Brbr Deng

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About

Brbr Deng is a nickname given to the 2000 song "Dig" by American heavy metal band Mudvayne. Starting in 2012, the song has appeared in humorous edits on YouTube and other platforms, acquiring the onomatopoeic nickname "Brbr Deng" in late 2018.

Origin

On August 22nd, American heavy metal band Mudvayne released their debut album L.D. 50.^[1] The first single from the album, "Dig", peaked at number 33 position on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart^[2] and went on to become one of the band's signature songs. In the same year, the music video for the song was released.

On October 3rd, 2009, the Mudvayne YouTube channel uploaded the music video for "Dig" (shown below). Within 10 years, the video accumulated upwards of 30 million views.

Spread

On November 29th, 2012, YouTube user Ammnontet uploaded the first known edit of the song, titled "Most Brutal Metal Scream 2012" (shown below), in which the opening scream was replaced with a weak, stretched-out "a" vowel. The parody received over 11 million views in seven years.

In the following years, more edits of the song were posted to YouTube, with several notable examples also posted to /r/YoutubeHaiku subreddit.^[3] For example, an edit by YouTube user kmlkmljkl received over 110,000 views in three years (shown below, right).

The exact origin of Brbr Deng meme is currently unknown. On October 26th, 2018, Instagram user paegr posted an image of Mudvayne bassist Ryan Martinie from the music video, captioned with onomatopoeic representation of the opening riff, "brbr deng brbr deng"(shown below).^[10]

On November 2nd, Twitter user @bustedpipes made a reference to the joke.^[4] On November 5th, the image was reposted in /r/comedyheaven subreddit.^[5]

Over the following months, more edits of the image appeared online, with several notable early examples posted by Instagram users paegr^[11] and offensive_metal_meme (shown below, left and right).^[12]

On February 5th, 2019, YouTuber Knux827 uploaded a video titled 'brbr DENG" (shown below, left), which used Only Jerks and Bimbos video template by Instagram user yaomarso.^[6] On April 23rd, YouTuber Florian R. Kiss uploaded a looped clip from the Mudvayne music video titled "brbr DENG for 10 hours" (shown below, right).

In April 2019, the format gained significant recognition in music-themed communities on Facebook, with multiple notable examples of the meme appearing in DjentShitposting group.^[8]^[9]

On April 24, 2019, Redditor Flickkerke reposted a meme based on the "Only Jerks and Bimbos" video previously posted by Instagram user offensive_metal_meme^[12] to /r/comedyheaven subreddit.^[7] The post received over 13,800 upvotes in three days, prompting a surge in popularity of the meme on Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.