The Kamalafication of BRAT

So, my intro question for you is:

Do you think that Kamala Harris would allow herself to be filmed doing cocaine with Charlie XCX to secure the youth vote?

I don't know if you remember when she was asked about her all the convictions for like marijuana offenses, and if they were like, Have you smoked weed?

And she was like, Well, yes, well, yes, she was like, Well, yes, well, yes.

So, I think in answer to that, yes.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity.

I'm Matt Bernstein, and I'm so happy that you're here.

On July 27th, 2024, Brat Summer, as we knew it, was declared over.

When Buddy Carter, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, whose personal policy positions include wanting to outlaw gay marriage, outlaw abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, ban trans people from the military, and eliminate affordable health care, tweeted, am I doing the hashtag brat thing right?

With a photo of a chartreuse square and with a blurry text in the middle that said, middlemen are driving up the cost of prescription drugs.

Buddy Carter, no, you are not doing the brat thing right.

In fact, you couldn't.

How the fuck did we get here?

Who the fuck is Buddy Carter and what?

is Brat Summer?

What is this garish shade of chartreuse that defines pop culture right now and why is Kamala Harris using it to appeal to young voters?

How did the image of an experimental pop artist beloved by gay people everywhere from Bushwick to Williamsburg become key?

That was funny.

I thought that was funny.

I loved.

Thank you.

Thank you.

How did the image of an experimental pop artist beloved by gay people everywhere from Bushwick to Williamsburg become key to the U.S.

presidential race?

Today, we will try to answer all of those questions without drinking bleach, at least until we stop recording.

Before we begin today's episode, if you would like to support the show or you would like some extra episodes of it, we are over on Patreon.

The link for that will be in the bio.

This summer, I have been working on a multi-part series revisiting the Buy Sister 2019 beauty guru homophobia heterosexual trickery vitamin gummy scandal.

None of those words were in the Bible.

And we also just put out a brand new bonus episode, taking a look at what went wrong with what Rolling Stone is calling the worst comeback single of all time, Katy Perry's Woman's World.

The link for the Patreon is in the bio.

If you'd like to support, we'll be over there.

And if you would like to sink your teeth into what the hell is going on with Brat Summer, then hang out, strap in.

We have some things to unpack.

There is no one who I would rather help me unpack this topic with.

Then welcome back to the show, friend of the podcast, Maia.

So excited to be back.

Maia is in my apartment today, so we're doing this together.

We have two camera angles to make it look a little more chic, but we are in fact sitting right next to each other.

Right next to each other.

I could get into your camera right now.

We both have green nails, too.

We're both feeling very Brat Summer.

Very Brat Summer.

We're celebrating the final breaths of Brat Summer.

The final gasp, the death rattle.

The death rattle of Brat Summer.

So I'm Maia.

I have a YouTube channel called Broi de Chanel, where I do film analysis, video essays.

And then I also have a podcast called Rehash, which I co-host with my best friend Hannah.

And it's all about internet phenomena.

And if you like this podcast, you would love Maia's podcast, Rehash.

She does such a great job of unpacking these like pop political topics online.

And I am so happy that we're going to sit and talk about this very jarring thing that has happened to one of my favorite albums of the year.

What did they do to my son?

If you have listened to the beginning of this podcast episode and you are like, I have no idea what you are talking about, we're going to be talking about a lot of things in this podcast and a lot of wild shit that has gone down at the intersection of pop culture and American politics.

But I want to establish the basics.

I want to meet everyone where they're at.

And so, Maya, can you explain, first of all, what is Brat?

What is Brat the album or what is Brat the lifestyle?

I guess both.

We have to discuss both.

So Brat the Album is Charlie XCX's most recent album.

Charlie XCX, for those who don't know, is a pop artist who's kind of came up through the underground scene, I would say.

She's been around for quite a while.

I think I was in high school when she first came out in around the 2013, 2014 era.

She's always been kind of a cool girl.

And I would say over the years, she's had a very incremental growth in her audience.

She's had a lot of like international success.

I think she did like a song with Iggy Azalea back in the day that also kind of brought her a bit more into it.

I'm so fancy.

Yeah, I'm So Fancy.

Personally, one of my least favorite songs of hers, but totally.

But it that also kind of brought her into mainstream attention.

Most recently, she came out with this album called Brat, which had one of the most impressive guerrilla marketing campaigns I've ever witnessed, honestly.

Yeah.

I remember I learned about it because I went to a party at a bar next to my house.

It was like some sort of event that these people I knew were throwing.

It was very intimate.

And all over the bar were these stickers that said brat on them, like chartreuse-colored stickers with brat on them.

And I was like, what is this?

And they were like, Charlie XEX's team reached out to us and were like, hey, we hear you're throwing an event in Toronto.

Do you want these stickers to give out?

I think it's notable to begin with.

Charlie XEX is British.

Yes.

And she's had a wild splash in American politics.

over the last few weeks, but she's not American.

And like you said, she's been around for basically a decade.

And what's interesting is that even though she's had so many moments of mainstream success, like she had a song in the Barbie soundtrack, she has always, I think, been most cherished by the like queer underground.

I think she continues to like, she loves the underground as much as the underground loves her.

When this stuff hit, like, you know, CNN and stuff, they were talking about Charlie XCX, like, she had this death grip over Gen Z, which she kind of does, but they were talking about her like as if she was a famous icon, like Beyonce,

or like Lady Gaga, or Taylor Swift.

And like she doesn't, she's never at any point had nearly the same like popularity or cultural ubiquity as any of those people.

Yeah, I would say she's niche.

She's definitely niche and she's always kind of maintained an edge, I would say.

Totally.

In a way that I think is really alluring to a lot of young people, especially among Gen Z.

So I think when Brat came out, it kind of felt like the anthem for these like kind of cool underground people.

But then I think it just like exploded from there.

It was like felt like kryptonite almost for some reason.

Describe Bratt's brat's album cover it's like a chartreuse square and it has in like very lo-fi kind of a like pixelated font just like brat it's very simple it's very like windows xp yeah yeah yeah yeah what's interesting is when this album cover first came out i remember online people were like angry like angry in a very serious way about the fact that this was like a very lo-fi album cover you know and i remember like charlie was going back and forth with her fans online and she was like i don't know why you expect that artists' faces must always be on their album cover or whatever.

And there was like a weird back and forth happening, but people were really upset about it.

And it's interesting because the album cover clearly has become like, I mean, it became a meme.

It became like one of the most iconic and central parts of the marketing of the album.

People would really, yeah, repurpose it for other things and kind of put their own names on it.

Different corporations and like publications were using it as a marketing tool as well.

Yeah, it kind of became like the people's princess of marketing, really.

It's kind of the people's princess of albums, really, or at least it was.

Yeah.

I guess you can't really be the people's princess of albums once you're like co-opted by like a major political party.

Oh, I want to say before we move on, I actually met Charlie XCX once.

Maybe this isn't a story.

It's just not an interesting story.

I met her and she was really sweet is the point.

I've heard she's very nice.

I also know people who have met her.

She's kind of just like around.

She's kind of an accessible person.

I think that's actually really important.

Again, you think of these major pop stars and while some of them build like extremely successful parasocial relationships with their audience, like Taylor Swift, none of those people ever feel accessible like they're up here.

