You Are Now Existing Within the Context
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Weāve come a long way from Bill and Alās snazzy ā96 home page. For one, the Kamala campaignās TikTok received more views in a single day than the entire universe of daily internet users in 1996. Itās endearing to imagine voters navigating to Americaās first website for a Presidential campaign and clicking on those links to learn more about the āVolunteer of the Weekā or how they plan to meet Americaās challenges, but thatās not how it works today. I canāt tell you the last time I looked at a campaignās website. These days, for better or for worse, we learn about candidates through memes and YouTube clips.
If you needed a case study, the last 8 days re-wrote the textbook. Letās cut through the noise and break down the major themes emerging in this new election landscape.
Let The Unprecedented Times Roll: Biden Drops Out Via X
President Bidenās decision to first post his withdrawal announcement on social media was certainly a first in modern politics ā an unprecedented event announced in an unprecedented way. Where politicians of the past may have chosen a standard press release to major media outlets, the sitting President chose to tell the whole country, every person, all at once with a tweet. Social media now allows a communications intern to throw out a screenshot of a PDF, put their phone on do not disturb, and call it a day.Ā
The influencers, opinion leaders, and hot-take merchants are always in search of new things to comment on, and President Bidenās announcement certainly satisfied. Reactions were immediate, and countless memes spread like wildfire, often far beyond either campaignās control.Ā
This lack of control can be a blessing and a curse. It can amplify a campaignās message or motivate their base. It can also distort your message, taking on a life of its own and wind up out of control. The reactions to Bidenās announcement and Harrisā subsequent campaign activity exemplify this duality, showing just how unpredictable the digital noise can be.Ā
Execute Operation Coconut
With President Bidenās announcement came an explicit endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. A slower news cycle of pre-internet days may have invited some conversations about an open convention, other candidates, or at the very least a discussion about President Bidenās legacy, but not today. Operation Coconut was already underway.
If you arenāt aware of the meme, it comes from a speech the Vice President gave last year about expanding educational opportunities in America. In it is her now-iconic quote, āYou think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.ā Ironically, the original clip was first shared by a Republican oppo research account on YouTube and X, ostensibly to mock both the quote and delivery. They were somewhat successful, and the clip went fairly viral in mainstream social media, spurring some unflattering discourse.Ā
Fast forward a year, and the script has officially flipped. Moments after President Bidenās announcement, social media was filled with coconut-related memes and emojis. It started with influencers and everyday users, but quickly spread to political opinion leaders, traditional media, and other politicians in a matter of hours. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, and Hawaii Congressman Brian Schatz were among the first, with many others tweeting out jokes about coconuts, coconut trees, or some joke about falling out of one. Even the Harris campaignās own X profileās bio now says, solely, āProviding Context.āĀ
What was originally a Republican oppo research snippet has now turned into the Democratsā most viral and energizing meme; a powerful messaging tool and a canvas on which influencers and content creators can paint. While I donāt blame the GOP for posting the original video, I canāt imagine this is what they had in mind.Ā
Other Memes and Positive Themes
Memes set the tone, as we discussed in this issue. They are the building blocks of viral content and serve as a vessel for humor and attention, the two most important components of viral content. They are the DNA of the internet, which is apt since the name comes from biologists as a term for cultural genetics. You may not see many memes throughout your day, but I can assure you they are the oxygen of social media.Ā
They also affect the world around them in profound ways. You donāt have to be steeped in internet culture to see the shockwaves they make in both traditional media and our IRL conversations. Take Jake Tapper, for instance, who live on air announced his aspiration last week to ābe brat.āĀ
Tapper showcased this combination Kamala Harris and pop star Charli XCX meme on CNN after telling viewers he had learned about it from his 16-year-old daughter. The meme, which you can read a full description of here, incorporates the radically popular pop starās latest album, "brat,ā with the lowercase letters featured on a glaring lime green background. Late Sunday night, Charli XCX tweeted ākamala IS brat, " which has since received over 50 million views, and the content has since flowed. Harrisā official campaign has adopted it, other supportive politicians have engaged with it, and cable news channels are reporting on it.Ā
The meme has everything youād want in todayās quick content economy ā one word, a relevant celebrity extremely popular with young people, and an easily copyable aesthetic of a single color. Itās been memeād all over the last few weeks pre-announcement, including on a NYC MTA announcement telling me my subway line would be down all summer for renovations. The irreverent green glow was humiliating, frankly.Ā
Itās not the fact that Kamala memes are everywhere online ā it's 2024, there are always memes. Whatās important is how these memes move downstream and change the discourse offline. Teenagers find a funny one and send it to their friends, who send it to their friends. Some of those teenagers go on to show their parents in a desperate attempt to bridge the cavernous generation gap. One of those parents happens to be CNNās most-watched news anchor, and he tells everyone else. After all, the median age of a CNN viewer is 67 years old and now they know what brat summer is, albeit against their will.Ā
Is that actually consequential to a 67-year-oldās mindset? Probably not. But itās an example of how internet culture seeps into real life, and not all the memes were happy and coconut-laden.Ā
Itās Not All Lime In The Coconuts
Not all the memes this week were positive. Bidenās announcement and Harrisā assumed rise to the candidacy generated intense vitriol from right-wing accounts.Ā
Hereās the thing: Right-wing social media messaging is usually much more coordinated and organized than it is on the left. There are many reasons why, and weāre writing a future newsletter to go into more detail, but that was not the case this week. The candidate swap instantly disarmed the major Biden attacks ā age, cognitive decline, inflation, etc. ā and forced them to pivot to Harris. From my perspective, they were not ready.Ā
The lack of coordination generated a free-for-all online, spawning content mostly focused on her race, gender, and the sound of her laugh. The most common attack was calling her a āDEI candidate,ā arguing that she only got the VP position and the nomination because she is black. This started on right-wing online influencer pages and quickly made its way to GOP politicians who echoed it on camera; another example of how online content gets into mainstream media. Things got so bad that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson privately told his caucus to tone down the racial attacks. It didnāt seem to help.Ā
Next up was content claiming the only reason Harris had gotten this far was because she āslept her way upwards.ā Posters claimed she had only gotten ahead in politics because she had slept with the former Mayor of San Francisco, while one account with over 200k followers called her āKamala Hoerrisā. Fox News echoed the sentiment, calling her the āDEI candidateā in the process. Peppered throughout this were additional insults about her lack of children. An old clip of JD Vance calling Harris a āchildless cat ladyā made its way around, which added fuel to the fire (and was quickly co-opted by millennial women and Taylor Swift fans).Ā
āDemocrats Fall In Love. Republicans Fall In Line.ā
There are always gross attacks on politicians and even grosser content online. What made this week particularly messy was a complete lack of message coordination from the GOP. While left-wing social media bubbles were drunk in love over a shiny new potential future, conservative influencers had no cues to take and no central theme to follow. The message became a variable to fill in themselves.Ā
This is a central theme to keep an eye on through November. Even if the GOP is able to whip its influencers into line, itās clear that they do not have control over their ideological fringes. Riling up a base and relying on shock-factor content to keep them motivated has its downsides. The problem is exacerbated online, where the most extreme content gets the most engagement.
Mike Johnnson and others can urge influencers to refrain from these attacks, but I have my doubts it will work. The right might be fired up online, but Iām not sure itās a controlled burn.Ā