A Gen Zer’s Guide to Kamala Harris Memes - Washingtonian (2024)

Momala is so Julia so the coconut #KHive rides at dawn, unburdened by what has been. If that sentence sounds like gibberish to you, welcome! You’re in the right place. I’m 20, here to explain all the Gen Z Kamala Harris memes blanketing your X feed. The girls that get it get it, as we say, and now you can be one of the girls.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been meme-able for a long time (in case I’ve lost you already, memes are videos, images, or phrases that are shared across social media and altered in subtle ways so as to be continuously funny). You may remember the viral “we did it Joe” video of Harris calling President Joe Biden after the election was called in 2020, when her legato phrasing became fodder for parody videos. Since then, her hearty laugh and sometimes very random remarks have become ubiquitous audio clips and video edits on TikTok, Instagram, and X. Here’s everything you need to know about the moment’s most popular Harris memes.

Coconut Tree

kamala falling from the coconut tree and into the oval office pic.twitter.com/yLCbORoOjK

— Alex (@alexxmalloy) July 21, 2024

You may have noticed coconut and palm tree emojis popping up in social media usernames and bios. You may have been confused when Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker responded “You think I just fell out of a coconut tree?” to a post about his political future. You may have been downright baffled when Hawaii senator Brian Schatz attached a picture of himself climbing a coconut tree to his X post declaring support for Harris.

The coconut tree meme originates from a May 2023 swearing-in ceremony at the White House for an initiative advancing educational equity for Latino students. During her speech at the event, Harris digressed for a moment to quote her mother.

“None of us just live in a silo. Everything is in context,” she said, in the middle of explaining how families and communities are important in supporting students. A smile crept across her face. “My mother used to—she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris grinned, leaning forward toward the audience and letting out a big laugh. An instant later, she was solemn: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.’”

There’s something hilarious about the sudden tone shift, something musical about the way she says “coconut,” something refreshing about hearing a vice president joke around. Whatever it is that gives the clip that special sauce, Gen Z quickly spun it into a TikTok audio, pairing the quote with on-screen text about situations that quickly turn from silly to serious. Following Biden’s withdrawal from the current presidential race, the soundbite has taken on new life, and coconut-related quips have become a form of Harris endorsem*nt. One edit mixing the clip with popular Charli XCX song “Von dutch” has been viewed over 3.5 million times and sparked a wave of Harris/Charli crossover content.

Kamala Is Brat

ijbol 360 you think you fell out of a coconut tree ? pic.twitter.com/K6IU1Wg0OM

— aram (@aramnotagoat) July 8, 2024

Speaking of Charli XCX, you may have seen lime green-tinted pictures of Harris circulating, or the off-puttingly blurry and casual banner image of the official Harris campaign X account. These are references to the most recent album by British singer Charli XCX, Brat, which consists of highly auto-tuned, rave-ready hyperpop music that has become the consensus album of the summer for Gen Z. Being “so Julia,” a reference to actress and model Julia Fox, is the summer’s top compliment—it means you’re that girl, effortless and hot. On the album, Charli shuns all that’s traditionally considered tasteful in music, playing around with edgy graphics and lyrics and taking on an unabashed party-loving persona. Listening, you can’t help but feel like you’re the life of an underground party in a London warehouse, and that anyone who’s not cool with that is outdated and a bore.

To many young voters, Harris comes across as completely comfortable in her skin, smiling and laughing, untouched by the haters—all of this in true Charli fashion. As a fellow Washingtonian intern put it, “young people seem most endeared to the parts of [Harris] that are a bit kooky and human.” Perhaps more importantly, just as Charli defies music industry standards, Harris challenges the norms of white- and male-dominated politics. So when Charli herself posted the simple three-word Tweet “kamala IS brat” on Sunday evening, it was one of the most powerful endorsem*nts Harris could possibly receive for the youth vote.

Unburdened by What Has Been

live from the “unburdened by what has been” HQ pic.twitter.com/xb6IajkAcu

— Saint Hoax (@SaintHoax) July 21, 2024

A post originally published by the Republican National Committee compiles four straight minutes of Harris reciting the same phrase: “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” The surprisingly common Harris talking point, used by the GOP to diss Harris as an uncreative broken record, has instead been latched onto by Gen Z—who actually think it’s pretty funny.

So, Are These Memes Good or Bad for the Harris Campaign?

Gen Z seems ecstatic about the prospect of a 59-year-old daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants becoming the next Commander-in-Chief. Granted, my evidence is strictly anecdotal, but my social media and friends have a palpable new energy. The defeatist sentiment that dominated just a few days ago seems to have melted into renewed interest in the election.

There are even posts of Harris with a cop hat edited on, superimposed over the American flag, mirroring the picture of a saluting, bikinied rapper Nicki Minaj that I’d wager is the most popular college dorm decoration. It’s an unexpected image for a generation that has been skeptical of policing, and really, there’s a heavy tinge of irony to all the Harris memes. On the other hand, they represent at least some sort of engagement with politics during a grim, re-heated presidential race that has inspired election exhaustion and avoidance.

It really just feels like if you showed Harris the memes, she’d laugh. And wouldn’t that be nice, for a change?

CNN is just now learning that we're living in a brat summer. pic.twitter.com/4MNALNxF3F

— Austin Linfante (@AuLinfante) July 22, 2024