‘Damn Daniel’ and modern internet culture
March 15, 2016
In the span of 1 week, the internet was raving over Damn Daniel, a series of videos in which a child filming a boy wearing white Vans shouts “Damn, Daniel! Back at it again with the white Vans!” There’s something very off about this sensation, though; no one knows why it’s so popular. Some people say it’s because of the voice he does, some say it’s because Daniel is a piece of man candy, others say it’s a viral ad for white Vans in disguise, but the response is almost always different. Most people who enjoy this video think that it’s funny, but they don’t know why. This is the problem with modern internet culture: how fast things spread.
Loading ...The origins of ‘Damn Daniel’ and other popular internet fads can be traced back to social media, especially on Snapchat and Instagram. The video started out with this kid, pointing a camera at his friend, and out of nowhere just saying ‘Damn, Daniel.’ Then he started doing it daily. As time went on, people spread it around Snapchat and reposted it on social media like Instagram, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Eventually, within about a day’s time, Damn Daniel became a viral success, garnishing millions of fans and even an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Something similar happened a while back, almost in the same exact way, too. Everyone remembers Alex from Target, right? Well, no. Not really. Sure, he had his 15 minutes of fame, and even a spot on Ellen, but it seems as though these things just keep popping up. People obsess over these irrelevant posts of some hot teenager, and sure enough, they get a spot on Ellen. It’s just plain bizarre.
It seems strangely formulaic. Someone posts a short video or a picture on Snapchat, Tumblr, or Instagram, it quickly spreads around the internet within a day, and then the creators get a spot on Ellen. There was even that dress a while back, which sparked a nation wide debate for 2 days about what color it was. Eventually, even that was a discussion on Ellen, but it was a little more understandable. The dress did happen to be blue and black, but because of the high contrast and lighting, it seemed that it could have also been white and gold. Because our brains are so good at cementing memories into our brains, whatever you had seen it as first, that’s just what was stuck in your mind, and that was a genuine topic for debate.
What’s not a genuine topic for anything, though, is some hot guy someone took a few pictures of and then decided to upload it to social media. It just seems like such a waste of time for the developed world, almost as a whole, to obsess over these fads that don’t last more than a week.
There were so many more newsworthy things that could have been reported in the week that Damn Daniel arose to popularity. Doctors are beginning to develop precision medicine that is proven to be more effective based on your genetic code; the robot Atlas was created to show how well our current technology can mimic human balance and motor function; roboticists have created the most functional prosthetic limb technology to date; bio-engineers have created a cheaper way to make synthetic human skin that can be grafted onto burn victims; MIT has created the precursor to a contact lens that has a screen built into it, and scientists were able to revive frozen tardigrades after being in a dormant state for over 30 years. But instead, we decided to take a week off from the betterment of society to talk about Daniel, and his white Vans.
Alex Schwarz • Mar 29, 2016 at 7:20 pm
This was a great story for multiple reasons. One is that it is very different from what most people would write about this with you voicing your opinion quite openly. You got in what my opinion a very difficult story to write about, but you took off with it and writing a great story. Good Job.