Thanks I Stole Them From The President - Tumblr Posts
could you explain the post about shoelaces and presidents? it would be greatly appreciated thank you
Sure! Do you mean this post?
So, it started in a post in 2012 (or earlier, I don’t know the exact date). As the Urban Dictionary entry explains, you would say “I like your shoelaces” in public as a sort of secret code if you suspect there’s another Tumblr user there. And if there is another Tumblr user, they would reply “Thanks, I stole them from the president” to let you know they understood the message and are, in fact, a Tumblr user.
I don’t think people do this anymore, and if they ever did, it probably wasn’t a very common thing to do. Maybe they did back in 2012 when the post was recent and Tumblr wasn’t as popular as it is now.
I also don’t think there’s any deeper meaning to the phrases. “I like your shoelaces” seems like a pretty common and nice thing to say, and if it turns out the person you thought was a Tumblr user doesn’t recognise the ‘secret message’, nothing would happen. But then “Thanks, I stole them from the president” seems weird and specific enough that you would know they understood the ‘secret message’, unlike if they just replied “Thank you”.
Then other posts appeared making references to the shoelaces and president posts:
4 mill in 2024, on my dash, 11 years after its posting... What a sight to behold
Tumblr Code.
YALL! OLD TUMBLR PEOPLE! OR JUST PEOPLE WHO GET THE REFERENCE
look what I found as an add
Would ya guys judge me if I got them
holy shit guys they're here and i have never had fewer regrets
shoutout to whoever stole my amazon package containing nothing but a single pair of shoelaces.
shoutout to whoever stole my amazon package containing nothing but a single pair of shoelaces.
what do we do if we meet non-tumblr people in the wild and we think they’re tumblr people and try and identify with them and they look at us like we’re crazy?
like some kid told me he liked my shoelaces (they are pretty cool they’re rainbow and have beads on them) and i just- “thanks i stole them from the president” and he gave me the weirdest, most confused “wtf is this girl talking about is she on crack” look and kind of scooted his chair back over to his desk.
like, how do we avoid looking insane?