Whereas like Charlie XCX, like part of her album rollout was like she was doing these like club performances.

There was a brick wall here in New York that they turned into like the brat wall that always had like messaging relating to brat and remixes that were coming out.

And like she like went to the brat wall and like met a ton of her fans there.

It was the ultimate campaign.

Like it truly was incredible.

We have to talk about about Brat summer.

But of course.

Because Brat is more than just an album, it's a lifestyle.

I just love that every summer we come up with a new term for us having our like messy era.

There's like a new term every year and it kind of means the same thing every time.

Every summer is basically about like being hot and having sex and like partying, but we find new ways to dress up.

We find new ways to do it.

Yeah, so I think Brat generally kind of oscillates between these songs about being, it can even happen within a single song, but like, you know, being a party girl, going out doing drugs being messy having kind of indie sleeves vibes like having messy makeup and riptites kind of energy and then oscillating with tank top with no bra tank top with no bra oscillating between that and then like kind of really introspective poignant takes on being a woman in your mid to late 20s and early 30s and kind of reckoning with like the biological clock and reckoning with just getting older in general, body image stuff that I think really resonated with people, but it's couched within these songs that are kind of like club hits almost.

Right.

The amount of times I've heard 360 or Von Dutch played on a night out is crazy.

I know, and I lose my shit every time.

I was like at the club a few weeks ago with my friend Tyler, and Von Dutch came on, and we were just like, I was like, I don't care, like, if I like sweat through my like filled-in eyebrows, like, I don't care.

I'm just gonna like fucking ball out to the song.

Yes, I think the essence of like a brat,

you're maybe cocky, maybe a little mean, you're like hot, you like sweat through your makeup on a hot summer summer day and you like the sidewalk on the street is your catwalk kind of thing but then also you are like a vulnerable insecure person

and you're using these kind of like edgy hot girl aesthetics to cover up for that and you're aware of that.

Is it a little bit Epi Stoneham, dare I say?

Is that skins?

Yeah.

She was like a Tumblr icon, right?

Yeah, Tumblr icon.

I guess Indy, it's just such an Indy Sleaz thing, Eppy Stoneham kind of coming home in her like makeup and her messed up hair.

Totally.

But then being this kind of like tragic figure.

I think there's also like really uplifting notes.

Like there's a song called Girl So Confusing, which is about feeling in competition with other women who might also like be your peers.

It's a song she did in reference to Lorde.

Right.

So then Lord and Charlie made a remix together where they were like, let's work it out on the remix.

And then they basically like used their respective verses in the remix to describe how like they didn't know that the other one was feeling that way and they were so caught up in their own insecurities and their own paranoias about themselves and the world that they didn't realize that they had like projected this image of like infallibility onto the women around them and then at the end of the song they're like we ride for each other and it's like there's a lot of like a lot of introspection and a lot of universality but in very like yeah very specific ways like that feels like such a feels like kind of a universal experience with womanhood and just like the the competition amongst women and and like this kind of guard we all have up when we first meet each other like it's yeah it's very interesting it's definitely a break the internet moment.

Right.

And so Brat Summer is about just like embodying all of these themes on the album.

It's about being vulnerable.

It's about being hot.

It's about doing cocaine also, which I'm not, you know.

Don't do drugs.

YouTube, we're demonetized.

Don't do drugs.

Right.

Don't do drugs.

But also that is what Brat.

That's what it's about.

That's what I saw this tweet from someone.

I think I sent it to you.

And it was like, does Kamala Harris know that like Brat Summer is about doing Coke and wanting to kill yourself?

Yeah, I saw that.

Now, before we talk about how Brat Summer enters the world of Kamala Harris and problematize it a bit, I want to talk about how Kamala Harris, I think she's become the meme candidate.

I think in many ways, memes are like the language of young people.

And I think politicians make a conscious effort oftentimes to meme themselves in ways that will endear themselves to young people, but it doesn't work usually.

And with Kamala Harris, it has worked so well.

And we're going to talk about why that is but I want to make reference to some of the memes that have even before she announced that she is essentially the Democratic nominee for president right now she she became really endeared to like this the very online very young portion of voters by like being herself in these kooky ways so do you know the wheels on the bus no don't remember it She literally, Kamala Harris is just always, I mean, as a high-profile politician, she's always being filmed.

And she just like, I mean, she's been memed into like kind of the coked out ant in a way.

People make a lot of jokes about like, she is on the craziest pharmaceutical cocktail known to man.

She's on some zans for sure.

And yeah, the wheels on the bus one was a viral video where she's just, she sees a bus on the curb, like in front of the curb in front of her.

And she goes, the wheels on the bus go round and round.

On the bus go round and round.

And it's not in tune with how the wheels on the bus song go.

The wheels on the song is the wheels on the bus go round and round.

And she sings, the wheels on the bus go round and round.

It is one of the most rudimentary songs of humanity.

Like there's some like row, row, row, your boat.

Like it's a song that's just ingrained within us from age three.

So it's crazy.

Well, and it's also just like there were, there weren't children around.

Like the thing that inspired her to do that was seeing the bus in front of her.

Like she really is a kooky individual.

She's got a jouissance for sure.

Like she's, she's got a, she's got a joie de vive.

A what?

A joie de vivre.

A joie.

Me doing the French accent.

A lust for life.

Oh, yeah.

She's got energy.

She totally has a lust for life.

Yeah, yeah.

Totally has a lust for life.

Love her or hate her.

The woman has a lust for life.

She's got a lust.

Do you know the Venn diagram meme?

Yeah.

Essentially, Kamala Harris in another, in some other public appearance, said that she loves Venn diagrams.

And she went into great detail explaining why specifically.

she loves the Venn diagram, what it does for her.

Well, so the funny thing is, though, I watched that video.

I was preparing for this episode episode and I watched that video and she doesn't actually say why she loves Venn diagrams.

She just describes what a Venn diagram is.

She's like, I love Venn diagrams.

You know, you get those two circles and a part in the middle, right?

I love Venn diagrams.

I really do.

I love Venn diagrams.

It's just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection, right?

Yeah, I see people.

You agree with me, right?

So, okay, so I asked my team.

I brought props.

That, yes, that's what I've been doing.

That's why she loves it.

She loves it.

She loves those tongs.

She'd be like, I love lawns.

You know, you have the grass and, you know, you water it and lawns.

You know, it's like, she's just describing the thing.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's the most like

benign.

I mean, it's a diagram.

It's a type of diagram.

Yeah.

She's giving like glass of scotch barbituate 2 p.m.

2 p.m.

kind of energy.

And I kind of like, yeah, it's so hard not to find it so funny.

And I think the lens of that for so long during Biden's presidency, and especially in the months leading up to this past couple months, was that, like, oh, here's Joe Biden, he's got dementia, he never knows what he's saying.

But then, and then Kamala was kind of paired with that as like, and then he has this crazy VP who does a lot of drugs, you know?

So they were kind of this pair to be kind of like mocked.

We're going to, again, problematize all of this.

Like, this is not an episode about worshiping Kamala as a camp icon.

We're going to discuss her, I think, in a hopefully nuanced way as a politician.

