About

Did He Died? (alternatively, “Did He Die?”) is a catchphrase generally posted by people attempting to troll in the comment sections of YouTube videos depicting physical injuries or accidents, such as FAIL videos. Although the expression had its beginning as a troll-bait containing a grammatical error, it has been increasingly used in comments without any context, regardless of whether there’s a reason to even question if anyone might have died in the video.

Other variations of the phrase include, “did he dieded” or “did x died,” where X is the subject of the video.

Origin

The first recorded instance of the expression can be found in the comments section of a YouTube anime music video^[15] uploaded on November 5th, 2006.

What episode did he died? And when did he cut is hair?
posted 4 years ago by 57682835

Although its exact site of origin or the backstory remains unknown, the phrase became closely associated with comment trolling in FAIL videos on YouTube and Cheezburger's FAILBlog before spreading to other videos on YouTube. The earliest known iteration of "did he died?" in the context of FAIL was posted in July 2007 to a YouTube video of a soccer player getting injured during a game.^[7] The phrase was first defined on Urban Dictionary^[4] in December 2008.

Spread

Between May and June, a handful of additional definitions were added to Urban Dictionary^[5], each referencing its popular usage in YouTube comments. By 2009, the phrase was used on 4chan^[11] and on May 17th of that year, the first Yahoo! Answers question^[13] about the fad was posted. Several thousand related questions^[14] were submitted to the site over the following three years.

Throughout 2010, several Facebook groups were created for “did he died,” all in relation to FAILBlog, including OMG! Did He Died?^[9], FAIL --> “Did He Died??”^[10] and The Guy Who Always Comments “DID HE DIED?” on FAILBlog Videos.^[8]

As of May 2012, the phrase is still being used as a trolling mechanism on YouTube videos^[6] and as a tag on Tumblr.^[12]

Meta Videos

In 2009, videos began appearing as self-aware satires of the phrase, with creators using the title in their FAIL videos in anticipation of the comments or in vlog style videos complaining about the commenters who use the phrase. As of May 2012, there are 562 videos with "did he died" in the title.^[1]

Search Interest

Since "did he died" is a misspelling of a common phrase, it is hard to accurately gauge the search results in relation to the video comments.

External References