Yeah, I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas as well.
Let's go Brandon, Let's go.
I agree, let's let's talk about Let's go Brandon. I maintained the only good thing Biden has done so far.
It's pretty funny. It's very funny.
So this is like also the sort of attitude that is actually necessary to like win the culture war side of these things. It's not like defending yourself, and it's not when they do something like put out this meme like being like, oh my god, this is so dangerous and like some responsible no funk with him right back, you know, like boh, put some glowing eyes on Joe Biden and make it looks like he plans to shoot somebody. You know.
It's funny.
So let's talk about the rise of dark Brandon.
And also the other thing that they're kind of deterning and reposting with here is like taking the uh what is it, taking the fucking Brandon memes and let's go Brandon meme, Let's go Brandon and going being like all right, yeah, fuck it, call him Brandon, like doesn't hurt us, Like yeah, we'll be branded.
But Biden did that himself, when someone asked him about it, he didn't know what it meant, and he was like, yeah, let's go Brandon.
I actually I actually already had that clip inserted of above this conversation jameson good job, good job, We're on the same page.
Yeah, which is just being given the content.
So Dark Brandon combines two different pro Trump memes while trying to subvert them, both pretty successfully. I would say, I'm I'm assuming everyone listening to this is is familiar with the fuck Joe Biden, Let's go Brandon kind of evolution, So I'm just gonna skip right past that because the other half of Dark Brandon, I think is a little
bit more interesting. So Dark Brandon began with chronically online life theftists doing a satirical riff on Dark Mega, replacing the figure of Trump with an alter ego of Biden and having and having this like mirror universe president appear as some kind of like neoliberal socialist demagogue, because when you replace the fascist figure with some largely ineffectual liberal given like militaristic and socialist or anti fascist catchphrases, but
like otherwise leave the rest of the authoritarian ascetic stylings of fascism. The result is pretty funny because it's Joe Biden. Yeah, so again, I think I've read a lot of stuff on this, and there's like a two two to like academic reports on on Dark Brandon.
Uh.
Some people believe that Dark Brandon started as like a right wing meme. They are they are mistaken. They are misreading irony poisoned leftists as being like like alt right memesters common common miss tank.
But also yeah, because you wouldn't want to be stuck in a car with any of them, right.
But Dark Brandon evolved into satirically imagining what if Joe Biden was actually the militant communist dictator many on the right made him out to be. With all of the authoritarian impulses of Dark Mega turned on its head and ironically targeted against Trumpian conservatives, Dark Brandon can be seen hunting down at Trump voters for execution, or sitting on a throne of air fifteen's with yellow laser eyes. I'm gonna play I'm gonna play one video for us to watch here.
President, There's no way.
Out Joe Biden's America.
He's putting on a skullman.
No more malarkey tie me to a missile and fire me into the suburbs.
I'm ready, genuinely quite amazing.
It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny stuff. I do like the way that like Dark Brandon edits work is there's there's there's this one smile that Biden does that looks very like evil and mischievous that if you edit it, if you like, edit in after he says something ridiculous, it's pretty funny. So here we have here we have a meme about Joe Biden publicly executing Patriot Front members after they got arrested in Idaho. And probably my favorite Dark branded meme is a picture of Biden with sunglasses
and a list of names. Has shinzu albe neutralized, gas prices neutralized, COVID nineteen neutralized, Antifa fully armed, Roe v Wade too coming soon, Global Homo coming soon, Communism coming soon, which is pretty funny.
It's good.
So one of the reasons that Dark Brandon was able to flourish where Dark Mega stagnated is that the Biden version is both based on and never lost its sense of irony, imagining the feeble, bumbling Biden as some like hard lined, ruthlessly effective tyrant is in it is like in innately humorous premise from like from the very beginning. The ironic nature also made a Dark Brandon all but impervious from attack by conservative commentators on the right, because like,
how can you attack this vibe? Like it's it's so ironic and absurd that like there's no way to be like, look, how dangerous the dark brighten memel what like come on?
