Sky Daddy

Submission 15,376

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About

Sky Daddy is a nickname for God that has been casually used on the web since at least 2004. The term is frequently used by atheists to joke about God and Christians, as some believers see it as offensive. The term became increasingly popular in December of 2020 due to a viral TikTok video in which an abortion clinic escort argues with an anti-abortion protester, saying, "so go off Jennifer, is that the validation you want from sky daddy?"

Origin

The first instance of the term "sky daddy" in reference to God is unknown, but has been floating around on the web since at least 2004. On October 26th, 2004, Urban Dictionary user mongoloid defined the term as "euphemism for god"^[1] garnering 272 likes in 16 years (shown below, left). This is the earliest known definition of the term. In a Yahoo! answers post^[2] from over a decade ago asking, "Who coined the word 'Sky Daddy'?" an anonymous user claims the term was common amongst hippies in the 60s (shown below, right).

The term is frequently used by atheists to refer jokingly to God, often to bait a reaction from believers. It became popular on atheist YouTube channels around 2006. For example, on December 22nd, 2006, YouTuber abortedsoul uploaded a video titled, "Invisible Sky Daddy."^[10] criticizing Christians (shown below).

The term has caught on outside atheist-specific circles as well, used commonly in political circles, too. On August 22nd, Redditor broadcash posted a meme joking about the Bible to /r/PoliticalCompassMemes^[3] titled, "Definitely Sky Daddy will send me to Hell for making fun of his novel" garnering over 1,700 upvotes in 3 months (shown below, left). on September 16th, Redditor lol62056 posted a screenshot of a tweet joking about conservative Christians to /r/politicalhumor^[4] under the title, "Conservatives love their magical sky daddy" garnering over 36,000 upvotes in 2 months (shown below, right).

Is That The Validation You Want From Sky Daddy?

On November 29th, 2020, TikToker loveurmother uploaded a video to TikTok^[5] in which an unnamed abortion clinic escort is in the middle of an argument with what appears to be an anti-abortion protester (shown below). The video starts with the escort saying, "but that's loving her by calling her a coward? Really?" to which the protestor responds, "No, he's a coward," and the escort responds, "you can shut the fuck up. Because they're making the best decision that they can in their situation and you're trying to make them feel bad about it. So go off, Jennifer. Is that the validation you want from sky daddy?" The video gained over 8 million views in a day.

Spread

On November 29th, 2020, Twitter user sportyidk posted loveurmother's video to Twitter,^[6] garnering over 1.3 million views, 29,000 retweets, and 106,000 likes. The video was reposted^[7] again by McuScottLang on December 1st, along with the caption "adds Sky Daddy to vocabulary" garnering over 1.3 million views, 1,400 retweets, and 9,300 likes in 10 hours. On that same day, the term "sky daddy" started trending on Twitter as users shared and reacted to the video. For example, on December 1st, Twitter user AlexUlrichh tweeted,^[8] "Sky Daddy coming down from Heaven to punish everybody slandering his name on Twitter" along with a video, garnering over 1.6 million views and 1,200 likes in 5 hours (shown below).

On the same day, The Mary Sue^[9] published an article describing why the term was trending. Later that day, lola_veux commented on sportyidk's repost of the video on Twitter making a joke about Christians who hate on non-Christians, garnering over 1,200 retweets and 8,700 likes in 4 hours (shown below).