About

Deep Dab is a comedic dance move in which one performs a dab by lowering their knee low enough to nearly touch the ground. In 2019, the move was added to the video game Fortnite. YouTuber jacksfilms then accused the game of stealing his movie, similar to The Carlton, The Floss and other dance emotes.

Origin

On June 19th, 2017, YouTuber jacksfilms published a video entitled "my lowest, deepest dab." In the video, the YouTuber performs the dance move. In two years, the video received more than 1.7 million views (shown below).

Spread

Later that year, on October 3rd, jacksfilms published another version of the video, "My slowest, longest dab." The post received more than 2.2 million views (shown below, left).

On June 19th, 2019, the official Fornite Twitter account published a video, announcing that the "Deep Dab" would be made available as an emote in Fortnite. The post received more than 24,000 likes, 4,000 comments and 2,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Bring 'em down to your level.

The new Deep Dab Emote is available now! pic.twitter.com/pPEvW0m1WN

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) June 20, 2019

Some responded to the tweet by noting that the move resembled the jacksfilms "Deep Dab" videos (shown below, left).

That day, jacksfilms responded to the emote in the video "Fortnite is literally selling my deep dab." In his video, the host compares the two moves and claims that Fortnite used his version of the deep dab as an example, calling it "mo-cap" or motion capture. Within one week, the video received more than 1.4 million views.

On June 23rd, Twitter user @TheFlexDaddy mocked the alleged dance movie, writing "Make sure to support a legitimate creator when purchasing competitive advantages from the item shop!" The "competitive advantage" the user is referring to is an exploit in which the move "allows players that have built a window structure to slide underneath the middle section and shoot their opponents immediately after the emote animation comes to a close. When performed correctly, it's going to be very difficult for an opponent to be able to combat the move."^[1]

Make sure to support a legitimate creator when purchasing competitive advantages from the item shop! pic.twitter.com/llKdurtcpR

— TheFlexDaddy (@TheFlexDaddy) June 23, 2019

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