Shark do do.
YouTube has a lot of practical knowledge, and I imagine that my daughter’s generation is going to live, work and play with screens omnipresent. So, the wife and I decided to deviate from generally acceptable parenting principles (GAPP, for future reference) and introduce the daughter to YouTube. Even though this deviated from GAPP, I was quite sure that a few kids songs weren’t really going to turn the daughter’s brain into liquefied mush.
I failed to consider the effect they would have on my brain, however, and ended up with dire consequences.
We started playing a few kids songs on YouTube at the end of the night, to help the daughter get through her nightly milk, which she hated. There’s a handful of songs that we approved of and placed into a playlist for her to listen to, but she particularly liked one song. A lot. It was “The Baby Shark Song”.
The song is startlingly simple. It goes “Shark do-do do do do-do”. That’s it. 90% of the song is these two words — “Shark” and “do” — repeated over and over again. There are various sharks — baby shark, daddy shark, mommy shark, and more — and they all go “do-do do do-do do do” over and over again. And oh, it has 1.5 Billion views on YouTube.
I couldn’t figure it out. How can such a simple song with a simple melody have so many views? Like some hypnotic meditative chant, the “do-do do do-do do do” repeats ad nauseum, over and over again, until you’re left with nothing but questions. What is it about this song that the daughter likes so much? There’s no story, no texture to the lyrics, no structured beginning and no ending. Who are these sharks? What are they doing? What is “do-do”?
While I pondered over these questions, the daughter took to listening to this song on repeat. Our doctor had warned that toddlers can get obsessed with a certain book or song and repeatedly listen to it, so I didn’t really think much of it. After a couple of days, my deep philosophical musings about the interpretation of the song faded, but the daughter continued to consume it with the gusto of a librarian consuming a rare, out-of-print history about the Dewey Decimal System. A week went by, and the song settled into our routine.
I realized that true impact of the song when a few days later while driving to work. I normally drive in complete silence — no radio, no audiobooks — and let my mind wander while I’m driving. However, on this day, I found my self singing “do-do do do-do do do”.
This surprised me, because I normally don’t have songs stuck in my head, but this particular song had somehow made its way inside my head, and I was now humming it in traffic. Oh well, it’ll pass I’m sure, I thought as I drove the rest of the way, occasionally humming “do-do do do-do do do “. And then the next day, it happened again. My mind was wandering as usual when it suddenly dropped out of it’s leisurely mental stroll and straight into “do-do do do-do do do”. I shook myself, trying to put this infernal song out of my head, but I couldn’t do it. It’s like when you’re trying really hard not to think of Zebras, exerting all kinds of mental effort to avoid thinking of that black-and-white stripped animal, but then a herd of Zebras invades your mind anyway.
I was humming this song more and more often, and with increasing frequency. This dammed song was following me around. All through the day, I caught myself humming it. It was everywhere.
In a meeting with the VP. “We need to build a contingency plan for the scenario where…”. Me, absent-mindedly “do-do do do-do do do”. Waiting in the lunch line, my mind singing “do-do do do-do do do”. Colleague: “Are you going to be ready for the review tomorrow?” Me: “do-do do do-do do do”.
This song was following me around with the determination of a stalker. I tried to shake off the song to no avail. It just dug its shark-teeth into my mind even deeper, and the “do-do do do-do do do” was getting louder and louder in my mind. I decided that instead of fighting it, maybe I should just let it run about my head, and the song would just run its course and leave me soon enough. So I relaxed, leaned into the sharks singing “do-do do do-do do do” that day, sure that if I just slept it off, my head would wake up clear of the song the next day.
That evening was hell, as the Shark song followed me around, but I didn’t fight it and just closed my eyes and went to bed, expecting to see the last of the sharks.
I slowly awoke the next morning. I opened my eyes, and looked out of the window into the beautiful flowers that had bloomed in the backyard. The light was streaming in through tiny gaps in the curtain, casting long columns of shadows around the bedroom. That’s pretty, I thought to myself, too scared to think of the-song-that-must-not-be-named, just in case it jumped out and ambushed me. I gingerly looked around my brain trying not to think of what I was looking for, and luckily there was no sign of it.
I got out of bed, and stood up.
A faint beat was echoing in my head. Oh No. I hope its some other song. I desperately tried to recall whatever the latest pop hit was, but before I could inject my own song, the shark do-do song burst forward in my consciousness with the bang of a stick of dynamite going off.
“do-do do do-do do do”.
