I found out Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race from a meme.

I was at the movie theater with my best friend, Camille, watching “Maxxxine” when the movie ended promptly at 2:50 p.m.—an hour after the announcement was made.

She turned to me and said, “I think Biden dropped out of the race.”

I looked up at her. She showed me a meme on her phone.

“It’s Joever,” read the Tweet above his official statement. 

“But it’s from a meme page, so it might not be true,” she added.

I quickly closed Letterboxd and opened my email. Sure enough, an hour ago, the New York Times had alerted me that the 46th president dropped out of the impending presidential election via a social media post.

As a historical and unprecedented moment, I do believe this memory will be cemented in our minds for years to come. Everyone will remember where they were when they found out Biden dropped out. Just like everyone will remember where they were when they found out Donald Trump was shot. When they found out he won, back in 2016. 

Or when they found out the Biden-Harris ticket won, back in 2020, making Kamala Harris the first Black, South Asian, female vice president. There is a certain significance to the fact that my best friend and I—two textbook twenty-something teenage girls—found out about this historical moment from a meme page on Instagram.

I think about the surge of Harris memes that have flooded TikTok, X, and Instagram the past week. How this gives Gen Z much needed exposure to a political figure, and more importantly, generates much needed enthusiasm for who is going to take that White House seat in November. How, unlike memes about Biden, they aren’t jokes at her expense, but rather indicators of our adoration. 

Even if this excitement isn’t surrounding her laundry list of progressive legislation, or the fact that she has been a silenced proponent for a permanent ceasefire in the White House, or her searing interrogations of Trump cronies during the Mueller Investigation, it’s excitement nonetheless. And given the recent apathy that’s been expressed about this election, back when it was still between two old white dudes arguing about golf, a rush of adrenaline is just what the Democratic Party needs. 

The hubbub around Harris is nothing new. Since the “We did it, Joe” heard ‘round the world, to her iconic laugh, and even preceding the 2020 win with “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she has been a staple in memes of the political variant—but could this also mean a gateway for apolitical young folks into the political world?

Before I get on my soapbox, it’s important to acknowledge the facts. 

Fact No. 1: Gen Z showed record numbers of turnout in the 2022 midterm elections. We made up 31 percent of the electorate in 2022. Two years later, there will be a whole new swath of kids-turned-young-adults-turned-voters. 

Fact No. 2: We are also overwhelmingly more left-leaning than previous generations, save for millennials. More voter turnout means more blue tickets in this case, which is good news for the Democrats—if they can get us to show up and vote for them.

Fact No. 3: The majority of Gen Z relies on social media for information, news, and current events. 

Tl;dr: This election, which may be the most important election in modern American history (given the impending threat of Project 2025) lies in the hands of Gen Z, whose main medium of political communication is social media.

There is an argument to be made that the new generation might very well carry Harris to the presidency with every “Kamala is Brat,” “coconut tree”core video, and TikTok of her dancing.

Again, even if most young would-be voters are not informed on her policies, they know who she is. She is currently a staple in pop culture, even if it’s just the meme du jour. While trends may come and go, Harris has a treasure trove of them, which may be just as valuable to the campaign as the war chest of Biden-Harris funds.  

While the polls may not reflect that right now, showing Trump ahead in key battleground states, I implore you, dear reader, nay I beg of you, do not pay attention to the polls.

Let me let you in on an important lesson I learned on day one of journalism school: we don’t pay attention to the polls. This may be sacrilegious for me to say, as a student of an institution with a revered, relied-upon polling center, but hear me out:

If you’re reading this as a Gen Zer, I want you to ask yourself how often you answer phone calls from numbers you don’t have saved. If you’re a Gen Xer, ask your kid this same question. I can almost assure you the answer will be never. 

We are, as such, underrepresented in the polls because why are you calling me if I don’t have your number saved. Boy, bye.

To refer to the 2022 midterm elections, again, I ask you to recall the red wave that wasn’t. Preemptive polling warned us all of an anticipated, forsaken, red wave that would quell the valiant attempts of Democrats to prevail. 

And then … flop. The red wave broke before it even reached the shoreline. All because of the under 30 voter turnout that was not reflected, nor predicted, by preemptive polling.

That’s not to mention the fact that most numbers pollsters call are landlines … which I think exactly no one uses anymore except for older folks, who are most likely going to poll conservative. 

There are plenty more reasons, and if you’re curious, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with them here.

To bring it back home, social media is an increasingly relied upon tool of political communication for young people. Think of social media as the language we speak. Call it brain rot, call it jargon, but it’s still a medium of social interaction and grounds upon which to host discourse in the form of comment sections, Instagram polls, and TikTok trends. And sometimes, those conversations may be fruitful. 

I know we can think of social media as this horrible, polarized echo chamber where every discussion must be inflammatory, but I promise that is not always the case. For every argument you read online that makes you feel like you’re losing brain cells as you read it, there is an informative video reaching someone who may not have otherwise been exposed to a viewpoint unlike those of the people they live with. 

Like it or not, it’s here to stay, and if we can use it as a tool to invigorate the new generation of voters, to get them not just involved in, but excited about the electoral process. Well … it may be just what the Democrats need to stop Project 2025 and save democracy.

(If you think I’m being hyperbolic, please read Project 2025’s wishlist, abbreviated from their 900 page Christo-fascist manifesto. Like, please.)

Democrats, this is the way of the world now. TikTok is a serious tool of political messaging. You can hop on the train or be left at the station. But at the end of the day, we are growing closer and closer to being the generation in charge of whether or not you keep your jobs. 

As for Harris, I hope she keeps that jubilance that got #Harris2024ForTheWin trending on X Sunday, and I hope she also schools the fuck out of that white collar criminal on the debate stage. Felon, meet prosecutor. 

So, next time you see a Harris TikTok you like, do your civic duty and repost it. Boost the algorithm by exposing more young voters to the joy and brilliance of Harris, and she might just win it in November.