About

I Wanted to Understand European Populism, So I Talked to Bono is a headline from Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria. The headline was mocked on Twitter as people found "European Populism" and "Bono" to be unrelated, and turned the headline into a snowclone wherein people wrote "I wanted to understand X, so I talked to Y," with X and Y to be unrelated.

Origin

On September 20th, 2018, Fareed Zakaria posted a column in which he discussed European Populism with U2 lead singer Bono (shown below).

Spread

The column began seeing parodies the following day. Twitter user @greg_jenner tweeted "I wanted to understand the laws of Thermodynamics. So I talked to Noel Edmonds" and gained over 550 retweets and 2,900 likes. User @LukewSavage tweeted "I wanted to understand quantum physics. So I talked to Fred Durst." The tweet gained over 940 retweets and 5,900 likes (shown below, right).

Other popular examples were tweeted by user @Moudhy, which gained over 190 retweets and 840 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @JohnDurant made a joke which gained over 220 retweets and 820 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Select All.^[1]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References