Episode Transcript
Jake Tapper: The singer Charli XCX tweeted last night, Kamala is Brat.
Charlie XCX: 360. When you’re in the mirror do you know what you see.
Kamala Harris: You think you just fell out of a coconut tree.
Charlie XCX: I ‘m everywhere I’m so Julia.
Morgan Sung: What you’re hearing is a TikTok video. It’s different clips of Kamala Harris dancing and they’re all colored this bright lime green. If you’ve been online this year, you might recognize it as bright green. Named for the latest album by pop singer Charli XCX. This is her song, 360, with Kamala Harris’s now iconic coconut tree speech cut into it.
Kamala Harris: Of all in which you live and what came before you.
Morgan Sung: This is the kind of video that fans usually make for celebrities like K-Pop idols and movie stars. They’re often called “fan cams” or “fan edits”. This summer, we saw a tsunami of Kamala edits taking over people’s feeds.
Morgan Sung: But well before the Vice President became the nominee, people were making fan cams of her.
Aly McCormick: At first when I posted it in early July, it had like 100,000 likes. And I already thought that that was a lot.
Morgan Sung: Aly McCormick is a college student studying political communications, but she’s also been very involved in online fandom.
Aly McCormick: I used to run some fan accounts. I used to do a little editing on the side.
Morgan Sung: Aly was behind one of the most viral Kamala Harris brought edits this summer. The one we played at the very top of this episode. It has more than 4 million views on TikTok and it’s been reposted all over X and Instagram.
Charlie XCX: So, Julia.
Aly McCormick: And then after Biden dropped out and Kamala became the nominee, it started to blow up a little bit more. Mark Cuban reposted it on his story. And I was like oh that’s interesting. And then the next day, it was just like I was watching CNN and I was like, there’s my there’s my video.
Jake Tapper: So is the idea that we’re all kind of brat and Vice President Harris’s brat.
CNN: You don’t just become brat. You have to try.
CNN: You can work work at it.
Aly McCormick: I think edits humanize people a little bit in ways that people don’t expect. A lot of my friends, at first they were like, oh I don’t know about Kamala. Like, you know, she’s they had some issues with the Biden administration and they thought that she was carrying it on. But I kind of forced fed them information a little bit. I was like, but look at her record here and here and especially like with women’s rights and stuff. And then one of my friends texted me she saw a video of Doug Emhoff and she was like oh I love him. And then she was like, my God, it’s working. Aly’s working.
Morgan Sung: Even Aly’s grandma got into Brat Summer because of the Kamala edit, even though she didn’t know that Ally was the one that made it.
Morgan Sung: She saw it on Fox News. She saw the brat stuff on Fox News and then I texted her like, oh I made the edit. And when I went to go visit her this summer, she was telling me how she had like a lime green shirt, like a lime green shirt, that she was brat in. I was so happy.
Morgan Sung: Fandom and stan culture are starting to really shape the way that people engage with politics both on and offline. Now, even though Kamala Harris had a pretty dedicated supporter base when she first ran for president in 2020, we didn’t see anything close to this amount of widespread excitement for her candidacy. So in the last couple of years, how did a former prosecutor who ran on a relatively moderate, traditional platform suddenly become synonymous with pop music icons? The Kamala social media team is on top of it. But it’s not just their digital savvy. Our relationship to the Internet and by extension, fandom has evolved significantly since 2020. So let’s talk about how stan culture and politics go hand in hand and why that might not be so great for democracy.
Morgan Sung: This is Close all Tabs, a special series from KQED. I’m Morgan Sung. I’m a tech journalist, you’re chronically online friend, and your guide to the weirdest and most fascinating corners of the internet. Together, we’re diving into election memes, disinformation campaigns, political influencers, and we’ll open as many browser tabs as it takes, all to better understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. So as we do with all our little deep dives, let’s open a new tab. When did stan culture hit politics?
Kat Tenbarg: So stan culture derives from this idea in early 2000s pop culture that actually came from an Eminem song.
Morgan Sung: This is Kat Tenbarge. She’s a reporter for NBC News and she covers influencers, fandom and tech.
Kat Tenbarge: A “stan” is like a stalker fan. And it kind of was born from this idea that with the rise of the internet and digital community, “to stan” someone is to not just be a fan, but to be an obsessive fan and to monitor people and to obsess over people as part of your daily life and sort of entwined in all aspects of your life.
Morgan Sung: What’s your relationship to Stan culture, or are you part of any fandoms? Were you ever part of any fandom?
