David Remnick: I've been in the news business for a few years now, and here's a statistic that I found interesting. I'm not blind to the fact that TikTok is a thing, a huge thing, but a third of American adults under 30 regularly get their news from TikTok. That caught my attention to say the least. I came across that figure in a piece by my colleague, Claire Malone, who covers media for the New Yorker. Claire writes this, "More and more voters are forming opinions based on the funny video that their cousin's husband's sister shared in the group chat." In other words, whether I like it or not, memes matter. Claire Malone joins us now.

Claire, one of the quotes in your piece just stays with me. A right-wing influencer says the following, "The left can't meme, but we can." What does that mean?

Clare Malone: It basically means the left is too self-righteous and sanctimonious, and worried about being politically correct that they can't be funny, but the right-wing can be funny and go there. They can say the things everyone thinks but doesn't actually say out loud. I think that's what he means there.

David Remnick: I see. Is he right?

Clare Malone: I think there's some truth to it. Sure. Yes. I talked to this professor Ryan Milner, who studies memes. He's an academic memeologist and he --

David Remnick: [laughter] You can make a living at that?

Clare Malone: He basically said the reason why right-wing memes are so successful is because in American right-wing ideology of 2024, it's a very black-and-white thing, right? Fluid gender identity is a total joke. We all know that that's the right-wing thinking. We can make the funny joke that frankly probably elicits a lot of maybe inappropriate laughter from people who consider themselves Democrats, but they wouldn't maybe make the joke themselves. I think the right wing, what's the phrase we all like to say, has created a permission structure for that humor because it is a more black-and-white ideology. This is how America should be, this is how it shouldn't be.

David Remnick: Let's start with this meme of Biden's birthday cake and other age-related memes.

Clare Malone: This is a picture of Joe Biden that was posted on his Instagram. He turned 81 in November. It is a birthday cake absolutely alight, engulfed in flames.

David Remnick: It looks like a forest fire on top of a chocolate cake.

Clare Malone: That's right. Biden is sitting there smiling at a glossy mahogany table. The caption says, "Turns out on your 146th birthday, you run out of space for candles."

David Remnick: That's all in good fun.

Clare Malone: Basically, the Biden campaign has realized that he will not get younger and so the way to deal with concerns about his age is to make jokes about it.

David Remnick: That joke is showing up on Joe Biden's official Instagram account, right?

Clare Malone: That's right. Yes. That's their way of counteracting some of these-- There are a lot of memes on the internet of Joe Biden tripping over his words, or maybe looking confused. The RNC actually put an ad or YouTube ad that spliced them all together. I think those are a little bit unfair. One, Joe Biden suffers from a stutter or has overcome a stutter throughout his life. Maybe there's some of that going on with his speech patterns. Yes, there are various things beyond just the Biden tripping on the internet that makes him look old or fumbling, or feeble.

David Remnick: A recent poll shows that 77% of American adults think that Biden is too old for a second term. Is that meme helping Biden? [chuckles]

Clare Malone: [chuckles] I should say with those poll numbers, it's also a majority of Democrats or a plurality of Democrats. Most people think this, he's too old. I think it's--

David Remnick: Trump is a spring chicken of what, 77?

Clare Malone: Yes. He's four years younger than Biden.

David Remnick: And looks fabulous.

Clare Malone: I think we're dealing with an American public that is upset, I would say, that both of their candidates are-

David Remnick: Of an age.

Clare Malone: -old. Let's use the word, David, old by any standard.

David Remnick: Online, we're not seeing left-leaning memes at all when it to comes politics?

Clare Malone: We are. We are. I think the most prominent one, which I do talk about in the piece, is the Dark Brandon Meme.

David Remnick: Explain what that is.

Clare Malone: It's complicated. The Dark Brandon Meme is a left-wing meme derived from the right-wing meme, Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon is a polite way of saying F Joe Biden. The Dark Brandon meme sprung up on what we call dirtbag left Twitter. It was basically any time Joe Biden got a policy win early in his administration, to counteract the feeble narrative of Joe Biden, these guys, and they're mostly guys, would tweet out images of Biden in his aviator, but with lasers coming out of his eyes, or like Emperor Palpatine hands shooting out thunderbolts.

