Jerking

There is much to admire, Mr. Roberts suggested, in the vision of teenagers of all sorts united in pursuit of a music that blends computerized pop syncopations with hip-hop beats, that obliviously blurs racial boundaries and that encourages sartorial experimentation of a kind that, Mr. Hasan said, would have marked him in high school as a hopeless nerd.

Mr. White was referring to Camera and China Walker, 16-year-old twins from a girl group that first posted YouTube videos of salacious home-recorded jerking songs like “Tasty” just seven months ago.

At two o’clock precisely, students flood from a 1930s brick building evocative of Andy Hardy movies.

Jerking, said Mr. Hasan, the film director, is “like this huge communal collage, all these teenagers coming together to collaborate.”

As school let out last week, the unlikely superstars from the Ranger$ preened their moves against the stolid backdrop of Hamilton High.

Perhaps the most compelling thing about jerking, suggested Randall Roberts, the music editor of the L.A. Weekly, is how handily its practitioners manipulate the Web, scouring culture of historical context, freely deploying any tool that comes to hand.

It is certainly, Ms. Sommer said, less physically demanding than krumping or vogueing or the other highly skilled and innovative urban forms of dance.

Warner Brothers/Asylum and Interscope were among those that quickly signed jerking crews — the Bangz, the Cold Flamez, the Rej3ctz and Audio Push.

Jerking, said Mr. Hasan, the film director, is “like this huge communal collage, all these teenagers coming together to collaborate.”

And isn’t this partly why the students hanging out on South Robertson Boulevard have become huge stars on the Internet, their fame conjured out of home-grown YouTube videos of jerking — a new dance with its own quickly evolving music and a style of dress?

But what attracted him to jerking, he added, were the same things that make so many jerking videos contagious: its fresh neo-punk style, its simple beats and the sense that anyone with a degree of coordination can learn the dance.

Perhaps the most compelling thing about jerking, suggested Randall Roberts, the music editor of the L.A. Weekly, is how handily its practitioners manipulate the Web, scouring culture of historical context, freely deploying any tool that comes to hand.

And jerking, its adherents say, has a cultural resonance that goes beyond the Reject and the Tippy Toe.

“Jerking is a movement, almost like in the ’80s when rap started,” said Tammy Maxwell, the manager of the Ranger$ and the mother of Julian Goins.

In late spring, Shariff Hasan, 30, a filmmaker, began filming a feature, “Jerkin’,” simultaneously developing a documentary and a jerking reality show for MTV.

Sneaker manufacturers like Vlado got in on the act, sponsoring the Ranger$, whose offhand way of mashing up fashion influences — punk, ’80s pop, skater culture, Daisy Age hip-hop and goth — breathed life into the weary proposition that fashion’s most compelling innovations often come from the street.

But in the last nine months or so, jerking began an unexpected run as an Internet phenomenon.

Ask the Pink Dollaz, astonished as anyone at their overnight success.