It works whether you read it ironically or not.īy contrast, Joe Biden’s image in internet culture has long been malleable. That’s because so much of their ideology and methodology involves coded language, dog whistles, and a grandiose aesthetic that melds easily with the kind of humor you can never be sure is real. This kind of imagery has always served far-right agitators well, across levels of online fluency. Since the 2015–16 “Deplorables” era of Trump memeing, images produced by his supporters have evoked the former president as a testosterone-fueled Rambo-style warrior, boldly riding tanks or giant bald eagles toward a hyperbolic victory over the libs, flags waving. Joe Biden is a famously innocuous public figure. There’s a lot to unpack in a meme about an old dude with Godzilla eyes, so let’s sally forth. Is there anything we can do about that? Should we even try? The irony that attaches to memes of this nature is often used, especially by the far right, to obscure and distort their underlying point - and can raise confusion about whose aims the memes are ultimately serving.

But like so much of the internet these days, the wholesome appeal masks a much more shadowy history. On the surface, this may all just look like good, clean superhero fun. #DarkBrandon /uEmBuxGCVR- _ August 8, 2022 The Deep State told Biden he could not withstand The Storm.īiden replied, I am the Storm. And at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29, Biden briefly donned sunglasses and referenced the persona, to cheers from the audience. Recently, visitors to Biden’s newly unveiled 2024 campaign website discovered the site’s 404 (page not found) landing page serving a “Dark Brandon” Easter egg and pointing people towards a special “Dark” campaign tee emblazoned with the Brandon image. In the year or so since Democrats - including numerous politicians and White House staff members - started using it, the “Brandon” meme, which began as an ironic take on an already-ironic meme from the right, has become a triumphant anthem for the Biden campaign.

Who gets to decide what a meme means? Can a meme born in darkness - say, for instance, the racist corners of 4chan - ever come to have lighter meanings? Do we have a responsibility to purge our cultural vocabulary of memes with spurious origins, or does that just lead to the elimination of, well, all internet culture?īut the Dark Brandon meme’s popularity among Biden supporters was so swift and decisive that it has effectively become a positive affirmation, not only of Biden himself, but of the internet’s ability to reclaim and salvage what once was lost. At first, the rise of “Dark Brandon,” President Biden’s cooler, laser-eyed internet alter ego, presented us with a number of complicated questions about memes and their origins.

Dark thoughts meme