Guess?
So Dark Brandon grew in popularity as Biden's Inflation Reduction Act also known as the IRA past last summer.
And memes out of that too, and it.
Also it also kind of spread Afternows broke that an American drone strike killed the then leader of al Qaeda on July thirty first, twenty twenty two. So around this time period is when Dark Brandon broke containment. So Dark Brandon kind of started in March of twenty twenty two, and by by early August it has now left the irony poisoned leftist like Twitter sphere and has now broken
out and is freely swimming around the liberal populace. So come August, Dark Brandon no longer belonged to leftist ship posters liberals started to catch on and make Dark Brandon memes of their own, albeit much more cringey boomer versions, And although most of these liberals probably didn't really know what was quite being satirized, that didn't stop them from trying to emulate this cooler, more edgy version of Biden
with glowing eyes. So here I have a two liberal memes here with with someone reacting to the news that there was no civilian casualties in the drone strike at Kilty al Kainda leader having Biden shooting laser eyes down from orbit and then also him eating ice cream in front of an explosion, which is horrible, like a not very good meme, but the fact that there was bad, like very very bad, low quality dark branded memes is actually very important for later.
Yes, yeah, yes, no, it's good that this happened.
Yes, the Internet has taken notice. And now there's a new meme out there known as Dark Brandon, which shows a badass Biden with super villain laser beme my malls.
The liberalization of Dark Brandon was met with sadness from the original memesters that pioneered the overtly ironic dictatory Old Brandon, who commanded battalions of Antifa. The The ongoing liberal co option of dark Brandon was thought to signal the death of the meme, although a completely unintended positive side effect of this recuperation seems to be taking hold. We'll have we'll have more on that later. I have I have a four other pretty bad dark Brandon memes.
Here go on with corn ROAs is fully fully me.
It's not good. There's there's two of these are like photoshop movie posters with Biden's face extremely poorly photoshopps on Tomeo's.
Ship, photoshops again this is ms pat Yeah.
And then a poster for the Dark Brandon Rises with the tagline that the Malarchy will end. Not not very good memes. So it wasn't just overly online democrats on social media who were spreading these dark branded memes. Soon enough, White House staff joined in to celebrate the passing of the kind of Neutered Inflation Reduction Act. On August seventh, the White House Digital director shared a high contrast photo of Biden grinning with red laser eyes pointed towards the
camera that quickly went viral. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut posted a dark branded meme, which was a drawing with
yellow glowing eyes. Later that same day, and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee posted the same picture as well, and the Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates posted a whole ass Dark Branded meme, writing dark Brandon is crushing it with a horribly cringing photo abided with red laser eyes and white text that reads, your malarkey has been going on for long enough, kiddo, Like, oh my god, oh my god.
Now you know what, Garrison, we were just celebrating this, but I think I am now a fascist. It's done.
It of the White House Staff Secretary joined in by responding to a tweet saying lasers shooting out of Joe Biden's eyes is an official statement of administration policy by saying that is indeed an official physician what anyway.
So god damn it.
Many people, myself included, suspected that Dark Branded would suffer through kind of a regular meme cycle and die off pretty soon once it hit this like peak popularity, But somehow Brandon showed a surprising amount of resiliency, partially due to liberals being a few months behind and they're being really nothing else for liberals to meme about, because this was like one of the this time in Biden's presidency was the first time the Democrats actually felt like they
had something to celebrate, and having this kind of overly outrageous kind of joking meme was like the first bit of like agit prop that liberals have like done since Trump went out of office. And it's also like the first effect of etchiprop they've ever done period. Now, Dark Brandon showed one other surprising trait very soon, the ability
to influence actual Joe Biden. On September first, Biden gave a prime time bombastic speech addressed to the nation and spoke about the threats to American democracy from extremist mega forces. Joe Biden stood outside of Independence Haul in Philadelphia, lit with high contrast red lights and uniformed marines on either side.
