Will Dark Brandon’s Attempt to Reach Young Voters on TikTok Help Joe Biden?
There are two public versions of Joe Biden right now.
One is the made-for-television Biden. It’s a Biden that’s all too human, bobbing and weaving through a folksy demeanor, gaffe-prone ad-libs, and statesmanly appeals for the future of American democracy. It’s also a Biden noticeably advancing in age, experiencing some salient political weakness as an octogenarian trying to steer the country through troubled waters.
The other front-facing Joe Biden is manufactured for the internet. You’ve heard of this one too, even if you haven’t seen him. His name is Dark Brandon.
On Sunday evening, with the Super Bowl already well underway, Biden’s presidential campaign posted on TikTok for the very first time. At first, it’s a fairly innocuous vertical-video interview: Chiefs or 49ers? Actually, the Eagles—for Philly native Jill. Game or commercials? Game. Jason Kelce or Travis Kelce? Mama Kelce.
All standard stuff, before: “Deviously plotting to rig the season so the Chiefs would make the Super Bowl, or the Chiefs just being a good football team?” an aide asked. “I’d get in trouble if I told you,” Biden says, before the video cuts to a full-screen image of Dark Brandon, a laser-eyed meme version of Biden, the kind that jokes about deep-state “Taylor Swift is a CIA operative”–type conspiracy theories.
Dark Brandon is Biden’s current internet nom de guerre, a play on the “Let’s Go Brandon” political chant that right-wing chuds concocted years ago as a euphemistic stand-in for the similarly syllabled “Fuck Joe Biden.” Yes, this was his TikTok debut, his first sally into Gen Z’s digital wasp’s nest, but Dark Brandon has already posted on X and Instagram too: “Just like we drew it up” was the social media caption on both once the Chiefs won.
Dark Brandon is Biden as a sparring partner for—or outright parody of—the worst vibes of the QAnon-era internet craziness—an online character with edgelord posting flair and crypto-king visuals, a political communicator’s take on Gritty. An attempted reclamation of narrative after years of MAGA memes.
It’s also a far cry from Biden’s previous millennial-pandering brand—the one that posted cute stuff about Ray-Ban aviators, his passion for ice cream, #Joementum, or his custom Bitmoji (on Snapchat).
It’s a far cry, too, from the chief executive who considered continuing his predecessor’s pursuit of banning TikTok on national security grounds, given its parent company’s Chinese origins—a move that would have likely doomed him with the older teen and twenty-something voters he’s currently pandering to on TikTok.
Despite what his defenders say—despite how normal and unproblematic his aging might actually be—Biden does have an old-age problem on his hands. Just last week, a special counsel’s report called the 81-year-old a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties in advancing age.” When Biden held a press conference railing against the special counsel’s assessment, he immediately mixed up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico.
There is a real middle on the Venn diagram of the Biden you see on television and the internet golem Dark Brandon that has infested Biden’s digital iconography. Biden is not young, but he still beat Donald Trump by being realer, more grounded, and, dare I say, … cooler than Trump? (Low bar.) His Egypt-Mexico mix-up was one he would’ve made a decade earlier—if not the decade before that. But Biden still has an uphill battle to get on-the-fence voters to put his mind out of their minds completely.
This newfangled internet Biden won’t solve that. It’s a purposely slapdash take on Biden for the digital age, a software update that attempts to patch the bugs that make this ancient computer click for America’s voting youth. It’s an attempt to energize younger voters, not pitched to convince older generations that he’s still got his former charm.
The problem is, those in TikTok’s cohort aren’t easily won over just because you’re speaking a language they relate to or editing videos in a way they recognize. In the first day of the Biden account, the campaign posted four videos. The top comments are “i cant afford gas or rent,” “8 hrs edited down to 30 seconds,” “Good job answering those questions. I know it’s hard,” “had to wake him up for this one,” “What about Rafah???” He’s in the lion’s den now.
