President Biden Has A Plan For Memes, And Dark Brandon Is A Big Part Of It

The effort to keep President Joe Biden in office has finally set up shop on TikTok.

Even though the app has caused problems in Congress, experts say that presidential candidates can’t do without TikTok to reach young voters.

Annie Wu Henry, a digital communications strategist who has run social media for several political campaigns, said, “I wasn’t surprised at all that the campaign made a TikTok account. It would have been such a waste to go through this cycle and a missed opportunity to not be on that platform.”

She told TechCrunch, “I always thought it would happen; it was just a matter of time when.” “Did I really think that would happen during the Super Bowl?” No.”

The new account posted its first TikTok during the big game. In it, Biden jokes about a right-wing conspiracy theory that he fixed the NFL (because Biden’s 2020 campaign endorser Taylor Swift is dating Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Travis Kelce and camera operators often show her in the crowd).

“Working behind the scenes to fix the season so the Chiefs make the Super Bowl, or are they just being a good football team?” A staff member off-screen asks Biden in his first TikTok video.

After Biden says, “I’d get in trouble if I told you,” a meme called “Dark Brandon” shows on the screen.

The TikTok makes fun of several right-wing conspiracy ideas at the same time. Biden’s campaign has used the Dark Brandon meme a lot, along with the joke about fixing the Super Bowl. This meme grew out of the “Dark MAGA” trend among Trump fans. The idea behind “Dark MAGA” comes from the widely debunked conspiracy theory that Biden stole the 2020 election from Trump. Supporters of “Dark MAGA” picture an angry, deranged Trump who runs for president again in 2024 and wants revenge. Memes in the style of the vaporwave show Trump with glowing red eyes, and sometimes they show Trump Tower as a dark, black castle.

The look of Dark Brandon is influenced by that style and blends it with the Trump supporter inside joke “Let’s Go Brandon.” Someone on TV misheard chants of “F— Joe Biden” as “Let’s Go Brandon,” which is where the meme came from. Now, Trump fans use the phrase as a shorthand way to say they hate the current president. Supporters of Trump have also used the event to support their false claims that the government controls the media. They say that the NBC reporter purposely misunderstood the chant to hide criticism of Biden.

For the Dark Brandon meme to work, you need to know a lot of things about Biden before you can see him with glowing red eyes trying to fix the economy or something. That’s why the Biden campaign has leaned so hard into it. But it looks like it’s working in some ways. When Biden announced his bid for re-election in April, his team began selling official Dark Brandon merchandise. As of August, this made up 54% of the store’s total revenue.

Dark Brandon comes from memes that say bad things about the president, but Biden’s relations team seems to be using the style to make the president look better.

Jodi Pecora, communications head of the gen-Z advocacy group Voters of Tomorrow, said, “When we see Joe Biden fighting for the American people—really, really fighting, not just standing up for them—that’s the most energetic and most true to Joe Biden.” “I feel like that’s kind of reflected in Dark Brandon.”

Memes can help you connect with people online, but if you use them at the wrong time, your attempt to be cool can backfire. Another Dark Brandon meme was shared on X by Biden’s campaign after the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. They said that the game went “just like we drew it up.” But the meme was shared by Biden’s staff around the same time that the Israeli military attacked Rafah, forcing more than a million Palestinians to flee. A lot of people, especially young voters, don’t like how Biden keeps supporting the Israeli military, which made people even more angry about the meme’s bad timing.

“The campaign and the administration work separately,” Pecora told TechCrunch. “So I can say with almost 100% certainty that the timing was a bad accident.”

Also Read: Joe Biden Says, “we Can’t Let Trump Win,” and He Promises to Run Again to Stop Him

But there are people who might not be willing to give politics this chance.

“I do think that we can and should add fun, trendy, and relevant moments to the way we talk to each other, especially on digital platforms,” Henry told TechCrunch. “But even if it’s just a meme, we need to keep being strategic, deliberate, and aware while we do that.”

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