MINNEAPOLIS — Why should you care about tik toks and memes? Experts say it can fire up voters.
For example: brat.
No, it's not a a bad word in the context of the 2024 election.
It is a popular Charlie XCX album with some interpretations related to not caring what other people think. So what does that have to do with a presidential campaign?
Well 'brat' took the internet by storm, especially when Charlie XCX posted "kamala is brat."
So what did Harris' campaign do? They embraced it, with the album color's lime green as a focus of a refurbish of Harris' social media. Since then, influencers have posted different videos of Harris to the tune of songs on the album with the lime green filter.
Experts say its posts like those that propel Harris into the orbit of young voters.
The same phenomenon is happening with her running mate, Governor Walz. The internet says he's giving major dad energy.
"Research shows that younger people, in more than other generations, are looking to social media for news and information," said April Eichmeier, an emerging media professor at St. Thomas.
"I really think when campaigns are thinking about this, they're really thinking about their campaign as a whole," said Eichmeier. "So social media being a big part of it, particularly with Gen Z outreach."
But different campaigns take a different approach. Former candidate Donald Trump constantly posts opinions and reactions, he also has twice as many followers as his opponent, Harris on TikTok. His most recent post on the platform features him and internet personality Adin Ross dancing to YMCA.
"It is, in a way, a democratizing force," said Eichmeier.
Eichmeier also pointed out there's also a lot out there that is not in the campaigns control, making it sometimes difficult to predict what will catch and what won't.