On February 11, during the Super Bowl of the "Spring Festival Gala" in the United States, the 81-year-old American **Biden issued the first short ** on the international version of Douyin TikTok.
This year's Super Bowl viewers are as high as 1200 million, more than one-third of the total population of the United States. The Kansas City Chiefs, the last Major League Baseball champions, won the NFL championship again with a touchdown in the last three seconds of overtime to defeat the San Francisco 49ers.
Tyler Swift, a pop** singer who has just been elected as Time Magazine's "Person of the Year 2023", cheered for her boyfriend, Kelsey, the core player of the Chiefs. She was given more footage on live TV than she was given to MVP Mahomes.
Taylor Swift attends Super Bowl 58 in San Francisco at Loyalty Stadium in Las Vegas on February 11, 2024.
Biden hurriedly rubbed a wave of hot spots.
This ** is called "Hi guys". 6 questions, quick questions and quick answers, Biden was full of smiles, he was at ease, and he lost no time in cueing "mildew".
In 2022, Biden signed the TikTok ban. In 2023, the U.S. Congress will hear a bipartisan siege of TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi. These things seem to have been "forgotten" by Biden.
"I support Biden".
Biden's "quick questions and quick answers" are fashionable in content, proving that although he is old, his mentality is not old; It took 26 seconds to try to prove that ** was quick to react, and the knife was still sharp.
When asked if he supported the Kansas City Chiefs or the San Francisco 49ers, he said it was the Philadelphia Eagles, or "I'd have to sleep alone" because "my wife is a Philadelphia Girl (fan)."
Ask him if he likes the Super Bowl or a halftime show. Because the halftime shows of the Super Bowl in both years were sponsored by Apple Music, it was star-studded. This year, we invited Arthur the Kid, white (left) and professional, who served as a member of the Arts and Humanities Committee during the Obama tenure, to participate in ** cultural activities in Cuba. Last year, it was Rihanna who was invited, breaking the Super Bowl halftime show record.
Biden said he liked the game itself.
Screenshot of Biden's "Quick Questions and Quick Answers" Source: Biden's official TikTok account.
When asked if there was a "conspiracy" to manipulate the championship game to give the Kansas City Chiefs a win, so as to use Swift's fame to support the campaign, Biden looked relaxed and played with a meme - posting a "dark brandon" **.
If I told you, I'd be in trouble. He laughs.
The last question can be described as "the picture is exhausted". It's the year of **, "Do you support Trump or Biden?" ”
Biden laughed again, "Are you kidding? Biden, of course! ”
* Probably the most interesting content in the book is "Dark Brandon". This "meme" shows that "things are changing" inside the White House: the polls have not changed much, but the atmosphere has changed.
Like all memes, the origins of "Dark Brandon" are complex. Biden**, whose eyes can glow red lasers, first came from China's Sina Weibo. A certain painter painted Biden, who had just won the election at the time, as a "Game of Thrones"-style zombie king.
Game of Thrones Zombie King stills.
After several circulations, the American right-wing was very happy to see it, so it was changed and added a red laser eye to Biden - implying that he was the first villain. The red laser eye is generally a symbol of ** in anime, like the superman of the normal "red laser eye", which represents "blackening".
The text "dark brandon" comes from a strategic "mishearing" in 2021. During the NASCAR Racing Series in October of that year, a reporter interviewed professional race car driver Brandon Brown, and many spectators were scolding Biden with the word F. The reporter emptily translated the audience shout ("his Biden") into "Come on, Brandon" (let'S Go Brandon), asking the champion how he feels. This aroused the enthusiasm of opponents to play memes and use them to ridicule Biden.
Since then, "Brandon" has become synonymous with "Biden". With a red laser eye and a black coat, Dark Brandon "became a popular meme in the United States in one fell swoop."
Biden who was added with a red laser eye.
Since the summer of 2022, the right wing has liked to use "dark Brandon" to hack Biden. However, at that time, Biden was achieving a series of "policy victories", and the so-called "benefiting the country and the people" chip bills, infrastructure bills, and the like were very popular.