Kat Tenbarge: Yes, I would say especially growing up being in high school, that was when I first got onto Tumblr. I got into, at the time this was 2014, so this was really like the peak of what was called SuperWhoLock.
Morgan Sung: SuperWhoLock is a portmanteau of Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, three TV shows that dominated pop culture and Tumblr in 2014.
SuperWhoLock: You’ve been on that phone for two hours Dean who did you give the money to? Nobody. Hello it’s me, tell him we are going out and it’s all on me except for the money and the driving.
Kat Tenbarge: I was a huge supernatural fan in particular, I did all the conventions. I have like a supernatural tattoo.
Morgan Sung: Oh my god.
Kat Tenbarge: So I definitely consider myself a stand. And then as an adult, I think I’ve grown out of some of those aspects of standom. But I just have a lot of empathy and appreciation for fan communities while also kind of acknowledging that there can be a lot of toxic elements of stanning as well.
Morgan Sung: This kind of toxicity can show up sometimes when stands take their dedication too personally and end up with things like harassing anyone who disagrees with them or even doxing critics, leaking private information like their phone number and home address.
Morgan Sung: And this is something that I think culturally has really like, expanded beyond the boundaries of Tumblr and the internet to influence so many aspects of life today from like what gym you go to, what credit card you use, what airline you fly. And of course, it has also become a huge part of our political environment.
Morgan Sung: Kat said that we first started to see stan culture bleed into politics back in 2015, when Donald Trump first ran for president. Remember, this is when modern fandom started to really pick up and really drive the way that we consume entertainment. People weren’t just enjoying music or TV shows or books anymore. They were diving headfirst into these niche online communities and starting to really shape their core identity around these aspects of culture.
Kat Tenbarge: And it really makes sense with a figure like Trump because he was an entertainer. He was before even entering the political landscape, somebody who was an idol to like broad groups of people.
Donald Trump: And now you cut them off as they’re fighting each other for who should be fired. Michael. Michael, Yes sir. You’re fired.
Kat Tenbarge: He pushed this ideology of like individualism and the art of the deal, like winning and dominating, which are things that really appeals to certain segments of the population and can drive like really obsessive and fanatical communities.
Morgan Sung: Trump’s campaign called for a version of the United States that excludes almost all marginalized people. But a lot of people are still nostalgic for that version and the campaign built a whole fandom identity around this sentiment. You still see it now in the bright red hats that say Make America Great Again.
Morgan Sung: So I think that in 2016, you really saw like the rise of the Trump stan and it crossed the border, the boundary between part of leisure and part of entertainment into active political engagement.
News Clip: Why Donald Trump?
News Clip: I’m here to judge for myself on whether Donald Trump is a reality TV star or does he really have a political platform and agenda.
Kat Tenbarge: And sort of in response to this over the past eight years, you’ve now seen this effect kind of be repurposed on the other side of the aisle.
Morgan Sung: For example, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has her share of stans.
TikTok: Wow, this is amazing, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just called out Republican Matt Gaetz after Marjorie Taylor Greene showed unclothed photos of Hunter Biden on the House floor today.
Morgan Sung: And although Bernie Sanders said that he himself doesn’t have any apps on his phone, he also had very online supporters when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020. Like in early 2020, we saw “Hot Girls For Bernie” take off, which was basically hot girls posting pictures of themselves and endorsing Bernie Sanders. You may also remember the okay Boomer video.
TikTok: Okay boomer, whatever you say boomer!
Morgan Sung: When a creator went super viral for dancing in a cropped Bernie shirt as a kind of rebuttal to less progressive older voters. Back in 2020, many of the Democrats united behind Biden, but we didn’t see anywhere near this intensity of excitement. This year is different.
Kat Tenbarge: I think that in this election, for people on both sides, the stakes feel exceptionally high, and particularly when it comes to Democrats and people who are liberal and left leaning. There is this strong sentiment that it’s important to rally behind Kamala because no matter what, like they don’t want Trump to get reelected. And then another part of it is how we interact with politics in this current moment has become very online and very centered around memes and iconography and like viral posting. And so you see these kinds of like micro trends bubble up that are very reminiscent of fandom and stanning.
Kamala Harris: You exist in the context.
Kat Tenbarge: Like Kamala is brat and the Kamala coconut tree memes.
Kamala Harris: Of all in which you live and what came before you.
