The Guy Who Pointed a GoPro the Wrong Way for an Entire Vacation Is the Most Dad Thing on the Internet

The necessary call-and-response nature of the internet means I need to somehow draft an introduction pretending you haven't already seen this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro, even though we both know you've already seen this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro, because everyone has seen this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro.

The reason this video is funny is because the Irish dad is using the GoPro back-to-front. I have to tell you that in case you have not seen the video and need a little sizzle to get you hungry for the steak. But as discussed: You have seen this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro. We are all consuming the same culture, every second of every day. The echo chamber amplifies every joke into a scream. But here I am just embedding it anyway:

That was fun, wasn't it, how you didn't click on that video because you've already seen it? That was fun. And so let's consider this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro, which everyone has seen: This video of an Irish dad using a GoPro is—and I don't think this is hyperbole—the most dad thing to ever happen on the internet.

Dads. Dads doing dad things. Dads turning all the lights off in the house while screaming. Dads slowly leafing through a big catalogue of screwdrivers. Dads sobbing in a shed. Dads taking a 45-minute Christmas Day shit. Dads meaning to put a shelf up but not actually putting a shelf up. Dads speaking just a little bit too loudly into a mobile phone because they don't quite understand the technology. Dads cracking dad jokes to the waiter in a restaurant. Dads really fancying Myleene Klass. Dads not understanding these eyebrows these girls have these days. Dads ordering a curry that's slightly too hot for them but turning away all offers of a glass of milk. Dads only truly having an emotional attachment to the dog. And Dads somehow spending an entire holiday in Vegas pointing a GoPro camera at their own face. Dads inadvertently foretelling the future of the internet.

Because consider the moment when the Irish dad does a Forrest Gump impression for nobody and think: Is he really that different from an under-watched beauty blogger in Nottingham perkily telling an audience of six about her social anxiety?

Watch Irish dad repeatedly videoing himself going up a series of Vegas escalators—Vegas escalators so unpicturesque that, even if the camera was facing the right way, the footage would be incredibly boring—and think: is this really that much different from watching someone slowly explain their shopping haul?

And watch Irish dad look in the completely wrong direction to the Grand Canyon while hanging out of a high window and think: is he really that dissimilar, really, to that awful Sam Pepper, with his social experiments and his help-the-homeless viral platitudes, that awful Sam Pepper, that terrible man? No. No he is not.

Vlogging is just talking quickly and with an annoying inflection. That's all vlogging is. And as our bodies age and die, and the vlogging generation grows up, this is what YouTube will turn into: that, but older and less technologically apt. Irish dad cluelessly commentating a dull walk around Vegas actually makes him a trailblazing vlogging auteur. Zip forward into the future: Zoella doing an 18-minute review of homeopathic HRT alternatives, Alfie Deyes doing his thousand-yard stare while slowly telling a dying audience about his favorite Christmas present, a spade. Tyler Oakley documenting an irregular ear check-up. ASMR videos complaining about how often they have to go to the bathroom these days. Beauty vloggers getting really excited about hand cream.

The internet when we were young was MySpace friend shuffling and Livejournal emotional indulgence, and then the last whisps of puberty hit and we all got smartphones and opinions about the news, and that's when Twitter and longreads got big. The internet is aging with us and we are aging with the internet.

Look at Facebook now: It was fun when you first started, wasn't it? And now it's just people your age having babies and buying houses. Can you hear it, on the wind? Every cell in your body is dying and you are racing inexorably towards the grave. We age and we change: we stretch and we shrink. I used to laugh at my parents when they didn't know how to program the VHS player, and now I brick my iPhone every time I update the iOS. Irish GoPro dad is me in 15 years, in 20 years. Irish GoPro dad lives inside my body and is waiting to one day burst out.

Catch your boy in the year 2032, wearing a Sports Direct T-shirt and using his son's GoPro to ruin a family holiday. Catch your boy in two decades shouting "YOU TREAT THIS HOUSE LIKE A HOTEL" furiously up some stairs. Catch your boy in less then 20 years dying of a heart attack while watching PewDiePie host Top Gear. My final Facebook update is me obliviously trying to sell a cupboard on Gumtree, one Sodalicious chain away from a new Candy Crush hi-score. Irish GoPro dad is me one day, and you. Irish GoPro dad is what we are all doomed to become.

Anyway: funny vid!

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