Evidence, with a photograph: a laminated menu in a chain pub, 21 January. Damn Daniel used as a verb by an organisation that has never previously used a verb.
Damn Daniel
A boy in white Vans praised by his friend in a rising voice. Ellen gave him a lifetime supply of the shoes eight days later, and that was the end of it.
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6 entries · newest firstCause of death is wrong, or at least incomplete. “Overexposure” is what finished it, but it was already fading from ordinary use by 2017. Overexposure was the symptom, not the disease.
The headnote is right but it undersells how ordinary this was at the time. Nobody using Damn Daniel in 2016 thought of it as a thing with a name; it was just how you talked, and naming it is what started the clock.
For the record — a university's clearing hotline hold message, seen 12 June. Damn Daniel in an automated message. A person configured this once, years ago, and has since left the company.
My first encounter with Damn Daniel was a friend sending me a link with no explanation at all, which was the etiquette then. You did not say what it was. You said 'look' and let it happen to the person.
The simplest definition of Damn Daniel is the one you would give a parent, and the reason it is hard to write down is that the parent version is the one that killed it.
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What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.