DAMN DANIEL BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH THE DEAD MEME

Picture this. Friday night, February 2016. A 18 year-old me is sitting on the couch at my friends house scrolling through vine when all of the sudden this is what I hear.

And thus… Damn Daniel came into my life.

A little history on *Daaaammmmmnnnn Daniel*. (A side note — this information is coming from my new favourite website knowyourmeme.com ) The phrase Damn Daniel became a meme when high school student Josh Holz posted a video montage — comprised of nine snapchats of him ‘complimenting’ his friend Daniel Lara’s fashion, most notably his white vans. The video was posted to twitter in February 2016 and received 121,938 retweets four days after being posted.

The world saw an opportunity with this new meme. Obviously Vans jumped on it, and it was announced that Daniel would participate in a vans ad campaign. However 2 years later, it looks like that never actually happened.

Everyone was referencing Damn Daniel and putting their own spin on it. My personal favourite is Damn Trash can.

But like most internet trends and memes, Damn Daniel rose fast and fell fast. A few weeks, one Ellen appearance and a lifetime supply of Vans later — Damn Daniel had for the most part disappeared into the dark interenet hole. But this was not the end for Damn Daniel. Seven months later — LG tried to revive Damn Daniel by remixing and ‘remastering’ it. Although it turned Damn Daniel into a cheesy, over-used catch phrase that cause eyeballs to roll, and people to groan.

The reason this failed for LG, Daniel and Josh is because they waited too long. This ad was released in September 2016 which was months after the hype surrounding Damn Daniel died down. This meant that it was not relevant anymore and to be quite honest — no one gave a crap about how fly Daniel looked with his white Vans.

If this ad had been released closer to when Damn Daniel was relevent and popular, perhaps that would have expanded its life as a relevent piece of culture. Daniel and Josh both kind of just sat back and enjoyed the ride when Damn Daniel was at its peak and as a result the peak was brief. In March 2016 they appeared in the music video for the song California Kids by Weezer. But other than that not much happened for the duo directly after the video went viral.

10 months after Damn Daniel was released to the world, almost everyone (especially 25 and under) knew what Damn Daniel was and would occasionally say it to be funny. But no one knew or cared what Daniel Lara or Josh Holz were doing. Daniel did appeared briefly in YouTube Rewind 2016. But Daniel and Josh were back to being regular high school students.

The reason Damn Daniel had such a small lifespan was because the creators took too long trying to find something to capitalize it. It would be like if the Selfie Kid (who is already kind of irrelevant) made an ad with Samsung in September. There’s a specific timeline to how memes can make the most out of their lifespan and unfortunately (or fortunetly) Damn Daniels timeline did not work. Damn Daniel back at it again with the failed relevence.