The Guys Who Make Dad Memes for a Living

The first time I consciously registered a dad meme online, I was a little embarrassed by how funny I found it. We were still struggling with sleep training a year in, and I was on Instagram trying to ignore the monitor, and a former spin instructor/fellow new parent shared this post that was a picture from a movie of a zombie—clothes in tatters, eyes blank, face bloody—shuffling away from an explosion. The caption was something along the lines of: Dads after the bedtime routine. It was from an account called The Dad, the most prominent aggregator of all things dadness, which had just climbed over two million Instagram followers. I went back to The Dad, began to recognize the names often reposted there and on similar platforms—Dad and Buried, Dad at Law, Matt the Dad. I reached out to dozens of these men, for some reason expecting to be ignored, but many were flattered, or at least bemused, by my interest, and willing to chat. And in every conversation, at some point, talk turns back to the rooms.

Esquire sent this email to their subscribers on April 18, 2024.