But it is worth noting, like, she would be America's, I think, first kookie president.

It goes a long way to have personality.

I think that is the most fundamental aspect of American politics, unfortunately.

Is personality.

Yeah.

Which is the problem.

Yes.

Which is the crux of this episode, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

I'm not done talking about Kamala memes.

Do you know Unburdened by What Has Been?

Wait, you just described this to me three seconds ago.

Unburdened.

Okay, okay, okay.

You take it.

I will tell you what it is.

Yeah.

So this is really interesting.

A lot of the memes that have really been successful for her have surfaced from one Twitter account, which is a Republican-run Twitter account.

It's like an official RNC account and it's called RNC Research.

And what this account does over and over again is publish these videos of her doing things that the people running that account, Republicans, think are like cringy or weird.

And what they don't realize is that it's really like camp and funny.

And so multiple times they have done this where they're like, can you believe Kamala said this?

And then everyone, like kind of the liberal and left internet will both be like, this is fucking hilarious.

And so it, to the extent that I am like, okay, I think the RNC research Twitter account is a psyop.

That's my conspiracy theory.

i think it's like a liberal psyop but anyway they posted this four-minute compilation of her from like a hundred different speeches that she's done she she uses this line what can be unburdened by what has been i can imagine what can be and be unburdened by what has been you know what can be

unburdened by what has been there are those who are unable to see what can be

um but there are many more who are able to see what can be unburdened by what has been.

And it's

just like, they're trying to be like, it makes no sense.

She obviously thinks this is an extraordinarily hard-hitting line that she's said it in a hundred different speeches.

And it's just kind of not, but that is what's so funny.

And she does her politician hands when she does it, where she does her like roundabout hand and she's like, don't you see?

And it's just like drunk auntie giving sage advice kind of vibe.

And you're like, yes, yes.

The wisdom.

Totally drunk auntie giving sage wisdom.

Yeah, yeah.

And then perhaps the most famous meme is The coconut tree meme.

Take it away.

I believe it was a press conference where she's telling a story that her mom used to tell her.

She kind of does this crazy laugh where she's like,

then she's like, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

And then she all of a sudden gets extremely serious and she's like, we exist in the context.

What is it?

You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

And she's like doing her politician hand.

My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and 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?

You exist in the context

of all in which you live and what came before you.

And she, it's just the switch up from the crazy laugh to this immediate seriousness and like somber tone that's so funny.

And it's just like when you take any clip out of context, if you're walking, let's say you hear someone walking by you on the street, anything they say will be so funny.

But so something about the out of contextness of it also just amplified the like ridiculousness of the statement.

I think if you listen to the speech in full, it makes sense within the context of what she's saying.

But the way she delivers it and like the concept of the coconut tree and it just, it's just so kooky and strange.

I was at the gym the other day and I,

you know, there were, they're like the stationary bikes and I get on one and the two guys on the stationary bikes next to me, I just hear one go to the other one, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree.

Kamala Harris fans are describing themselves as coconut-pilled.

And I do think this is just such a seismic shift because, like, Democrats have struggled for so long to appeal.

I mean, since Obama, really, like, Joe Biden has struggled so much to appeal to young people because there's nothing about him that was ever naturally appealing to young people.

He's out of touch with the issues that we care about, but also just like on a personality level, it's like, what?

No amount of like Gen Z Democratic strategists huddling around Biden, which they did every day for years, could ever make him like cool to young people.

And so the fact that Kamala could do this like organically,

it makes sense that the people around Kamala would try to capture this and seize on it.

There's been a lot of discourse in like leftists, like just on the left, about the idea that like the Democrats kind of need their own Trump, not ideologically, but just in the sense that like Trump was someone who was able to galvanize a group of disenfranchised people, right?

And he used populism to do it.

He used these like horrible worldviews to do so.

And he, I think what's so important about to remind ourselves of is that we live in a society of spectacle and like the most important things in that society are images and their icons and like narratives and stories.

And I feel like Trump, what was so effective about his campaign and what people really underestimated was the power of the image.

Like he had the really simple hat.

He had these really simple slogans.

And I'm not saying, oh, everyone should go be a populist.

That's That's not at all what I'm saying.

But I think what the Democrats have kind of failed to capture is this, this like, the simplicity of those things and the power of those things.

And I think Biden especially was someone who just really came to symbolize how forgettable the Democrats became.

And especially these like establishment Democrats.

Like I can't even remember his slogan.

All I can think of is We Did It Joe, which was Kamala's slogan.

Like that was what he did.

Literally,

I also can't remember his slogan, but you're right.

Yeah.

That's like the most like memorable kind of like slogany thing that came out of that campaign.

And it was Kamala again being herself at the end of a run.

Lean in, Aunt Joe.

It was again, it was like the drunk aunt at like.

Exactly, yeah.

And I think, you know, even thinking about Trump getting shot recently, the second that image of him was taken by that associated, I think it was an associated press photographer, everyone was like, oh, it's done.

It's done.

Because that image of him with the ear is like...

way too powerful.

The fist, it's an innate thing for him.

Trump understands the power of an image.

Of course, and I think the reason he does is because we can talk about this more, but like American politics has always been political theater.

Like American democracy is political theater.

It's all about personality.

It's all about the image.

It's all about the narrative.

And so politicians are celebrities by way of that, like by virtue of that being a thing in this like mediatized society.

But Trump especially was already a celebrity.

Like he knows how to appeal to people in these in these ways.

And like that's kind of what he had.

Not to give him too much credit, but even in the months leading up to this election, people were kind of like, Trump's kind of funny, which is not something I ever want to indulge, but it's like that, that was a thing that even people on the left started kind of admitting.

And it's like, the Democrats just lost, like, they just didn't have that.

Ever since Obama played basketball, I feel like after that, no one was ever to recreate, was ever able to recreate that.

Not only did Democrats fail to have any sort of like, there was never any cult of personality.

And like, to be clear, I think cult of personality is bad.

It's bad.

And I think that, I think the fact that American politics is like you said, theater is bad.

And we're going to get into all of that, but that is what it is here.

And it is what you have to champion if you want to win.

And Democrats could never do it.

And I think Democrats just became viewed as like the like boring party that's always just like slapping you on your wrists and being like, we suck, but you have to vote for us because we're not the other guy.

Yeah.

The lesser of two evils.

Yes.

And it's like, you just can't campaign, like, you can't run a successful campaign as the lesser of two evils forever.

You have to give people something something to vote for and not just someone to vote against.

I'm just remembering when, like, even Hillary went on Broad City.

And instead of that being good for her campaign, it was just bad for Broad City.

Something about them, like the most recent, like Democratic candidates just felt so disingenuous and so like hollow.

Yeah.

In a way that like, yeah, Trump kind of speaking his mind and being for the people and being this like populist person worked.

And I think that's something that the Democrats can no longer take for granted.

Totally.

You know who should be president?

Put this on record.

Monica Lewinsky.

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Now, let's get back to the show.

So, where does the world of brat summer Charlie XCX cocaine hot vulnerable girls enter the campaign of Kamala Harris?

Well, I've constructed a little timeline and we are going to walk through it bit by bit and provide commentary as we see fit.

Oh, poet.

Didn't know it.

