"Pajama Boy" is a derisive term for a photograph posted online in 2013 by the American political organization Organizing for Action (OFA) of one of its employees, Ethan Krupp, in support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
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Background
The photo was posted on December 17, 2013 by the organization, which advocates for the legislative agenda of President Barack Obama, from President Obama's own Twitter account. It was part of a general campaign to get younger Americans to sign up for the health insurance program. The photo showed Krupp wearing thick-rimmed glasses, wearing black-and-red plaid onesie pajamas, and cradling a mug. The accompanying text read: "Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance. #GetTalking." The tweet linked to the OFA website, which encouraged individuals to discuss Obamacare during the holiday season with those family members that are uninsured, and encourage them to sign up.
The tweet and pajama-clad man featured in it were quickly dubbed "Pajama Boy", and mocked across social media, particularly by conservatives.
Pajama Boy soon developed into an Internet meme in which the Pajama Boy image was digitally inserted into other photos, or the text of the tweet was revised or new text added to mock the campaign.
Criticism
The day after the original tweet, December 18, New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie lampooned and criticized Pajama Boy with his own tweet, which featured a photo of him volunteering in an apron with the accompanying text: "Get out of your pajamas. Put on an apron. Get volunteering. #SeasonOfService." Writing in The Washington Post, Chris Cillizza said that Pajama Boy had the "worst week in Washington", calling it a "horribly, terribly, plaidly wrong" "effort to encourage young people to sign up for Obamacare."
Writing in Bloomberg News, libertarian pundit Megan McArdle said conservatives got "trolled" by Pajama Boy: "The purpose of Pajama Boy is not to get people to buy health insurance, but to get a rise out of conservatives -- and thereby to engage the solidaristic, money-raising, meme-spreading power of OFA’s liberal base." Fellow libertarian commentator Nick Gillespie, writing in the Reason magazine blog, similarly wrote that, though "for many - arguably most - Americans, this guy is hipster douchitude on a cracker," the image succeeded in getting "people to talk about health insurance".