“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

This question has become a viral catch phrase by presidential candidate Kamala Harris on social media, quickly gaining traction as a meme across social media platforms like TikTok.

Immediately after President Joe Biden stepped down from the 2024 election, Vice President Harris campaigned for the Democratic Party and was officially nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate. It didn’t take long for Harris to receive a considerable amount of support on social media.

Using platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter),  Harris’s campaign and media team created a brand called Kamala Headquarters, or Kamala HQ, which is her social media campaigning platform. Here, Harris’s campaign team creates content promoting her political platform. However, this content is not the same as seen in typical political campaigning: it is bright, loud and borrows heavily from pop singer Charli XCX and TikTok trends.

Charli XCX’s electro pop album “brat,” released in June, sparked the phenomenon of “brat summer” which represents a carefree, bold and “party girl” lifestyle.

The idea of “brat” has recently become tied into Harris’s campaign. On X, Charli XCX proclaimed “Kamala is brat.” Since then, Harris has used this to her advantage and embraced the label of “brat” on her X account. On the Kamala HQ account, the header was changed to the same color and font as the “brat” album cover.

Paly history teacher Katya Villalobos said that she thinks “brat” is a woman who is a strong leader, empowered, confident and speaks her mind.

Additionally, ever since Harris’s nomination, fans have edited her speeches and distinctive laugh into popular songs. Using these audio clips, fans have attached compilations of edited clips of Harris to make social media content.   

“I listened to the album when it came out and I’ve also been seeing all the memes about how Kamala herself is ‘brat,’” Paly senior Sarina Grewal said. “That’s pretty entertaining … [Kamala HQ] made a deep cut of Trump saying dumb stuff … I thought that was the funniest thing they posted.”   

While this may seem like an unprofessional way to campaign, many believe the strategy of using trends to captivate specific audiences is effective.

“Pop culture expression is definitely a good way to get people aware of who the political candidates are and aware of the need to vote,” Grewal said. “I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good way to directly get [the youth] to go to the polls, but it definitely helps raise awareness of political candidates and political issues.”

Villalobos said the strategy Harris has taken toward campaigning is clever in targeting the young voter audience.

“It’s ingenious of her team,” Villalobos said. “Whoever her campaign workers are, they are using almost every avenue of social media because she needs to get a large percentage of the 18 to 30-year-old voting block.”

This method has proven to captivate the youth generation, as many receive their news through media platforms.

“Most of the news I get from the election campaign is honestly like the meme accounts that post memes about them,” Grewal said. “A lot come from Kamala HQ, and a lot from just random TikTok accounts that are posting reactions to what they’re doing.”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in the 2020 election, 51% of youth (ages 18-24) voted, making them the age group with the lowest voter turnout. Villalobos said if Harris gets the youth vote,  hopefully there will be increased voter turnout.

“She needs to receive … a majority, plus 3% over the general population,” Villalobos said. “Every vote, I mean literally every vote, counts.”

In contrast, it is not just traditionally left-wing parties who are using social media campaigning tactics to target youth voters on the internet. Former president Trump has tried to leverage connections with social media influencers to reach male dominant audiences.

Paly senior Alec Bonnard said that he has seen the Republican Party use public figures, specifically social media influencers, to campaign to the youth.

“Trump is using Adin Ross, or Nelk Boys, and all these young influencers that are mainly on social media, and that helps him hit his demographic,” Bonnard said. 

According to the New York Times, there is a large gender disparity in politics, with women leaning left and men leaning right. The Trump campaign has

been trying to reach a demographic of voters they call the “bro vote.” This category consists of 18-to-29-year-old males that have traditionally been regarded as “unreliable or unreachable,” meaning lower voter turnout.

To encourage the “bro vote,” the Nelk Boys, a group of men owning a YouTube channel and entertainment company, have played golf with Trump and have hosted him on their podcast twice. Additionally, on Sept. 13, TikTok influencer Bryce Hall joined Trump onstage at a campaign event.

So far, using influencers and taking advantage of social media trends, have all been tactics to gain the youth vote. Bonnard said this is due to their susceptiblity to social media influenence that there will be more of a social media presence of political campaigns.

“The youth vote is easy to sway,” Bonnard said. “I think that because it’s easy to sway, they’re trying to exploit that and make the most of it … there will be more of a social media presence and campaigns will be more and more on social media.”