Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:30 PM | May 26, 2024
meme

[I am fighting a migraine, so I am recycling a column from earlier in the week that seems appropriate to the task]

Joe Biden's campaign is hiring a meme manager. 

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As the president would say, "no joke." They really are. Can you imagine the gems that will be produced?

This will make for good business on Twitchy. Those guys are always on top of the best memes and Twitter postings.  

The Biden campaign is aiming to speak the language of youth by hiring someone to manage its content and meme pages, as the president’s reelection campaign struggles to connect with Gen Z voters.

In a job posting on Daybook, the campaign is looking to hire a partner to manage the campaign’s internet content, including memes. 

Memes have played a big part in how presidential candidates have tried to get the word out about their campaigns. 

To be fair, memes are so powerful that it makes sense to do so. Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, a meme is worth 10,000 position papers. You can sum things up in a punchy, visual way that gets people nodding their heads. So, in principle, this is smart. 

Except for the fact that it is well known that the left can't meme, and lame memes are worse than no memes. If you are rolling your eyes instead of nodding your head, the meme didn't just misfire--you look like a total fool. 

What makes a meme so powerful is that it concentrates everything down to its essence. I picked the above meme nearly at random (it was near the top of my image search), and it does the job. In just one image that is easy to grasp, you get the point: you are being gaslit by the MSM. They want you to believe something so much that they will say anything. 

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The problem with the Biden meme manager idea is simple: they are the gaslighters, and it is hard to gaslight in a meme. You can communicate a bad idea but not gaslight because gaslighting requires convincing people that reality doesn't exist. 

Memes tap into your experience; it's the way they work. It is their superpower--getting you to an aha! moment by tapping into implicit knowledge you already have. A good meme pulls threads together to create something new, but it can never communicate anything you don't already grasp. 

This meme works because, without even a word, you get it immediately and nod your head. Now surely Democrats wouldn't agree with it, and it probably isn't persuasive per se, but it does a perfect job communicating an idea that would take an essay to explain. 

You just nod. Yep. Seems about right. 

The Biden administration's attempt to meme has centered around "Dark Brandon," who is supposed to be the President's alter ego. When they couldn't shake the "let's go, Brandon" meme, they tried to coopt it. The campaign has officially adopted a version with Biden shooting lasers out of his eyes, and other versions depict Biden as a powerful warrior. 

The idea behind this is not inherently bad. In fact, Trump often leans into hyperbole and even makes jokes that take the sting out of Democrat accusations about him. Think of the "dictator on Day 1" joke, which set liberals off and wound up helping him because their accusations were so absurd. 

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But the problem with Dark Brandon is obvious: Joe Biden projects a sense of power as well as Stephen Hawking did. Whatever other nice things you could say about the guy, nothing will persuade you that Biden is vital or powerful. More people think he poops his pants than find him intimidating. 

The Biden campaign has lovingly adopted “Dark Brandon,” a meme that portrays an alter-ego of President Biden that was created after a reporter misheard chants of “F—- Joe Biden” as “Let’s Go, Brandon” as she was interviewing race winner Brandon Brown at the Talladega racetrack for the Xfinity series in 2021.

What started as a way for Biden haters to criticize the president eventually led to the Biden campaign leaning into the meme and embracing it. The profile picture for the Biden-Harris HQ page on X is the Dark Brandon picture, which shows Mr. Biden with red lasers shooting out of his eyes.

The problem is obvious: if you are trying to attract Gen Z with memes and images they have to resonate. This image resonates with a committee that brainstormed about how to attract the kids. 

Memes only work when they don't have to be explained--when they resonate. No meme will resonate with everyone, but the best memes even generate a chuckle out of people who disagree with the point. 

Touché!

I hope the Biden campaign leans heavily into meme-making. The countermemes will be epic! And Trump will rise higher in the polls with Gen Z than he already is. 

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A CNN poll from late April showed that Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden among younger voters ages 18-34 by 11 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, even though younger voters typically lean Democratic.

The left can't meme, but when they try, it is epically funny to see them fail. 

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