Dad Sneeze

About

Dad Sneeze is a cliché which points out how peoples' fathers seem to consistently make the loudest, most unique sounds when sneezing. The idea has been joked about and parodied throughout the 2000s, and inspired image macro in 2019.

Origin

People have been joking about "dad sneezes" online for decades. For example, in a thread on posted October 25th, 2002 ArsTechnica,^[1] user SneakerLint wrote "My Dad used to scare the hell out of me regularly as a child with his sneezes. Now that I'm grown up, I believe my sneezes have topped his. I will TERRIFY my sons and daughters some day, once my wife happens to introduce herself to me." On June 25th, 2007, DrownedInSound^[2] forums user shucks wrote "my dad's sneezes = loudest thing ever!" Jokes specifically referring to "dad sneezes" as a general term for loud sneezes began on Twitter around 2012. For example, on August 27th, actress Molly Ringwald^[3] said she had done a "dad sneeze" (shown below).

Spread

Jokes about "Dad Sneezes" began appearing more frequently over the course of the following decade, culminating in a December 27th, 2018 tweet by user poth0le,^[4] who wrote "never in my life have I heard my dad sneeze at an acceptable volume," gaining over 4,200 retweets and 19,000 likes (shown below, left). A month later, Buzzfeed^[5] posted a listicle of tweets about Dad Sneezes, including a popular tweet by @brokeangel that gained over 3,600 retweets and 18,000 likes (shown below, right).

Over the following years, jokes about Dad Sneezes were made in image macros. For example, on May 13th, 2019, Memebase posted a Thanos meme about Dad Sneezes, gaining over 1,300 likes (shown below, left). On September 20th, 2019, Imgur user LymeWarrior6ix9ine posted an image macro that gained over 2000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References