Story From North America

About

Story From North America is a viral animated video and song by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore in which a father debates the morality of killing a spider crawling around under his bed, ultimately teaching his son that all life is important. The video, animated in a hand-drawn, absurd style, was first posted to YouTube in 2009, becoming notably viral over the next decade across social media platforms and inspiring a sequel.

Origin

"Story From North America" was first uploaded to animator Kristen Lepore's website^[2] in May 2007.

On January 15th, 2009, "Story From North America" was uploaded to the kirstenlepore YouTube^[1] channel (shown below), who co-animated the video with Garrett Davis, credited as an animator and the musician behind the song. The video, drawn in a hand-drawn pencil style, depicts an interaction between a son and a father. The son wants his dad to kill a spider under his bed, but the dad refuses, instead teaching his son about the value of life, thinking of beings other than yourself and assuring his son that his fears are baseless. In the end, the father and son release the spider into the wild. The video gained over 5.1 million views in 12 years.

Notably, Lepore also animated the Hi, Stranger video^[3] in collaboration with Garrett Dais heavily featured in the Tag a Friend and Don't Say Anything trend in 2017.

Spread

On January 19th, 2012, YouTuber^[5] Xander Greene posted a video of a man singing the song on stage for a recital, gaining over 67,000 views in nine years (shown below).

Story From South America

On September 2nd, 2013, Animation Domination High Def, a block of cartoons on Fox that featured short original animations between shows, teamed up with Garrett Davis to make a sequel to "Story From North America" titled "Story From South America." The animation features the same father and son duo working at a prison and dealing with escaped monkeys, as they flip-flop between wanting to kill the monkeys or befriend them (shown below). The video gained over 2.7 million views on YouTube^[4] in eight years.

The sequel received mixed reviews from fans of the original, with some saying it failed to capture the spirit of the original, and that the Flash animation paled in comparison to the hand-drawn animation of "Story From North America."

Daddy Daddy, Hurry, I Saw Something Scurry / TikTok

On May 23rd, 2020, TikToker @waywardscientist posted the opening clip from "Story From North America," garnering over 2.5 million views in just over a year. The original sound became significantly widespread over the following months, resulting in a number of popular videos. For example, on June 11th, TikToker^[6] @deepfacez posted a video wiping away an ominous dark liquid in a drain, garnering over 1.4 million views in a year (shown below, left). On July 10th, TikToker^[7] @nucleicacids posted a video of a modified Barbie doll with elongated limbs to the sound, garnering over 4.9 million views in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

A year later, on May 18th, 2021, TikToker^[8] @robofizziepop posted another clip from the song, this time showing the spider killing the boy, garnering over 2.8 million views in a month (shown below).

What If The World Was Made of Pudding?

One conversational verse from the song later became widely referenced as a retort for when a social media user offers an outlandish hypothetical scenario:

That's the point dad, what if he did?
That's why, I have to strike first!
What if he did? What if he didn't?
What if the world was made of pudding?

One of the most well-known examples of this and perhaps the exchange that sparked the usage of "What if the world was made of pudding?" as a common retort was posted by Neil Cicierega to Tumblr on February 8th, 2014.^[9] After an anonymous user asked Cicierega, "If someone beats you up for being 'cishet white male' and nothing else, is this okay? Did you deserve it?," he replied, "What if the world was made of pudding?" The post gained over 92,000 notes in eight years (shown below).

Over the following years, the phrase became a common retort for when a social media users proffers an outlandish hypothetical scenario. This often came under politically-themed hypotheticals. For example, on July 25th, 2021, Twitter user @TransSalamander^[10] posted it in response to a Daily Mail headline about an author publishing an anti-trans book, gaining over 400 retweets and 3,800 likes (shown below, left). On March 28th, 2022, Twitter user @primarycatdad^[11] joked "what if the world was made of pudding" was "the correct Marxist response to hypothetical questions that require you to presume the world is fundamentally other than what it is" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References