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ICYMI . . . It’s Brat Summer

Five things to know now about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s memeability

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Unless you just fell out of a coconut tree, you’ve seen the explosion of memes on social media featuring Vice President Kamala Harris, whose historic White House run is at the center of a Venn diagram where politics and pop culture collide.

So what does it all meme? For the context, AU Now turned to SOC journalism professor Sherri Williams, an expert on race, gender, social media, and the representation of Black women in media.

Here are five things to know now about the memeability of the glass-shattering presidential hopeful:

1. Grassroots, user-created content has driven the viral trend’s popularity.

When President Joe Biden announced on July 21 that he was dropping his bid for a second term, an army of exuberant TikTok creators began flooding the platform with dances, musical remixes, and edits.  

While Harris is using Beyonce’s Freedom as her official campaign song, TikTok users have tapped into tunes from Sabrina Carpenter, SZA, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift in a different way—further blurring the lines between the online world and IRL.

Albeit comically perplexing to older generations, the posts have reached millions of users who are in on the joke.

2. The Harris campaign is embracing TikTok.

Kamala HQ officially dipped into the memeified waters when Charli XCX posted about Harris on X just after Biden publicly threw his support behind his veep. Audiences responded.

A July 22 TikTok posted by the official campaign account received 7.1 million likes and 54.8 million views—the most since the account launched in February 2024. Since then, Kamala HQ posts have averaged 5.3 million views.

3. Memes indicate young voters’ renewed excitement about the election.

Younger generations have expressed greater dissatisfaction with a Biden/Trump rematch than older voters.

But with a third of Americans under 30 now getting their news on TikTok, Williams said “memes can serve as a call to action to get voters more engaged”—much like the identity group Zoom calls that have raised millions of dollars for Harris.

“I’m not sure if this will translate into votes—it could,” Williams said. “But at least there is a young demographic showing interest and paying attention.” To be effective, campaigns have to communicate with young people “in a way that is relevant to them.”

4. There’s a synergy between brat green and the unlikely popularity of Harris memes.

 
 

The cover art of Charli XCX’s Brat, which dropped in June, features an atomic green akin to Nickelodeon slime. But the British artist said the hideous hue was by design.

“It just felt like the most wrong out of all the options we had,” she told Architectural Digest. “The most off, the most uncomfortable, the most disorientating. And that’s why I chose it.”

Just like latching onto an unpopular color and coining ‘brat’ as a term of endearment, Harris memes are reclaiming sound bites and depictions originally used to paint her in a negative light.

5. This trend is both cool—and cringe.

While mainstream media typically doesn’t cover social media activity, Williams said it’s notable that journalists have latched onto what’s happening on TikTok.

In DC and beyond, hundreds of stories and news segments about Kamala Harris and “brat summer” have attempted to explain the trend.

“It kind of reminds me of explaining a VCR to my grandmother in the 80s,” Williams said with a laugh.