Far right politicians and influencers reacted with shakun horror, calling the speech demagogic, outrageous, and divisive, while liberals and even some leftists praised the speech for accurately addressing the threat posed by far right actors in this country. But both of those on the right end left definitely noticed the Frank brandonness of the entire thing, especially with this being less than a month after the White House's own Brandon post.
The red lights, the background marines, and the impassioned and oddly well delivered appeal to fight for the soul of the country from the Trumpian mega extremist political faction set on dismantling democracy played very well. Uh, the whole the whole thing felt very dark brandon Esque. And the takeaway many people had is that they had somehow memed Dark Branded into existence. Do you know who else you don't
want to fuck with? It's the products and services that support this vital, academic level research into Dark Brand and truly truly unparalleled work on the part of myself. You're welcome, Here's here's fucking ads. All right, we are back. Let's talk even more about Dark Brandon. I cannot believe I
wrote three thousand, over three thousand words on this, all right. So, like many natural predators, Dark Brandon went through a period of hibernation, laying dormant through most of the winter, that is,
until a huge resurgence in April of this year. This past April, Biden launched his new twenty twenty four re election campaign website, which not only featured a Dark Brandon error four h four page reading your lost Jack, Let's get you back on the rails, which is kind of funny but not really funny because it's doing the whole like Biden and track reference, And it's kind of funny because it's like a four oh four page, So it's like it's Dark Brandon telling you to get back to
the regular website because you're now on like the part of the website that doesn't exist, because like Dark Brandon doesn't exist. It's not I'm overthinking this. I'm doing way too high concept. It's like Beaudryard analysis of this. This this joke is not that good. But beyond the Dark Brandon error four h four page, there is also official Dark Brandon merchandise. Biden's Dark line features dark blue monochrome images of Biden or Brandon staring forward with red laser
eyes and a mischievous grin. The design comes on baseball hats, t shirts, mugs, stickers, and tote bags. Product descriptions are as follows best worn while vanquishing malarkey. Protect yourself from malarkey and the sun with this dark cap. Dark Brandon Dark Rose, what dark dark Brandon dark roast tea drinkers welcome, And finally, the worst one malarkey is tot's over after we re elect President Biden.
This is the This is like the Internet equivalent or the me I don't know what the I feel the same way I feel in like old Yeller when you're like, well the dog's got ra you got to shoot it, Like there's no other ethical way to deal with This is like, but it's it hurts.
It's like when someone's dad turns up to the skate park. This is what's happening here.
Yeah, you've got to shoot him otherwise they'll give everyone rabies, Right, that's what you meant, James.
Yeah, Yeah, it's time for their life to end.
Yeah.
This is also like fascinating because like the fact that that Biden, Joe Biden made assume direct control laser eye
dark merch before Trump did is wild. And now Trump won't really ever be able to like capitalize on this sort of thing because Biden just beat him to the punch on this, and and and like in a way that's like not actually promoting fascism, which effectively this this whole thing effectively neutralized Trump's ability to cash in on Dark Mega and the fashwave aesthetic, which is just a pretty shocking and like amazing trajectory for fash wave.
Yeah yeah.
The latest appearance of Dark The latest appearance of Dark Brandon was during the White House Correspondence dinner this past April, when Biden handed off the podium to comedian Roy Wood Junior.
Roy the point of is yours.
I'm gonna be fine with your jokes, but I'm not sure about Dark Brandon.
The coolest thing the Libs were so happy to have a meme.
A meme.
They got one, they got one, and they were just it's one of those things again, like like a little kid having to shoot his dog. I just I couldn't. You can't take it away from him. They were just so happy.
I have I do have three. I selected the only three Dark branded memes I like here for the very end. One is just Biden in a beard and eye patch. It says it's over Jack. One has Biden with a like a very like horrifyingly edited smile with laser eyes saying malarkey detected and it looks.
Like the monster in a fucking like I don't know exactly what from. But like demon teeth, like nightmare teeth, the leftists are so much better at making these memes than anyone else.
