[Update] This TikTok Albino Alligator Conspiracy Is Wild…And It’s Only Getting Weirder
Update! Below, I reported on a very interesting and entertaining conspiracy theory about the former albino alligator at the South Carolina Aquarium by TikTok user @mom.life.etc. She has since deleted the TikToks and released a final follow-up video on the subject, which you can watch here.
In her video, she talks about how not only are other TikTok users and YouTubers harassing her online, people have also begun to harass the South Carolina Aquarium, spamming their social media and phone lines. At the end of her video, she admits that her original video was just satire about an admittedly popular yet silly conspiracy theory. If you’d like to learn more about her fun theory, read on below. Just make sure not to harass her or the aquarium, friends. This is all in good fun. Update complete!
In 2009, the South Carolina Aquarium announced a new animal for their exhibits: Alabaster the Albino Alligator. Of course, for an animal so rare, attendance to the aquarium got a major boost. But something seemed a bit off. Now one TikTok user is insisting that Alabaster was fake all along–and she’s got some compelling receipts to prove it. While there’s no hard and definitive proof that South Carolina Aquarium faked an albino alligator, you may just be a believer by the end of this.
TikToker @mom.life.etc was a regular visitor to the South Carolina Aquarium. She loved alligators and would bring kids to hang out by Alabaster the Albino Alligator’s tank when she’d bring them for summer camp. With all that time spent at Alabaster’s tank, she noticed something odd:
In the hours spent in front of the albino alligator tank, I noticed that Alabaster had one distinct movement. Only one. He would be floating in the top right-hand corner of his tank, dive down to the bottom left, and then float back up to the same point and position in the top right. He did this once every 15 to 20 minutes.
@mom.life.etc
That certainly seems suspect. Why would an alligator have such a regimented routine? If it was just that, it wouldn’t be much of a conspiracy. It just gets weirder from there. She then says that the guy who would come out to let you feed baby alligators would instead come out yelling about how Alabaster was a “very real albino alligator” even when no one was asking. Why bring that up in the first place? *Cue the “don’t be suspicious” song.*
Eventually, she just couldn’t keep her theory to herself, so on June 8, 2019, she posted about it on her Facebook. She says:
The albino alligator at the aquarium is fake. I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t care what videos you show me, it’s fake, and no one can convince me otherwise.
@mom.life.etc’s Facebook post
She had a friend at the time who worked at the aquarium, and they commented saying “what if I told you I’d fed him.” And when she said she’d want to watch him be fed or feed him herself to believe it, they said, “I guess there’s no helping then. No contracts or anything.” What’s this about a contract? It’s so out of nowhere. Was the aquarium making people sign NDAs for knowing the alligator was fake or signing to promise to stop talking about the conspiracy?
Her Facebook post started a storm of people wondering if Alabaster the Albino Alligator was fake. Suddenly the theory was getting all sorts of attention. Then, a little over a month after her original post, the news broke that Alabaster had died. The timing seemed really convenient, further proving to her that he was fake all along.
Even the pictures that the South Carolina Aquarium had of Alabaster were suspect. There are only a few of him even though he was in their care for 10 years–and they seem more like stock images than pictures of a real alligator.
Since her first TikTok on the subject, people have found YouTube videos that supposedly show Alabaster the Albino Alligator swimming around in his tank. From these videos, he certainly seems real. Judge for yourself below.
If that’s some sort of animatronic, it’s seriously expert-level. If you check out the video’s comments section, it’s filled with people streaming to the video from TikTok to see if Alabaster was real. But is this proof that he was? @mom.life.etc isn’t so sure. She posted a follow up about this:
And that’s a good point. This is just a random account posting a video of an albino alligator and saying it’s Alabaster. There’s no proof that it really is. I did a little digging and I found this quote from the South Carolina Aquarium in a news article about Alabaster’s death in the Courier Tribune:
[We’ll] always remember his passion for fish, his ability to remain completely still, and of course, his toothy grin.
South Carolina Aquarium representative, Courier Tribune
“His ability to remain completely still.” What a weird way to describe an animal, especially in a tribute after his death. That’s one of the main ways they’d describe him? It’s almost as if it’s a way for them to explain away the fact that they were using a fake. Don’t worry, he’s just really good at not moving at all.
We’ll probably never know for sure whether Alabaster was a real albino alligator. He’s now long gone so none of us can stalk the aquarium to make sure. And maybe that’s what the South Carolina Aquarium wanted. This will forever remain a conspiracy theory now that he’s gone.