About

Father, When Can I Leave To Be On My Own? is a quote from the upcoming 2022 animated film Pinocchio: A True Story spoken by Pinocchio who's voiced by Pauly Shore. In late January 2022, TikTokers began using the audio clip of Shore saying the line from the trailer in lip-dub skits, joking that Pinocchio sounds like a stereotypically effeminate gay man or yassified version of Pinocchio. The film's producer, Lionsgate, as well as Shore, played into the jokes.

Origin

On January 26th, 2022, the trailer for the upcoming Pinocchio film Pinocchio: A True Story, produced by Lionsgate and starring Pauly Shore as Pinocchio, was uploaded to YouTube.^[1] The trailer begins with Gepetto naming Pinocchio, followed by Pinocchio saying, "Father, when can I leave to be on my own?" (shown below). The video gained over 715,000 views in two weeks. The choice of Shore for the voice was considered funny to many who immediately reacted to the trailer. A post of the isolated clip by Twitter^[3] user @AniMat505 made on January 31st gained over 184,000 likes and 22,000 retweets in one week.

On February 4th, the official Lionsgate TikTok^[2] page posted the clip from the trailer containing Pinnochio's dialogue with an on-screen text box reading "Wait til you hear it…," playing into the memes, with the video description reading, "the yassification of #pinocchio" (shown below). The video gained over 12.1 million views in five days.

Spread

On February 2nd, 2022, YouTuber^[8] Crystul posted a meme titled "Stan Twitter: Fruity Pinocchio" using the clip followed by a reaction clip of a woman smelling the air and saying "this is definitely fruity," gaining over 286,000 views in a week (shown below).

The original sound for Lionsgate's video became popularized on TikTok as the subject of lip dubs that month as users acted as an exaggerated, stereotypically effeminate gay man while lip dubbing Pinocchio's line. For example, on February 6th, TikToker^[4] @scotthoying posted a video to the sound, gaining over 10.7 million views in three days (shown below, left). On February 7th, TikToker^[5] @jalogann posted a similar video, gaining over 10.4 million views in two days (shown below, right).

On February 8th, 2022, Pauly Shore posted a similar lip-dub video to the sound to TikTok,^[6] gaining over 761,000 views in under 24 hours (shown below). That day, Us Magazine^[7] published a piece on Shore's video.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References