Comedy writer Ariane was brutal when I asked her about using cheesy pick-up lines like "Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?" She said that even using them ironically should be avoided at all costs. We ought to put in a bit more effort! "I would avoid even ironic use in case the person doesn’t get the irony and thinks you’re a total muppet! Originality is so much more genuine and refreshing," she told Bored Panda.
Ariane, who is very active on Twitter and other social media platforms, said that predicting what will go viral online is a lost cause. There's too much luck involved.
"In my experience, it’s totally down to luck and you can’t predict virality whatsoever. I’ve tweeted things I thought would fly but they only got a handful of likes, and then I’ve tweeted things that I haven’t expected to do well but then a celebrity has retweeted them and suddenly they have thousands of likes! So who knows? That element of surprise is the beauty of Twitter," she shared her experience.
Ariane noted that humor can often soften and diffuse a message. That's why some people tend to rely on it to share their real opinions about important topics. It also acts as a safety net in case things go awry. "Humor often softens and diffuses a message. It also has the bonus of you being able to say, ‘I wasn’t serious, it was only a joke’ if your message lands badly. With straight social commentary, you don’t have this leeway."
Meanwhile the line between mean jokes that are still funny and mean jokes that are downright mean depends on how sensitive the person is. "In general, we tend to think a joke is much funnier if it’s aimed at someone else than if it’s aimed at us," the comedy writer said.
According to Know Your Meme, the cliché pick-up line “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?” implies that the stranger you’re trying to woo at a bar (or the library, we’re not judging you Ravenclaws) is “considered cheesy and unusable.”
However, very recently, in the summer of 2021, the line morphed and became a ‘snowclone’ on Twitter. Internet users replaced the second half of the pick-up line with other humorous questions.
A snowclone is a meme template where some words can be replaced with others for comedic or other effects. It’s all very similar to Mad Libs, the ‘fill-in-the-blank’ game, and shows that memes have a tendency to change and be updated over time.
It’s not completely clear when the original “Did it hurt?” pick-up line originated. However, the first time it was mentioned in print was traced back to The Tampa Tribune in 1985. However, by then, the newspaper already suggested that people avoid using it.
Personally, I like to imagine that the cheesy pick-up line was with humanity from the very beginning. It makes for a pretty hilarious anthropological narrative when you consider the possibility that it might have been in use while we were still nomads, living in caves, or building the first cities as we settled down to grow crops and raise livestock. Of course, that’s all just conjecture on my part. But it’s fun to daydream!
