Fortnite Blinding Lights emote: Origin, history and more

The Blinding Lights emote was first introduced in Fortnite on December 2nd, 2020. What is the music behind the emote? Where did the dance come from? These questions and more after the jump.

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Blinding Lights: Fortnite's love of TikTok continues

Blinding Lights hit the Fortnite in-game item shop on December 2nd, 2020, for 500 V-Bucks. Backed by the popular song of the same name by The Weeknd, the dance this emote is based on comes from TikTok, as many emote dances do.

TikTok credits the dance to user @macdaddyz, but others have used it before as part of the Blinding Lights Challenge, such as Jenny McCarthy and Donny Wahlberg. Even Nicole Swartzeneger got in on the action.

Of course, being TikTok, hundreds of people performed the challenge, brightening the days of all who watched them.

Fortnite jumped on the sensation and released Blinding Lights so players could join in the fun without needing any dance skills at all. They must have someone in a motion capture suit 24x7 just waiting for the next viral dance to drop.

Not only did the challenge take TikTok by storm, but also Instagram and YouTube, with videos flooding. Just searching for Blinding Lights Challenge will fill a user's screen with many videos, articles, reactions, and memes.

With all the ingredients needed for a TikTok sensation, Blinding Lights was destined for fame. The Weeknd provided the music, @macdaddyz provided the moves, and the internet provided the appropriate response for the dance to explode the way it did.

All Epic had to do was recognize the trend would be a good fit for Fortnite.

Blinding Lights is now part of the Iconic Series as of Fortnite update 15.30.