After Tuesday night's debate, as former president Donald Trump worked the reporters in the spin room in Philadelphia, Vice President Kamala Harris's TikTok team was busy appealing to a different crowd.
In the digital "war room" at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., they hit the button on their pice de rsistance shortly after midnight: A six-second video that mocked Trump's performance by showing his lectern inhabited by a laughably dramatic "Dance Moms" star. "I thought I was ready to be back. I thought I was stronger than this but obviously I'm not," she lamented. "I wanna go home."
Viewed more than 7 million times, the video was produced by a small TikTok team - all 25 and under, some working their first jobs - given unfettered freedom to chase whatever they think will go viral. Over the past eight weeks, Harris's social media team has helped supercharge her campaign, harnessing the rhythms and absurdities of internet culture to create one of the most inventive and irreverent get-out-the-vote strategies in modern politics.
They have trolled Trump inside his own social network, Truth Social. They have made viral memes out of bags of Doritos and camouflage hats. In 2016, a single Hillary Clinton tweet might have required 12 staffers and 10 drafts; today, many of Harris's TikTok videos are conceived, created and posted in about half an hour.
"This campaign empowers young people to speak to young people," said Parker Butler, the 24-year-old director of Harris's digital rapid response content, a team that watches all of Trump's speeches and can blast a clip onto social media at a moment's notice. "And we're here to put in the work."
Very interesting story about Gen-Z targeted political message and GOTV efforts. The article also mention's Trump's social media team and in how it differs from Harris' joyful meme warriors. Moving forward there is no doubt there will always be teams like these whose job is to be wherever younger voters congregate.
