introducing the next generation to Numa Numa

- 2 minutes read - 249 words

Kiddo and I often play a little bit of Switch together right before or after dinner. Last night, she was humming what my spouse and I both thought was a nonsense melody that she was making up—but that immediately reminded both of us of the Romanian dance song Dragostea Din Tei as featured in the classic internet meme Numa Numa.

It turned out that kiddo was humming Dragostea Din Tei—the adults had both forgotten that a version (or sample? I dunno) of the song features in Mitchells vs. the Machines, but she’d watched it recently on her own, and that’s what she had in her mind when singing during Switch time.

Anyway, that turned into explaining to kiddo how we knew the song and watching the meme video together, which she found a lot of fun. We chatted about internet video before YouTube and looked up together how the guy in the video felt about his memetic status, to make sure that we weren’t exploiting him for our own amusement à la Lightsaber Kid. Over the past 18 hours or so, we’ve also basically just had the song permanently stuck in our heads, which we haven’t helped by bringing it up to listen to just one more time.

This has been one of a few moments where my spouse and I have enjoyed reminiscing about 2000s internet culture and trying to explain it to the next generation, and I’m looking forward for the next unexpected opportunity to do so.

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