All Is Lost; Nightmare Man "Surprises" Wife With Her Own Pregnancy
In an age where elaborately-staged marriage proposals and tearjerking pregnancy reveals are YouTube commonplace, self-proclaimed vloggers must now go to extreme lengths to achieve maximum virality when announcing their most personal family moments online. One man brought this terrifying reality into stark relief Wednesday when he posted a video titled, “HUSBAND SHOCKS WIFE WITH PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT!”, in which he steals his wife’s urine and subsequently “surprises” her with her own positive pregnancy test.
Men: they have ideas, and they go for them. The man who had this particular idea is a dad vlogger named Sam, who posts videos every single day with his wife, Nia. They’re best known for the viral YouTube hit “Good Looking Parents Sing Disney’s Frozen (Love Is an Open Door).”
This week’s video is much more inventive than a lip sync of a children’s tune, however. Sam reiterated the premise in the caption: “That’s right! For the first time daddy announces the pregnancy to mommy!”
Behold, the most cynical eight minutes of film ever posted to the web:
Are you crying?
Sam is happy that you’re crying. Every second of the video, which has now garnered over 4 million views on YouTube and was picked up by E! News, The Daily Mail, and The Huffington Post, is played to the audience. From the first moment Sam dips a pregnancy test into a toilet full of his wife’s pee—he knows that she “goes pee all night long”—to the last rambling bit where he announces he’ll eventually post a time-lapse video of her growing bump, the realities of what another child will mean for the couple are treated as an afterthought. But can you believe that Daddy surprised Mommy? Isn’t Daddy amazing?
That Sam appears to be wholly concerned with “going viral” is not even the video’s primary flaw. The conceit is, of course, unbelievable. In between mugging for the camera and doing cartoon voices while eyeing his wife’s stale urine in a (locked?) bathroom, Sam explains, in a series of takes eventually pieced together, how he’s going to pull this off:
So I’ve had this dream about announcing Nia’s pregnancy to her. [CUT] I want to find out before she does. And last night at 1:30 a.m., while I was at work, she randomly texted me and said that she’s two weeks late. [CUT] All night long Nia usually goes pee throughout the night. She has a bladder the size of a golfball. [CUT] And she doesn’t flush the toilet at night because she’s afraid she’ll wake up the baby [CUT]
He then produces a pregnancy test and dunks it in the toilet. And it’s positive!
Okay.
Okay.
Then the surprise: Sam enters the kitchen, where a bathrobe-wearing Nia is cooking breakfast for their two young children. Sam shoves the camera in her face, turns it back on himself to smirk at the audience, then—cue the swelling, emotional background music—ya pregnant! Nia is shocked and excited, the kids are confused, and Sam’s floating on air. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Nia exclaims. “I had all these plans to tell Sam myself when I found out. This isn’t fair!” Sam then explains to Nia that she must be “two weeks” along, and she kindly counters that no, that’s not how it works.
During the comedown from the emotional climax, Sam interviews his young daughter about the news, who sweetly says she’s excited about “holding the baby while Mommy makes dinner and breakfast.” Nia responds, “I can’t even handle it because those are the things that scare me the most, having to still cook dinner with a newborn...”
Now I’m crying.
Whether or not Nia actually learned of her pregnancy for the first time during the filming of the video, the idea that a man surprising a woman with the contents of her own uterus in front of millions of viewers is supposed to be—what? Heartwarming? A thoughtful gift? Extremely cool?—is insane. Let this woman have control over at least one thing.
Even if a man is absolutely sure that his partner will be thrilled she’s carrying his child, it is polite to let her discover this information about her own body herself (or together, if she asks).
But in the quest to make the Yahoo! homepage, everything must be sacrificed, including any last tether to reality. In the video, both Sam and Nia address the camera more than they address each other. Despite the fact that she’s getting the shock of her life, Nia habitually refers to “you guys”—the viewers—throughout the video, narrating her experience as it happens.
We’re having a baby. We all are.
Wow guys! One million views in 24 hours!! pic.twitter.com/iUW56OEVuR
— Sam&Nia (@SamAndNia) August 6, 2015
Surprise.