Democrats Have Finally Learned the Value of Shitposting

Not even two weeks ago, J.D. Vance promised to boost the campaign’s funding and deliver a hokey, small-town family man who could speak to voters in rural America.

Instead, the entire Democratic Party apparatus has taken to calling him weird. Digital strategists, and the entire internet, are saying it's about damn time.

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Two years ago, I wrote about how Democrats were suddenly more comfortable clowning on Republicans online. It was August 2022 and the midterm elections were quickly approaching. When you scrolled through what was then still called Twitter, Democratic Senate candidates like John Fetterman were volleying attacks at their opponents over veggie trays and crudités.

Around the same time Fetterman and his young digital staff were cyberbullying Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Biden campaign pulled an Uno reverse card on the GOP’s “Let’s go Brandon” cry, co-opting it into what we all know as Dark Brandon today. We could spend hours discussing Brandon’s merits, but it showed Democrats that accepting or dismissing these attacks outright could be a successful digital strategy of its own.

It’s felt like a while since Democrats have gotten back into the posting game. In some ways, it’s because they didn’t really have to. Moments like Oz’s crudité gaffe were primed to go viral. And in 2022, social media was a different place. Democrats held themselves to a higher standard on platforms that were optimized for virality. That same year, Elon Musk bought Twitter—and it wouldn’t be much longer until Meta’s platforms deprioritized political content.

To me, it now feels like Democrats took a crash course in shitposting and have nearly mastered it. They’re acknowledging the grassroots support, and interacting with it in a way that shows they truly, and perhaps finally, understand the social media landscape in 2024.

Pinning the Republicans as odd and weird has become the Democratic Party’s primary weapon this week. And they unsheathed it because the internet and the base was ready for it. Did I think that last week a joke about the possible VP having sex with a couch would land so hard? No, no I didn’t. But here we are, in a new era where Democrats are the ones doing the dunking.

“It is deeply important to Republican policy and ideology that they are not the weird ones, so they will never be able to let it go. It [sic] shows that Democrats are done playing nice with people who do not play nice with us,” said Emma Mont, Democratic creator and an admin for the @Organizermemes X account. “There are groups of people online who for years have been begging Democrats to lose the niceties, and now that they have, those online folks are excited to participate.”