Dark Brandon is over and here come the coconuts and “snotty summer.”
Wondering what all this means? For those who still don't know what a meme is, let this 142-year-old newspaper explain it.
Bottom line: Vice President Kamala Harris, who burst into the spotlight on Sunday (more on her later) after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed her, is having a digital cultural moment.
Within hours of Biden leaving the campaign trail, Harris supporters flooded the internet with clips from her past speeches, including a reference to a falling coconut tree. The clips, which had previously been used by her detractors to criticize her speech, have been endlessly remixed into laudatory TikTok videos, X-rated memes and Etsy products.
Adding to the viral vortex, pop star Charli XCX, referencing her hit summer album “Brat,” posted on X Sunday: “Kamala IS a brat.” (Yes, that’s a compliment.)
Harris’s nascent presidential campaign has embraced the social media maelstrom, spreading memes and rebranding her official @KamalaHQ account in the same shade of lime green and blurry Arial font as the “Brat” album cover.
Will memes work for the likely Democratic nominee, especially among tech-savvy Gen Z voters? Only time will tell.
“Social media hype doesn't always mean people will turn out to vote. We're going to see a very big test of that in 2024,” said Yumi Wilson, a professor at San Francisco State University who specializes in social media and branding.
For young voters, who overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020 and participated In great quantities For the 2022 midterm elections, platforms like TikTok are highly influential because that’s where people get their news, marking “a shift from previous generations who relied more on traditional media,” Wilson said.
The flashy entrance by Harris, 59, in what had been a replay of the contest between Biden, 81, and former President Trump, 78, excited progressive youth advocacy groups, which reported record fundraising figures.
Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-led nonprofit that works to engage young voters, endorsed Harris on Sunday and raised nearly $125,000 from grassroots donors in all 50 states on the day, said Jack Lobel, a spokesman for the group.
“Voters of Tomorrow is working hard to mobilize our peers, turning this authentic engagement we’re seeing online into participation. With 40 million Gen Zers eligible to vote in 2024, this momentum could very well propel Kamala Harris to the presidency,” Lobel said in an email.
On Tuesday, Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee focused on electing young progressives, said it had raised more than $330,000 for Harris. The group’s founder, David Hogg, sent an email on Tuesday with the subject line: “Kamala IS a brat.”
“Using memes and music, the Harris campaign has already opened the door to communicate with younger generations about climate change, gun reform, abortion rights and more,” wrote Hogg, a 24-year-old survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“For those who don’t know,” he added, “‘brat’ and ‘brat summer’ are about living your best life, which is EXACTLY what we’ll be doing if the Democrats win by a big margin this year.”
Earlier this summer, Charli XCX explained on TikTok that being a brat means being “that girl who's a little bit messy and likes to party and sometimes maybe says some dumb things.”
A spoiled child, she continued, “feels like she is, but also, maybe, she has a nervous breakdown, but she kind of has fun. She is very honest, she is very direct, a little volatile.”
So why all the coconuts?
In May 2023, Harris gave a speech during a swearing-in ceremony for commissioners of the White House Initiative to Promote Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics.
He stressed the importance of supporting not only young people, but also their families, teachers and communities, because “none of us live in isolation,” and enthusiastically quoted his mother.
“He would say, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. Do you think you fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris said, laughing heartily. “You exist in the context of everything around you and everything that came before you.”
The Republican National Committee immediately posted a clip From the coconut discourse to YouTube and Xwhere right-wing commentators said Harris sounded drunk and called her crazy.
Now, Harris supporters — who say they've been “coconut-slapped,” a reference to the movie “The Matrix” that indicates they've been enlightened by a new reality — have revived the ridiculous boogeyman clip, mixing it with songs from artists like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Kesha.
For Harris, “it’s one of the best things that could happen to her and her campaign, to go viral right now,” especially since Biden has struggled to connect with young voters online, said Ramesh Srinivasan, founder of the Digital Cultures Lab at the University of California.
Srinivasan said her family hails from Tamil Nadu, the same southeastern Indian state where Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was born. There, she said, coconut trees aren't just cute emojis, they're ubiquitous and important providers of food and cooking oil.
“She is a total coconut,” Srinivasan said. “At least in terms of her parents’ generation, the reference makes perfect sense.”
Shortly after the memes began circulating on Sunday, other politicians joined in.
“Madam Vice President, we stand ready to help,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. published in Xalong with a photo of himself climbing a coconut tree.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., posted a photo of Harris with laser beam eyes, a reference to the Brandon Dark meme, a laser-eyed Biden alter ego that is, itself, a combination of the Dark MAGA and Let's Go Brandon memes used by conservatives.
On TikTok, Harris’ sudden popularity is a stark contrast to Biden, who has struggled on the platform, especially after he signed a bill in April that would effectively ban the app in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell TikTok’s U.S. operations within a year.
On the app, Biden's most recent attempts to make the two-year-old Dark Brandon meme popular again — a bit too obviously orchestrated by his campaign — failed.
Instead, after Biden called out Trump following the assassination attempt, TikTok users are now portraying the bitter political enemies as secret lovers — #triden — by overlaying videos of them with Chappell Roan’s song “Casual,” about a friends-only relationship that clearly means more.
Harris’ viral moment, at least for now, is considered authentic because it was created organically on the internet, not by political operatives, said Tim Miller, who previously worked for the RNC and left the party after the 2020 election.
While Harris is enjoying a positive meme cycle, conservatives like Trump are excelling at mocking their opponents online and are trying out virtual attacks, Miller said.
Trump — whose catchy slogan Make America Great Again and acronym MAGA became part of the American lexicon — leveraged the power of social media, especially X née Twitter, to bypass traditional media and speak directly to his supporters.
“Say what you want about Trump, and I’ve said every negative thing you can imagine, there is a largely male online community that he has sympathy with,” Miller said.
While Biden has been vulnerable to right-wing trolls online who portrayed him as hesitant and confused, recent attempts to troll and turn Harris into negative memes have backfired, Miller said.
This week, the @RNCResearch account, run by the RNC and the Trump campaign, tweeted A clip of Harris laughing at a campaign event and the words: “Kamala Harris brought her laughter to Milwaukee: 'Good afternoon, Wisconsin! Ha, ha, ha, ha!'”
And the right-wing liberals' TikTok account, which has more than 3 million followers, shared a 2 minute and 20 second video composed entirely of clips of Harris laughing.
“There was an effort on the right to label her a lightweight, and videos of her doing silly things don’t seem to be working,” Miller said. “The left has reappropriated silly memes to make her look funny.”
Harris supporters were quick to respond with memes and merchandise that says: “BAD: Make America laugh again.”
Times staff writer Hannah Ly contributed to this report.