Morgan Sung: Right? I mean, you have like Kamala HQ posting like almost fan cams of Kamala and other DNC leaders, which is wild that you know, it’s the same political party that, you know, nominated Joe Biden in the last election.
Tiktok: Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might’ve been one of those Black jobs? Donald Trump is an unserious man. One of those black jobs.
Kat Tenbarge: Yes. And I think part of this is that you have a lot of younger people working on these communications teams. And even within the Biden administration, they were starting to poll like young, fresh political communications talent. But with Kamala, I think that the moment is sort of unique, having the presidential nominee, the presumptive nominee, step down and endorse his vice president this late in the game has clearly activated a kind of just desire to jumpstart her campaign and really push it in any way possible and stan communities over the past really decade have just grown and grown and grown and grown on a platform like X or, you know, what was once Twitter. Everyone is mixed together. It’s this big melting pot of all these different communities. So you have like politics and Stan Twitter completely colliding. And this is a perfect example of what happens when these factions collide.
Morgan Sung: But it’s not like all candidates can amass this level of support and excitement online. In fact, when most politicians try to be trendy and engage with voters online, a lot of people can see right through it. Politicians are rightfully called out all the time for trying too hard to pander to young people. So what is it exactly that makes politicians stand out online? Is there a secret recipe to engineering standom? We’ll open a new tab on that after this break. All right. So what’s the secret sauce that makes for a stan worthy candidate? New tab. What made Kamala so stannable? We talked about how Trump built his fandom. He had his TV show. He had the merch. He had that chaotic charisma that made him a kind of outsider in politics which appeal to certain voters. In this campaign, Kamala Harris is portrayed as this person who’s very accomplished but fun and approachable. It’s really interesting to see how much her image has shifted from when she first ran for president in the 2020 primaries. What exactly happened since the last election that turned this stern former prosecutor into a pop culture icon?
Kat Tenbarge: So it’s super fascinating to watch sort of the evolution of Kamala as a cultural figure because, yes, in 2020, when she first came forward as a primary candidate, her sort of selling point hinged on her career as a prosecutor. The summer of 2020, we saw the Black Lives Matter movement have this massive resurgence in response to the killing of George Floyd. And so you had protests and movements culturally and physically around the country and around the world. And for Kamala to be branded as a prosecutor figure at this time ultimately really undermined her success. And that that’s where you saw like the Kamala is a cop meme, like really come to play. Kamala’s campaign a lot of people have talked about how it was ultimately pretty unsuccessful, and then over the past four years as the vice president, what we saw happen is that a lot of times it’s more about appearances and it’s more about how you’re presenting like the narrative of the administration to the public versus like the policy work that you’re doing. And so Kamala would do a lot of appearances out in public. And it also helps that she was very young compared to Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris: We did it. We did it, Joe. You’re going to be the next president of the United States.
Kat Tenbarge: And so we see these moments that were recorded for campaign materials or for administration materials that then went viral online even before she announced her candidacy. And some of these moments were like her singing the wheels on the bus go round and round. But like singing that incredibly off tune.
Kamala Harris: The wheels on the bus go round and round.
Kat Tenbarge: There’s a clip that is so well known that it’s now been put into one of her official campaign videos where she’s like dancing with a marching band. And these moments over the past four years, even before anyone had any inkling that she would be the presidential nominee, people really liked this. The perception of Kamala shifted from like this sort of formidable, negatively associated cop prosecutor figure into this, like, fun loving, like aunt.
Morgan Sung: She’s like the cool wine mom now instead of the cop.
Kat Tenbarge: Yes. And that’s the perfect blend for, like, viral video content.
Morgan Sung: Add to this shift, the fact that Charlie XCX, an artist who already had a very dedicated fandom, connected her wildly successful album to Kamala Harris. Her campaign rode the cultural phenomenon that was Brat Summer.
Kat Tenbarge: And so I think it was a natural opportunity for Kamala’s days old, like fresh presidential campaign to be like, okay, let’s just seize this moment that’s already happening. Let’s jump on this thing that’s already viral. So all of them propelled Kamala is brat from like a couple a handful of viral tiktoks into the narrative that shaped the early days of her campaign.
Morgan Sung: But where is the line between, you know, embracing the meme and then just blatant pandering?
