Gah Dayum

Submission 34,281

Part of a series on TikTok. [View Related Entries]

About

Gah Dayum or "God Damn" TikTok refers to a viral audio clip of a woman exclaiming "god damn" in a deep, raspy voice that sounds more male than female. The clip was originally posted to TikTok by @drknlovely in October 2020 as part of a trend where users say "god damn" over a blank section of a song and went viral as an original sound in lip-dub skits over the following months. In January 2022, a remixed shitpost version of the sound with added echoes, distortion, music and fart sound effects went viral, spreading beyond TikTok.

Origin

On October 14th, 2020, TikToker^[1] @drknlovely posted a video following a trend where TikTokers say "god damn" during a blank section of a song. The user's "god damn" sounds like "gah dayum" and is notably deep and manly sounding, despite the TikToker being a woman. The video gained over 3.5 million views in just over a year. She posted a second version of the video to TikTok^[2] that day so TikTokers could use it as an original sound, gaining over 2 million views in the same span of time (shown below).

The original sound became notably popular over the following months, inspiring over 25,300 videos in just over a year. The majority are skits where the TikToker lip dubs to "gah dayum" as it's said (examples shown below, left and right). YouTuber^[3] TikTok Rabgit posted a compilation of the videos in October of that year, gaining over 189,000 views in just over a year.

Spread

On January 1st, 2022, TikToker^[4] @dripiathy posted a video using a remixed version of the sound effect, distorting it in various ways and repeating the phrase in different pitches, gaining over 1.7 million views in just under three weeks (shown below).

The original sound inspired over 11,000 videos in roughly three weeks. Many of these videos are shitposts and 21st-century humor edits, setting the audio to random footage of memes, although there is no specific trend related with the sound on TikTok (examples shown below, left and right).

Versions of the sound effect have also spread outside of TikTok. On January 14th, Instagram^[5]^[6] meme pages halfvampirehalfsuccubus and memeguard.mp4 posted absurd video edits using the sound effect, gaining over 8,300 views and 150 views respectively in five days (shown below, left and right).