About

Did It Hurt? When You Fell From Heaven? is a cliché pick-up line used to attempt to introduce oneself to a potential romantic partner in a communal setting like a bar. The question implies that the stranger is an angel fallen from heaven. The line itself is generally considered cheesy and unusable. In the summer of 2021, it became a snowclone on Twitter in which people replaced the second half of the question with other, more specific and humorous questions.

Origin

It's unclear when or where the "Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?" line originated, but its first use in print was traced to The Tampa Tribune in 1985 by Word Histories,^[1] though even then, The Tampa Tribune recommended against using the line in public. On March 29th, 2017, Urban Dictionary^[2] user Diana Prince Wonder Woman also recommended against ever using the pickup line (shown below).

While snowclone uses of the pickup line appeared sporadically on Twitter prior to the summer of 2021, they began becoming commonly used after a July 20th, 2021 Twitter post by @bratzcokeden,^[3] who posted, "Did it hurt? when u fell off," gaining over 8,000 retweets and 58,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

Over the following month, the snowclone spread as people began using more specific and humorous questions with the format. Usually, these were not flirtatious and more literal. For example, on August 24th, 2021, user @thisyearsgurl^[4] tweeted "did it hurt when you fell from those crates?", referencing the Milk Crate Challenge, gaining over 9,000 retweets and 87,000 likes (shown below, left). On August 28th, user @alexsongxia^[5] tweeted, "Did it hurt? When u went to nyu?", gaining over 1,800 retweets and 36,000 likes (shown below right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References