President Joe Biden had conspiracy theorists in a tizzy after posting what appeared to be his reaction to the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl win on Sunday night.
“Just like we drew it up,” Biden posted on X alongside a photo of “Dark Brandon,” the meme created by hardcore—and very online—supporters of Donald Trump that Biden and his team loved so much they adopted it as their own.
The post was apparently referencing far-right conspiracy theories which posit the NFL and high-level government operatives conspired to rig the Super Bowl in Kansas City’s favor to give maximum exposure to a yet-to-be-announced endorsement from Chiefs star Travis Kelce and his girlfriend Taylor Swift.
It is kinda funny ngl
It’s fucking hilarious! This is exactly how you respond to something so utterly ridiculous.
Troll the trollers. I’m here for it! I want my president to be smarter than the dumb conspiracies I’m being forced fed by the morons!
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I’m sure you are qualified to assess this
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Sound it out…
I’d be surprised if he could properly post a tweet. I wonder if his pr team even bothered with running it by him. I think the post is hilarious, but I know it wasn’t Bidens idea, or even the one tweeting it.
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I mean, you really think that the 81 year old president of the united states, is terminally online enough to know about a niche meme, related to him, called “shadow brandon”, and is also terminally online enough to want to turn around and post it on twitter?
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Ah yes, he has to be “terminally online” to be aware of a hugely popular meme about him.
You’re also missing the whole deal of him talking about and mentioning this meme several times and he and his PR team having made their own jokes for it for a couple of years now. All of this has been extremely hard to miss. I don’t interact much with US politics any more than what pops up here on Lemmy and the biggest things that get worldwide reporting and I’ve seen this several times.
Exactly. How the hell else are we gonna get dopamine and serotonin today? They’ve removed all the naturally occuring sources of with their fucked up policies and general ghoulishness. Where else then but from the tears of their impotent, incandescent rage?
Mmmm. The rage gives it that lemony twist.
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English is also my second language. Good job putting together longer sounding words to sound smart but not mean anything!
It makes perfect sense to people that know what the high school level words mean. Whether it’s funny is debatable.
How the hell else are we gonna get dopamine and serotonin today?
Sigh
Unzips
There you go mate, that’s what you were craving, right?
I’m fucking hysterical
This is one of the most upvoted comments I’ve seen on Lemmy
It’s crazy. Any leftie knows this is a plain joke while the wingnutters on the right take every facet of it seriously. Meanwhile, trump says some pretty terrifying shit and means it, but the right has to translate it as “he was joking.”
Not a USer, what I find utterly bonkers is seeing clips of them discussing the dark Brandon conspiracy on fox news, like it’s real and relevant political discourse. Wtaf is wrong with that portion of you population.
Am USer. I have no explanation, but I can assure you that being up close to this shit doesn’t help it make any more sense. I come from a conservative white family in a mostly white area, and sure I can see how people get into that insular world and are conditioned to reject rational inquiry, but at the same time we live in the information age, people!
The problem is that there is too much information. And information doesn’t come with a disclaimer of whether it’s fact, opinion, conspiracy, or otherwise batshit.
We have passed the age of information, we have entered the age of misinformation.
Upvoted with a frown of agreement on my face.
Or went back to it? I think there was only a short period of time in human’s existence when only the intellectual elite could reach the public with the new technologies because it was too complicated or pricey for the common people. Now we’re back to bar-room level of information quality.
Or went back to it?
Now we’re back to bar-room level of information quality.
/disagree
There used to be something called The Fourth Estate (of Government). Used to be.
Was that press accessible for the average people at that time? Everybody being able to read is fairly recent too.
News organzations should not be allowed to express opinions, but only recite news.
Did people think more critically before? Or maybe there was limited dissemination in the past? Crazy BS maybe didn’t travel as far?
I’d like to think we could differentiate between fact, opinion, and BS more in the past, but that’s probably not true.
I think learning everything about the world from the random unqualified people around you is exactly how most people in history have done it. As long as it’s a person you like and they say it with confidence, it will probably stick.
But now it is easier to see that process happening and avoid it. It’s also easier to locate authoritative sources of information.
Except… even though this works for many of us, it paradoxically makes the problem WORSE for a huge number of people. We have easier access to all the opinions out there, but that means any given shitty opinion has the potential to reach millions rather than somebody’s social circle.
I agree. What I have no idea about these days is how to solve this.
It might be a ‘there is no solution’ type problem, but it would be nice if more people and organizations as a whole recognized this issue.
Maybe publishing questionable information over a long period of time or our lack of holding orgs and individuals accountable contributed. I’d think it hard to legislate accountability without reducing freedom or speech, press, and opinion (that isn’t toxic, but that’s subjective and part of the problem isn’t it).
but at the same time we live in the information age, people!
