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Dark Brandon popping off: is Joe Biden’s ‘cringe’ TikTok helping or hurting him?

Dark Brandon popping off: is Joe Biden’s ‘cringe’ TikTok helping or hurting him?

2 weeks ago
Anonymous $6hYC3Wwiad

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/joe-biden-tiktok

His youth support declining, the president needs ‘to be where the people are’. His account regularly mocks Trump – but remains silent on Gaza

In Joe Biden’s TikTok debut, timed to the Super Bowl in February, the president answered rapid-fire questions like “Chiefs or Niners?” (neither, he picked the Eagles because his wife’s a “Philly girl”) and flashed the Dark Brandon meme. He got over 10m views, so by pure metrics, the video was no flop. But to use one of TikTok’s favorite disses, for many gen Z viewers it felt “cringe” – even pandering. Worse still, the TikTok, captioned “lol hey guys”, made the rounds after Israel struck Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza strip. Biden’s jokes infuriated users who flooded the post with the comment “WHAT ABOUT RAFAH?”