The ‘Bill Hader dancing’ meme origin, explained

For most internet users with social media accounts, which is literally everyone, it was an interesting morning waking up to the infamous “Bill Hader Dancing” meme spawning all over everyone’s feeds. The meme exists by pure luck — but it’s a good thing it does, because it is miraculously packed with everything we didn’t know we needed.

Saturday Night Live is a good gig for a comedian because it sets them up for the rest of their lives if they take advantage of it. The names can go on and on, but look at Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Adam Sandler, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph. This list doesn’t do the show justice with how many success stories come out of there, and Bill Hader is one of them.

He quit the show to go off on his own, and he’s been tearing it up. His hit HBO series Barry just recently wrapped on season 4, and fans are devastated that Hader himself has resolutely stated that there will be no season 5, as Men’s Health so aptly put it. That might be why the meme is so popular today — but where did it come from?

What SNL Sketch did the Bill Hader dancing meme come from?

In 2015, Bill Hader did an SNL sketch that In The Know reports didn’t even air. He portrayed a character named Alan, who is in a glass box in a married couple’s living room, dancing with different hilarious facial expressions. His character is deemed “the future of casual entertainment” and has multiple modes, including “Default Alan”, “More Alan, “Total Alan”, and “Perfect Alan”.The sketch is appropriately titled “Alan” and was part of an October 2014 episode called “Cut for Time”, which Hader hosted over a year after he departed from the show.

It’s a mystery as to why the skit didn’t air, though it found its way into someone’s hands and started the latest craze of memes, which began with a TikToker named @lordtoasterstrudel who posted it first on June 13.

Hader’s somewhat awkward dancing was just what TikTok users eat up, and the trend has since spread like wildfire. Like most TikTok trends, it is amazing to see how many different ways users have found a way to creatively incorporate it into their page.

From the archives and straight to YouTube, watch the original skit above and see what it’s all about.

When CapCut user @Igreenscreenthin posted the green screen version of the dance for anyone to use, the meme took off and got crazy.

Watching Hader dance, anyone with a sense of humor and an imagination can put together a video that promises to go viral.

This one has been viewed upwards of 3.7 million times, which means viewers can’t get enough of these things.

Of course, with the Titan tragedy so fresh on everyone’s minds, it was bound to join the party.

Barry has left us, and Bill Hader is moving on to bigger and better things — admittedly, it’s hard to top a dark comedy about an assassin who is trying to find his way out of the business but keeps getting pulled back in. Good thing this meme exists to keep everyone going!