Perhaps more so than in any presidential election that has come before it, the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump has unfolded online.
(That’s saying something, considering the 2020 election, which took place during pandemic lockdowns, was almost entirely digital.)
From the moment in May when President Biden’s team announced it was looking to hire a meme manager, it was clear that campaigns were taking internet strategy seriously. But Mr. Biden struggled to break through online, and it wasn’t until Ms. Harris rose to the top of the ticket that nominees for both parties began to wield their influence there.
Images went viral. Online personalities and influencers took center stage (especially as Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump at times avoided traditional media). Awkward blunders, old interview clips and sometimes quite serious moments became memes, whether or not the candidates particularly wanted them to.
The Nelk Boys, a group of prank-pulling internet stars with a popular podcast, popped up at the Republican National Convention, and Mr. Trump played a viral round of charity golf with the popular YouTuber and professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau. Ms. Harris was absorbed into the online hype around Charli XCX’s summer album, “brat,” and her campaign embraced it.
In pursuit of viral moments, the candidates appeared on TikTok shows and dueling podcasts. (For Ms. Harris, “Call Her Daddy” and the Brené Brown podcast “Unlocking Us.” For Mr. Trump, “Impaulsive,” hosted by the YouTube prankster turned professional wrestler Logan Paul, and “The Joe Rogan Experience.”) Both sides maintained official campaign TikTok accounts, churning out loose, timely videos that felt diametrically opposed to the more slick look of conventional ads.
While online campaign efforts in the past might have felt cringe-y — see here: Hillary Clinton’s call for voters to “Pokemon Go to the polls” in 2016 — this time around, campaigns seemed better equipped for the flexibility required to thrive online. What followed was an election that can be measured in TikTok dances and video views, hashtag fights and a very specific shade of lime green.
Members of the Styles staff took a look back at some of the online moments that stood out.
The Photo
A photo snapped of Mr. Trump in the immediate aftermath of an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa., took on a life of its own. The picture of Mr. Trump, with his fist raised, his ear bleeding and Secret Service officers surrounding him, became inescapable, with Trump supporters using it as a symbol of resilience and social media users, inevitably, finding ways to incorporate it into jokes. — Madison Malone Kircher
Kamala Gets ‘Brat’-Coded
On July 21, shortly after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, the British pop star Charli XCX posted a three-word manifesto on X: “kamala IS brat,” a reference to her album of the same title. Ms. Harris’s supporters ran with it. They churned out memes in the album’s signature shade of green, and remixed its synth-heavy songs with audio of a viral quote from the vice president: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” An official X account for the campaign soon changed its banner to a Kamala-fied version of the album cover. “Brat” memes became a vehicle by which enthusiasm for Ms. Harris’s candidacy rocketed across social media, and a defining symbol of a very online campaign.
— Callie Holtermann
‘Childless Cat Ladies’
JD Vance claimed in an interview with Fox News in 2021 that the country was run by “childless cat ladies” like Ms. Harris, who had no stake in its future. Several years later, that clip became a rallying cry online, where childless cat ladies around the country wore the moniker like a badge of honor. The peak moment came when Taylor Swift — herself a cat person with no children — signed her Instagram endorsement of Ms. Harris with the phrase. — Madison Malone Kircher
‘That’s My Dad’
“That’s my dad,” Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was seen exclaiming on camera during the Democratic National Convention in late August after his father, Ms. Harris’s running mate, discussed his family during a speech. The emotional moment — the younger Mr. Walz was visibly weepy — inspired a viral hashtag, #ThatsMyDad and prompted much debate across social media. While it was largely praised as a genuine moment or pride, some Trump supporters were more critical. The conservative commentator Ann Coulter posted and deleted a message on X that described Gus as “weird.” In an election with many different representations of masculinity on display, the younger Mr. Walz presented one more. — Madison Malone Kircher
The Bear (Not the T.V. show)
The admission was as odd as it was unexpected: in early August, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — scion of the famed Democratic political family and a long shot presidential candidate — posted a video on X telling the comedian Rosanne Barr that he had once collected a dead baby bear by the roadside, after seeing the cub getting hit by a van. But that wasn’t the most peculiar part: Mr. Kennedy, who was anticipating a negative story in The New Yorker, then said he deposited the cub in Central Park in an attempt at humor, alongside a spare bike he just happened to have, to make it appear it had been the victim of a bicycle-related accident. Ms. Barr’s expression — a mixture of bemusement and bewilderment — said what many were thinking about Mr. Kennedy, who had previously made headlines for being an opponent of vaccines. Mr. Kennedy, whose uncle was John F. Kennedy, would later shock in another way: endorsing Donald Trump, and campaigning for the Republican nominee. — Jesse McKinley
‘Eating the Dogs’
Mr. Trump’s untrue claims during the September presidential debate about Haitian immigrants eating pet animals — a claim that originated in a Facebook post before being amplified online and picked up by the Trump campaign — were remixed into a catchy tune. (The duo behind the song, Casa Di, had previously gone viral for remixing a quote from JD Vance into another song.) On TikTok, there was even a dance routine with participants pantomiming eating with a spoon from a bowl while mouthing along, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.” — Madison Malone Kircher
Into the Manosphere
Mr. Trump’s appeals to the internet have primarily focused on a particular brand of right-wing masculinity. When his campaign joined TikTok — the platform Mr. Trump tried to ban as president — his first videos featured Dana White, the chief executive of U.F.C., and Logan Paul, the YouTuber and king of the bro influencers. Along with appearances on Joe Rogan and Theo Von’s podcasts, it was another salvo in Mr. Trump’s attempt to woo young men. — Joseph Bernstein
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