About

Animatronic Tweaking, also known as Animatronic Screaming, refers to a reaction video of a Halloween animatronic freaking out by twitching and screaming at a convention hall, akin to the slang term "tweaking." The video trended on TikTok and Twitter / X in 2023, predominantly paired with text captions that used the phrasal template "Me genuinely tweaking after X." The original video was posted in 2022, taken at the TransWorld Halloween Show. The animatronic is called the "Mutant" and is made by the company Distortions Unlimited.

Origin

On March 18th, 2022, YouTuber^[1] BrickThunder posted a short that was taken at TransWorld's Halloween Show, showing an animatronic called the "Mutant" made by the animatronic company Distortions Unlimited.^[2][3] BrickThunder's video received roughly 109,000 views and 2,400 likes in one year (shown below).

Currently, the first known memetic usage of the video was posted by TikToker^[4] @luhtrailgn on September 23rd, 2023, who referenced the slang term Blinker ("blinkie"), gaining roughly 1.6 million plays and 367,400 likes in three months (shown below).

Spread

Soon after the aforementioned video's upload, others on TikTok used the template, such as TikToker^[5] @mxnnysburner on September 28th, 2023, whose video received roughly 458,800 plays and 106,600 likes in three months (shown below, left). On October 4th, TikToker^[6] @xaviditz used the video to reference emergency school alarms, gaining roughly 85,300 plays and 12,200 likes in two months (shown below, right).

On November 9th, 2023, X^[6] user @abcdentminded posted the original video, writing, "Powerful video. the reaction mp4 potential is immense, will be keeping this locked and loaded," gaining roughly 6,200 likes in one month (shown below). The tweet inspired other X^[7][8] users to caption the video thereafter.

Powerful video. the reaction mp4 potential is immense, will be keeping this locked and loaded pic.twitter.com/6nrV5tNtjv

— abcdent (@abcdentminded) November 19, 2023

During the same timeframe, meme creators on TikTok started to pair the video with the phrasal template "Me genuinely tweaking X," inserting a setting or action that would make them freak out like the animatronic. An early, viral example was posted by TikToker^[9] @awesomepablo24 on September 29th, 2023, who joked about walking behind a Gyatt, receiving roughly 206,500 plays and 39,100 likes in 11 days (shown below).

Reposts of the Animatronic Tweaking memes spread on iFunny ^[10] and Reddit^[11] during the same timeframe.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References