It was basically like, he's not a daughter or a grandpa. He's this powerful dark Lord who gets it done in Washington. The campaign now sells T-shirts of the Dark Brandon meme.

David Remnick: Now, you say that right does this better, they're better at memes, or at least you sourced it in this piece. At the same time, there seems to be memes all over the internet about Trump's affection for fast food, for example.

Clare Malone: I think the famous meme is when he invited the Clemson football team. After they'd won the national championship, they came to the White House during a partial government shutdown. Trump on Washington silver, served them McDonald's, Dominoes, just like a host of fast food and there's an amazing picture of him with his arms outstretched, basically.

David Remnick: That meme works for him, not against Biden.

Clare Malone: There were certainly liberals who made fun of him on Twitter. People have been making fun of Trump for his bad eating habits and appearance for a long time. Then people on the right were like, he will lead us. This man is in touch with the pulse of America. People like fast food, and so does Donald Trump and--

David Remnick: You might not have a pulse after that meal, but it's relatable as they say.

Clare Malone: It's relatable.

David Remnick: It's relatable.

Clare Malone: He leans in. He's a caricature and he knows that.

David Remnick: Oh, and plays with it.

Clare Malone: Yes. In fact, if you look at when he was booked and had his mugshot taken, he had that famous glowing to-the-camera picture--

David Remnick: Which he apparently rehearsed.

Clare Malone: Yes. [laughter] I think we could all tell that. It is an amazing visual representation of our time, and Trump tweeted it out himself.

David Remnick: It became a meme for him everywhere.

Clare Malone: It became a meme. It was basically then made into T-shirts. Sure, people on the left wing made fun of him, but Trump knew that was going to happen. He knew it was going to be the news of the day, and he very candidly asserted his own control over it and gave--

David Remnick: His outlaw cred.

Clare Malone: Exactly, his outlaw cred. Gave his supporters basically signal to them, this is how we're going to handle this. This is going to be our line of response.

David Remnick: Is the meme format uniquely effective at taking something that in the old sense would be bad coverage and turning it into a positive?

Clare Malone: It can be. It can spin both ways. Memes are basically like the updated political cartoon.

David Remnick: Which barely exists anymore.

Clare Malone: Yes, here [laughs] [unintelligible 00:07:47]

David Remnick: Political cartoons used to be a staple of what used to be called newspapers across the country, and everybody had a Herblock, or Toles, or whomever. It's a smaller tribe now.

Clare Malone: I think that you can be hurt by memes as a politician, as I think Biden probably is.

David Remnick: Do any memes ever end up hurting Trump, or is he just immune from that because of the nature of his persona?

Clare Malone: I think he is probably hurt by them to a certain extent, but to a much lesser degree than--

David Remnick: Which one's hurt?

Clare Malone: Let me back up and say that I think it's all impacted by polarization. I do think there is a slice of people who are ambivalent about whether or not they're going to vote for Trump. I think for some of those people, the memes of the mugshot, or when Trump is talking back to the Manhattan judge or making pure old statements, those are things that I think can go out into the ether. Some people will say, if they're a supporter of his, "Look at this guy, he's really sticking it to the man. It's a witch hunt." Other people will be like, "Geez, this guy, the accumulation of bad stuff is going to happen all over again if we reelect him."

By the way, when I reached out to the Biden campaign to ask for their response, they basically said our internal polling shows that most target voters, that's what they used.

David Remnick: What does that mean?

Clare Malone: It means basically, I think independents who are potentially swayable towards Biden.

David Remnick: In crucial states.