The Younger generations do at least.
The US is very dysfunctional for anyone but the upper middle class. We all see our taxes taken out of our check, and the services provided to us are very limited: no working healthcare system, limited affordable housing, abusive elder care industry, few social safety nets, student debt & cost of education, etc.
One party (Republicans) is convinced the government is broken (it has lots of problems) and their solution is to… break it more. They throw a lot of red meat to their voters (hatred toward minorities, LGBTQ+) to keep them energized and distracted. They also seem to be literal fascists lately, and are breaking our voting systems through pushing misinformation to make people distrust our institutions.
The other party (Democrats) ignores their progressive supporters and pushes milquetoast half-meassures to solve problems. They are weak, inept. However, they aren’t interested in literally erasing LGBTQ+ people or marginalizing racial minorities. Nor are they interested in breaking our democratic processes.
Corporate-owned media has been pouring gasoline on this trash fire the whole time. I hate people who do this whole “both sides” shtick (Because the parties are not the same, it’s fascism vs a party that still seems to believe in democracy), but that’s what I think of when I see things like this . This is an article about how right wing talking heads are pushing some conspiracy about Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl, and it appeals to that part of my brain who wants to laugh at dumb people who disagree with me. But I have to point out, nobody actually cares.
People are lonely and bored and are making how they vote into rooting for some sort of sports team. You can see it in the replies to your post: someone called the right wing a “cult”. I’d like to say there is some grand conspiracy where corporations are dividing the working class but the truth is probably far more bland: Rage gets clicks, and this is dividing us. It’s not hard to do because the USA is a very flawed place with a lot of wealth inequity.
some right-wingers seemed to suggest that occasional camera shots of Swift had dubious, manipulative intent.
Oh lawd. I hope they are just as concerned about the cuts to SpongeBob and Patrick in their box. They had a box!
And Usher was pulling some serious MJ vibes with that rhinestone glove. I bet that means Epstein is involved somehow.
They’re servile morons.
Wtaf is wrong with that portion of you population.
They would get along quite well with brexiters. Some segments of the human species are… special.
Raised on evangelical TV preachers and AM radio talk show hosts. The more radical, fire, thunder, brimstone, and fear you can throw at them theatrically the more they love it. Think WWE, carnival freak show barkers, snake oil salesmen…they eat it up. Used to be there was this view of an intelligent, reserved country folk that whiled away their time reading and listening, having a plain sense of what’s right. A quaint image. The lot of them have been taken in by hucksters and proudly show off the Emperor’s new clothes.
They’ve joined a cult.
My sneaking suspicion is that a majority of the adult population has passed well beyond the sub-acute level of lead exposure and is now showing the side effects.
Lead paint, TEL, 100LL.
Think of it as “throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks”. That is the role of intellectuals or pundits, whatever you want to call the class that disseminates ideology / PR. There are lots of them and they spout all sorts of crazy stuff. Now basically it’s like the theory of evolution through natural selection. Except as individuals we are intelligent and can make decisions like “oh that sold clicks” or “oh that helped pass that law”. Who decides that? Well those who work for those that own everything and who see it as their job to increase profit.
So basically ideology is like a secretion of a specialized class that is filtered and selected to “work”.
So my theory is that after decades of wealth transfer and increasing inequality, dwindling middle class and lowering of effective quality of life, you need “stronger secretions” to control the masses. Because the old ideology doesn’t work any more. One word for it is late stage capitalism.
Another environmental aspect that plays into this I think is climate change - since we already failed to prevent what could result in our extinction or at least in countless genocides, what social contract remains? Why even pretend to be civilized when our civilization obviously has gone insane? Like a decadent indulgence in an orgy of hatred. Or just insanity like in “Don’t look up”.
Unfortunately the terrifying thing is nothing is actually physically wrong with those people that is making them believe crazy shit. They don’t all have dementia or something.
America is just so dysfunctional that it shoots perfectly normal people off the deep end into crazy (very hateful often) conspiracy views like a particle accelerator shoots protons into stuff to make them explode. Some businesses actually target that as their explicit business model here (YouTube).
We have no idea!
I’m interested in what it’s like to live in a country where the culture, society, people are more…United. I don’t mean all the same.
I don’t think the melting pot saying is true anymore. People don’t want to blend together, lack of a sense of community or pride, nothing to be proud of anymore?
Lots of get mine mentality.
Remember to vote this year yall
Vote early, vote often!
Wait, this is a joke? I’m pretty sure we talked about the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl at the annual “You didn’t vote Republican so you’re part of the Deep State” meeting back in August
Oh shit, was I supposed to keep my mouth shut?
