Someone thought they could destroy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political future with a college video. They were wrong.
In January 2019, an anonymous Twitter account surfaced footage of the newly sworn congresswoman dancing on a Boston University rooftop. The post called her a “clueless nitwit.” The account disappeared within hours. The video got 8 million views. And Ocasio-Cortez turned an attempted hit job into one of the shrewdest political responses in recent memory.
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A College Project Goes Viral Eight Years Later
The original video had nothing scandalous about it. In September 2010, about 20 Boston University students gathered before dawn on the College of Arts & Sciences rooftop. They were filming a tribute to The Breakfast Club, recreating the movie’s iconic dance sequence to Phoenix’s “Lisztomania.”
This was standard internet fare in 2010. An original mashup combining Brat Pack film clips with the Phoenix song had gone viral the year before. Students from Brooklyn to Amsterdam were making their own versions. Boston University’s Howard Thurman Center decided to join in.
Ocasio-Cortez was a student ambassador at the center. Raúl Fernandez, then assistant director, organized the shoot. Student filmmakers Eric Calvin Baker and Julian Jensen handled production. Fernandez brought bagels. They filmed for a few hours and posted it to YouTube, where it collected roughly 5,300 views over eight years.
Nobody paid attention until Ocasio-Cortez defeated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in June 2018. At 29, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, representing New York’s 14th district. She was sworn in on January 3, 2019.
The Attack That Wasn’t
Two days later, the dancing video reappeared. The Twitter account AnonymousQ1776 posted a heavily edited 30-second clip with a caption claiming it showed “high school video” of “America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is.”
The claim about high school was false. The video was from her college years at Boston University, where she graduated cum laude in 2011 with degrees in economics and international relations.
The clip spread fast. Views jumped from 50,000 to 2 million in 48 hours. But something unexpected happened. Instead of outrage, most reactions praised the video. Conservative commentators said it made her likable. Twitter users mocked whoever thought dancing college students was scandalous.
The account that posted it deleted itself.
Dancing in the Capitol
Ocasio-Cortez responded on January 4 with a new video. She filmed herself dancing outside her Capitol Hill office to Edwin Starr’s “War.” The caption read: “I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous. Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too!”
The response got 20 million views.
She told The Hill reporter Olivia Beavers: “It is not normal for elected officials to have a reputation for dancing well and I’m happy to be one. It is unsurprising to me that Republicans would think having fun should be disqualifying or illegal.”
Breakfast Club stars Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy welcomed her to the Brat Pack on Twitter. Phoenix congratulated her, tweeting: “Congratulations on being the youngest woman ever being elected to Congress!” Streams of “Lisztomania” surged. A parody account editing the footage to different songs gained 12,000 followers overnight.
The Manufactured Controversy
Media outlets rushed stories about conservative outrage over the dancing video. But Fox News and others later pointed out a problem: there wasn’t any real outrage. Beyond the single anonymous account, criticism was nearly nonexistent. Most conservatives who commented found the video harmless or charming.
Several news organizations had reported a controversy that didn’t exist. The backlash was manufactured. The response was real.
What the Video Revealed
The incident exposed how political attacks can misfire in the social media age. What seemed damaging to one anonymous account looked joyful to millions. Attempting to shame a young woman for dancing in college only highlighted how out of touch the attack was.
Ocasio-Cortez, who built her campaign on grassroots organizing and social media savvy, understood this instinctively. Her response video wasn’t defensive. It was celebratory. She refused the premise that dancing was something to apologize for.
The congresswoman has since been reelected three times. She maintains over 13 million followers on X and 8.4 million on Instagram. The dancing video remains part of her political origin story, not as a scandal but as proof that old political playbooks don’t work anymore.
Someone tried to embarrass Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a video of her dancing. She danced again. That’s the whole story, and the lesson.