On July 3rd, 2024, Ryan Long, a senior at the University of Delaware with no, you know, substantial social media following or life in politics, post a video on Twitter captioned, Why did I stay up till 3 a.m.

making a Von Dutch brat coconut tree edit featuring Kamala Harris and why can't I stop watching it on repeat?

And this video, which I will play a tiny snippet of because I don't want to get copyright claimed, is videos of Kamala Harris when she's talking about falling out of the coconut tree and other clips of her like dancing and being kooky edited into the Addison Ray remix of Von Dutch.

It's so it's like it's like the word vomit coming out.

Literally, every episode I reach a place where it's like none of these words are in the Bible, but truly, none of these words are in the Bible.

Explain this to like to a Victorian child.

To a Victorian child, yeah.

Dead.

They're dead.

Dead before the sentence comes to a close.

Dead on site.

Dead on sight.

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

You exist in the context

of all in which you live and what came before you.

This goes totally viral.

It like catches fire on Twitter.

I think, first of all, I think memes are an art form.

And I think especially, I guess all memes are homemade, but especially when like edits like this.

And I just view this as like a Dada art piece.

Yeah, a little avant-garde.

It feels like nonsensical digital art that is like a product of total political disillusionment.

by young people.

We're returning to random core.

I think like well, we're if we're thinking about the dadaists Dadaists and like that entire art movement, I think it was born of people feeling fatigued and feeling disenfranchised and feeling nihilistic.

The absurdity kind of comes out of that.

Yeah.

And I think what we see with memes and this like irony poisoned culture is just that like people are feeling nihilistic and they're feeling disenfranchised, they're feeling tired.

And like even seeing these memes about Kamala, like I was at a place for a lot for like the past few years where I was like, I don't care.

I don't want to hear about politics.

I don't want to think about it.

I was a poli sci major.

Like this is not, this shouldn't be happening with me, I feel like.

I had always been really invested, but I just, yeah, it's like after all of these years, it's just like, we're just tired.

And so I think being able to find a bit of joy and a bit of humor out of these like absurdist videos and memes and this like ridiculous sense of humor.

Like I can't stop laughing at Kamala.

I think she's so funny.

Like I and like I am critical of her, but it's it's hard not to find joy in those memes.

You spend so many years in this place of like total political disillusionment.

I think especially for young people, like we've never been excited.

I mean, we had Bernie Sanders, but that didn't work in the sense that he didn't win.

And so it's like what you said, I just feel like videos like this that keep going viral are a product.

Like, that's like my artistic analysis of what's going on here.

Like, I think it's a product of like disillusionment and just like throwing our hands up and throwing shit at the wall.

Yeah, there's something that felt even less absurd about the memes about Bernie back in the day where, you know, like the meme that's like, I am once again asking.

And it's like, oh, yeah, I am once again asking.

Or the picture of Bernie sitting on the chair in the middle of nowhere.

Like they felt even less absurd and more just like endeared towards Bernie than these do, which is like none of these are necessarily endeared towards Kamala, although she is getting a lot of love on Twitter.

But more, I don't know, this kind of content feels a bit more just like, whatever.

Well, right.

And it's, I mean, and that's why I wanted to talk about what the album was about and what the themes of the album are about.

Like, we joked, like, Kamala has admitted to having smoked weed, but like, nothing about like brat has any real material or like meaningful association with Kamala Harris.

There's no connection there other than the one that's been forged through memes.

Yeah, like my girl was a district attorney and then she was an attorney general and then she like she she's not out here partying in bushwick with her mascara running down her face.

She's she's not yet.

She's prosecuting.

We have 90 days left of this campaign.

I'm telling you, it's not too late for her to do Coke and Bushwick.

She might just.

She might just.

Hey, DNC, I have ideas for you.

You're going to get demonetized so hard.

I was demonetized in the first six seconds when I asked if you thought Kamala would do Coke.

You can only bleep out Coke.

Sorry to say it again.

Coke.

This is why I have Patreon.

On the afternoon of July 21st, three weeks after this meme is released into the wild, Biden...

to much fanfare, withdraws from the presidential campaign.

He endorses Kamala as his predecessor within an hour, and almost immediately it becomes clear that she will replace him as the Democratic nominee, which is where we are now.

That evening, Charlie XEX totally shakes the table when she tweets something which has now been viewed on Twitter 53 million times, Kamala is brat.

It's like Kamala is brat.

Kamala is brat, is his capitalized.

This was like immediately controversial.

I think it's been quote tweeted like 30,000 times with everyone either being like, oh my god, like Charlie, like, I can't believe you're endorsing Kamala and like saying she's brat.

And then other people were like, what are you doing?

Like, why are you bratifying Kamala Harris?

Did you have any hot takes when this happened?

Like, I just have very complicated feelings about everything right now.

Like, I'm not really landed in one place.

I think just seeing Charlie XCX do it because she has this edge, her promoting this establishment Democrat, which I feel like has been really like not on vogue over the past few years.

Like, it's been really uncool to be a lib it's been kind of uncool to be like pro democrat for someone as cool as charlie to do that felt kind of like like it's more it was more just kind of like concern for her brand because i was like what's going on girl it did feel off-brand for her to to like lend her image and like lend the meme that's come out of this album to like a major american presidential candidate again she's british so it is which adds another layer of just like what are you ariana what are you doing here what's up girl i mean america has a very strong cultural power over the world.

So I add, like, in Canada, we're completely invested.

Why, like, why do I know any of this?

You know what I mean?

I should have been.

Yeah, my is Canadian, which is foreign.

Also, part of why I'm happy that you're here, because you can add some perspective from someone who's like living outside of the slush over here.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Within a couple hours of Charlie XCX tweeting that the Biden HQ Twitter account, which is the Twitter account that managed official communications coming out of the Biden administration, switched over to Kamala HQ and they switched over the imagery on the Twitter account and the banner for the Twitter account said Kamala HQ in the brat font on the brat chartreuse background.

This is marketing that's coming from the Kamala Harris campaign.

And I remember seeing this and honestly, at first, I was fucking gagged.

I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

It's so crazy for people who are working on a presidential campaign for the mainstream candidate to like acknowledge a meme like this, especially because so much of like the brat stuff is, it literally is just about like feeling crazy and doing drugs.

And so for them to like approximate it, I was like, I was like a little Kamala Brat pilled for a moment.

I think part of like why almost this kind of worked, there's, I have many reasons as to why this worked, but part of it I'm just, I'm thinking now is that so much of Brat, like a lot of it was Charlie XCX's fans and like people loving the album.

A lot of it, like we were saying at the beginning of the episode, was about marketing.

And I think the Brat logo getting taken and reappropriated so many times by corporations, by all these different people, kind of made it, like, it kind of extricated it from its context, like abstracted it.

And so I think that made it so, like, it lended itself so easily to something being kind of co-opted by a political campaign because it had, it kind of had no meaning after a while.

Soon after the Kamala HQ Instagram was set up, and they, one of the first things they published was the green brat square with text that said, Welcome to Kamala HQ.

So, this was the point of no return.

When Kamala HQ started using the Chartreuse Brat imagery as their own marketing, like there was no going back.

This is when it gets picked up by the mainstream media.

