About

Why Is My Bus Driver Playing Mitski? is a series of memes based on a viral video of TikToker @dannydawg95 filming themselves riding the bus in what appears to be red face paint as Mitski's "Bag Of Bones" plays in the background, an overlayed caption reading, "Why is my bus driver playing Mitski?" The video was posted at the end of January 2025 and garnered viral spread over the following months, becoming the subject of memes that play off of the TikToker's inexplicably red face and the fact that they do not mention it in the video, the joke being that people would rather know why their face is red rather than why the bus driver is playing Mitski.

Origin

On January 31st, 2025, TikToker^[1] @dannydawg95 posted a video of themselves sitting on the bus as Mitski's "Bag Of Bones" plays in the background. The video is captioned, "Why is my bus driver playing Mitski?" The TikToker's face is completely red, seemingly due to face paint. The video gained over 2.5 million views in four months, but has since been deleted.

Spread

On February 9th, 2025, X^[2] user @mitskidata reposted the video, writing, "A video featuring 'Bag of Bones' has gone viral on TikTok after a school bus driver played it on a school bus," garnering over 5,300 likes in three months. Later that day, X^[3] user @yukerus posted a screenshot of the video and a comment reading "I have a better question" under the post, garnering over 800 likes in the same span of time.

On March 8th, Redditor u/secure_sea-7117 reposted the screenshot to the /r/shirposting^[4] subreddit, garnering over 2,900 upvotes in two months. On March 15th, Facebook^[5] user memes i fished out of the toilet posted the screenshot, garnering over 6,200 reactions and 2,600 shares in the same span of time.

On April 11th, X^[6] user @mitskidata quoted a post by Dan Hentschel in which he is seen with a red face next to a Target ball, writing, "why is this bus driver playing mitski," garnering over 5,600 likes in a month. On May 8th, X^[7] user @weirddalle reposted the meme, garnering over 175,000 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References