Rafqa, I keep seeing pictures of coconuts on the internet when Kamala Harris is mentioned. What is happening?
Caitlin, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?
The origins of this meme lie in a speech Harris gave in May last year, swearing in commissioners for the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics.
Harris was trying to make a point about the need to focus on young people and their wider community at the same time, because “nothing exists in a silo”.
She then quoted her own mother, who she says used to say “I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”
Harris delivered the line mid-speech with a hearty laugh, then a sombre tone of voice and pause that sounded heavy with the knowledge of all the world’s tortured philosophers.
It was inevitable Harris would be edited into a 12-second soundbite that would fall into the TikTok algorithm, proving perfect for online virality. A popular cut of the soundbite has over 18,000 TikTok videos posted to it, with some videos racking up hundreds of thousands of likes each.
So why has it exploded again now?
In the last 24 hours, Joe Biden has announced he won’t be running for US president again, and has thrown his support behind Harris, who is the clear frontrunner now to become the Democratic nominee.
Cue thousands of new coconut-related memes.
Exhibit A: US Senator from Hawaii climbing a coconut tree, saying “Madam vice-president, we are ready to help”.
Madam Vice President, we are ready to help. pic.twitter.com/y8baSx44FL
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) July 22, 2024
And B: A Washington bar apparently offering $5 “pina kamala” coconut shots all night.
washington dc is in peak form pic.twitter.com/i8uFMwhZhj
— Josh Sorbe 🌴🥥 (@joshsorbe) July 21, 2024
I’m also being inundated with references to Kamala having her own “brat summer”. What’s going on there?
You are seeing Harris’ big news getting caught in the crossfire of many thriving memes at once – a potentially strategic “girlboss digital psyop targeting millennial women and gays,” as Sally Rugg opines, or a happy accident for Harris and her PR team.
We have covered the coconut tree. Now a quick recap of Charli xcx’s brat summer.
The British pop star announced the release of her sixth studio album a month ago with an Instagram photo of herself crouched on the pavement holding its slime lime green cover.
The internet started self-identifying as brats, editing memes on to the brat album cover, rejecting the “clean girl” aesthetic and attaching a grungy hyper-pop hedonistic aesthetic to summer (for those in the northern hemisphere at least).
The brat summer hashtag has nearly 1m posts on TikTok, neon brat raves have become all the rage, and anything lime-coloured is now brat, as put by Guardian’s Chloe Mac Donnell.
When Biden announced he was stepping down he got his own memes (Joever etc), but Kamala and her coconut trees became brat.
Charli xcx tweeted “kamala IS brat”, receiving almost 9m views in four hours.
kamala IS brat
— Charli (@charli_xcx) July 22, 2024
Video edits started flooding TikTok of Harris doing things (laughing, dancing) to a backing track of Charli xcx’s song mixed to Harris’s coconut tree quote, making them brat things.
if kamala harris becomes president it’s bc of this edit pic.twitter.com/kyDOhNIUUI
— sophia (@hellopugh) July 21, 2024
Big X names have jumped in – Hank Green formatted Harris’s coconut tree line on to the famous lime green Brat album cover.
— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 22, 2024
And people have already made T-shirts.
BRAT Kamala shirts already on Fire Island. The gays move SO FAST pic.twitter.com/Zq3e9yctzv
— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) July 21, 2024
There’s only one remaining logical question. If Kamala Harris receives the Democratic ticket, will Charli xcx be her vice-president?
In my expert political opinion, yes. Kamala is following Charli xcx on Instagram and X. The moves are already being made.
