About

"Damn Nature, You Scary!" is an online expression typically associated with videos depicting the destructive side of the mother nature, including amateur-shot footage of natural disasters and documentary films about wildlife animals.

Origin

The phrase first appeared on the American animated sitcom Family Guy in Season 6, Episode 10 titled Play It Again, Peter^[1], which aired on March 2nd, 2008. In the episode, Peter Griffin can be seen watching a fictional BET nature documentary show titled Damn Nature, You Scary, in which the stereotypical "ghetto-sounding" narrator says the phrase while observing a cheetah viciously maul a meerkat.

Spread

The earliest known use of the phrase in online discussions can be traced to a DVD Talks^[5] forum thread posted on March 2nd, 2008, the same day as the premiere of the Family Guy episode. On April 15th, The phrase appeared on the Rolling Stone fansite It's Only Rock n' Roll in a forum thread titled "OT: Family Guy vs Simpsons."^[2] On May 29nd, a question regarding the origin of the phrase was submitted to Yahoo Answers^[3]. On June 17th, the phrase was used as the title of a forum thread on the Kansas City Chiefs fan-site ChiefsPlanet^[4], which featured a photograph of a funnel cloud coming towards the photographer (shown below), along with a link to a New York Times article^[6] about said image.

On January 14th, 2009, Urban Dictionary user Ralph Maloy submitted the first definition^[7] of the phrase, eventually getting featured as the Urban Word of the Day in November 2011. On May 22nd, 2009, the single topic blog Damn Nature, You Scary^[8] was launched via Tumblr featuring a wide range of graphic images and videos of animals, insects, and undersea life, but the site has ceased updating sometime in January 2010. A Facebook^[11] page for the quote was created on December 31st, 2009 and has since gained over 11,000 likes as of December 2012. On January 6th, 2010, Youtuber Shae90TV uploaded a video (shown below) titled "Damn Nature You Scary (Live Action)," which showed footage of cheetah mauling a gazelle featuring the original narration voicing over it, and has since gained over 300,000 views as of December 2012.

Since then, the phrase has spread to Tumblr under the tags "#damn nature"^[9] and "#damn nature, you scary"^[10] where animal-related images, videos, and stories has been shared, and as of December 2012, there are 280 results on Reddit^[12] and 1,130 results on Youtube^[13] under the search term "Damn Nature, You Scary."

Notable Examples

Videos

Search Interest

Interest for both "Damn Nature" and "Damn Nature, You Scary" spiked in March of 2008, the same month as the episode's original air date.

External References