And my favorite is, this is a satirical rift on the This post has been fact checked by real American patriots trump Beam instead having an image of Dark branded with laser eyes. That's saying this post was fact checked
by real Dark branded acolytes. So this is like fun and good, right, Like this is this is fine, But there's actually a surprisingly like positive result from this whole Dark Brandon sega, because even as far back as August of twenty twenty two, myself, some research colleagues, and other journalists that I have like no connection to all started to kind of observe the same thing. The liberal recuperation of the fast wave style via Dark Brandon seemed to
seriously damage fast waves legibility in right wing circles. The normy use of dark Brandon had already appeared to have ceased all of the dark megaposting, because there was this influx of like Minion's Facebook Tier branded memes, which offered very strong levels of vicarious cringe that provided a social disincentive for anyone wanting to post laser Eye dark Mega memes due to their fear of being associated, even just asthetically associated with the liberal boomer Biden memes, which now
represented this cringe and dead style. The widespread nature of Brandon laser eyes also seemed to seriously dampen the Patrick batemanification of characters like Homelander from The Boys, who was at the time becoming one of the far right's favorite memeable characters. There are few things that these online nazi weirdos fear more than their special toys being played with by normies, because almost immediately they're like esoteric play loses all appeal once the ormies like start using it.
Like it's a signifier that you're part of the club. And if yeah, fucking the DNC is posting these memes, you're not part of the club anymore. Nope, Like there's no or it's not a club you want to be in. I guess yeah.
So I still maintain that one of the best things Biden has done since taking office is utterly destroying fashwave by complete accident. I postulated this back in twenty twenty two, and it still pretty much holds true now. And it's not just my opinion either others have noticed that Brandon's disturbance in the far right to mean ecosystem has really taken effect. I'm going to quote Ali Brieland in Mother
Jones quote. The fashwave athetic has already seen its best days and wasn't as pervasive on the far right Internet as it used to be. But by associating himself with a meme style that had partially descended from it, Biden and his earnest staff and followers have probably made it impossible for neo nazi edge lords to make fash wave posts for at least a bit. By enlisting fascist meme offshoots,
the administration unlocked a code. Earnest Democrats like Biden may have a hard time being cool on the Internet, but they can kill hip stuff that bad people like that is extremely powerful. They made fash wave a bit cringe. Do you know what else is a bit cringe?
Robert?
That breaks the fact that we have to have advertising on my on my fash wave Biden Dark Dark Gear Brandon episode Garrison.
The only the only purpose of studying or learning anything is to provide space for advertisements. That's why we do it all.
No more, actually do you know, if you subscribe to the new Apple Premium, you can have no more more Larki because there won't be any ads. So there you go.
That's right, all right, we.
Are back and we are finally finally going to talk about Ron DeSantis and and his his kind of fash wave misfire. So this happened about a year after Dark Brandon had taken control, so there was at least a y like a good a good year's worth of buffer where fashwave was unacceptable and just not really even attempted because of how cringe it is at this point. But that did not stop the Dysantas war Room Twitter account from trying to do it. And then we will see
what the right's reaction to this was. So, like I said at the beginning of the beginning of this episode, on the last day of Pride Month, DeSantis's campaign shared a video on their Desanta's war Room account attacking Trump for previously held positions seemingly in support of LGBTQ people and sayments that he said about, like allowing transgender women to compete in his Miss Universe pageants and allowing Caitlyn Jenner to use the bathroom of her choice in Trump Tower.
This video opens with footage of Trump at the twenty sixteen RNC saying that he would quote do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens unquote. Now this is pretty gross that the video opens this way because very importantly this this was just a month after the Pulse nightclub attack in DeSantis's home state of Florida, which killed forty nine people. That's why Trump was saying this is because there was just a massive massacre in the
state of Florida. And the fact that Dysantis is opening up this Trump like homophobic attack ad by including this
little bit is pretty is pretty gross. So this video then kind of transitions fifteen seconds in, accompanied by a dark synthetic beat to a black and white image of Dysantis standing in front of an American flag with red glowing eyes shooting out little laser lightning things, before a wave of pulsating images of Spartans and the Muscular Chad and clips of American Psycho, the Wolf of Wall Street,
and Peaky Blinders. Overlaid on top of these flashing images are headlines and short clips about DeSantis's extreme anti LGBTQ policies that he enacted in Florida. I cannot think of anything more plorified.