And I want to watch a clip with you

of them talking about this on CNN and like a bunch of CNN news anchors, like trying to understand what the hell is going on here.

Kamala Harris appears to be leaning into this.

The singer, Charlie XCX,

tweeted last night, Kamala is brat.

And this is in reference to her album.

It's called Brat.

Kamala has branded her Kamala HQ Twitter page with the same aesthetic of the album.

That's another Gen Z word, aesthetic.

So, first of all, just for my producer, Elizabeth Stewart, who will spit out her coffee as I say this, I am supposed to say, that's brat.

And for those who

are not in the know the way I am, that is a cool thing.

It has a color, chartreuse.

But I have brought some notes because I knew you would want a definition.

Okay, here we go.

Charlie XCX, who I do know, quote, Brat, you're just that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, end quote.

So it's the idea that we're all kind of Brat and Vice President Harris is Brad.

I don't know.

Well, I don't know if you're

aspire to be Brad.

Right.

Right.

Become Brat.

Oh, okay.

To try.

You could work at it.

I will aspire to be Brad.

They were talking about this on Fox News, and a Fox News anchor said that Brat is very dangerous to Republicans.

And they've essentially turned her into a meme, which has inherently given her a fan base for the first time in her career, and it's quickly changing the public's perception of her.

And this is very dangerous for Republicans, and it needs to be taken seriously.

That same day, July 23rd, the deeply unpopular mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams, who has the lowest approval rating of any New York City mayor in history, according to the New York Times, who has been accused of sexual assault, who is known for his tough on crime stance and for having been a cop for a really long time and his inhumane policies towards homeless people, including legally not allowing them to sleep on the subway.

Eric Adams tweets, Brat Summer shaking hands emoji with the summer of responsibility.

On July 24th, one day later, as I opened the episode with Buddy Carter, the Republican House of Representative guy representing Georgia's first district, tweets his own Brat meme and asks, am I doing Brat right?

And so I saw this and I was like, who the fuck is Buddy Carter?

And so I googled his policy positions and he's basically anti-human rights for everybody except straight cis white men and pro-gun and like got an a from the nra he's like a total trump stan like he voted against certifying the 2020 election after january 6th and so it was just like okay

we've absolutely lost the plot here like how did this beloved by you know queer and women who kind of like appreciate the underground music scene how how does this iconic album which is an incredible critically acclaimed album, how does it get in the hands of like a pro-gun, anti-affordable healthcare, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, 66-year-old white dude, Georgia Republican politician?

Like, what is going on?

What has happened here?

Here's my theory about memes and about this kind of internet culture: I think that it has to travel from the bottom up and not the other way around.

And what I mean by that is I think that memes are like

I really believe in the internet.

A lot of people are like, you know, like the internet's dumb and social media makes you dumb and like, it's all like, you know, right, rot your brain.

And like, I think that memes are a community-based art form.

I think that it's a democratic and like, I think it's like an inherently democratic and accessible art form.

And I think once they have been co-opted from the community of, you know, everyday social media users by the wealthy and powerful, that's when they lose their shine.

Like when we watched that first Kamala Brat video, you and I and anyone listening to the podcast, when we watched it just now, but also when we watched it on Twitter for the first time at the beginning of July, it was so funny and so sporadic and it made no sense.

We were just like experiencing this like absurdist, both political and pop cultural drama, like reach its peak through like, you know, random Twitter videos.

And it was, it was just funny and we could all laugh together to me the moment that it was doomed was also kind of the height of its popularity which is when kamala hq decided to make the to use the brat banner on their social media and it wasn't even them using the banner it was that they acknowledged it it worked because they weren't breaking the fourth wall do you know what i mean it was like totally community-based yeah and then once people at the top start manufacturing it back down, then it's manufactured.

Then you're receiving this like watered down version of it that was created by a focus group at in in a boardroom in washington dc yeah i think some of it much of it is pr like i'm saying like politicians are celebrities in within north american democracy that's just kind of that's that's how it is and i think there was like a viral tweet that went around being like kamala when the brad stuff first started coming out they were like and kamala was endorsed someone was like Kamala shouldn't acknowledge the memes because that's going to take the power away.

Something I've learned about Kamala Harris throughout throughout just like knowing about her as a as a politician, but also in like researching for this episode is that she was someone who was actually really averse to like narrativizing herself.

Oh.

It's something that like I was listening to some podcasts where people were like, why doesn't she address like the South Asian side of herself?

Why doesn't she talk about her relationship to her father?

And it's like she's actually been kind of against that.

I think just as like a former DA and as an attorney general, like that's not really something that she was kind of in touch with because that's not something you do to get into those positions.

And she was kind of uncomfortable with that in 2020.

And that's something that didn't really work for her.

And it's something that you kind of need as a president is to be, or as a candidate is to be able to narrativize yourself.

And so it didn't work for her in 2020.

She didn't really know how to deal with her like prosecutor label.

People are like extremely critical of that.

You know, the idea of her being a progressive prosecutor just doesn't make any sense.

Like, right.

All that stuff.

So now when we get to now, I think Kamala Harris on her own has like gotten in control of the narrative.

And she's kind of, she is kind of like embracing the prosecutor position because Trump is a criminal kind of vibes.

Yeah, and for liberals, it like totally works really well.

I'm the cop and he's the felon.

Yeah, and like that doesn't work for the left.

It's not working for the left, it's not going to work for Gen Z.

She doesn't, she needs to appeal to like the comparatively much larger group of like center liberals, which that narrative works really well for.

Exactly.

And so to have her personality kind of come through to Gen Z in this really organic, grassroots way was kind of the perfect way for her to galvanize these, what is the Democrats disenfranchised group, which is Gen Z and which is young people.

The thing about the memes is she was never trying to have a moment.

Like you think about like the wheels on the bus go round and round or like the Venn diagrams.

It's like those were not moments where she was trying to be funny.

She was just literally zoning out and being herself.

Molly Roberts wrote in the Washington Post, The so-called coconut pilling of the populace was, until recently, organic.

No one, well, no one that we know of, paid a TikTok user to produce a remix of Harris's goofiest moments to tracks from Charlie XCX's blockbuster album Brat.

Now, Democratic surrogates are proclaiming their own coconut pilledness and posting pictures of themselves climbing palms.

The campaign itself, on a Twitter account rebranded from President Biden to Harris, has traded out Dark Brandon for Kamala HQ on a lime green brat background.

Who can blame them?

The content is that good.

But there's a risk in trying to force something whose appeal comes precisely from the reality that is unforced.

You might lose the magic.

Do you remember Dark Brandon?

This is in my blackout era where I was like, no, I won't hear it.

You're also fully non-American.

Like, you don't have to understand these failed memes.

Unfortunately, like, it's shoved, it's shoved down our throats anyways, us Canadians.

We know about it anyways.

I think Canadians know more about American politics than they do about Canadian politics.

Wow.

Because cultural hegemony.

It's just.

America's strong culture.

I was watching the American women's gymnastics team effort this morning where they won gold.

gold and it's like I'm like Simone Biles is the only thing any other country should know from America all the other shit we should keep under wraps we love her

so dark brandon was

I like already hate it I already hate it

basically there was a thing that Trump supporters started doing a few years ago where they would chant at their MAGA rallies and the Trump rallies and whatever they would chant like let's go Brandon and it was for some coded to mean fuck Joe Biden.