From this, Biden's supporters also opened their minds: there are no guns and no artillery, the enemy makes us.
Under their interpretation (creating memes), "Dark Brandon" is not Biden's "self-black", but a rather cool superhero image - Batman is also "black" anyway.
Wooing young voters
Biden's short hair is also fashionable because of a sense of crisis.
Just last week, the White House was in an awkward motion. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Biden's handling of classified documents, saying he is a "friendly old man with a poor memory."
In a recent poll, a whopping 75 percent of voters thought Biden was too old for the job.
Moreover, many young people are not satisfied with Biden's pro-Israel leanings and the way he handles Gaza. There are also some young people who feel that Biden is not doing enough in terms of student loan forgiveness.
What worries Biden most is that most surveys show that he lags behind his rival, 77-year-old former Trump, in popularity with young voters.
Biden (left) with Trump (right).
Thus, the "packaging" begins. The account @bidenhq maintained by the campaign team and posts regularly on TikTok, just like on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
After the release of the first short **, Biden's account gained more than 50,000 followers that night, and the number continues to increase. However, it will take a while to catch up with his X account - nearly 38 million followers.
Within 24 hours of the establishment of the number, Biden issued 4 **, in addition to denouncing Trump for boasting about overturning Roe v. Wade, he also laughed at his age.
Biden's campaign advisers pointed to an increasingly fragmented ecosystem as one of the main reasons the campaign finally joined the platform.
Screenshot of Biden's TikTok account.
A few years ago, young voters were all but ignored. The incumbent** campaign should choose TikTok," said Voters of Tomorrow spokesman Jake Lobel.
Biden's deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, stressed that "on TikTok, Biden's campaign will reach millions of young people, some of whom might not otherwise have heard of his achievements in a range of areas, including climate change and education." ”
Flaherty is the questioner of "quick questions and quick answers" in Biden's first **.
This also proves that today's ** environment is increasingly fission, fragmented, and personalized. Campaigners and teams must find new platforms and innovative ways to reach voters.
The mouth is honest and honest
Say no, the body is honest.
It has been less than a year since the CEO of TikTok endured all kinds of criticism to the Biden team's registration of a TikTok account.
In March 2023, TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi was questioned by the U.S. Congress. It is not so much a "question" as a public trial.
Lawmakers from both parties did not intend to give the hearing a chance to defend themselves, and even Zuckerberg, who was deeply involved in the "Cambridge Analytica" and "2016** foreign interference" scandals in 2018, did not have such "treatment".
Zhou Shouzi. TikTok has 1700 million users, 80% of whom are between the ages of 16 and 34. Since 2020, when Trump first failed to threaten a ban, the discussion about TikTok's "data security" in the United States has never subsided.
From the "model" of Chinese technology companies going overseas to the political target of "everyone shouting and fighting" in American political circles, the change in TikTok's image has become one of the many footnotes to the drastic changes in Sino-US relations and the global political and economic environment.
It is reported that as of December 2023, only 37 of the 535 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives use the program.
At that time, neither Congress nor the executive branch of the United States quickly reached a unanimous conclusion, and the TikTok issue had to continue the stalemate. For TikTok, caught between the geopolitical game between China and the United States, the results are not too bad.
Data on the percentage of younger generations in the U.S. who use social networking from 2022 to 2025.
As the number of users grows and teenagers enter election age, the U.S. environment is conducive to TikTok's long-term operation.
Although the use of TikTok is not allowed on federal** devices, and many individual Democrats are reluctant to use TikTok, as Michael Hopkins, a Democratic strategist who has worked on the Obama and Hillary campaigns, has said, candidates must face the fact that TikTok is a platform where they can reach all voters.
You have to communicate with your constituents where they are. ”
In the year **, the elect is God. Even if these "gods" are in their early 20s.
It is under the birth of such an "election culture" that we can see Biden, who is in his 80s, "entertaining relatives in colorful clothes" - using the way that young people accept, to please young people.
This is exactly what the situation is stronger than people, and the votes are bigger than the sky.