President Joe Biden took to X/Twitter final evening to acknowledge the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs’ Tremendous Bowl win, posting a photograph of his laser-eyed, alter ego “Darkish Brandon” — a meme originated from a right-wing slogan however co-opted by Biden’s followers and social media crew.

In response to the Chiefs beating the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, the president posted the eerie portrait that liberals have reinterpreted and used since 2022 to depict Biden as a superhero.

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“Similar to we drew it up,” learn Biden’s put up.

The web has since, and unsurprisingly, had so much to say.

What’s the “Darkish Brandon” meme?

The genesis of the Darkish Brandon meme is peak web, which actually simply means its story is murky and laborious to hint. As Vox defined in 2023, the meme seemingly originated at a NASCAR Xfinity Sequence race in October 2021, when NBC reporter Kelli Stavast decided crowd chants of “Fuck Joe Biden!” as “Let’s go Brandon!” throughout a dwell interview with profitable driver Brandon Brown.

Conservatives wasted no time in adopting the phrase as an insult towards Biden, with Republicans even utilizing it in speeches in Congress. From there, memes emerged on-line. The sinister, extremely stylized iteration of Biden with glowing crimson eyes is inflammatory coming from right-wingers, portray the president as a supervillain of kinds. This kind of meme-ing is in keeping with the “Darkish MAGA” subgenre, which options more and more unhinged and “darker” variations of Donald Trump working for re-election, largely purported by MAGA followers themselves.

However Democrats determinedly jumped onto the meme in an effort to make it their very own. “Darkish Brandon” was born, repurposed to rejoice Biden’s place as a frontrunner. The meme picked up tempo after the administration introduced that it killed Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a strike in 2022. It additionally adopted a sequence of political wins orchestrated by Biden that yr, just like the employment charge hitting a 50-year low and the Senate passing the Inflation Discount Act.

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Since, prime members of the Biden administration — from the director of digital technique to a number of press officers — have posted the meme steadily. The president himself concluded his speech throughout the annual White Home Correspondents’ Dinner final yr with a Darkish Brandon joke:

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Now, the 2024 Biden-Harris marketing campaign is even promoting a T-shirt flaunting the meme on its web site.

Why did Biden put up the Darkish Brandon meme?

Biden’s newest Darkish Brandon put up is not any coincidence. Mixed with the caption, “Similar to we drew it up,” it is doubtless a response to the wave of conspiracy theories centering game-rigging, Travis Kelce, and Taylor Swift.

The president has reportedly been angling for a second endorsement from Swift, who beforehand backed Biden within the 2020 election. This induced Trump supporters into a storm of suspicion, with many claiming Kelce and Swift’s relationship is a gimmick to learn Biden and that this yr’s Tremendous Bowl was “rigged” in favor of Kelce’s crew, the Chiefs (who gained within the closing seconds of the sport). This contingent consists of Fox Information hosts and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy, the latter speculating on X: “I ponder if there’s a significant presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.”

The long-winded conspiracy had Trump sharing his ideas on his personal social media platform, Fact Social, writing, “I signed and was answerable for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all different Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn’t do something for Taylor, and by no means will. There isn’t any means she might endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President within the Historical past of our Nation, and be disloyal to the person who made her a lot cash.”

All of this prefaces Biden’s put up, which seems to be mocking the right-wing set over these theories. A TikTok posted by the president (on his model new account) referenced Darkish Brandon to poke enjoyable on the conspiracies, additionally signaling his social media crew’s intention to maintain the meme going by election season.

How has the web responded?

Some folks thought the meme, posted by Joe Biden’s official X account, was from a parody account.

Regardless of the meme involving key gamers like Trump and Swift, the web can also be outraged that Biden’s put up feels tone deaf and out-of-touch amid the disaster within the Center East. On the time of the Tremendous Bowl win, Israeli forces had been finishing up a particular forces operation into Rafah, a southern metropolis in Gaza the place Palestinians had been discovering refuge from the struggle. The strike killed at the least 50 Palestinians. Two Israeli hostages had been freed.

On X, folks quoted Biden’s posts and shared ideas on the timing of all of it, with many pointing to Biden’s function within the ongoing devastation in Gaza. The character of the meme does not assist: the image of Biden’s alter ego, stylized with glowing eyes, seems to be menacing in itself. One consumer criticized “Joe Biden in fucking meme mode”, whereas one other wrote: “I can not consider that Biden tweet is actual”.

Biden most lately posted utilizing the official presidential account @POTUS to congratulate the Chiefs as soon as once more: “Able to welcome this crew again to the White Home.”