It was so stupid.

It was so stupid.

Everyone who participated in this was dumb.

But

sorry.

So this let's go Brandon thing is totally taking off in like MAGA circles.

And the Democratic establishment and the people around Biden are like, okay, we need to make you look cool, which, as everyone in America knows, is an extremely difficult thing to do for a senile old white centrist man.

Like literally geriatric.

And I commend everyone who like was at task with making him seem cool because that, you know, I don't think they ever successfully did it, but that is not a job that I envy.

Dye his hair pink.

Yeah.

We should have, we should have made, if we had made Joe a blue hair lib.

Yeah, making a cat girl.

I had to stop doing this.

Neon, like, what if, what if we made, oh my god.

A neon girl?

Neon cat girl.

We made Joe Biden neon cat.

Like, meow

if only hadn't if only hadn't dropped out joe biden come back here um so they were like he's gonna take a sound bite out of that and cancel you so hard on twitter

do it i don't care anymore i have nothing to live for

so they were like let's take this let's go brandon thing and turn it on its head and they attempted that and so basically what they made is this meme which I'm gonna show you.

Like,

like, what is it?

Can you describe what you're looking at?

Wait, what would would you describe this art style as?

I guess it's kind of like pop art, yeah.

It's kind of like a pop-art stencil version of Joe Biden, and then he has evil red eyes.

It looks like the thumbnail of a video I did about the Barbie movie, except it's Joe Biden, right?

It has like laser eyes, yeah, laser eyes, like

hypnosis eyes, right?

And so they called this the dark Brandon meme.

I don't know, like, this is Joe Biden, but like, as like a super villain.

Like, it was kind of, I i don't know they were branding him as like some like kind of like sinister like cartoon does this do anything for you my yeah so this is supposed to make him look good that yes the democrats made this to like make him look cool

do you think he looks cool

like it would be cool if if like i didn't know it was joe biden

But I also would not have noticed

that also, I would have no idea what's going on.

Yeah, so the dark Brandon, they basically were just like, you know, trying to rehabilitate his image as this frail octogenarian.

And this is what they came up with.

And it resonated with

no one.

With no one.

And so, but, you know, again, it's just this, like, this is what happens when a meme is created by a focus group.

Again, top-down versus bottom-up.

The culture, youth culture, internet culture, meme culture, it has to be, it has to start with the community.

It has to start with people.

Yeah, it feels like the memes are such an emblem of like the free net, you know what I mean?

Totally.

It's kind of like the wild west, yeah, the web, and to have like an actual corporate entity.

Well, it's interesting because one of my friends actually described Kamala and Brat, this whole Kamala ex-Brat phenomenon, as being like manufactured consent, which I thought, like, I really spent a lot of time thinking about this.

Manufactured consent in the way that, like, oh, this is being manufactured to us to basically get us to be on board with Kamala.

But then it's like, but like propaganda.

Like propaganda, propaganda, but like the thing with manufactured consent is that it is top-down and coming from corporations, whereas the Kamala Brad stuff was coming from the bottom up.

This is manufactured consent.

The other meme, the other kind of manufactured DNC meme that I had here was Pokemon Go to the Polls.

Do you know Pokemon Go to the Polls?

Of course.

Can we can we can we whip it out real quick?

Yeah.

Hillary was making a campaign speech in 2016, which was famously the summer of Pokemon Go exploding in popularity and taking over the world for a brief moment.

But you know what?

I will say one of my best friends,

one of my best friends is like not only still playing Pokémon Go, but he like travels to Pokémon Go meets and he's like ranked nationally or something.

Oh, good for him.

And so I do want to make the point that there is still a large swath of people who are like competitively continuing to play Pokémon Go.

Maybe Hillary Clinton is in that group.

I don't know.

Can you imagine?

Okay, here, I'll pull it up.

I don't know who created Pokemon Go, Go,

but I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokemon Go to the polls.

It's so, it never gets easier to watch.

It's

the issue with it is that, like, the grammar, it's just something about it is not flowing.

Well, but that's the whole thing, right?

Is it's not flowing.

Like, that was written for her, and you can tell.

Yeah, yeah, she's confused as hell.

Pokemon go to the polls.

I'm trying to get them to Pokemon go to the polls.

Stiff and wrong.

Stiff and wrong.

I want to talk a little bit about the intersection of fandom and politics.

I think that fandom has, for a long time, to your point about like political theater, it's had a place in American politics, but it's had a particular resurgence in a brand new way with Donald Trump.

The thing with fandom is that people's relationship to the politicians who are public servants, right, that they're voting for, starts to resemble the way that, like, again, a gay person in Brooklyn might love Charlie XCX or a 12-year-old girl in the mid-2010s might have loved One Direction.

It's when voting, which is political strategy, becomes hero worship.

Do you know where the word Stan came from?

Well, Eminem, of course.

Well, yeah, do you want to explain?

He has a song called Stan.

Yes.

And it's about a stalker.

I can't remember if he actually completely fabricated him or if it was inspired by one of his own fans.

But essentially, he wrote this rap song about a crazed fan who essentially becomes so obsessive with Eminem that he murders his wife and children, drives them off a bridge.

Yeah.

I think is what happens.

And

kills himself.

And it's like,

the song is supposed to be kind of like a cautionary tale about fandom and obsession.

When we talk about people standing politicians, I think January 6th was like standing, like politician standom brought to its like natural conclusion, which is just like doing this like wildly self-destructive, like extremely illegal.

You think about the people who have like gone to jail for January 6th, someone was murdered on January 6th.

It's like political standom to its most disturbing and also logical conclusion.

And it's like that was stand to M ⁇ M.

Like those were literally Donald Trump's stands.

Yeah.

And I I think, I think that it's incredibly, if you use the right rhetoric, you use the right us versus them driven politics and ideology, like you can very easily, like, it's, I think Trump went to show how easily you can suck people in with that and how easily people can be brainwashed by that kind of rhetoric.

And I think, like, I'm, I'm quite frankly terrified to know what would happen if he lost, given what happened with January 6th.

I think it's extremely, if he lost this election, I'd be extremely scared to see what would happen.

Oh, the the election that's about to happen.

The election that's about to happen because I'm scared.

Imagine what they're going to think with this one.

Yeah, well, his grip over the people who love him has certainly not loosened.

Totally.

And it's cultish.

Yeah.

And I think it's just like an extension of political theater in general.

And I think that's like the danger of it.

I find like, I find North American democracy extremely centered upon like sensationalism and emotionality.

And like, I find a lot of voters and like myself included, but like very unconcerned with the issues and policy proposals.

Like we don't have people people talking on Twitter about policy or like the nitty-gritty of, you know, like Project 2025 or Trump's agenda or like Kamala's, like Kamala's policies.

Like we don't like no one's talking about what she's going to propose.

And it's like, it's all centered instead around personality and this like worship and basically creating idols out of these people.

I think over the last couple of years, this has been something that the right has had a lot more success with of like building these like big personalities, both in media, you know, the Tucker Carlsons of the world, Elon Musk is ultimately a right-wing personality.

