WASHINGTON – The President of the United States is willing to do just about anything to promote his signature health care law, and that includes wielding a selfie stick and dropping a “YOLO, man,” on camera.
In a renewed effort to get Americans to sign up for healthcare.gov before the Sunday deadline, President Barack Obama brought out his selfie stick in a video for BuzzFeed Motion Pictures.
The video published on Thursday features Obama and BuzzFeed’s Andrew Ilnyckyj doing “things everybody does but doesn’t talk about.”
Obama and Ilnyckyj practice their funny faces in the mirror, pose with selfie sticks, miming jump shots, and repeat weird words like “February” and “Wednesday” over and over.
At one point, he drops his coffee, exasperatingly saying, “Thanks, Obama.”
The President echoes the catchphrase when trying to dunk his too-big chocolate chip cookie into a glass of milk.
He even doodles a photo of Michelle: “That’s pretty good,” he says.
When Ilnyckyj runs into the President trying out his jump shot, Obama deadpans, “Can I live?”
This isn’t the first time the White House has pulled out all the stops for the President’s health care website. Last year, the President appeared on “Between Two Ferns” with Zach Galifinakis, a move largely credited with boosting signups.
This video, coupled with interviews with YouTube stars and Vox, signals a changing media strategy from the Obama White House and a focus on using newer outlets to reach a younger audience.
“My advice to a future president is increasingly try to bypass the traditional venues that create divisions and try to find new venues within this new media that are quirkier, less predictable,” Obama told Vox in an interview taped in late January but released on Monday.
