United States | The “brat” vote
Is Kamala Harris “brat”?
America’s TikTok election just became more interesting
Jul 25th 2024|new york
“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”, begins a viral clip of Kamala Harris. It resurfaced in the days after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, but this video has a twist.
The song “Von dutch”, by a British pop star, Charli xcx, begins to rev in the background. Ms Harris’s signature belly laugh rises up. A lime-green filter with the word “brat”—the cover art and name of xcx’s new album—flashes across the screen.
“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” says Ms Harris. The beat drops. Enter supercuts of Ms Harris.
The video, uploaded to X by Ryan Long, a college student in Delaware, has 4m views—not counting millions from reshares and copycat remixes that have since spawned across social media. On the day Mr Biden dropped out of the race xcx gave Ms Harris her endorsement on X: “kamala IS brat”.
The post, which has over 50m views, is high praise. xcx’s songs and the colour lime-green have decorated the summer of the world’s coolest it-girls for weeks. The singer has defined the essence of “brat” in recent interviews: “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party.” All a brat needs is “just like a pack of cigs and like a bic lighter”.
None of that screams White House. Still, Ms Harris’s team is leaning in. It reshared xcx’s post and “kamala” versions of the “brat” branding on her campaign’s social media, puzzling pundits. Yet this moment did not just fall out of a coconut tree. The ironic, organic collision of cultures is why it works.
“Brat” album spoofs were across social media long before they rained over Kamala hq. Ms Harris’s predisposition to becoming a meme is a trait that Mr Long thinks captures something “very similar to Donald Trump”. It is also an opportunity Mr Biden’s team of meme manufacturers could only dream of (remember “Dark Brandon”? Maybe not).
Over on TikTok, the excitement is palpable. A video of Ms Harris, soundtracked to “Femininomenon”, a song by Chappell Roan, a pop star, has 6.6m views.
One commenter hopes to “meme her into [the] presidency”. Another calls for a “Kamala-nomenon”. A similar edit shared to Ms Harris’s campaign TikTok has over 35m views.
Whether she can turn vibes into votes is one thing. Another is certain: the TikTok election just became more interesting. ■