Yahoo Finanza Biden seeks $85k ‘meme lord’ in race for re-election
November’s US election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will feature the two oldest presidential candidates in history, with both expected to struggle with younger voters.
How can they reach this key demographic? The Biden campaign is betting on memes.
The US president’s re-election campaign team is hiring an internet meme expert to reach potential voters who do not pay attention to political news.
Mr Biden’s campaign is seeking a “partner manager” for content and meme pages, according to a job advert posted on Monday.
The role, which pays a salary of up to $85,000 (£67,000), will involve “engaging the internet’s top content and meme pages” from the campaign headquarters in Delaware.
“The ideal candidate for this role is passionate about bringing political content to voters where they already are on the internet,” the job advert states.
The partner manager will be tasked with forming relationships with internet personalities, popular podcasters, and so-called “meme pages” in an attempt to promote Mr Biden’s re-election bid.
Meme pages are accounts that typically post jokes or observations, often lifted from other social media sites such as X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit, or viral images poking fun at news items or celebrities.
They can often attract tens of millions of followers, some outstripping the president’s own 17 million Instagram followers.
The job advert has led commentators to dub the job a paid “meme lord” position. Meme lord is internet slang for someone who is skilled at both understanding and using memes.
Engaging with meme accounts or popular podcasters, for example by posting popular comments on their posts, is seen as a way of reaching potential voters who are uninterested in political news.
Mr Biden famously became a meme in his own right in 2022 when users began to post images of the president with laser eyes, under the name “Dark Brandon”, a play on “Let’s Go Brandon”, an anti-Biden chant from Trump supporters.
The president adopted the meme himself and Dark Brandon merchandise accounts for a substantial portion of sales from his campaign’s online store.
Social media has been an influential part of campaigning since Barack Obama harnessed Facebook to secure victory and thousands of donations in 2008.
It has been central in recent years, with Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth claiming the company was “responsible” for Donald Trump being elected in 2016 “because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen”.
The US president has said he is not a fan of social media himself and his staff handle his online presence, in stark contrast to Mr Trump, who was known for spontaneous tweeting during his time in office.
Mr Biden joined TikTok in February despite security concerns around the Chinese-owned app in an effort to reach its predominantly Gen Z users.
In April, he signed a bill forcing the app’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its US operations or face a ban.
Mr Trump’s personal social media presence is now largely on Truth Social, the X rival that he owns a majority stake in.