It really has shut down.
FRAG just produced some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence.
Congratulations, Ron Sander's mission a complic You win, all right.
So first off, Garrison, it had been so long since I looked at a bit shoot video so.
Weeks.
So first off, fuck you for that.
I had to watch a lot of bit chut videos for this episode.
I yeah, I know. Yeah, So that's I mean, absolutely impenetrable for like anyone who is not out of their mind.
Yeah, like it is.
It's this Yeah, sorry, James.
It feels like his fourteen year old nephew who goes by like groyper Chad fourteen eighty eight unfortune.
I'll describe what's happening as, like, you know, first you get, obviously the beginning, which I think is clear just from the audio, these clips of like Trump saying stuff that's not it's pro gay, you know, from back in twenty sixteen, and then it switches to like footage of like news articles about DeSantis, you know, doing horrible things to queer people in Florida, and like clips of pete leftists reacting to how bad it is and like clips of Ron
de Santis like walking around or you know art of him photoshopped with like sunglasses or super.
Muscular American Psycho stuff.
Yeah, clips of American Psycho, clips from like like I think it was actually from the movie Troy, Yes it is, yeah, just to like make him look yeah it's yes, it's just sad. It's just sad.
For example, So what one little snippet of is is uh one of these little one of these little like headlines is intercut between a Chad meme and a clip from American Psycho, and it shows dysantas in wearing sunglasses walking around with the headline Dysantis signs the most extreme slate of anti trans laws and modern history with this like pulsating music. So yeah, the whole, the whole second half of the video is just like that. The video seems to receive an almost universally negative reaction.
Yeah, it's so bad.
It's famously dog shit like just instant failure, upsetting both Trump supporters and gay Republicans and confusing those who are actually sympathetic to Dysantis.
Uh, because due to the bizarre imagery in the video. I'm going to read some of the comments under the Dessantas war room post. Nick Adams Alpha male replied, why is the Deus campaign sharing a video comparing him to Patrick Bateman? Isn't Bateman a serial killer?
I think I'm sure that the whole Nick Adams thing is an extended bit, like it.
Is literally impossible to tell Jesse.
Well, yeah, masculinity is an extended Matthew Weaver says it is disgusting that this ad is linked, apparently to the Dasanta's campaign.
It makes me question my support for DeSantis.
You love to see it.
A George Santos staffer said, quote, this ad makes the meatball look a gay.
Wow.
Now, I don't wanna sy I.
Think it's I think it's funny.
I think that's pretty funny.
But if you if you ever type out the sentence, this ad makes the meatball look gay. You can't. You can't be in America anymore. You have to go somewhere else, Like that's banishment, right, like they used to do in the old times, Like here's a backpack, off, you go off, you go can't. You're not allowed here anymore.
Lisa Loves Liberty replied what An American First commentator with over one hundred and fifty thousand followers, asked, what's the message that the Dessentists team wants people to take away from this ad that associates Ron with flawed criminal individuals? Is it that rad is a bootlegging, psycho killer who commits financial crimes and has an achilles heel? Because that's what it's saying.
God, that's so funny.
And finally, far right activist, former congressional staffer and aspiring conspiracy theory documentary film producer Annual Bostik said, quote, this is the gayest ad in the history of political advertising. So that was that was roughly the response is to to to dessand it's posting this ad.
All of this is extremely fun. I'm having a good time like this.
Uh.
The The only the only figure that I that I found who was in support of this ad like like, the only like slightly even slightly noble person who seems to enjoy this ad or thought it was a good choice was Ian Miles chungk. Everyone else on the right was a horrible decisie.