Clare Malone: Yes. They didn't specify, but I think we could probably infer that. Most of those people don't know, aren't sure that Donald Trump is going to win the Republican primary. The implication there was, once they do realize that he's going to be the nominee for president, there's a good likelihood they're going to get sick of him. It's not so much a defense of against Joe Biden being old so much as a well, people are going to be annoyed by Trump again. They'll forget about how much they think Biden is too old for office.

David Remnick: In a Quinnipiac poll, he comes out 6% ahead of Trump in the popular vote. Now, that's yet to be confirmed by other polls. We'll see how this matches up with others. It's polls themselves, as we've learned to our absolute devastation--

Clare Malone: Or how they do in swing states.

David Remnick: Yes, or how to do in swing states. It's a momentary phenomenon, to be sure, but this is the first poll that he's had that is at all encouraging to the Democratic Party in a very long time. Does humor and memes have any effect on voters, do you think? It's okay if we're just having a good time.

Clare Malone: My theory about American politics is, especially in the past decade, is basically none of it's really policy. It's all political pheromones. You like the cut of the person's jib, you kind of like, "Yes, that guy." That's really what it's all about. If the person parries back with humor that you like, and it seems to be done well, and it's not corny, then yes, maybe it works.

David Remnick: Or vicious.

Clare Malone: Or vicious, yes.

David Remnick: That's baked into the brand too. I hate to combine two clichés in one short sentence. Let's turn to something much more important than the 2024 election and the stakes of democracy in general, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Now, this romance has become a kind of cottage industry of conspiracy thinking. What has been showing up online, and what are the key memes there? Let's just take it really low here. Enough with this high-minded stuff.

Clare Malone: I didn't actually see this one coming. Shame on me.

David Remnick: Exactly.

Clare Malone: Basically, the new conspiracy theory is that Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift's romance is a Democratic or maybe deep state operation to win Joe Biden the presidency because if both of them endorsed Joe Biden, then it will be--

David Remnick: Unfair.

Clare Malone: I guess. A coup. The idea is basically that the NFL and Taylor Swift are, along with complaining about airlines, the thing that all Americans can get behind.

David Remnick: That noted left-wing organization, the National Football League.

Clare Malone: Right. This wasn't just a meme in weird right-wing Reddit. It was on Fox.

David Remnick: No, it was on Fox. It's been on Fox every night.

Jesse Watters: Dark Brandon doesn't get bogged down on details. He can't name a Taylor Swift song. Taylor Swift can't name a Biden policy. This relationship was engineered in a lab, and Taylor's boyfriend is sponsored by Pfizer. It is a match made in corporate heaven. Could you imagine if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl?

David Remnick: Does any of this mean anything or is this just a little bone for us to chew on for a while?

Clare Malone: I think it might be a bone for us to chew on, maybe some Super Bowl promo.

David Remnick: Here we are chewing.

Clare Malone: Here we are chewing on it.

David Remnick: Chewing like mad, yes.

Clare Malone: Ross Douthat had a little thing in The New York Times. I think he made a pretty good point, which was basically, Taylor Swift has endorsed in an election before. She endorsed in the midterms in, I think, 2018, and her candidate lost. Again, Tennessee is a deep red state, and that's where she made a very public endorsement, but will Taylor Swift swing in the 2024 election? Okay, maybe not, but maybe-- Biden is unappealing to younger voters. Maybe if Taylor's, I don't know, getting out to vote in Wisconsin.

David Remnick: Is there any history of a celebrity endorsement having a decisive impact either in the era of memes or before?

Clare Malone: I don't know. I want to say maybe during the Obama era, but that was really more like certain political influencers in the primary said to Black voters in particular, it's okay to vote for him.

David Remnick: But John Lewis who's not a celebrity as such.

Clare Malone: No, I know. You know better than I, was Oprah so early to Obama that it was influential.

David Remnick: Well, that's interesting. God, it's going to be a long, long campaign. Clare Malone, thanks so much.

Clare Malone: Thanks for having me, David.

David Remnick: You can read Clare Malone's column on the media and politics at newyorker.com.

[MUSIC - Merrill Garbus]

 

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