# Learn To Code Learn To Code is a mocking two-word reply weaponized on Twitter in late January 2019 against journalists who had just been laid off from BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Gannett. The phrase reused years of coverage suggesting out-of-work coal miners should retrain in software, and turned into a coordinated harassment wave that drew Twitter suspensions and even resurfaced during Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. ## Overview Learn To Code is a mocking catchphrase directed at reporters who lost their jobs during the late-January 2019 media layoffs at BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, and Gannett[1]. Typed as a reply under layoff-announcement tweets, the words took a piece of career advice that had been aimed at displaced coal miners for years and threw it back at the reporters who had covered coal country's decline[2]. On its face the reply looks like harmless advice, which is what made it useful: it carried plausible deniability while landing as an insult with the target[2]. The format is short and repetitive. Common variants include "learn to code," "maybe learn to code?" and all-caps versions like "BETTER LEARN TO CODE THEN"[1]. Trolls often stacked the reply with MAGA slogans, jabs about "fake news," and in some cases direct death threats aimed at named writers[2]. The meme became inseparable from a bigger fight about who deserved sympathy in the shift from blue-collar to white-collar work[3]. For the people typing it, Learn To Code was payback for years of think pieces telling out-of-work miners in Appalachia to retrain in Silicon Valley skills[3]. For the writers on the receiving end, it read as a coordinated brigade[1]. ## How It Spread Within hours of the Patrick George tweet, a Reddit thread on r/OutOfTheLoop asked what the "learn to code" replies meant, and the top comment traced the joke to reporters who, in that commenter's view, had spent years "shitting on blue-collar workers"[5]. The same day, 4chan users on /pol/ opened a "President Trump General, Learn to Code Edition" thread that treated the media layoffs as a celebration and coordinated the reply campaign[5]. Freelance writer Talia Lavin screenshotted the /pol/ posts and shared them on Twitter, where her thread cleared 2,100 likes and 850 retweets in 24 hours[5]. Laid-off HuffPost reporter Laura Bassett later described "learn to code" pouring into her mentions the moment she announced her job loss, with the flood escalating into far-right death threats such as "The day of the rope is coming"[2]. Talia Lavin, whose HuffPost opinion column was killed the same week, wrote in The New Republic that the wave of near-identical replies read as a brigade attack, not organic advice, and pointed to Tucker Carlson and other conservative figures amplifying the joke on cable[1]. On January 28, 2019, The Wrap editor John Levine tweeted that a Twitter source had told him targeting recently laid-off journalists with the phrase would count as a Terms of Service violation[5]. Tim Pool posted a screenshot of a suspension notice sent to user @Paul94Mck citing the hashtag #LearnToCode, and the enforcement itself became a right-wing rallying point[5]. Almost a year later, on December 30, 2019, presidential candidate Joe Biden told a New Hampshire rally that "anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can learn to program," and the clip pulled the meme back into a fresh news cycle[5]. ## How to Use The format is a reply-guy template. When a journalist tweets that they were laid off, the common convention is to answer with a curt "learn to code," often with a minor tweak like "maybe learn to code?" or an all-caps version[1]. The joke lands hardest when the target is a reporter whose outlet had run coal-to-code retraining stories, and it depends on the reply arriving in the immediate hours after the layoff announcement while the writer is still online[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Learn To Code? A mocking two-word reply aimed at journalists who lost their jobs in the January 2019 layoff wave at BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Gannett[1]. ### Where did Learn To Code come from? The reply-guy version took off after Jalopnik editor Patrick George tweeted about it on January 24, 2019, though the phrase itself grew out of 2014 to 2015 coverage of coal miners retraining as coders[5]. ### What does Learn To Code mean? It functions as a linguistic dog whistle: harmless-sounding career advice to outsiders, a targeted insult to the laid-off reporter it is aimed at[2]. ### How do you use Learn To Code? The template is a curt reply, usually "learn to code" or a slight variant, sent to a journalist right after they announce their layoff[1]. ### Is Learn To Code still popular? It is a classic 2019 catchphrase, with its biggest waves tied to the January 2019 media layoffs and Joe Biden's December 2019 coal-miner remark rather than any active current campaign[5]. ### Which outlets' layoffs triggered the meme? The wave hit after BuzzFeed cut 15 percent of staff, HuffPost eliminated its Opinion and Healthcare desks, and Gannett laid off newspaper staff, all in late January 2019[2]. ### Who is Rusty Justice? A Pikeville, Kentucky entrepreneur who launched Bit Source, a coding shop that trained laid-off coal miners as web developers, in response to Bloomberg's remark that it could not be done[4]. ### Why did Twitter suspend accounts for saying it? The Wrap reported on January 28, 2019 that Twitter treated coordinated "learn to code" replies to laid-off journalists as a Terms of Service violation, and user @Paul94Mck was suspended with #LearnToCode cited in the notice[5]. ### What did Joe Biden say about coal miners and coding? At a New Hampshire rally on December 30, 2019, Biden said "anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can learn to program," which revived the meme[5]. ### What did BuzzFeed publish about coding in 2014? On February 10, 2014, BuzzFeed News ran a satirical quiz called "Should You Learn to Code?" that made fun of the constant think pieces telling everyone to pick up programming[6]. ### Did the meme come with actual threats? Yes. Laid-off HuffPost reporter Laura Bassett described far-right death threats such as "The day of the rope is coming" arriving alongside the "learn to code" replies[2]. ## References 1. [https://newrepublic.com/article/153019/fetid-right-wing-origins-learn-code]() 2. [https://archive.thinkprogress.org/learn-to-code-decoded-the-campaign-against-laid-off-journalists-is-harassments-new-frontier-20725ddd480a/]() 3. [https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner-to-code/]() 4. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/21/tech-industry-coding-kentucky-hillbillies]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code]() 6. [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/should-you-learn-to-code]() 7. [https://www.dailywire.com/news/heres-where-learn-code-meme-originated-hint-not-ashe-schow]() 8. [https://digitalcultures.net/memes/learn-to-code/]() 9. [https://x.com/i/status/1089319941898207233]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/learn-to-code Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library