Again, if if you're not as if you're not a terminally online leftist like us if you're one of like the nice sweet liberals who who liked the Joe Brandon memes, the Dark brand and memes. Ian Miles Chong is a Malaysian senior citizen, a fire right youth influencer through a series of decisions that you don't need this to be explained, but he's one of the people that Elon Musk cares about the most in this world.
You can google a picture of Ian Maleschung and understand everything you need to from that picture.
I think so.
Fox News called the Dissentist campaign's use of the ad mystifying and an unforced error. Now I'm also gonna doe that's so good. I'm I'm also gonna play a short clip from Miami, Florida's local CBS affiliate.
By the way, the video that you're just about to see has over twenty four million views. I will do everything in my house to pretend our lg GQ citizens. The video then suddenly veers in a different direction, accompanied by dark images, loud music, mixed images of governor with
shirtless muscular men, including actor Brad Pitt. A prominent group that represents LGBTQ conservatives also, when on Twitter criticizing the video, saying Florida governor can't tell the difference between common sense gaze and the radical left Gaze labeled the scientist positions as dangerous and politically stupid.
So I think that clip's also just a good reminder of the level of specialized political analysis that you're getting by listening to this show versus what you get on local news. Yeah, because this local news can never explain this nones No.
If you if you were to hand this over to a team at MSNBC, they would die, they would be.
That's the next cliff I have. The next clip I have is them handing this over to MSNBC.
This is one of my favorite days at work we've had.
First of all, the DeSantis campaign sent out a tweet later that night saying, quote, opposing the federal recognition of Pride Month isn't homophobic. We wouldn't support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation. It's unnecessary, divisive and pandering. It's very very cool. So here is here is here's the cliff of of m s NBC reacting to this ad. Uh, it's it's it's it's gonna be. It's gonna be, it's gonna be, it's gonna be pretty good.
Meanwhile, Governor DeSantis is defending a controversial and frankly bizarre campaign video that attacks for President Donald Trump's views on l g b t Q rights. Donny Deutsch a man, extraordinaiy What am I? What am I looking at there?
And extra stopped?
Okay for a while, what I'm doing here?
And the answer is, well, first of all, he's DeSantis is flailing and he's trying to continually move to the right of Trump. But this lgbt Q thing is just do you think this is moving voters?
Are you?
And to pay Trump as a patron of this group is you know, as an ad guy, There's one thing I learned over yours is people aren't stupid. Okay, you just and I don't know the voter that's going to see that and go, you know what, Trump, I'm going You're my guy. And it's just DeSantis is such a dark, dark, dark character. I've talked a lot about on the show.
How at the end of the day, a candidate Trump, even though you know, we eviscerate him and there is a likability if you're a Trump guy about him, he's entertaining, he's a loungeacked, He's this and that. This guy is just the dark the Prince darkness. And that is one of the darkest, most bizarre, twisted, deviant ads I've ever seen.
Well, he was defending it yesterday. Bipartisan backlash to the video, by the way, many people calling it homophobic. Governor DeSantis standing by the ad, calling it fair game.
I think, you know, identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants, I think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning saying the opposite, that he doesn't think that you should
have men competing in women's things like athletics. And so we've been very clear on it that we believe in protecting the rights of our girls and the rights of women athletes to be able to participate with fairness and with integrity.
In response to those remarks, Trump campaign spokesperson said, quote, a desperate dissanctus campaign with a flailing candidate is in its last throes of relevancy.
First off, such bad analysis of that video.
Yeah, I mean if they're completely out of their debts.
Yeah, yeah, No, No, the point is not that he is so dark and evil. The point is that this is incompetent and impenetrable. You could just say that it's okay.
Yeah, it's my job to understand this ship and I don't. Yeah, so.
Beyond beyond, beyond dissandis being the prince of darkness, as we've only established. Yeah, why try to.
Make him sound cool.
This is what he's doing.