Oh no! Oh god! This song has incepted itself into my brain. It has slipped past my usual defenses because this abomination of a song disguised itself as a harmless children’s song, and like a virus has now inserted itself deep into my consciousness, invading all my thoughts. It’s also displacing my inner voice in my head. This is a defcon-1 disaster. I haven’t had an original thought in my head in 3 days! All there is, is “do-do do do do-do do do”. Unless I stop this, unless drastic steps are taken, it will soon invade my vocabulary, and all that there will be left in life is “do-do do do-do do do”.
I need to perform an exorcism.
The song doesn’t let up all day. Like a unwelcome house guest, it has plonked itself on my mind’s couch, refusing to leave and forcefully imposing itself on my everyday routine. By the time I get back home that night, my mind is ready to burn itself down.
That night, I prepare exorcism tools. I’ve dug up all the music I listened to during my teenage years, which was the peak of my brush with music. Metallica. Iron Maiden. Music from the death-metal era of teen years. I’ve assembled a playlist of potent songs, each one capable of shaking my brain loose of this shark-virus of a song. I even Googled “catchiest songs of the year” and add them to the playlist.
Like the hell fire of a F-35 attack jet, this playlist is going to carpet bomb my mind and blast this “do-do do do-do do do” into oblivion. I put on my headphones and hit play. Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” bursts forward. Guns ‘N Roses and Slash’s guitar solo. There’s even some Britney Spears in there somewhere. The next 3 hours is a shock-and-awe campaign of intense, loud music, continuously hammering into my brain, reaching out into all the dark corners of my mind and displacing anything that may be hiding there.
My brain has turned to a rattled mess. The massive offensive has probably obliterated all my knowledge of calculus, but that’s a small price to pay to smoke out that infernal song.
I take off my headphones and turn my hearing inwards, listening to the din inside my head. I’m almost too afraid to listen carefully, afraid that if I go looking for the shark do-do, it will show up resurrected. In my mind, I’m carefully listening to my own thoughts, pretending I’m not looking for anything, just walking around, but from the corner of my mind’s eye, on the lookout to see if the sharks show up.
They don’t. What a relief.
I go to bed, and wake up with a clear head the next day. Phew! I breathe a sigh of relief.
Next day, I’m stuck in traffic. As my mind starts to wander, I hear Metallica in my head “I tuck you in, warm within / Keep you free from sin / Until the sandman he comes / do-do do do-do do do.” I shake myself as I catch this track playing in my head. Oh my God, the virus has mutated. I sent in Metallica to destroy the shark song, but the sharks have mutated and lodged their “do-do do do-do do do “ into the attacker. Like the priests in Age of Empire 2, they’ve converted the attacking force and assimilated them into their own, and I now I have a Frankenstein of a song sitting in my head, spinning around unchecked.
What am I going to do now? Is this the end of the road? Am I going to lose my mind, get committed into a mental asylum and spend the rest of my days with the sharks? You know, the Joker in the “Dark Knight” batman movies never explained his origin, but I bet it began with a similar story of a song stuck in his head that he couldn’t get out.
That day is hell. My mind has turned into a surrealist’s dreamscape, with Slash playing “do-do do do-do do do” on his electronic guitar while sharks swim overhead. I think this is the end of my mind. It’s going to crash with a blue-screen-of-death.
I spend the night wide awake. There’s nothing I can do now. Over the course of the day, the Sharks have mutated into a death metal reggae band, and are walking upright in my mind, lasers mounted on their backs, singing the battle cry “do-do do do-do do do”. We’re in the end game now.
I wake up the next morning, my mind unexpectedly still in one piece. That’s a shock. I thought my brain would have to be hard-rebooted by a professional by now, but it seems to be somehow holding it together. Since I’ve hit rock bottom, I decide to just get up and get on with my day, stoically accepting whatever fate the shark song has in store for me.
As I go through the day, I realize that maybe it’s not so bad. My inner voice has miraculously come back, but now has the voice of the shark from Finding Nemo, and occasionally bursts into a bollywood song-and-dance routine “do-do do do-do do do”. Over the next several days, the Sharks have mellowed down and the song has faded into the background a little bit, but remains omni present.
I guess the shark do-do song is just going to be like my personal cosmic background radiation — Always there, coming in from all directions, and cooling slowly over the eons. I’m just going to have to learn to tune it out. The Sharks have also receded along with the flood waters, calmly co-existing within my mind, swimming around in the cold dark waters of my subconsciousness.
I think I’ll leave them alone for a while.
