Overview

Ana Coto's Fornite Dance refers to a Fortnite emote called "Freewheelin'" and roller-skating skin that was teased in early August 2020. The Epic Games-created emote does not credit TikToker Ana Coto although many noted the clothing and dance similarities.

Background

On April 28th, 2020, TikToker Ana Coto uploaded a video of herself roller-skating to Jennifer Lopez's "Jenny from the Block" and garnered over 2.2 million likes in four months (shown below).

On August 5th, 2020, YouTuber Kingzi Kingz released a video called "Fortnite Freewheelin Dance Emote (Built In Emote)" which introduced gamers to an emote that would be released in the next few weeks (shown below). The video gained over 87,110 views in four days.

Developments

On August 6th, 2020, TikToker Ana Coto shared a side-by-side video of her dance and the Fortnite emote captioned, "@fortnite smdh #freewheelin is literally me" (shown below). The video received over 96,900 likes in five days.

That same day, Twitter user @morgan_sung^[1] shared Ana Coto's video and tweeted, "fortnite ripped off ana coto’s skate dance to “jenny from the block,” which went viral in april and inspired the Great Rollerskate Shortage of 2020. the original video has 15.7 million views on tiktok" (shown below, left). The video acquired over 23,800 views and 480 likes in five days. Twitter user @mrmedina^[2] also commented on the controversy saying, "It would be great for Fortnite to disclose how they handle emotes that are lifted from viral dances. It's not clear. They introduced Renegade into the game last month and credited Jalaiah. Did they also pay her? Other pop culture dances in the game have no credits" (shown below, right). The Verge^[4] and The Daily Dot^[3] published articles on the emote.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References