Sitting? If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the last few weeks, you know that sitting is the opposite of standing. That’s thanks to comedian and actor Brian Jordan Alvarez’s incredibly viral and incredibly catchy song “Sitting,” performed by TJ Mack, one of his many comedy personae. “Sitting” (which, because this is the internet, is actually pronounced “sittim”) has spawned multiple mega-viral TikToks, with users covering the song in genres including but not limited to electro pop, musical theater, country, acoustic, and death metal. It’s so popular that “Sitting” has landed on the radio in the US and Australia. In a year without a clear song of the summer—unless you count “Planet of the Bass,” another TikTok parody—“Sitting” by TJ Mack may very well be that girl.

“Why do I think ‘Sitting,’ specifically, is blowing up? I have a simple answer to that question, which is, I think it’s because sitting really is the opposite of standing,” Alvarez tells VF. “People are connecting to the truth of the song.”

Phoning in from Los Angeles, Alvarez, an actor and comedian who’s appeared in Jane the Virgin, the Will & Grace reboot, and, most recently, M3GAN, actually seems as surprised as anyone that “Sitting” has taken over the internet, with no signs of slowing down.

“You don’t know what’s gonna go viral,” he says. “It inspires a lot of courage and ease in me because it’s like, Well, just post it and you’ll kind of find out how good it is.” That said, Alvarez had an inkling that “Sitting” might be TJ Mack’s big break after he posted the OG video on September 10. “The original video is just a cappella. It’s TJ Mack in his apartment, which is randomly also my apartment,” says Alvarez. “People started reposting it a lot, and one of the things I kept hearing was, ‘Whoa, this is actually a good song. Oh, my God, this is a bop.’”

Unlike many of the chart-topping tracks you hear on the radio, “Sitting” did not have a team of Swedish songwriters behind its hook. “It’s all improvised,” Alvarez says, as is the case with the other comedy videos he records and posts online. But as luck would have it, Alvarez’s first take of “Sitting” was the victim of technical difficulties, so he had to do it a second time. “I think it is a big part of why it’s so much higher quality,” he says. “I had just had a rehearsal where I’d made it up. Then when I did it the second time, it was so much cleaner and tighter.”

“Everything you see of mine is the first take, and then suddenly I’m willing to do one more take, and it goes so much more viral. And it’s like, Well, maybe you should do a second take,” he says with a laugh. “I’m always so obsessed with doing everything off the cuff. Sometimes it’s like, You know, if you practice a little bit, it’ll just get better.”

“Sitting” didn’t blow up on the strength of Alvarez’s second take alone. Musicians across the internet took to his initial video, releasing their own covers of the song. One such cover, put out by Josh Mac, a US-based music producer from New Zealand, added high-quality production, giving the track catchy, electro-synth accompaniment, layered vocals, and, of course, a sick beat. It has, perhaps, become the definitive version of “Sitting.”

Mac’s version, which is available on Spotify and Apple Music, is the one that has graced radio stations in the US and Australia. “[Josh Mac made] a fully fleshed-out pop track that sounds literally good and normal when you play it on the radio,” says Alvarez. “That is hugely to his credit. He mixed the vocals. He makes it all sound clean. When they play it on the radio, it’s like, Oh yeah, this is a song on the radio. It’s a funny song, but it’s still a song on the radio.”

While Alvarez credits Mac with taking “Sitting” to the top of the internet’s chart, he is quick to shower love on a bevy of covers, reposting various versions he comes across on the internet. “There’s all of this incredible celebration of the internet that happens with these things,” says Alvarez. “For me, it’s so inspiring about the human race. Look at this: We can still make art, and we can make art using this new technology that we’re sometimes afraid of.”

The real magic of “Sitting” comes from the constantly chuckling, wife-and-son-loving, fish-eyed character that is TJ Mack. Like many of Alvarez’s personae—Timothy, the politician; Marnie, the thought leader; the Intern—TJ Mack was inspired by the technology that creates his unmistakable face. The filter is so crucial to helping Alvarez get into character that he sometimes worries whether he can tap into TJ Mack without it.

That became an issue when he called in for a recent guest appearance as TJ Mack on a radio show. The solution? “What I ended up doing was just looking at a picture of TJ Mack while I talked to them and feeling like, That’s me. This is me. I’m speaking. I look like that. And then it all came together.”

“It’s ancient mask work,” he quips.

It’s not just TJ Mack’s face that brings the laughs—it’s the specific way that he talks. “He’s big on ending words with m,” Alvarez says. Mack has also been very clear about his intention to become a world-famous pop star, and has released many songs in the past, such as “Baseball Cap” and “Morning” (pronounced “mornim”). “In a way, he’s sort of manifesting this with what he’s already saying about himself,” says Alvarez. “Now, if all things go well, he really will become the next pop girlie.”

And becoming the next big pop girlie is not out of the realm of possibility for Alvarez, either. The creator tells me he’s coming to New York to figure out how to create a live show around TJ Mack. “I’m still figuring out the technicalities, but I think it’d be cool, almost like the Wizard of Oz behind the things, or just my face is blocked, and then TJ Mack’s face is projected onto a big screen,” he says. “I want to be able to do the character live.”

He also may be releasing an LP sometime soon. “I want to go into the studio and cut an album,” says Alvarez. If you assume the music industry would not be receptive to an Instagram character cutting an album, the response will surprise you. “I am meeting with Atlantic Records, I will say,” Alvarez tells me. “It’s giving 2023 Atlantic Records, all rights reserved.”

Album or no, Alvarez is happy to ride the “Sitting” wave wherever it takes him. “I came up when the internet was first becoming a thing. I remember 2008 or something, putting stuff on YouTube. Just slowly watching this garden grow has been so cool,” he says. “I’m 36, and I think a lot of people my age or older might feel a little sort of left out of the internet game, but I’m like, No, baby. This is where it’s at. Let’s keep partying on the internet.”