Kat Tenbarge: It’s a fine line to walk. And I remember there was a viral tweet early on where someone basically said, like Kamala, like, please read this. Like you can not try to own this joke yourself or like the flame will be extinguished. And I think some of that is the nature of Internet culture comedy, where there’s an in-group/out-group sort of mentality behind a lot of memes. Like memes as a form of communication are kind of like this populist idea of it’s like we the people, think this is funny, but if we’re making fun of McDonald’s with a meme and McDonald’s official account plays into the meme, then it loses the thing that made it funny in the first place. Kamala’s campaign, you know, they took the brat format like they took the font and the color, and they used that for campaign materials and they reshared tracks that had like Charlie lyrics. And so people were willing to sort of play along with that. And I think people were sort of excited at the idea that the campaign was listening to them. But it’s a really fine line to walk because you can very easily make it no longer funny and fun if it becomes too much because now it’s something that’s being sold to you instead of something that you as like the person is pushing.
Morgan Sung: But Harris’ campaign has shown that they can be adept with literally selling this version of the candidates without falling into the cringe trap that Kat describes. They are able to capitalize very quickly on another pop culture moment by linking Tim Walz as Harris’s V.P. pick, to the meteoric rise of another pop star. Chappell Roan.
Kat Tenbarge: And Chapel’s esthetic is the Midwest princess, where she’s from a small town in Missouri. And she talks about her roots, so she’ll wear like a cameo trucker hat that says she has merch that says like Midwest Princess. And almost immediately, Kamala’s campaign took this and repurposed it to do like a Kamala Harris’ Tim Walz hat that was like the Midwest princess hat. And it all happened.
Morgan Sung: Like Tim Walz is the Midwest princess.
Kat Tenbarge: Yes and it speaks to what they’re also trying to do on a political level, which is reach the Midwest. They’re trying to reach people who are in the quote unquote, flyover states because these are obviously the people who determine elections at the presidential level. And so it all happened so quickly that Chappell herself even, quote, tweeted like a Pop Crave tweet that showed that Kamala/ Walz hat and was like, is this real? Because you can also due to like the consumer nature of these types of merchandise, you can produce something like that overnight. You can mass produce a hat or a T-shirt that hinges on some sort of viral meme or moment very, very quickly.
Morgan Sung: Yeah, I mean, it really reminded me of like when artist merch drops and everyone’s scrambling to get the merch before it sells out.
Kat Tenbarge: Absolutely. And they’ve responded to things that they see bubbling up online in really interesting ways. And a lot of times it doesn’t have anything to do with policy. It’s more of a vibe. So, like when people started to express a lot of affection for Doug, Kamala’s husband, they like put out like merch related to Doug. And people ate that up really quickly as well.
Morgan Sung: Can you talk more about how stan culture impacts consumerism with elections like we are being sold a candidate?
Kat Tenbarge: Yes, absolutely. Over the years, money has played an increasingly determinative role in politics. And so campaigns have become a lot more over the years about getting people to buy things, about getting people to send them money. And the campaigns have taken a lot of lessons from stan culture because at the exact same time, stan culture has become a lot more commercialized. And the reason why is because corporations and conglomerates that own entertainment properties have fully realized the commercial power of fandom. And so as a fan, you’re going to be marketed to every single day of your life.
Morgan Sung: Think Disney Cruises. Harry Potter Pajamas. Taylor Swift releasing a new themed cardigan for every album variant that she drops. And Kat says, we can now see this with political campaigns as well.
Kat Tenbarge: You have the clothes, you have the ideology and demographic driven campaign donations. You have advertisements on every single social media platform that are targeted to you. You have text messages that are asking you to send money to these campaigns. And when they see viral moments popping up online, especially if those viral moments don’t have to do with policy, but have to do with an appreciation for Kamala’s husband or an appreciation for the Midwest princess esthetic. That’s very easy to capitalize on because it’s not a hard decision. It’s sort of like a knee jerk emotional response. Like, I love chaperons, so I’m going to buy this Kamala Harris hat.
Morgan Sung: Just because a group of people all like the same thing, whether that’s a pop star or a movie franchise or in this case, a politician, it doesn’t mean that they all get along. And we know that fan communities aren’t always purely wholesome spaces. Stans are known to be incredibly defensive of whatever they stan. We see this a lot during awards seasons when fans believe that one star was more deserving of an accolade than another. And we also see this when people criticize an actor or musician. Not all stans, but the most dedicated ones have been called out for dog piling critics or trying to minimize scandals in an effort to maintain their idol’s image. It’s really hard to have nuanced conversations within fan communities when any negative discussion is shut down. And this makes it very difficult to hold celebrities accountable. It’s one thing when fans swarm any criticism of their favorite pop stars excessive private jet use. What about when it comes to politicians who also have a very passionate supporter base? What are the darker implications of stan culture intertwining with politics? Time for a new tab. The Dark Side of Stanning Politicians. Back to Kat.
