About

Obama's Strategy For Picking Up Girls refers to a passage from Barack Obama's memoir A Promised Land in which he describes reading philosophers and critical theorists in an attempt to attract girls in college. He describes reading Marx and Marcuse to try and attract a "long-legged socialist," Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks to attract a "smooth-skinned sociology major," and Foucault and Woolf for "the ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black." After the passage spread on Twitter, people joked about the way Obama described the three different women he tried to impress.

Origin

On November 17th, 2020, Barack Obama released his memoir A Promised Land. ^[2] In the book, he discusses how he educated himself on the works of various cultural theorists and philosophers in order to pick up girls, though he didn't succeed. In the passage, he describes attempting and failing to attract a "long-legged socialist," a "smooth-skinned sociology major" and an "ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black." He says "as a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless." The passage was tweeted that day by Twitter user @daniel_dsj2110,^[1] gaining over 2,900 retweets, 7,000 quote tweets, and 28,000 likes.

Spread

As the passage spread, Twitter users joked about the way Obama described the various women. User @AsFarce^[3] posted, "are you a long-legged socialist, a smooth-skinned sociology major, or an ethereal bisexual who only wears black?", gaining over 3,700 retweets and 44,000 likes (shown below, left). User @awkward_duck^[4] joked, "'sup, you ethereal bisexual, how the foucalt you today?", gaining over 150 retweets and 1,100 likes (shown below, right).

Other popular jokes include a tweet by @sheryabasu003,^[5] which gained over 3,100 retweets and 33,000 likes (shown below, left) and @flurtcobain,^[6] who tweeted, "who among us has not pursued an ‘ethereal bisexual’," gaining over 70 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References