This is the thing, this is the thing they don't understand, right, this is why, this is why Dark braindon happened by complete accident like it was. It was so effective because there was no way for liberals to concoct this themselves. They were they were they were only copying the asthetic stylings of of of like ironic leftists. So yeah, everyone is just baffled by this sad saying, there's absolutely no
way of understanding what's going on here. There's there's absolutely no like larger trends that that like may be at play. But obviously we we we've kind of offered some insight into what's been going on here, and in the end, DeSantis's attempt at fash wave has been rejected by conservative America either through it's just sheer like esoteric strangeness, and also the kind of the the whittling away at at at Fashwave's power that the dark branded meme has been
doing for so long. There's just nothing first of all appealing about this, which makes all that remains just incredibly just like just like off putting, so like what we have here from disantas like in the actual video, but besides the obvious like homophobia, is a sort of like meme soup, combining some elements of like fashwave and some like dark mega imagery, with other imagery from from right wing meme tropes that have also gotten popular the past
few years, like Patrick Bateman, who's who's kind of more popular in like the Schizzo wave subgenre just still heavily tied to fash wave, kind of like it glorifies the set ex the mental illness to push you towards doing like extremist violence.
Yeah, and then I should say the the aesthetics of like how a specific subculture depicts mental illness, yes.
Yes, yeah, And there's there's a bunch of other like pop culture sigma figures. In this video, there's images of the real life Chad mistaken in news coverage as a generic body builder. But this is actually like a very specific online meme that's like not like it's not niche. And there's there's also like a very a very specific
uh dysantist Chad Wojack in this video. So and in the end, like this attempt at kind of reviving a soft fast wave style or you know, kind of dark mega style for an attack ad by the Disanta's campaign was basically wholesale rejected by conservative Americans and with with no with no other politicians co signing this. The only other, i mean notable figure who applauded this was Ean Miles Chung. Uh no, no, no one note thought this was a
good idea. Most dissentis of supporters were off putted. The only people who really like liked this were like chronically online fascist zoomers who are either not old enough to vote or just barely old enough to vote.
Yeah they are teenage Nick Flintz fans.
Yeah, like because like they're the only ones who are like, well understand what's going on. So it like becomes a cohesive message, because if the average viewer isn't turned off by like the intense homophobia or the anti Trump angle, the alienating editing style and online references and other kind of bizarre attributes like the the the music, the flashing images, it either left most ordinary viewers confused or just like
turned off. And so in the end, like I think there is there is a recurring trend here and that like Dark Mega didn't help the Republicans win the mid terms, like that that that was a pretty pretty big defeat for them. All of all of the work they were doing beforehand to like to like start getting people like riled up, get making making like attention grabbing authoritarian memes, all of like the critical rice theory stuff. None of
that panned out in the actual elections. And whatever DeSantis is doing sure doesn't seem to be helping him beat Trump. The only person who who is who is winning right at this is Dark Brandon. Dark Brandon strikes again. He is the one that actually has made has made sure that Desantius cannot use this playbook. Dark Brandon is sitting on a gargoyle over top of whatever city in Florida DeSantis lives. Dark Brandon is is our watchful protector. He is, he is, he is our silent guardian.
I'm gonna Garrison was just talking about this image of Dark Brandon sitting on a throne above. I'm gonna say, Miami. They lifted up their shirt to show their new Dark branded chest tattoo, and wow, that must have been what was that twelve hours in the chair gear the big, it was big.
It was well, the first day was thirteen hours, at the second he was twelve hours. So good wolds thirteen twelve at the end.
Yeah, that's good. That's good, very big.
Will you run out of battery or the eyes are always going to glow? No?
Actually those are fluorescents, so I have to stand in the sun for for like ten minutes to charge them up and a last about.
Like five hours.
Magic hajike love that. Yeah. I have a conspiracy theory here. I believe that Rondi Santi's fourteen year old nephew grew Bitchad fourteen eighty eight was extremely online, so online that his parents took away his phone and he just lost all contact with the internet circa like early twenty twenty two, and then run A Santas asked him to make an advert, and this is what happened.
