TikTok users are flocking to the social app to post clips of the latest viral craze: strutting to…the Tom & Jerry instrumental theme song…?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B25icn3rxwo
If you’re not already aware, TikTok is a global video platform that merged with musical.ly earlier this year. It’s where users share short musical clips akin to that of Vine. It’s already become a popular platform for humorous video challenges, such as the “good girls, bad guys” challenge.
The Tom & Jerry video’s description states that this is the “latest movement” in Vietnamese, thanks to Google Translate. But why are TikTok denizens suddenly interested in this bizarre “dance” move? Our closest guess, thanks to one commenter’s direction, is that scores of Tom & Jerry fans saw episode 57 of the classic cartoon, entitled “Jerry’s Cousin,” which features a gang of some pretty tough feline customers who Tom enlists for help as a response to the titular mouse cousin of little Jerry, who packs a wallop.
Jerry’s cousin Muscles happens to have super strength, and as such he’s acting as a bodyguard for little Jerry, keeping all the cats in the neighborhood who would bother him away. Tom enlists a few tough cats from a company named Dirty Work, Inc. and it looks like they’re going to show Muscles a thing or two, but, well…they fail. Before being utterly defeated, the cats move in a peculiar fashion, much like the people in the clips, so the likelihood of this being the original source for the “dance” is pretty high.
In any case, it’s amusing trying to watch people in real life move like these “tough cats” do.
Correction: While particularly popular in China, the app TikTok is available globally, and the company’s headquarters are in Los Angeles.
