Story From North America

2007viral videoclassic

"Story From North America" is a 2007 hand-drawn animated short and folk song by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore about a father teaching his son not to kill a spider under his bed. The clip went viral on YouTube after a 2009 re-upload, spawned a 2013 Fox ADHD sequel, and returned in 2020 as a TikTok sound placed over unsettling or absurd visuals.

animation memestiktok sound trendsdelayed virality memesfather son memesearworm memes

Overview

"Story From North America" is a hand-drawn animated short and folk song by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore in which a father talks his young son out of killing a spider crawling under his bed1. Davis wrote and sang the conversational dialogue while Lepore drew the sketchy pencil animation, giving the piece a rough, homemade look that fits its earnest little morality tale3.

The clip runs a bit over two minutes and ends with the pair releasing the spider outside. One verse about a hypothetical world made of pudding was later pulled out of the song and used as a dismissive reply to bad-faith hypotheticals on Tumblr and Twitter4.

How It Spread

In January 2012, YouTuber Xander Greene posted a video of a man performing the song live at a recital, reaching about 67,000 views over the next nine years3. On September 2nd, 2013, Animation Domination High Def, Fox's late-night animation block, released "Story From South America" with Davis, an official sequel about the same father and son working at a prison and arguing about killing or befriending escaped monkeys. The Flash-animated follow-up passed 2.7 million YouTube views but split fans of the original, many of whom preferred the pencil look of the first short.

The song came back into circulation on TikTok in mid-2020, when @waywardscientist posted the opening scene on May 23rd and reached about 2.5 million views. Sound edits followed quickly: @deepfacez placed it over footage of a dark liquid in a drain on June 11th (around 1.4 million views), and @nucleicacids attached it to a long-limbed modified Barbie doll on July 10th (roughly 4.9 million views)3. A year later, on May 18th, 2021, @robofizziepop clipped the darker verse where the spider kills the boy, drawing about 2.8 million views in a month.

Separately, one line, "What if the world was made of pudding?", spread as a stock reply to loaded hypotheticals after Neil Cicierega used it on Tumblr on February 8th, 2014 to answer an anonymous ask about political violence; that post picked up more than 92,000 notes4. The retort later reappeared on Twitter, including a July 25th, 2021 reply from @TransSalamander to a Daily Mail headline about an anti-trans book.

How to Use This Meme

People typically use "Story From North America" in two ways. As a TikTok sound, the folk melody is often layered over unsettling or absurd visuals so the calm father-and-son dialogue clashes with what's on screen. As text, the pudding line is quoted verbatim to shut down a hypothetical the poster considers bad-faith; both uses rely on the reader already knowing the song.

Frequently Asked Questions

Story From North America

2007viral videoclassic

"Story From North America" is a 2007 hand-drawn animated short and folk song by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore about a father teaching his son not to kill a spider under his bed. The clip went viral on YouTube after a 2009 re-upload, spawned a 2013 Fox ADHD sequel, and returned in 2020 as a TikTok sound placed over unsettling or absurd visuals.

animation memes tiktok sound trends delayed virality memes father son memes earworm memes

Overview

"Story From North America" is a hand-drawn animated short and folk song by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore in which a father talks his young son out of killing a spider crawling under his bed1. Davis wrote and sang the conversational dialogue while Lepore drew the sketchy pencil animation, giving the piece a rough, homemade look that fits its earnest little morality tale3.

The clip runs a bit over two minutes and ends with the pair releasing the spider outside. One verse about a hypothetical world made of pudding was later pulled out of the song and used as a dismissive reply to bad-faith hypotheticals on Tumblr and Twitter4.

How It Spread

In January 2012, YouTuber Xander Greene posted a video of a man performing the song live at a recital, reaching about 67,000 views over the next nine years3. On September 2nd, 2013, Animation Domination High Def, Fox's late-night animation block, released "Story From South America" with Davis, an official sequel about the same father and son working at a prison and arguing about killing or befriending escaped monkeys. The Flash-animated follow-up passed 2.7 million YouTube views but split fans of the original, many of whom preferred the pencil look of the first short.

The song came back into circulation on TikTok in mid-2020, when @waywardscientist posted the opening scene on May 23rd and reached about 2.5 million views. Sound edits followed quickly: @deepfacez placed it over footage of a dark liquid in a drain on June 11th (around 1.4 million views), and @nucleicacids attached it to a long-limbed modified Barbie doll on July 10th (roughly 4.9 million views)3. A year later, on May 18th, 2021, @robofizziepop clipped the darker verse where the spider kills the boy, drawing about 2.8 million views in a month.

Separately, one line, "What if the world was made of pudding?", spread as a stock reply to loaded hypotheticals after Neil Cicierega used it on Tumblr on February 8th, 2014 to answer an anonymous ask about political violence; that post picked up more than 92,000 notes4. The retort later reappeared on Twitter, including a July 25th, 2021 reply from @TransSalamander to a Daily Mail headline about an anti-trans book.

How to Use This Meme

People typically use "Story From North America" in two ways. As a TikTok sound, the folk melody is often layered over unsettling or absurd visuals so the calm father-and-son dialogue clashes with what's on screen. As text, the pudding line is quoted verbatim to shut down a hypothetical the poster considers bad-faith; both uses rely on the reader already knowing the song.

Frequently Asked Questions