The ‘Bill Hader Dancing To’ Meme Is Back, Baby

If you’ve spent any time endlessly scrolling and rotting away on TikTok over the past week, chances are you’ve seen a lot of clips of Bill Hader dancing. The viral meme features the step-touching Barry star edited into all kinds of environments, like corporate offices, Willy Wonka’s chocolate river, and even the site of the Titan disaster. This isn’t the first time the “Bill Hader Dancing To” meme has graced the internet — it first rose to prominence with the since-deleted @billhaderdancing Twitter account in 2019. But, now that it’s reemerged on TikTok, Gen Z is putting their own twist on the famed meme.

First, a little context: The clip itself is from a “Cut for Time” Saturday Night Live sketch titled “Alan” from Bill Hader’s hosting stint in October 2014 — over a year after his departure from the cast in season 39. The episode also honored some characters minted during Hader’s eight-year tenure on the show, like Stefon and Herb Welch, as well as a host of new characters — one of them being Alan.

Written by Mikey Day, the “Alan” sketch also features Taran Killam and Vanessa Bayer as an upper-middle-class-looking couple — who honestly look like they’d call Barry a riot — who receives The Alan: “the future of casual entertainment,” played by Hader. Alan, whose full name is Keither Alan Croft, wears a muted- blue knitted sweater, khakis, a sensible pair of shoes, and a mischievous, wayward smirk. Bayer’s character is quickly charmed by Alan and claims “I like Alan!” while Killam’s character doesn’t quite get it, even when he learns that Alan has multiple modes. There’s the default Alan; “More Alan,” which is like Alan but more; “Total Alan” (thumbs-up!); and “Perfect Alan” — little stinker! Day managed to put the phrase “casual entertainment” in the sketch five times, which pales in comparison to the 31 times “Alan” is uttered in the five-minute-long sketch.

“Alan” first reached meme status in September 2019 when the @billhaderdancing Twitter account was born. The approach was simple: The account took the clip of Hader as Alan dancing and put different songs over it — everything from the Succession theme to Britney Spears’s “Toxic” to “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo, who gave the meme her official approval. Sometime after @billhaderdancing was at its prime, the account mysteriously vanished in the night, just as Alan did out of his little box.

But in June 2023, Alan step-touched his way back onto the internet when the meme was gloriously resurrected by a TikTok user who took posted moments from the sketch — namely when Hader’s character is politely throwing it back with his hands pressed against his Barbie-like display case, shrugging in a very Alan way, and waggling his eyebrows — with the 2015 song “Makeba” by Jain playing behind it. That TikTok, which currently has over 6 million views, sparked an Alan renaissance: There’s now a CapCut template that allows all users to let Alan dance his heart out in whatever scenario they see fit. Needless to say, the fans are loving it.

Teenage girls in their 20s have renewed the meme:

The tiny-bladder community used it to further their platform:

It’s been used for a ton of OceanGate jokes too:

The religious crowd has also gotten to it:

Brand accounts are cashing in on the trend too:

The “Makeba” queen herself, Jain, even got in on the fun:

It should surprise absolutely nobody that Gen Z has taken a middle-aged white man with a rascally sense of whimsy, deemed him babygirl, and made him trend on social media. What should be even less surprising is that, after years of SNL sketches being memed, TikTok has now gotten a hold of it. And though there may be “only one Allan,” there’s also Alan, and he likes to dance in a casually entertaining way.