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“Don’t Lean In” Becomes the Internet’s Most Ridiculous New Meme

Ben Auxier

Source: @alpharivelino /@Sir_BrianJM on Twitter

The internet is leaning into a new meme born from the cesspool of pick-up artist culture and boy is it hilariously horrible. The terminology is a little fraught as “Lean In” is generally shorthand for “Lean In Feminism,” which refers to a 2013 book about women in business, whereas “Don’t Lean In” now refers to some dude’s philosophy on how men must remain perfectly perpendicular to the ground in order to…be attractive, I guess?

Honestly, I don’t know, this is such a mess.

Let’s start with the author….

This is the guy, who fancies himself a “guru” of the pick-up artist variety. He tweets A LOT (Including many posts which seem to ride the line on Twitter’s wishy-washy rules regarding nudity.) But though he’s a guru, he admits he is far from perfect.

Here he is enumerating some of his shortcomings:

Expanding on his philosophy.

If you’re looking at the above list and asking yourself “What’s NLP?” That refers to “Neuro-linguistic programming,” which is a pseudoscience that power-hungry dummies think they can use to sort of control the minds of people around them, usually with the goal of doing a sex.

This account checks so many boxes on pick-up artistry absurdity that I honestly thought it was some sort of satire or troll account. But scrolling through further…it seems sincere.

Which brings us to the meat of the meme. REAL MEN DON’T LEAN IN:

Don’t lean in.

The philosophy here is that if a man is standing straight up with his partner, he maintains his rightful power or something. But if he leans toward his partner, the way that, yanno, almost everyone does when posing for pictures, he might as well just turn in his man card. Pwned.

Size doesn’t matter.

I mean sure, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson literally won the World’s Strongest Man competition, and is roughly the size of a barge, but 100% of that masculine energy is INSTANTLY erased the moment he slightly shifts his torso, and this is something we DEFINITELY need to CARE ABOUT.

https://twitter.com/alpharivelino/status/1257142707362959367

No win situation.

I mean, look at these numbers! Numbers don’t lie! He did a not very great sports number AND stood at an angle! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

Royal screw up.

Even children know what a beta snowflake you are.

Rock and roll.

Man, Dwayne Johnson, I thought you were cool.

The response.

Naturally, Twitter laughed its ass off.

The “Fellas, is it gay…” meme fit nicely into these paranoid ramblings of fragile masculinity.

https://twitter.com/sewcialism/status/1257279451160883206

And it wasn’t long before this gold-mine of a format started getting exploited.

Jack leaned into the water, look what happened to him.

From the moment I saw the original tweets, my very first thought was “somebody is gonna turn this into Loss.”

https://twitter.com/roun_sa_ville/status/1257316797172158474

And there you have it. The dumbest thing you’ll see all day. Check out the replies on the original tweets for more endless riffing if you feel so inclined. You’re welcome, and I’m sorry.

Have you seen something dumber today?

If you have, I absolutely dare you to tell us about it in the comments.