THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 NY P5
be to make it more accessible, but it can also make
politics feel oddly remote — as if it is all just a televi-
sion show to watch, or a fantasy novel to read, or a
game to play. And while presidential candidates need
to pitch a wide tent, swaying other people — people
who are not like them — to their cause, stans are
intrinsically agents of exclusion, posturing above
those who don’t already agree with them or just don’t
get the jokes. Though political stans ostensibly exist to
promote their favorite candidates, you get the sense
that they are also looking to build micro-fandoms
around their own online personalities. This is a time
when social activity — talking with friends, creating
media and offering commentary — can be styled as
political in and of itself. Activism slips easily into dis-
course; our idea of what it means to “do something”
has become almost indistinguishable from talking
about it.
The stanning of the presidency is a fresh form of
civic engagement, but it is an agent of disengagement,
too. It is a new way of seeing democracy, and of
obscuring it. In 2019, the democratic nature of online
creation masquerades as democracy itself.
I
T BEGAN, like so many modern presidential cam-
paign stories do, as a joke. Sarah Marilyn, a 28-
year-old Brooklyn social media strategist, didn’t
bother to watch the first Democratic debates in June.
She was only vaguely aware that they were happening
until the memes began cascading onto her phone. She
chased the best jokes, fell into a kind of Photoshop
fugue state, and emerged as the co-founder of a Face-
book page dedicated to the candidate with the most
stimulating content: Marianne Williamson’s Dank
Meme Stash. (fig. 15)
It took only a few hours for her ironic interest to
bloom into something more. Was it just her, or was
Marianne Williamson actually kind of making sense?
Somebody tweeted that “Marianne Williamson just
needs 2 or 3 hot Bushwick witch girls to run her social
media and she will absolutely run away with this,” and
Marilyn decided that she would be one of them.
As Marilyn waded into the campaign, she met re-
sistance from Williamson’s old-school supporters, the
kind of people who sincerely seek her spiritual self-
help content. When Marilyn shared a meme featuring
the candidate in a meditative pose that said “Re-Align
America’s Chakras Again,” somebody called her a
“hater.” Others worried that mocking memes would
undermine Williamson’s claim to a serious run.
Williamson herself seemed a little spooked. “I am not a
cult leader,” she clarified on Twitter. “Why do people
make crystal jokes?” she pleaded to The New York
Times. “I don’t use crystals!”
CAN MARIANNE
WILLIAMSON’S FANS
ASTRALLY PROJECT HER INTO
THE PRESIDENCY?
In a meme campaign, ironic and sincere Williamson supporters unite against the haters.
I
fig. 12
fig. 13 fig. 14
fig. 15
WHAT DOES IT MEANthat Joe Biden, a front-runner for the Democratic
nomination for president, has approximately zero online energy around
his campaign — that he has, if such a thing is possible, negative online
energy?
Search for Biden-related Facebook activity, and you’ll be confronted
by groups dedicated to memeing the former vice president’s habit of sniff-
ing the hair of women and girls. (fig. 12)Throughout the Obama adminis-
tration, The Onion delighted in mocking Biden, plugging him into the per-
sona of a disarming old rascal, (fig. 13, 14)but this year, a former Onion
editor, Joe Garden, publicly apologized for that coverage. Nobody is com-
ing out on Twitter as a Biden stan.
Why? It’s partly because the Democratic electorate is older and less
lefty than its Twitter delegation suggests. But there is also an inverse rela-
tionship between a campaign’s proximity to traditional power centers and
the online buzz it inspires. And Biden is running on the most establishment
platform possible: His pitch is that he should win because he could win.
When Biden was the vice president, there was space to play around
with his persona. It was cute to imagine him stripped down to a tank top on
the White House lawn, polishing a Trans Am. But now that he is gunning
for the presidency, his appeal as an online object of fascination has waned.
Garden said he regretted framing Biden in a way that made him seem
“ ‘creepy but harmless,’ with the emphasis on ‘harmless.’ ” There is a para-
dox at the heart of presidential fandom: It views the most powerful person
on the planet as also, somehow, the little guy. Candidates can embody that
contradiction through their ideologies (if they are socialists or populists);
their biographies (cue presidential hopefuls shaking their family trees un-
til some humble welder falls out); or their attitudes (President Trump is
literally mighty but acts figuratively small). No tension exists within Bi-
den’s persona: It’s just power in pursuit of more.What makes a candidate an online sensation?CASE STUDY
JOE BIDEN
HAS ZERO
MEME ENERGY