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Why Joe Biden Keeps Winning the Internet by Accident

From Diamond Joe to Dark Brandon, how America’s least online president became a social-media sensation

By Yair Rosenberg
President Joe Biden
(Getty)

“It can’t be bargained with,” intones the voice-over, as ominous music pulses in the background. “It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity. Or remorse. Or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.” This dialogue is originally from The Terminator, but that is not who appears in the video. Instead, pictured sitting upon an imposing throne made entirely of assault rifles is … Joe Biden. Or rather his alter ego, Dark Brandon. Images flash across the screen: Biden with lasers shooting from his eyes. Biden with a beard and an eye patch. Biden summoning lightning from the sky. “To all those of you who voted for President Trump,” the president declares, “there’s no way out.” He grins.

I can see you are confused. Let’s back up.

It’s hard to think of someone who less represents the id of the internet than Joseph Robinette Biden. Indeed, after four years of a terminally online president, part of Biden’s appeal was that voters were pretty sure he didn’t even know how to operate his Twitter account. And yet, for more than a decade, Biden has been a surprise social-media superstar.

Today, it’s Dark Brandon. We’ll get to him in a moment. But in the beginning, there was Diamond Joe.

This was a persona lovingly crafted by The Onion. For years, the satirical newspaper recast the vice president as the country’s wacky uncle. This Biden installed slot machines in the Naval Observatory, played scratch-off lotto cards during Obama’s inauguration, and invoked the Freedom of Information Act to find out when a woman got off from work. Incorrigible but lovable, he was constantly getting into and out of trouble. A representative story begins:

The White House suffered a severe bedbug infestation last week after Vice President Joe Biden reportedly “scored” a discarded recliner chair that “someone was just throwing out” on the corner of Windom Road and 32nd Street. “It’s plenty comfy, and I’ll tell ya, they don’t make ‘em with levers like this anymore,” said Biden, scratching at a series of red welts on his arms as he pointed out the pocket on the side that could hold both a remote control and a Coors tallboy. “It reclines all the way back. All the way. And you wanna know what else? It holds two people, if you know what I mean.”

A wizened Washington mainstay tapped by Obama as his running mate precisely because of his unthreatening vanilla vibe, Biden was the last person one would expect to become an off-color internet meme. He was the epitome of offline; the stuffy establishment suit to Obama’s outsider. And that’s what made the Diamond Joe gag funny. The meme’s appeal rested in its absurdity.


Ever since, the comedic contrast between Biden’s fundamental boringness and the internet’s edginess has turned him into irresistible fodder for the Very Online. Today, there is even an elaborate ongoing web series in which a deepfake version of Biden stumbles through misadventures in a medieval fantasy video game. The series has over 2 million views to date. (Strong content warning applies.)

Novelty YouTube videos aside, though, Biden reached his online apotheosis with the advent of Dark Brandon. This meme began as anti-American propaganda produced by a Chinese artist:

The image was meant to depict the U.S. leader as a tyrant in command of an evil empire. But through the arcane alchemy of social-media telephone, it is now being shared earnestly by White House officials and Democratic senators.

(White House deputy press secretary)
(Senator from Connecticut)

How did this happen?

The short version goes something like this. Back in October 2021, a reporter misheard a conservative crowd at a NASCAR race chanting “Fuck Joe Biden!” as “Let’s go Brandon!” Soon enough, “Let’s go Brandon” became a coded taunt for Trump partisans everywhere—a way to slyly deride both the current president and his perceived media enablers. Meanwhile, Chinese artist Yang Quan was producing his menacing Biden graphics, based in part on visuals from Game of Thrones. These images were eventually appropriated by ironic socialist accounts, who used them to fantasize about a different Joe Biden who would vanquish the bourgeoisie and impose his will upon the moneyed classes. Far from an adoring homage, in other words, the original Dark Brandon memes were a leftist critique of the neoliberal president’s perceived impotence.

These memes simmered on the margins over the summer. But then Biden unexpectedly began notching a string of political wins. He assassinated al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. Gas prices started to plummet. He passed a bipartisan bill to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry, then turned around and sealed the deal on the Inflation Reduction Act—a progressive reconciliation package that tackled climate change, health care, and IRS enforcement. Suddenly, an anemic presidency had been transformed into a potentially historic one. And the Dark Brandon persona, which began as an unholy alliance of right-wing and left-wing anti-Biden ideas, was transmuted into a tribune of triumph.

(White House director of digital strategy)
(White House senior advisor)

In recent days, Google searches for “Dark Brandon” have even eclipsed those for “Let’s Go Brandon.” This trajectory might seem bewildering from the outside. But it follows the online logic that has buoyed Biden for a decade.

To be sure, there’s no better way for a trendy meme to be rendered uncool than for it to be unironically deployed by the White House. But Dark Brandon is not the first time Biden has somehow unwittingly won the internet, and it won’t be the last.


Thank you for reading this edition of Deep Shtetl, a newsletter about the intersection of politics, religion, and culture. Please be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already. Send your thoughts, questions, and choicest Dark Brandon memes to deepshtetl@theatlantic.com.

Yair Rosenberg is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Deep Shtetl, about the intersection of politics, culture, and religion.