(UPDATE: For the latest on OTO, check out our follow up – ‘OM TELOLET OM’ fever sweeps the world: The best reactions, remixes & government backlash)
What is ‘OM TELOLET OM’? That’s a question that’s been on many people’s minds since recently, including some of the world’s biggest EDM DJs. Many of them started tweeting and asking about it yesterday, causing the phrase to go massively viral worldwide.
To foreigners it might sound like some sort of chant, but if you’re Indonesian or have any familiarity with the weird and wacky world of Indonesian memes, then you probably already know that “om telolet om” basically translates into “sir, honk the horn, sir” (om meaning uncle and telolet being the Indonesian onomatopoeia word for the sound a horn makes).
It’s long been a hobby for kids all over Indonesia to wait by the side of the road and try to get buses and trucks to honk at them. But recently it’s become an even bigger phenomenon, with kids chasing after buses with their smartphones trying to record the sound of their horns.
Part of the reason behind the phenomenon too is that public buses here often feature their own customized horns. It’s clearly more than kids that are into it now – a search for telolet on Youtube brings up plenty of videos with hundreds of thousands of views that simply show off new bus models and their horns.
And of course like any meme that’s exploded in popularity, there have been plenty of parodies as well, with recently trending hashtag #demamtelolet (telolet fever) producing several great ones.
But how did this Indonesian phenomenon end up going global via the Twitter feeds of superstar DJs? That appears to simply be due to Indonesians spamming “OM TELOLET OM” as joke comments on the DJs’ social media channels (and tons of other places on the internet).
So in a sense you could consider “om telolet om” an act of trolling, but we like to think it is simply Indonesians trying to spread an appreciation for life’s simple joys, like getting a massive bus to honk at you.
The meme also managed to produce the first legit telolet techno remix, courtesy of Dutch DJ duo Firebeatz:
Given the new global success of the meme, we’re predicting that ‘OM TELOLET OM’ won’t be going away anytime soon. We’ve heard rumors that K-Pop stars might be targeted next. Frankly we’d love to see PSY dancing to a telolet techno beat.
