Cat Whips It / Nae Nae Cat

Submission 8,561

Part of a series on Aaron Benitez. [View Related Entries]

EDITOR'S NOTE: IS THIS REAL??

About

Cat Whips It, also known as Nae Nae Cat and Dancing Grey Cat, is a viral video from Vine by user AaronsAnimals in which Aaron, his friend and his cat Prince Michael perform the Nae Nae dance. In 2019, the video spawned a meme on 4chan's /tv/ board in which users would ask if the video was real and how the cat was taught to dance.

Origin

On May 12th, 2015, Viner and YouTuber Aaron Benitez (AaronAnimals) uploaded a five-second video in which he, his friend and his cat Prince Michael performed the Nae Nae dance. Michael's part was achieved by motion capturing Aaron dancing in a giant cat costume, with Michael's head digitally superimposed. The video accumulated over 22.3 million views on YouTube^[1] in seven years (shown below).

Spread

The video did not see viral spread until late 2018 when it was used in an ironic trend in which it was set to ringtones and other music. The first such edit, a version in which the clip was set to the Skype ringtone, was posted by an unknown user prior to December 30th, 2018.^[2] On January 8th and 9th, 2019, YouTube^[3]^[4] users dedo and Tolga20 both reuploaded the meme, with the clip gaining over 60,000 views and 195,000 views in three years (shown below).

On March 4th, 2019, YouTuber^[5]^[6] Stanley64 posted versions in which the cat set to the Nokia ringtone and to the Emergency Alert System sound, with the edits gaining over 103,000 views and 19,000 views in three years (shown below, left and right).

Following the viral spread of the original "Skype" version of the video, on January 23rd, 2019, an anonymous 4chan^[7] user posted a WEBM of the cat dancing in a /tv/ thread about how cats are trained to act, writing, "Just tell them to go sicko mode." In the same thread, multiple users replied to the post with comments expressing faux disbelief that the video was real (screencap shown below).

Through 2019 and 2020, the WEBM (and GIF version) gained virality on the /tv/ 4chan board, being used as a random image which often derailed the thread as users replied to it with questions such as "is this real" and "how did they teach the cat to dance" (examples shown below, left and center).^[8]^[9]^[10] By April 2020, the meme spread to other boards. For example, on April 4th, 2020, a 4chan user posted a Sneed version of the GIF to /pol/^[11] (shown below, right).

Behind the Scenes Mocap Video

On May 5th, 2018, AaronAnimals uploaded a behind-the-scenes video in which he revealed some of the CGI and mo-capping tricks used to create his animal videos. At the 3:22 mark in the video, Aaron is shown motion capturing a dance for another video in a giant cat costume (shown below). The video received over 11.1 million views on YouTube^[12] in four years.

On July 3rd, 2022, Twitter^[13] user @Emerald_mp3 posted a still image from the video next to a frame from the Vine, writing, "So apparently this is how they did it." The tweet gained over 2,200 retweets and 24,500 likes in two days (shown below).