About

El Primo Bailando refers to a TikTok trend in which a Mexican-style animated fighter is dancing to the Brazilian song "Bara Bara Bere Bere" plays next to gameplay of Breakout on a split screen. The fighter is El Primo, a character from the mobile game Brawl Stars, and only appears in the videos when the ball of the Breakout game hits a block.

Origin

Although the first post of the meme is unkown, the trend started around February 2022 on TikTok, inspired by a trend of Mr. Incredible Becoming Uncanny videos shown on a split screen with gameplay of the mobile game Bounce and Pop. (shown below).

On February 17th, 2022, TikToker nashepapu24 created an edit with the Brawl Stars^[2] character ‘El Primo’ dancing at the bottom of the split screen, with the Brazilian song ‘Bara bara bere berê’^[3] by Michel Teló playing. When the shuriken in the Bounce and Pop^[4] game stopped popping the ballons, the animated fighter is replaced by a video of the streamer iShowSpeed with a sad face while the song "Jugaste y Sufrí"^[5], by the Mexican group Eslabon Armado plays. The video went viral on the platform, receiving 10 million views in seven months.

Spread

The meme widely spread on TikTok between February and March 2022, with videos reaching millions of views. For example, a February 22nd, 2022 video posted by @elasticgirlperturbadora using Breakout gameplay reached 53 million views in seven months.

The videos were also uploaded on YouTube Shorts, such as a March 20th, 2022 post by @bernaal005 that accumulated 9 million views in six months.

The viral memes with El Primo Bailando on TikTok also inspired people to upload 1-hour loops of the animated character dancing on YouTube (example shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References