Kat Tenbarge: You actually see this push back on both sides of the aisle where if someone wants to critique Kamala or critique Trump, other fans of Trump or other fans and supporters of Kamala will be like, save it. Like, save the argument, save the nuance, save the critique until the election has been decided. And that is a huge idea from fan culture, and it has absolutely seeped into political culture because of those stakes that we talked about at the beginning. Like the stakes are seen as too high to criticize Kamala right now. But the issue with sort of the stan mentality that we’ve seen in the pop culture arena is that stans will become so defensive of their idols that they won’t not just abstain from criticizing them, but they’ll attack people who do criticize them.
Morgan Sung: And even idles themselves aren’t immune from other people’s stans. Chappel Roan, for example, got a lot of heat from liberals for declining to endorse Kamala Harris.
Chappel Roan: F*** the policies of the right, but also f*** some of the policies on the left. That’s why I can’t endorse.
Morgan Sung: She’s criticized the Biden administration for its opposition to gender affirming care for trans minors. And she also turned down an invitation to perform at the White House during Pride Month in protest of the administration’s support of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
Chappel Roan: F**** Trump for f***** real, but f*** some of the shit that has gone down in the Democratic Party that has failed people like me and you and more so Palestine. So yeah, I’m voting for f****** Kamala, but I’m not settling for what has been offered.
Morgan Sung: A lot of Democrats were furious at her for this nuanced take. Like Kat predicted, many people said Chappel should have saved her criticism for after the election, and some even compared to a Trump supporter, which she never stated she is. Still, amid the backlash, Chappell also got a wave of support. It wasn’t just her fans rallying behind her, a lot of people who agreed with her pointed out that even when the stakes are this high, politicians still need to be held accountable for how their policies affect their voters.
Kat Tenbarge: At the exact same time that people are questioning the overall influence of stanning in politics, you’re also seeing like the beginning of a reckoning for stanning in general. And it’s something where you have like this undercurrent bubbling up for a long time. But even with Chappell Roan, you saw her really push back against the way that fans interact with her.
Chappel Roan: I don’t care that abuse and harassment, stalking, whatever, is a normal thing to do.
Morgan Sung: Kat’s talking about a video that Chappell Roan posted a few months ago where she talks about the dark side of fame and basically tried to set boundaries with her fans.
Chappel Roan: I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career field I’ve chosen. That does not make it okay.
Kat Tenbarge: And it caused a lot of conversation where sort of for the first time, you’re seeing a lot of people say like, we need to reconsider our relationship with celebrity period. I think that that conversation is only going to continue and people are going to continue to evaluate how we can have a healthier relationship with elected officials and politicians in terms of where the fan culture is going to run into issues is when it comes to more serious aspects of the campaign. Like if people have questions about specific policy or about specific controversies or real world events that are happening right now that they don’t have a good answer to. And if instead of focusing on those real questions, they lean more into the fan fervor, that’s where I think you’re going to start to see cracks in this foundation.
Morgan Sung: Stan culture within politics might be problematic. But Aly, the college student behind the viral Kamala Brat edit also points out how can galvanize young people into getting involved with politics.
Aly McCormick: It’s just like so cool to see like people be excited about politics, like stuff they didn’t really expect from making a 15 second edit.
Aly McCormick: But it’s cool to see how that can, these types of edits can resonate with people and make them look at a situation completely differently.
Morgan Sung: At the end of the day, vibes alone cannot win an election. Embracing the stans is just a sliver of campaign strategy, but that sliver is more relevant with every election. Stans do show up for merch drops and album sales. This election is a test of whether or not they’ll show up to the polls.
Kamala Harris: To see what can be, what should be, unburdened by what has been.
Morgan Sung: And this wraps up our deep dive. Time to close all these tabs.
Morgan Sung: Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported in hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our managing producer is Chris Egusa. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Jen Chien edited the series and is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Original Music and Sound Design by Chris Egusa. Additional music from APM. Audience Engagement Support from my Maha Sinad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Director. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. A special shout out to the team at Political Breakdown for letting us share our episodes on their feed. We’d love to hear what you think about the series. Hit us up at podcasts at KQED dot org. That’s podcast with an “s”. Thanks for listening.