Donald Trump, obviously.

I think like on the left, like again, Bernie Sanders had that.

He had a really personality-driven kind of, it was also populist.

And what I found so refreshing and beautiful about Bernie, though, was that he had a really compelling way of actually getting people to think about specific issues.

And I think, I think, like, more than ever and more than any other politician that he was, he was up against.

And I think that was the appeal of him.

And that's what, that's what drew me to him specifically.

But then still managed to have this really distinctive look, distinctive voice, distinctive personality.

And he had these, yeah, very kind of casual ways of delivering that information.

I think maybe because he was a lifelong politician, he's talking about like he's dead.

I think maybe because he's a lifelong politician, like he had that ability.

But but yeah, it was very compelling.

And I think you don't usually get that kind of balance from a Democrat.

From Democrats, especially.

Yeah.

Well, and but and the thing is, like Republicans and conservatives, you're saying like, oh, people only, you know, it becomes all about their personalities and not their policies.

And it's like, I'm not saying that like Democrats work entirely for the people all the time.

Like at the end of the day, like these are all part of like an elite class of politicians who answer to people that aren't always us.

They answer to the oligarchy, quite frankly.

But also like Republicans in particular, like they need this personality driven almost psychosis that they have over their, I would say like voter base, but it literally becomes base, but they need that personality stuff because anyone who starts reading the actual policies that they're proposing, it's like, these aren't for working people.

Yeah, of course.

Like Trump's whole thing is that he's proposing stuff that's actually completely at odds with the well-being of his voter base, you know, like tend to be lower income like white people.

It's sad.

It's sad.

He needs people to buy into his personality because like there's nothing to buy into with the policies.

I mean, like we could talk about Project 2025 and like all that stuff, but it's just like, it's not good for anyone.

Like whether you, if you're listening to this podcast and you've never agreed with a single thing I said, if you are just like not in the 0.0001%, like the policies that these people put forward are not for you.

And like, we don't have to get into the details of it, but if you're listening to this podcast, you don't know what Project 2025 is, it was a transition plan proposed by a famous right-wing think tank, signed off by tons and tons of people who worked in the Trump administration during his first term.

And essentially, it's like an extremist proposal that will have outrageously devastating effects for every single person in this country, other than a very small few.

So I highly recommend looking into it.

I looked into it recently and it kind of lit a fire under my own ass.

Yeah.

Cause it's scary.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

But so back to standing politicians, right?

People in America tend to understand, especially like anyone left of center, knows that Trump's base stands him.

What's interesting though, and what people talk about way less often, is the way that self-identifying liberal people can do that.

Do you know what blue MAGA is?

Not fully know.

Okay, so blue MAGA, this is something that I talk about a lot.

Blue MAGA, they're basically people who are, they tend to be like centrist liberal Democrats who have taken this like MAGA-like obsession, but like towards Democrats.

Who?

These were the people who were like ride or die, like Biden people.

You know, these were all the people who were like, no, Biden shouldn't drop out.

Like, he's our candidate.

And that.

And, like, the, okay, these are the people who, like, when the Dark Brandon meme was pushed on us, they were like, hell yeah, Dark Brandon.

Like, Biden's a boss.

I've got to meet these people in person because I'm like, that sounds like a unicorn to me.

But also, there's just like a lot of people online, you know, it's like hashtag blue wave, hashtag resist libs.

Like on Twitter, they're known as resist libs.

But it's basically people who have this like fandom like obsession and inability to criticize politicians the way that Trump supporters are towards Trump.

No, I am going to mention it.

There's this page on online that's like very popular on like Facebook, but it's called Occupy Democrats.

But it's basically, it's one of these huge pages that's just like,

they're liberal, but they treat American politics like it's team sports.

And like, I'm on the blue team and you're on the red team and the goal is for the blue guys to win and it's like no the goal for any of this should be to make people's lives better it's just so revealing of like the failure of North American democracy in general and like especially American democracy with the two-party system and obviously people vote third-party but it's like you really have the two and they're pitted against each other they're us versus them even when they are sometimes they're quite often aligned at least like fiscally and with regards to foreign affairs they're quite similar and it's just it is a team sport if you add that to the pageantry in the theater it's like it is basically like sports and it's like should we be indulging that or should we should we be trying to change that when Biden withdrew from the campaign and was replaced with Kamala something that so many Trump supporters I saw saying online was like wow you guys are just like you know going coconuts for Kamala right away and like you're just gonna let Biden go like that and it's like yeah

You know, I don't think people who are engaging with politics from like an intelligent place should be like wanting to like marry themselves symbolically to any single politician.

Trump has built this like cult-like base and when people behave that way towards a Democrat candidate like towards Joe Biden or you know whoever Democrat like I don't think anybody should be doing that.

I don't think any of this stuff should be personality driven.

We should not, we should be focusing on these people's policies, like you said.

Like we should be pushing them in the direction that we want them to go politically, like in favor of, you know, bettering people's lives.

Like we should not be doing this like, I don't think we need posters of these people in our rooms.

No, of course not i mean and that's something stalin would have loved you know like it's like yeah we shouldn't this that shouldn't be something that's like characteristic of democracy democracy is about the people and i feel like we always forget that i think so much of it gets lost in like the fervor and the us versus them and like the part this party being like he's lying she's lying everybody's lying and it's like we're we get so caught up in this us versus them stuff that like we have so little time to sit down and really envision like what this person would be doing on a day-to-day basis in office.

Are they charismatic enough to really engage with other leaders from other countries?

Are they strong enough to lead a team on a day-to-day basis within the Oval Office?

Like, are they, do they have these leadership skills that are important?

Rather than, like, who is this person?

What are all their scandals?

Like, all of this stuff.

It's like, that's not really what I'm interested in.

Like, I want to know what kind of person they're going to be on the job because it's a job.

And I think we just forget that because it's so mediatized, because of the spectacle.

Like, it's so weird that the president for so long had to have like a nuclear family unit.

Who cares?

Crazy.

I mean, even still, still, Kamala is getting so much shit for like not having biological children.

Of course, because it's a bad narrative.

It doesn't fit with the narrative of like American, the American ideal, I guess.

Yeah.

And it's misogynistic, of course.

But like J.D.

Vance is a fucking pig.

Yeah.

Fuck that guy.

Like, I just, that's just not what I'm interested in in politicians.

And I think we just, we so often forget that.

And we forget that this, this is all actually about us, not them, not these two people yelling at each other on a stage.

Like, it's a joke.

It just becomes a joke after a while.

Returning this to the, what I'm calling the camalification of brat, I have conflicting feelings about this at the end of the day.

On one hand, I think that nobody our age has ever been excited about a presidential nominee.

I say my age because I was too young to really understand what was going on when Obama.

Oh, I was big on Obama.

Me 12 years old.

I was like, I was riding hard for Obama because it was exciting at the time, you know.

But like, but I'm, I mean, I'm a couple years younger than you and like everybody younger than me and I'm 25.

There's a lot of people younger than me who are voting and who all they've ever known are like Hillary Trump and Biden.

What's there to get excited about there as a young person?

And so like, I think it's good ultimately.

Like if Brat, if Kamala Bratt gets young people excited about like voting, which I think is a net good, then I think that's great.

