Behold the Rise of “Dark Brandon”

In the persevering with memeification of our whole society, a sinister alter ego to President Joe Biden often called “Dark Brandon” has reached a zenith this week. Spawned from a form of telephone-game misinterpretation by a television commentator, who heard “Fuck Joe Biden” as “Let’s Go Brandon,” this meme started as a mascot for shade-throwing from right-wingers. The subsequent evolution appeared to return from a Chinese language illustrator named Yang Quan, who posted a manga-style sequence of Biden-wins-Recreation-of-Thrones imagery on his Weibo microblog account, following Biden’s 2020 election victory, in line with Politico. For a time, Darkish Brandon was the “Thanks, Obama” of the Biden White Home, ultimately evolving right into a bleak antihero for a distraught left-wing voting base.

However your derision solely makes Darkish Brandon stronger, fools! Over the weekend, it appears the meme has outgrown its humble origin story as a Republican playground bullying tactic, and is now going viral on a wave of left-leaning memelords rallying behind this chaotic-evil model of, let’s face it, a typically unintimidating politician.

On Sunday, White Home press secretary Andrew Bates shared a Darkish Brandon meme, that includes Biden with laser eyes.

“Dark Brandon is crushing it,” he famous.

Cue the wave of scorching takes on Darkish Brandon phenomenology, with Slate characterizing Darkish Brandon as the impotent fantasy life of a voting base dying for a present of pressure from their milquetoast various to the trendy axis of evil that’s the GOP.

“We can debate over whether it’s foolish to assign any intellectual significance to the tweets made by weirdos on the internet, but I do think that both Dark Brandon and DarkMAGA were interesting artifacts of America’s superheated political environment,” writes Luke Winkie, for Slate. “The country does feel like it’s perched on the precipice of some sort of prophetic rebirth, and perhaps, as our institutions erode into the sea, Dark Brandon is the harbinger of that final judgment.”

“And while the White House often repeats the ‘Twitter is not real life’ mantra, the internet love was welcomed in some Democratic circles after several months of trying to defend an administration with approval numbers in the thirties,” write Politico reporters Alex Thompson and Allie Bice.

The flourishing of Darkish Brandon has dovetailed with per week of political wins, together with a historic bill to empower clear power initiatives, the assassination of al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a drop in gas prices.

Tobin Stone, who posted one of the in style “Dark Brandon” memes, spoke with The Hill on the Darkish Brandon phenomenon:

“After a year of bad news for Democrats, the past two weeks have seen the Biden administration get more wins than any other period of his presidency,” stated Stone, “and like many other Democrats, I’ve wanted to celebrate.”

After all, something being embraced by the institution turns into instantly outdated by web requirements, and Rolling Stone has already deemed Darkish Brandon lifeless from a “terminal case of cringe.” If anybody in-house observed how ironic it’s for this extraordinarily no-longer-cutting-edge publication to accuse another person of “how do you do, fellow kids,” posturing, they have been too busy high-fiving and photoshopping to say it.

However even the Washington Post appears to agree that what goes up, should come down.

“There’s a problem, though, and it stems from an unavoidable reality of the internet,” writes Molly Roberts for the WaPo. “Everything ironic eventually becomes genuine, if you wait long enough for the normies to discover it […] This is the way a meme ends: its nihilism co-opted into earnestness by embarrassingly sincere lookers-on not online enough to know better, and trying too hard.”

Similar to your mother and father becoming a member of Fb, mainstream adoption indicators the finish for Darkish Brandon. Or does it? We’ve it on good authority that Darkish Brandon faked his personal loss of life, solely to ascend on the eve of Midterm elections and summon a sharknado that can obliterate Marjorie Taylor Greene. You heard it right here first.

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