‡★¿! 👾😎👉👌
🍆🍆🍆💯👁️
It goes both ways. Jacob Frey (Mayor of Minneapolis, MN) took some heat from the left within the last week for a joke that he made. He, being a Democrat himself, made a joke about the remote workers having a… What was it… Nasty cat blanket and being losers?
He wasn’t joking though. Capitalism go brrrrrrrr.
“It goes both ways”
Lmao. No it fucking doesn’t.
The difference being that the mayor’s “joke” was dreadfully unfunny
“it goes both ways” followed by something completely and utterly different.
While it was a joke, the meaning behind it is the problem. The agenda wrapped in the joke is that we should all go to the office and serve our corporate masters. Joke or not the message is still rotten.
That’s fair.
So damn hilarious.
I love how the Biden camp has embraced the alt rights madness, with hilarious effect.
Good for Joe.
badass man
It was just a locker room tweet.
Fucking brilliant
Ooh, an anamorphic Travolta meme. That’s rare.
Also: internet looks okay to me too. Man I love this site.
I figured some dumb politics thing would be how I found out who won. Goddammit.
Jokes on them, I dont know who either of the teams are and I’ve already forgotten who won.
Now I want to know what he would have done if the 49ers won.
*American Internet
Rest does not give a shit
Clearly. As non-US person, clearly see this whole US political shit like a reality-show, so there is no room for this kind of thing in my memory.
As non-US person, we watched the Superbowl in anguish, fearing a win for SF would directly lead to a Trump win and a destruction of the current world order!
Please don’t joke about this. This is legitimately how politics work here now.
Liking the Chiefs is now “woke.”
Damn I guess I like KC now.
Actually I like whoever is the most fun to watch. I like Seattle for that reason, and I liked KC when it was Mahomes and Tyreek Hill.
Whatever is fun to watch. That’s whats most important.
Well soon Taylor Swift is gonna dump Kelce for flipping shit at his coach… This guy is too hot headed for a smart girl like Taylor.
Then the Chiefs won’t be woke anymore.
But on the other hand, new Taylor Swift album.
Taylor Swift leftist propaganda machine you mean?
Why would SF winning do that?
In all fairness, most US voters also treat politics like a reality-show.
Not like you can do anything about it
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America invented the internet, silly.
Ah yes, the Wamerica Wide Web
Here we go again… The web, which is what most people think about when saying “internet”, is an European invention.
So the low level stuff is American, but higher level stuff is European. But then again, were could claim that “web 2.0” was invented by American companies.
Internet is 70% American?
Very human of us to argue over who gets credit for creating the greatest tool for collaboration in history when it was clearly a collaborative process.
Seems like it was a collaboration of many scientists from many different nationalities. By “low level stuff is American”, I think you mean the backbone? And maybe “higher level stuff is European” means stuff like web browsers?
I enjoyed this article which is slightly less technical than the one above. https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet
That article is a joke. bbs’ we’re doing that long before berners lee made www a thing. The “web” was always there. All he did was develop another protocol.
Right but BBs was a direct connection from one computer to another on one phone line not an “internet” I believe but the technical aspects of it are beyond my knowledge
You can argue about this all day long. The web was invented on a Next computer, created by Steve Jobs, written in C or maybe C++, also invented by Americans.
Point is, a thousand different things had to come together from all over the world to create the modern Internet. I don’t think it’s accurate to say only one entity was responsible for it.
Edit: A gigantic amount of the Internet and its infrastructure runs on an OS written by a dude from Finland.
Unless that entity is Al Gore.
Heh. AI Gore. My font doesn’t differ on l and I.
Al Gore funded the internet.
written in C or maybe C++
Objective-C was the native programming language for the NeXTSTEP exnvironment when developing using Project Builder, the precursor to XCode.
while C and C++ could be used in Obj-C projects (painfully, sometimes), NeXTSTEP apps themselves had to be written/compiled in Obj-C.
edit: this was pretty much the case after they were aquired by Apple and running all the way until 2014 when Apple invented Swift, an evolutionary step beyond Obj-C. macOS (the evolution of NeXTSTEP) can now execute binaries built with Swift and Obj-C nativley.
the what now? Is this about those monkeys that went into space and came back super-intelligent?
When people say ‘Can I get the password for the internet?’ they are undoubtedly referring to the wifi password, which is an Australian invention.
Internet is 40% American?
Oh… All this time i thought they were talking about “the internet”, trying to ask me the password to access my ISP’s IP routing tables! 😯
It makes so much sense now that i think about it… They were confused when i replied that i didn’t know what was the password to the internet!
I love how you say all that and then provide ZERO sources, like I’m supposed to take the word of some random stranger on the network that Americans invented.
