Dancing Alligator

Origin

‘Dancing Alligator’ is a video of an animated alligator dancing. The original is a roughly nine-minute green-screen video posted by the YouTube channel KAGI GREEN SCREEN on December 22nd, 2020. It is stock footage made for editors, which is why the background is a flat colour and the clip runs so long.

The video was originally a ‘happy birthday’ piece, with the alligator dancing in front of a backdrop of baked beans. It is a rare case of a green-screen asset becoming a meme in its own right.

Spread

The real trend came in 2024, when a CapCut template combined with Lil Suzy’s ‘Take Me In Your Arms’ and swept TikTok. The caption was usually ‘You’re not a dancing alligator’ — while the template proceeded to turn whoever filmed it into precisely that, so the words and the picture contradicted each other.

On July 11th, 2024 the TikTok user @evantsantes posted a video using the template to become the dancing alligator, and it passed 12.8 million plays and 1.8 million likes within a week. That was the peak of the trend.

Usage

• CapCut videos transforming the poster into a dancing alligator
• The reversal of captioning ‘you’re not a dancing alligator’ and then becoming one
• As footage for birthday videos

With no dialogue and no narrative, it works on the single image of a dancing alligator, which carried it across every language region unchanged.

Sources

• Know Your Meme, ‘Dancing Alligator’ — KAGI GREEN SCREEN’s nine-minute original of December 22nd, 2020; the baked-beans birthday framing; the 2024 CapCut template with Lil Suzy’s ‘Take Me In Your Arms’; @evantsantes’s 12.8 million plays and 1.8 million likes of July 11th, 2024
• Know Your Meme video gallery — examples of the derivative videos