The "Dark Brandon" t-shirt and mugs being sold at the president's official campaign website.
President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday he’s running for re-election in a move that was no surprise to just about anyone. What was a surprise is that the 46th president started selling a “Dark Brandon” t-shirt on his campaign website to raise money.
“Best worn while vanquishing Malarkey,” the description for the Dark Brandon t-shirt explains.
What exactly is a Dark Brandon? First, you have to know the origin of some popular internet memes from the past few years. Back in 2021, NASCAR racer Brandon Brown gave an interview where people in the background were shouting “fuck Joe Biden.” The interviewer misheard the chant, thinking they were shouting “let’s go Brandon,” to cheer on the NASCAR driver.
Video of the interview went viral in October 2021, and a meme was born. Anti-Biden fans at sporting events would start shouting “Let’s Go Brandon” spontaneously, and the meme continued to spread. Pretty soon, former President Donald Trump even started selling “Let’s Go Brandon” merchandise.
But memes often evolve, and that’s exactly what happened with Let’s Go Brandon. Liberal internet users started to co-opt the name Brandon as a positive thing, with memes like “Brandon Sends His Regards” anytime a right-wing opponent was complaining about Biden online. Suddenly, Brandon was a synonym for Biden that Democrats were fine with using.
And, soon enough, Dark Brandon was born, with the implication that President Biden was secretly a ruthless lefty partisan who took no prisoners. The Dark Brandon meme often included red stars in the eyes of the president, another visual signal that started within right-wing meme culture. “Laser eyes” used to be used exclusively by white supremacists before they became more mainstream on the right and eventually became co-opted on the left.
There’s even an entire Reddit community dedicated to Dark Brandon, a celebration of Biden by people who typically wouldn’t feel very strongly about a pretty centrist political figure. And that’s part of the joke. Biden, as one of the most centrist politicians in existence, is constantly labeled a “socialist” by many on the right. By promoting Dark Brandon memes, lefties who otherwise would be reluctant to feel good about a centrist can re-invent Biden’s soft-guy image.
A Dark Brandon meme shared on Reddit.
And it’s not just Dark Brandon t-shirts that the Biden campaign has started selling. There are also Dark Brandon mugs.
“Dark Brandon, dark roast. Tea drinkers welcome,” the description for the mug explains.
For anyone who still thinks internet culture isn’t mainstream culture, you have yet another thing to prove you wrong. Even 80-year-old Joe Biden is spreading weird online jokes.