I get the gut reaction to say ‘haha epic burn’ or whatever, but this makes me really uneasy. I don’t think an official presidential account should be addressing this through a meme. Right wingers are going to lose their minds over this, but that scares me more than amuses me at the moment. Someone already got decapitated by their son over MAGA conspiracies this year, so meming about it feels really really reckless to me.
Idk I think that making fun of the conspiracy theories and joking about them is a good way to kill their credibility. Not addressing it at all would probably only lead to it persisting longer.
Right wingers are going to lose their minds over this, but that scares me more than amuses me at the moment.
They will lose their minds over literally anything, they created this whole conspiracy out of thin air and hatred of women.
Someone already got decapitated by their son over MAGA conspiracies this year, so meming about it feels really really reckless to me.
That happened anyway, avoiding making fun of them (by pointing out what they say is nonsense) won’t make their delusions go away.
Looks like it was his personal account, not the POTUS account.
That does alleviate some of my misgivings, still not my favorite idea but its better that it wasn’t on an official government account.
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“Dark Brandon” isn’t no right wing thing, there was a team of PR guys creating pro Biden memes leading up to the last election, to compete with the more natural pro trump memes being made. They were obviously not made by your usual trolls because they weren’t fucking funny.
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I don’t think you understood what I wrote. Read it again with the partisan chip off.
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doubt
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Kelce behaved badly and deserves benching and fining.
You wanna bench and fine him, eh? Nudge,nudge!
Bench and fine Kelce (Taylor’s version)
Lol; not what I find fine, but you elicited a fine, audible chuckle.
So much for bringing the country together.
Is that really the mandate we gave him in 2020? To mend our social fabric? I don’t think that’s on the table no matter who’s the president for the foreseeable future, if I’m honest.
From his inauguration speech:
My whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face - anger, resentment and hatred.
It’s what he said he would try to do.
I’ve seen you around and I know you’re too smart to be mistaking rhetoric for policy. I want that for America too, but it’s hardly realistic. The fact is that civil wars have to be properly dealt with from the jump, or they fester into insurgencies. That’s what this is, and it’s not over at all. I hope we make it.
I agree. I’m just taking note of the hypocrisy. If he had tweeted the Dark Brandon pic captioned with “ Trump will be arrested next week.” That would have been much better. Stop with the mocking of his supporters, they’re deplorable. Cut off the head of the snake.
cringy as fuck how they are trying to make that old fuck look cool.
That’s part of the joke, genius. We all get it, an old dude trying to be cool is funny, yet that self awareness is cool, so therefore he’s cool to an extent because we also get that it’s deliberate.
What about the other cringy old fraud who thinks he can run the country into the ground? Is being a piece of shit what passes for cool on his side?
its a real bad joke. it might have been amusing last time, this time its just condescending.
young people are not fond of you because of your warmongering, and what you do is try to ironically win the apparently dumb youth but making cringy jokes instead of like… actually putting a stop to the bad shit you do?
is your baseline now Trump? that aint a high bar.
Warmongering? You don’t know me. I’ve been against every damn war we’ve stuck our noses in for decades.
Dark Brandon? Far less condescending than the people who made up the whole “Brandon” thing in the first place? Can’t handle a little “in your face”?
Typical for the kind of people that are fine with the whole “let’s go Brandon” thing. They’re perfectly happy to trash talk but whine when someone deservedly dishes it back.
Edit: The comment about trump being low AF is the only thing I agree with.
what are you even saying man. regardless of whatever culture war ‘brandon’ thing, here are some facts as i see them: your current leader declared 3 avoidable wars that are currently ongoing. he has broken up the biggest strike of our time, which might actually have got you worker rights.
is fascism ok because the perpetrator is somehow way more polite now?
Way off base. Not even gonna tackle that, no way to reason you out of a position that you got yourself into without reason.
God luck.
youre bot gonna acke it because you have no argument.
appreciate the attention anyway, have a good day.
Totally… why cant he have a little more class like trumps artful nfts cards? /s
a literal fascist is your benchmark on how bad you are allowed to be?
Yeah, I think it’s weird when they photoshop Trump’s head on Rambo’s body as well… But that is besides the point.
thats… exactly my point tho
Say what you will, but the libs single handedly destroyed fashwave as an aesthetic with the Dark Brandon stuff.
thankfully
There’s probably a lesson there, that co-opting and humor are really good ways to castrate fascist messaging.
Biden calling himself Dark Brandon with fashwave imaginary is like if the emo kid parents started listening to MCR, dressed in tight black and pink clothes, and planned trips to go see them in concert.
It just obliterates any coolness the scene would have.
i’d be inclined to agree if it wasnt something new being used by another fascist. this is just meant to target different kind of people.
