Pickup Lines

About

Pickup Lines or Pick Up Lines are flirtatious conservation openers designed to pique a stranger's romantic interest. While some are serious in nature, pickup lines are often associated with cheesy jokes and sexual puns.

Origin

In the 1990s, threads containing humorous pickup lines were often shared on various Usenet groups, including alt.romance, alt.seduction and alt.humor.^[9]

Spread

On February 9th, 2006, a page for the "Worst 100 Pick-Up Lines of All Time" was created on the Uncyclopedia Wiki. On June 20th, 2007, Xkcd^[7] posted a webcomic titled "Pickup Lines," featuring various awkward conversation starters (shown below, left). On March 31st, 2008, Xkcd^[8] published a comic titled "Convincing Pickup Line," in which a person argues in favor of sleeping with their date in order to make the "local hookup network a symmetric graph."

On February 13th, 2014, BuzzFeed^[3] published a listicle titled "25 Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Pick-Up Lines to Avoid Using on Valentines Day." On January 27th, 2016, Redditor PyedPyper submitted a post titled "Reddit, what's your best pickup line" to /r/AskReddit,^[6] which gathered upwards of 17,400 votes (83% upvoted) and 9,500 comments before it was archived. On February 14th, 2017, the Nihilist Memes Facebook page posted an image macro with a pickup line joking about existential nihilism (shown below).^[1]

/fit/ Pickup Lines

On May 26th, 2013, Redditor FreakTalent submitted a collection of pickup lines taken from 4chan's /fit/ (fitness) board to /r/4chan,^[2] where it received upwards of 2,300 votes (91% upvoted) prior to being archived (shown below).

On January 13th, 2014, a second collection of /fit/ pick-up lines reached the front page of /r/4chan, gathering more than 3,100 votes (92% upvoted) and 190 comments prior to being archived.^[4] On January 20th, Redditor yoniyoniyoni submitted a post asking about the origin of the "ay bby u want sum fuk" pick up line, to which Redditor sleepy55 cited 4chan's /fit/ board.

Prank Videos

Many YouTubers have produced prank videos in which they record random pedestrians reacting to various pickup lines. On April 12th, 2011, the Simple Pickup YouTube channel posted a video titled "Internet Trolls Pick Up Girls," in which college students approach women with internet meme references, garnering upwards of 2.7 million views and 240 comments over the next six years (shown below, left). On November 6th, 2012, Australian YouTuber AdrianVanOyen uploaded a video titled "Pick Up Line Insanity," in which two young men walk up to random women and say absurd pickup lines (shown below, right). Within five years, the video gained over 8.1 million views and 16,100 comments.

Related Memes

Dat Ash

Dat Ash is an advice animal image macro featuring an alternate universe artwork of Pokémon trainer Ash Catchum captioned with lewd pun pickup lines that are derived from the character names of Pokémon creatures.

Pickup Line Panda

Pickup Line Panda is an advice animal image macro series based on a picture of a panda bear standing by a tree stub with a beer bottle. The captioned jokes typically begins with a predictable pickup cliche followed by a sentence that is contrasted by lack of subtlety.

Suave Six-Year-Old

Suave Six-Year-Old is an image macro series featuring a photograph of a six-year-old kid making a sly facial expression with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, which are typically captioned with cheesy pickup lines.

Pickup Line Scientist

Pickup Line Scientist is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of the character Howard Wolowitz (played by Simon Helberg) from the television sitcom The Big Bang Theory. The captions typically combine sexual innuendo and puns related to physics, chemistry, biology and other hard sciences.

#ShutdownPickUpLines

#ShutdownPickUpLines, also known as #GovShutdownPickUpLines, is a Twitter hashtag
associated with tongue-in-cheek pickup lines relating to a large-scale closure of the United States government. Though it first surfaced during the debt-ceiling crisis in early April 2011, the hashtag saw a resurgence following the shutdown of the federal government in October 2013.

Incel Pickup Lines

Incel Pickup Lines is a Twitter gimmick account that posts screenshots of creepy, awkward, and cringy pickup lines posted by people online, usually either in someone's DMs or as a response to How Do You Open? posts. Launched in late April 2022, the account went viral on Twitter in early May.

Search Interest

External References