So the ad.
So I tried tracking down who made this advert. I messaged someone who I suspect of making it, who ignored my message. To be fair, I I messaged them on my Julius of Vola sock puppet on Telegram and they still ignore my message. So I I there. The video was not created by the Disantis team himself. It was it was it was. It was embedded in their war room Twitter feed. It was tracked back to this at a one time pro Trump account called Proud Elephant, who
has a corresponding Telegram channel. So this guy Proud Elephant is, from what I can tell, the origin point of this video. I can't seem to find it in any earlier places. I've tried getting into contact with him to figure out what his intentions were for like if if he made the video or if he found it from somewhere. But this is why I said I I I clarified that the Disantis team shared this video on their official campaign account.
They did not make it themselves, which is also pretty funny because they didn't spend any money on this thing, and it still like was a massive shot in the face. Like it's just like huge, huge blowback. They didn't need to like embed this video made by like whatever weirdo loner who has like final cut pro on his computer, Like there's there's really there's really no reason, like they have an actual ad team and for some reason they
did this instead. Now also as a part of this research, I joined as many Dysantis Telegram channels as I could. I scrolled through months of posting. I scrolled through all like all three of the official Dysantis campaign Twitter accounts. Nothing else in their propaganda quite compares to this video.
It is such a weird outlier that makes me really wonder, like who who both who who was operating the the DeSantis war room to Twitter account that that like hit publish on this tweet with this with this video embedded, and like what their relation is to the rest of like the Dysantis like media strategy, because it's just it's just it is. It is utterly, utterly baffling.
I mean, I think some of it can come back to. In twenty sixteen, kind of about a month so, I think before the election, the Trump campaign came out with this really weird, very four Chan inspired sort of like ad video for the campaign that like a lot of Democrats you know, made fun of, but it was a
pretty effective ad. And I you know, I wrote about this some at the time, and I talked with the guy who'd been doing attack ads and stuff and was like, I don't know, I think this is a pretty successful ad because it it feels authentic in a way that
political ads don't. And my guess is that when this got presented to them, people at the DeSantis campaign were like, well, this could be that for us, right, this could be us leaning into something that's it's new, but it's like real and it's representative of how kids, young people are talking these days, and that will build the kind of excitement and the kind of like conversation around our campaign
that can help take us to the next level. And I think the thing that they missed there was that Trump, in sort of you know, signposting to that online alt right, was adopting and kind of making his own a real movement that was representative of some things that were appealing
to a lot of people. And this is not right, Like there's been no ground swell of people who are into this, like these weird like the only ground swell of a lot of normies getting into fash wave has been dark branded, like like normy normy Republicans did not adopt like this kind of shit in and mass And I think it was a mistake, Like it was a it was a it was a mistake to think that like I don't know, like random like goop heads were going to see their candidate compared to a serial killer
from a famously off putting and be like this is a.
Good call for us.
This is my guy. Yeah, like no, like not not everyone is like a seventeen year old suicidal alright, teenager, Like that's actually not their prime base if you want to win an election, there aren't.
Many of you kids, Like they don't want teenagers voting.
At all, which is it's also really weird that DeSantis has been given multiple opportunities to to pull back the ad, saying it was it was a mistake. It was not, it was not officially made by our campaign. It shouldn't have been shared. But every time they've been given this opportunity, they doubled down on the ad.
That's his whole thing though, like never admit fault, always pushing forward.
Yeah, I guess that is that is like a staple of fascism, but like.
Yeah, yeah, man, well.
Anyway, that's good stabbing stuff. I'm well, Garrison, this has made my week.
This has been a fucking time to be alive. This has been far too much of my week has been putting together these like three thousand, four thousand words.
Yep.
Well, I'm glad. I'm glad everyone was able to come away from this as as enlightened, as as god.
Oh yeah, brand, I have entered a state of nosis. Thank you, thank you for.
This.
I've achieved enlightenment.
All right, Well, long lived dark brandom.
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