than bread."

In Egypt the incitements were a preposterously fraudulent 2010 national election and, as in Tunisia, a not uncommon act of unforgivable brutality by security agents. In the U.S., three acute and overlapping money crises — tanked economy, systemic financial recklessness, gigantic public debt — along with ongoing revelations of double dealing by banks, new state laws making certain public-employee-union demands illegal and the refusal of Congress to consider even slightly higher taxes on the very highest incomes mobilized Occupy Wall Street and its millions of supporters. In Russia it was the realization that another six (or 12) years of Vladimir Putin might not lead to greater prosperity and democratic normality.

In Sidi Bouzid and Tunis, in Alexandria and Cairo; in Arab cities and towns across the 6,000 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean; in Madrid and Athens and London and Tel Aviv; in Mexico and India and Chile, where citizens mobilized against crime and corruption; in New York and Moscow and dozens of other U.S. and Russian cities, the loathing and anger at governments and their cronies became uncontainable and fed on itself.

The stakes are very different in different places. In North America and most of Europe, there are no dictators, and dissidents don't get tortured. Any day that Tunisians, Egyptians or Syrians occupy streets and squares, they know that some of them might be beaten or shot, not just pepper-sprayed or flex-cuffed. The protesters in the Middle East and North Africa are literally dying to get political systems that roughly resemble the ones that seem intolerably undemocratic to protesters in Madrid, Athens, London and New York City. "I think other parts of the world," says Frank Castro, 53, a Teamster who drives a cement mixer for a living and helped occupy Oakland, Calif., "have more balls than we do."

Click here to read the full article.