Political momentum is something that you need to win.

But, right, like my concern with it is that when she gets reduced to the like cool aunt, like brat coconut head girl, like we run the risk of forgetting that she is a fallible, powerful public servant who must be held accountable at every term and who must be pushed on some of the issues that she still needs to prove herself on.

It really does speak to like the myopia of the internet in general and just people, people just forgetting, you know?

It's just like a collective amnesia.

One month ago maybe two months ago Kamala Harris was crazy coked out aunt who everyone was kind of it was kind of derogatory like they were kind of mocking her and now we're all like ah my girl Kamala and it's take take that out

wait that was perfect

I literally just made myself cringe so hard

everyone's like yes Kamala mama I think we're in this kind of and I think young people especially are just in this mode where it's like yeah for as long as they've been voting it's been been a thing where, oh, they're forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, but like you got to choose one.

And I think a lot of people are just very fatigued with that.

You know, you look at Project 2025.

If you think about all the people that are going to be harmed by Trump's policies and by his

reign, it's like, it's going to be more people.

So you kind of end up having to do this utilitarian kind of calculation where it's like, who is going to be most harmed in this?

Who's going to be immediately harmed by this?

How can I, as a voter, protect at least one more person?

That personally is to me how I approach voting.

It's tiring being in a crisis where you can't just be excited about the person you're voting for and be like, hooray, I'm putting all my backing in them and I'm going to feel so represented by them.

Like, I don't think any young people have ever felt that.

Well, and the truth is, though, I think to a certain extent, if you are, you know, left, I don't think you're ever going to feel that in American politics.

I think like to aspire and to get close to achieving the office of the president, like you're an imperialist, like you're the empire.

And this is why I just feel like no politician should ever be stand because I think that they all inherently like, this is my hot take.

Like I think there will never be a perfect candidate.

I don't think there's ever going to be close to a perfect candidate.

I think every person who probably ever runs for president will have done like pretty awful shit.

And I still think that we should get out and vote.

And that's, I mean, that's my take, right?

Is like, I'll say, like, I'm voting for Kamala.

I hope.

that because she is the only person right now who can be Donald Trump, I hope that people will also get out and vote for Kamala.

And that being said, like, I think that Kamala is someone that you should vote for and then protest against every time she falls short.

And I think that she's like not our friend.

I think she's not a girly.

I think she's not coked out brat mom coconut head falling out of a coconut tree.

Like I just, I think she's a public servant.

And that's, I'm not speaking for Maia.

I'm not speaking for anyone, but like, that's like my personal ethos around all of this.

That's the other truth that I hold, right?

Like on one hand, I think that like if the memes get you excited, look, I don't want to be like the annoying lefty who's always smacking you on the wrist for laughing.

Like, I think excitement's, you know, political, like, it's fun.

It's fun.

We should, and we should have a moment to laugh, especially when, you know, the senile old, old guy isn't our only choice anymore.

But that being said, like, I think we should probably dial back our feelings about, like, Kamala being a girl that we're going to go out and party with.

Cause, like, she's not.

She's

very well could be the president of the United States.

Yeah, I'll also speak for myself and no one else and not Matt.

I think, like, I went from being incredibly nihilistic about this election.

I'm not a voter.

I can't vote for this, but like whatever happens in American politics will gravely affect us in Canada.

We're extremely codependent with the U.S.

And so we have a huge vested interest in it, and it's really hard not being able to have a say.

But I went from being completely nihilistic about this election to kind of honestly, without realizing it, unconsciously becoming a bit optimistic.

And I think that just comes from, I think it comes from a renewed energy that Kamala is bringing, just like in the happiness that Biden is gone.

And I think also just that, you know, Kamala has shown throughout her history that she's someone who can be pushed further in either direction.

That's just what I've observed of her.

And I think over the past few years, she's been pushed further and further and further to the left.

She's someone who will just do whatever is currently popular.

And I think that she has the capacity to be pushed even further.

And that is the optimism that I'm carrying with me throughout these next couple months.

I think the brat spell over Kamala Harris's campaign kind of broke for the young online left when

recently after Netanyahu disgracefully spoke in front of U.S.

Congress.

And Kamala, in fairness, and a lot of Democrats did boycott his speech, but there were tons of protests around DC when Netanyahu visited.

Kamala released this statement that basically smeared all of the protesters as anti-Semitic, which like certainly anti-Semitism has occurred at these protests.

And, you know, if I say that, if I don't include that disclaimer, then someone's going to send me a screenshot of some zoomed-in photo from a protest that had an anti-Semitic symbol somewhere.

And so I'm acknowledging that I'm sure that it did exist.

But as we all know, we've been so many months into this issue.

And we know that smearing all protests against the atrocities committed by Israel as anti-Semitic has been a way to squash the entire movement.

And so Kamala Harris wrote a letter essentially doing this and it went over really poorly online.

But I think I saw a lot of people being like, well, that's Brat Summer for you.

And I do think that that was like a necessary, like, I think the spell had to be broken.

There was only so long that like this like fun 365 party go up up and that.

could be co-opted by the Democratic Party, by any sort of like major politician before we have to all come back down to earth and be like, again, these are public servants who need to be protested when they do something that is not in favor of the people.

And so as we wrap this up, I want to read a tweet from Claire Schaefer.

She wrote, I could be totally wrong, but all I see in the Kamala memes is Gen Z nihilism over a lack of choice in the political system, not sincere standing of a politician.

The former is also worthy of critique, but let's not conflate it with the latter.

And I think that if we're thinking about the camps of people who were laughing at those memes or sharing them, I think there is definitely a nihilistic camp to that.

Who felt seen or at least a sense of release?

And I think we want to, like, I don't know, I want to like give everybody grace who thought these were funny because, to be clear, they are very fucking funny.

Like, they're very funny, but they're hilarious.

It's knowing when to temper ironic love towards a politician on Twitter with like actual standem.

I guess what what I'm trying to say is: I think it's fine if you're falling out of a coconut tree.

Just remember that Brat is about doing Coke and wanting to kill yourself.

Touche, got nothing to say to that.

Maya, thank you so much for coming to my apartment and doing this with me.

Thank you so much for having me.

If you guys want to know the review, Matt's apartment's gorgeous.

Oh, but it is an old building and the AC sucks.

And so if you could hear hear the AC, we've had it blasting because that is the only choice I have in this heat.

And if you can't hear the AC, then that means I've done some really good work in Final Cut Pro.

For those watching on YouTube, if you see a glint across my cheek, know, just know that it's sweat.

Mayo, where can people find more from you?

People can find me on YouTube at Broadway Dationel.

And you can find me on Twitter at Broad Dationel.

And you can find me on Instagram at at Broad Deschanel.

And listen to our podcast rehash.

It is so fucking good.

Oh, yeah.

If you want extra episodes of A Bit Fruity, you can find those on Patreon.

If you made it this far, we're living through a really weird time in America.

And I just want to give everyone my love and solidarity.

And we're all watching this unfold together with amazement.

And I love you.

I do, you know, get out there and vote.

Don't stand, but vote.

And we are all unburdened by what has been

and all that came before us.

And let's all get really fucking unburdened.

I love you, and until next time, stay fruity.