Readers will likely be familiar with the “Brandon” meme, which became something of a bumper-sticker slogan on the right in late 2021 after a NASCAR commentator misinterpreted a “f*** Joe Biden” chant as “let’s go, Brandon.” The Associated Press reported:
It started at an Oct. 2 NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting “Let’s go, Brandon” to cheer the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were saying: “F—- Joe Biden.”
NASCAR and NBC have since taken steps to limit “ambient crowd noise” during interviews, but it was too late — the phrase already had taken off.
Since then, the phrase has appeared on T-shirts, flags, and posters and has been tweeted incessantly. It was even used in House floor-speech sign-offs. Like many a meme, it’s pretty much been beaten to death. But more recently, amid an unusually good couple of weeks for the Biden administration, White House officials have attempted to repurpose “Brandon” for their own ends:
Dark Brandon is crushing it pic.twitter.com/w0L8xCzIW8
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) August 7, 2022
Tweets and memes from Biden officials featuring “Dark Brandon,” replete with laser-eye portraits of the president, have been received gleefully by the press. A Vox explainer outlines “how ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ and ‘Dark MAGA’ combined to celebrate Joe Biden’s policy wins.” A headline in the Hill declares that “the ‘Dark Brandon’ meme . . . has taken the White House by storm.” The Independent crows: “Inside ‘Dark Brandon’: What is the growing meme phenomenon?” Here’s the Daily Beast: “Dark Brandon’: How the Left Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Biden’s Alter Ego.” And here’s Politico: “Dark Brandon Begins: How WH aides appropriated the meme of their boss as an underworld kin.”
Internet culture relies on irony and a certain level of transgressiveness — a meme is funny only so long as it represents a certain kind of insider humor. The overeager attempt to boost the #DarkBrandon meme in the legacy press is the joke’s death knell. R.I.P. Brandon, 2021–2022.