Origin of 'emotional damage' TikTok explained as trend goes viral 

A trend called ‘emotional damage’ has been going viral on TikTok again. The trend includes funny videos where someone is being roasted, embarrassed, or humiliated. The clip ends with a short video, in which a man yells, “emotional damage” in a dramatic fashion.

The humiliations involved in these videos are only lighthearted and do not include serious matters with derogatory intonation.

Typically, the videos begin with a conversation, in which one person puts the other down or makes fun of them. Then instead of showing the humiliated individual’s reaction, the scene cuts to the man shouting the phrase ‘emotional damage.’

It's basically used as a burn. The relatability of the joke makes the insult funny rather than seriously hurting someone's feelings.

Following the trend, users across TikTok, as well as Twitter, are sharing their own ‘emotional damage’ memes. Some use the same clip of the man in a suit at the end, while others add their own voices to it.

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The 'emotional damage' meme comes from Steven He's 2021 YouTube video

The original video containing the viral phrase is by Steven He, an Irish-Chinese comedian, and YouTube content creator. He is best known for his ‘Asian dad’ sketches, in which he portrays some common and relatable traits of Asian dads and imitates how they react to certain things in general.

This specific voice clip was taken from one of Steven’s YouTube videos uploaded in September 2021. The video was titled When "Asian" is a Difficulty Mode, where his Asian dad (portrayed by Steven himself) plays a video game that has multiple difficulty levels ranging from easy to hard.

The hilarious part was when Steven added another level to the game called ‘Asian’.

In the skit, Steve shows that his Asian dad’s character is getting killed in the game just by getting hit by a leaf or by tanning under the sun for too long.

After a few tries, a boss called ‘Aunty’ appears on the screen and asks the dad when he got so fat. The character instantly dies, and the cause of death is shown as ‘emotional damage,’ implying that the character died from the insult. The scene then changes to Steven shouting the phrase.

Steven’s video got over 1.7 million likes on YouTube. Soon after that, a TikTok account was created by the name @emotional__damage. Several funny videos were posted on this account – all of which ended with the popular line from Steven’s video. These videos quickly went viral, earning the account over 3 million followers.

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Other people doing the trend

In one of the videos in which the meme has been incorporated, a man dressed as a clown interviewed a woman who appeared to be a wrestler. The clown asked the woman about the weight of the barbells next to her. When the woman said they were 200 lbs the clown replied:

“I bet that’s what your scale says too.”

This is when the ‘emotional damage’ clip was added to complete the meme.

In another TikTok video, a girl with dental braces and a gap between two of her front teeth asked her followers:

“When did you all realize Covid was serious?”

The reply read:

“When I saw your teeth social distancing.”

This was followed by Steven’s famous line.

In another video from a TikTok user @code016.ditf, a boy aimed to throw a pen in a pen stand from a distance, and said if he reached the target, it would mean his crush liked him back. Instead of throwing the pen from afar, he came closer to the pen stand and aimed for it. However, to his misfortune, he still missed, and then the scene changed to Steven’s phrase.