Coconuts, ‘brat summer’ and that laugh: The memeing of Kamala Harris

It’s out with Dark Brandon and in with coconuts and “brat summer.”

Scratching your head about what it all means? For those who still don’t know what a dank meme is, let the explaining by this 142-year-old newspaper begin.

In short: Vice President Kamala Harris, thrust on Sunday into a brighter limelight — more on limes later — after President Biden quit the presidential race and endorsed her, is having a digital cultural moment.

Within hours of Biden dropping out, Harris supporters flooded the internet with word-salad soundbites from her old speeches, including a reference to falling out of a coconut tree. Previously used by detractors to throw shade at how she speaks, the clips have been endlessly remixed into laudatory TikTok videos, X memes and Etsy merch.

Adding to the viral vortex, pop star Charli XCX, referencing her hit summer album “Brat,” posted on X Sunday: “kamala IS brat.” (Yes, that is a compliment.)

The nascent Harris presidential campaign has embraced the social media maelstrom, blasting out memes and rebranding its official @KamalaHQ account on X with the same shade of lime green and out-of-focus Arial font as the “Brat” album cover.

Will the memes pay off for the presumptive Democratic nominee, especially with tech-savvy Generation Z voters? Time will tell.

“Social media hype doesn’t always mean people will show up at the polls. We are going to see a really big test of that in 2024,” said Yumi Wilson, a professor at San Francisco State University who focuses on social media and branding.

For young voters — who overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020 and turned out in high numbers for the 2022 midterm election — platforms like TikTok are highly influential because that is where they get their news, marking “a shift from previous generations who relied more upon traditional media,” Wilson said.

The splashy entrance of Harris, 59, into what had been a repeat contest between Biden, 81, and former President Trump, 78, excited advocacy groups for young progressives, which reported record-breaking fundraising numbers.

Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-led nonprofit that works to engage young constituents, endorsed Harris on Sunday and raked in nearly $125,000 from grassroots donors in all 50 states within the day, said Jack Lobel, a spokesman for the group.

“Voters of Tomorrow is working hard to mobilize our peers, turning this authentic engagement we are seeing online into turnout. With 40 million members of Gen Z eligible to vote in 2024, this momentum could very well deliver Kamala Harris the presidency,” Lobel said in an email.

On Tuesday, Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee focused on electing young progressives, said it had raised more than $330,000 for Harris. The group’s founder, David Hogg, sent an email blast Tuesday with the subject line, “Kamala IS brat.”

“Using memes and music, the Harris campaign has already opened the door to communicate with the younger generations about climate change, gun reform, abortion rights, and more,” wrote Hogg, a 24-year-old survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

“For those who don’t know,” he added, “‘brat’ and ‘brat summer’ are about living your best life — which is EXACTLY what we’ll be doing if Democrats win big this year.”

Earlier this summer, Charli XCX explained on TikTok that being brat means you’re “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and, like, maybe says some, like, dumb things sometimes.”

A brat girl, she continued, “feels herself, but then also, like, maybe has a breakdown, but kinda like parties through it. It’s very honest, it’s very blunt, a little bit volatile.”

So, why all the coconuts?

In May 2023, Harris gave a speech during a swearing in ceremony for commissioners for the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics.

She stressed the importance of supporting not only young people but also their families, teachers and communities because “none of us just live in a silo.” And she enthusiastically quoted her mother.

“She would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris said, laughing heartily. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The Republican National Committee immediately posted a clip of the coconut spiel to YouTube and X, where right-wing commenters said Harris sounded drunk and called her crazy.

Now, Harris supporters — who say they have been “coconut pilled,” a reference to the film “The Matrix” that signals they have been enlightened by a new reality — have reclaimed the goofy coconut clip, mashing it with songs by the likes of Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Kesha.

For Harris, “it’s one of the best things that could happen to her and her campaign, going viral right now,” especially since Biden struggled to connect with young voters online, said Ramesh Srinivasan, founder of the University of California Digital Cultures Lab.

Srinivasan said his family hails from Tamil Nadu, the same state in southeast India where Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was born. There, he said, coconut trees are not just cute emojis — they are ubiquitous, important providers of food and cooking oil.

“She’s fully coconut,” Srinivasan said. “At least in terms of her parents’ generation, the reference makes complete sense.”

Soon after the memes started making the rounds on Sunday, other politicians glommed on.

“Madam Vice President, we are ready to help,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, posted on X, along with a photo of himself climbing a coconut tree.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, posted a photo of Harris with laser beam eyes — a reference to the Dark Brandon meme, a laser-eyed Biden alter ego that is, itself, a mashup of the Dark MAGA and Let’s Go Brandon memes used by conservatives.

On TikTok, the sudden popularity of Harris is a stark contrast to Biden, who struggled on the platform, especially after he signed a bill in April that would effectively ban the app in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell TikTok’s U.S. operations within a year.

On the app, Biden’s more recent attempts to make the two-year-old Dark Brandon meme cool again, a little-too-obviously orchestrated by his campaign, fell flat.

Rather, after Biden called Trump following the assassination attempt, TikTok users are now recasting the bitter political enemies as secret lovers — #triden — overlaying videos of them with the Chappell Roan song “Casual,” about a just-friends relationship that clearly means more.

Harris’ viral moment, at least for now, is seen as authentic because it was created organically on the internet, not by political operatives, said Tim Miller, who previously worked for the RNC and left the party after the 2020 election.

While Harris is enjoying a positive meme cycle, conservatives like Trump excel at mocking their opponents online and are testing out virtual attacks, Miller said.

Trump — whose catchy Make America Great Again slogan and its MAGA acronym became part of the American lexicon — harnessed the power of social media, especially X née Twitter, to bypass traditional media and speak directly to his supporters.

“Say what you want about Trump, and I’ve said everything negative you can imagine, there is an online community, mostly men, that he resonates with,” Miller said.

While Biden has been vulnerable to right-wing online trolls who portrayed him as doddering and confused, recent attempts to troll and negatively meme Harris have backfired, Miller said.

This week, the X account @RNCResearch, managed by the RNC and the Trump campaign, tweeted a clip of Harris laughing at a campaign event and the words: “Kamala Harris brought her cackle to Milwaukee: ‘Good afternoon, Wisconsin! Ha ha ha ha!’”

And the account of the right-wing Libs of TikTok, which has more than 3 million followers, shared a 2-minute, 20-second video composed entirely of clips of Harris laughing.

“There was a right-wing effort to brand her as a lightweight, videos of her being silly — that just doesn’t seem to be landing,” Miller said. “The left has reappropriated the silly memes in a way to make her seem fun.”

Harris supporters quickly responded, with memes and merch that says, “MALA: Make America Laugh Again.”

Times staff writer Hannah Ly contributed to this report.