Work Text:
Know Your Meme: The “Dad, no!” Videos of Miaiam
Part of a series on Viral Videos
ABOUT
This series of videos consists of a man attempting to do something cool or trendy, but dangerous, while his adult children and granddaughter either try to stop him or react to his antics. “Dad, no!” is a common line in the videos, though never spoken by the person filming. She is often heard encouraging “Dad”.
ORIGIN
The “Dad, no!” Videos of Miaiam started being uploaded to Leaf starting in 2012, although they appear to be clips of longer cell-phone videos originally on MyUniverse, as discovered by Herddit users in 2013.
SPREAD
Originally shared via Chirper, the first video -- titled “Ollie Tries to Ollie” -- features the family at a skatepark. “Dad” gets on a skateboard, with disastrous results. After several re-chirps, the video was cross-posted to Ramblr on the unrelated blog bestofleaf where it gained 175,000 notes.
More videos were uploaded, slowly revealing the whole cast. Names are never mentioned in the videos themselves, save “Dad” himself, who is called “Ollie” by nearly everyone. Several related memes have been generated. (See: Ridiculously Photogenic “Dad, no!” Guy, Hot Dad, Disapproving Grandkid, and “Oh That’s Going Right Up”)
Notably, on May 1, 2013, soon after the subherddit h/memes discovered the now-defunct MyUniverse page containing the original, longer videos, the @miaiam account chirped “Wwhat should I talk him into next? #DadNo” and the hashtag “#DadNo” began trending. @miaiam could not follow every suggestion, and this spawned a wave of imitator videos all shared under the #DadNo hashtag. The digital news site Lexfeed covered the trend on May 18, 2013
As part of the wave of imitators, a new Chirper account @redhood was created on June 3rd, 2013. The first chirp on the account was a Leaf video clip of the Joker being taken into police custody with the caption “The Joker being captured again. #DadNo #BatmanNo”. Herddit users were very interested in the @redhood account, because all the videos appear to be stripped of location data. More Leafs, recorded later, clearly show Gotham City monuments and the iconic skyline at times, which most Chirper and Ramblr users point to as signs of authenticity.
In direct response to the @redhood account, the formerly inactive @arsenal account chirped a Leaf on June 20, 2013 with only the hashtag #ArrowNo. It shows one of the Green Arrows missing a shot at fleeing jewel thieves, only for the phone recording the Leaf to be thrown, knocking out the criminals.
NOTABLE EXAMPLES
[Section incomplete. Please share or submit your notable examples]