The internet says Kamala Harris is 'brat,' and her campaign is embracing it

[July 23, 2024]  By Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kamala Harris is not yet the Democratic Party's candidate for president but her status online is already clear: she is a meme.

In the latest testament to her viral presence among Gen Z, British pop sensation Charli XCX name-checked her in a weekend tweet that called the vice president a "brat".

And Harris' campaign is leaning into it.

Soon after the artist tweeted "kamala IS brat" on Sunday night - giving Harris the name of her latest album – the U.S. vice president adopted the album's lime green aesthetic for her "Kamala HQ" account.

Charli XCX was acknowledging something that had already taken off online, where viral memes were featuring video clips of Harris dancing and joking against Charli XCX tracks.

Brat, the singer has explained, is "that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and like maybe says some like dumb things sometimes, who like feels herself but then also like maybe has a breakdown... It’s brat, you’re brat, that’s brat."

Her tweet on Sunday sent the trend soaring, a phenomenon that could help Harris's outreach to younger voters that could play a pivotal role in the Nov. 5 election.

That contrasts not only with 78-year-old Republican rival Donald Trump, but with Harris's 81-year-old boss, President Joe Biden, who quit the race at the weekend and endorsed his vice president as his replacement at the top of the ticket.

A spokesperson for Charli XCX declined a request for an interview.

The 'brat' trend joins another Harris viral meme - audio from a 2023 speech that was pilloried before by critics, but is now embraced by Gen Z as a sort of existential philosophy.

"'You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?'" Harris asks in the speech, quoting what her mother used to say, before laughing and then growing serious. "You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you."

The Internet hive mind has adopted a coconut emoji as an unofficial campaign symbol for Harris. TikTokers have used sound from the "coconut tree" speech in at least 3,000 videos, according to TikTok.

U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris dances with Kirk Franklin during a Juneteenth concert hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 10, 2024. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo

Harris's membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha - the first Black Greek-letter sorority - at Howard University in Washington, D.C., is also sparking viral engagement online.

"Listening to the opposition knowing we have 22,190,813 members in the D9 abt (sic) to vote for Kamala!" says one video on TikTok featuring two women, one of which is in the AKA colors of pink and green. D9 refers to a group of nine historically Black fraternities and sororities.

To be sure, Harris has her share of haters online. Critics have pushed clips aimed at portraying her in a negative light, including compilations of her boisterous laugh, after Trump himself referred to her as "Laffin' Kamala."

Younger voters, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, had so far been unenthusiastic about a presidential race between Biden and Trump, 78 years old.

"It's very hard to understand Gen Z unless you're Gen Z," said Chris Mowrey, a Democratic social media influencer with 340,000 TikTok followers, referring to the generation born between 1997 and 2012.

Internet moments can translate to the ballot box, Mowrey added: "Young voters vote significantly more based on just personality and, like, vibes."

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Heather Timmons and Deepa Babington)

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