Girlboss and millennial progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is really good at Twitter. So good that she schooled the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy by tweeting, "Boy math is needing 15 attempts to count the votes correctly to become Speaker and then shutting down the government 9 months later." Joining in on the girl math vs. boy math memes, AOC insinuated that the speaker was incompetent for his inability to keep the government open as the clock ticks and a government shutdown looms.
But if you aren't as chronically online as AOC, boy math means absolutely nothing to you. So let me break down the origins of this fast-growing internet meme, beginning with the phrase "girl math." The viral meme infiltrating our fraught politics began obscurely on a New Zealand radio show on which the hosts help rationalize absurd, illogical purchases their listeners share with them. So for example, it's suggested that using girl math, using cash for buying means a purchase is basically free because it's not considered real money (why??), and the money in your bank account isn't decreasing. Girl math rocked the internet world with this same pattern of women justifying each other's spending habits with light-hearted, ridiculous reasoning.
