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Democratic debate: Bernie Sanders tells voters to 'go to the YouTube'

The internet goes to town on the Vermont senator's quirky phrasing as he attacks former Vice President Joe Biden on Social Security.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
berniedebate

Democratic presidential hopeful Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders during Sunday's debate.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Image

Internet-related memes sometimes come from the simplest word slip-ups. On Sunday, during his debate with former Vice President Joe Biden on CNN, Bernie Sanders went after Biden's record on Social Security. Sanders encouraged readers to check out Biden's record for themselves. But it's the Vermont senator's wording that captured the attention of some on social media readers.

"Go to the YouTube ," Sanders encouraged readers, telling them to watch a video on Sanders' YouTube channel featuring a 2007 interview where Biden says "everything" is on the table when it came to budget cuts.

English-speakers do tend to say "the internet," or "the World Wide Web," but video company YouTube doesn't have a "the" in front of it. And social-media users immediately swept up the phrase.

"TO THE YOUTUBE!" tweeted one Twitter user, pairing the caption with a photo of Marvel's Avengers in full charge.

"Go to the YouTube," wrote another user. "And when you're done with that could one of yous please reset the clock on my VCR?"

Some saw a positive angle in Sanders' phrasing. "Bernie is reaching out to seniors by calling it 'the YouTube," wrote comedian Kate Willett.

And for some, the fact that Sanders' social media accounts picked up "the YouTube" and ran with it was a move worth voting for. "Bernie owing his gaffes make them 100% times better," wrote one Twitter user.

Sanders' official account's tweet using the phrase was liked more than 23,000 times and retweeted more than 7700 times in less than an hour.