AA words

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

Goofy, gentle, nimbly amateurish, jerking was little known outside certain precincts of this sprawling city until a year ago.

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

Yet as with so much else on the Web, there is some mysterious alchemy involved.

“Let’s go mess with the Pink Dollaz,” said David White, a limber 15-year-old Ranger$ member with a winning smile and his nickname, Spotlight, tattooed across his abdomen.

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

Batting their false eyelashes, the Walker twins giggled at Mr. White’s antics and the way the Ranger$ — Jacorey Williams, Julian Goins, Langson Higgins and Dashawn Blanks — amiably corkscrewed and did clumsy back flips on the grass.

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

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?

Batting their false eyelashes, the Walker twins giggled at Mr. White’s antics and the way the Ranger$ — Jacorey Williams, Julian Goins, Langson Higgins and Dashawn Blanks — amiably corkscrewed and did clumsy back flips on the grass.

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.nn“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.nnSneaker 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.

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

Like a cartoon thought bubble, that notion seems to hang in the mild afternoon air here, as school lets out early on parent-teacher conference day at Alexander Hamilton High School.

Seen in formal terms, said Sally Sommer, a dance historian who teaches at Florida State University, jerking may merely be a cousin to the “lambada or the twist.”

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.