The videos, while silly, may well demonstrate a collective desire for politics to just be a little more normal.
"If politicians would just play a game of Minecraft together, the world would be a better place," reads an earnest comment under one video.īrought down to the level of everyday gamers, with their own relatable problems and pastimes - like forgetting to pretend they weren't playing Genshin Impact - you can understand them, and possibly they can understand you. Viewers seem to respond well to them going on jargon-heavy rants, feuding over in-game resources, and sabotaging each other. "It's good to have friends who know what I'm going through," Biden says. It's certainly at least partially derived from the "Dark Brandon" meme of last year, which turned Republican critique on its head to portray Biden into a student-loan-demolishing laser-eyes badass at a time when his approval rating was beginning to tick upwards. Bill Clinton,whose lines mainly revolve around finding women to flirt with, drops in, as does Obama, who can be seen acting as a reasonable straight man attempting to convince Biden not to "grief" Trump's White House abode.īiden's characterization in these videos is a kind of "fanon," a fictionalization of him as a give-no-fucks old man. Biden is a forgetful, irritable everyman besieged on all sides by rudeness, who just wants to play without being bothered. On the TikTok account, "Sleepy Joe" plays Minecraft and other video games with his best (and worst) buddies. Portraying presidents as relatable, stupid, hubristic gamers spewing raunchy humor in the vein of South Park or any of the thousands of popular Twitch streamers, the videos are a communally-crafted sitcom featuring broad caricatures of figures every American can recognize, and jokes that people across the political spectrum would find funny. The Presidential Gaming Universe now has weeks worth of lore, spread out between different accounts and videos, all centered on realistic AI-generated audio with added video game visuals. Meanwhile, creators across social media are flocking to the viral format. It's already happening: recently, an attempt was made to spread a false audio recording of a candidate in the Chicago mayoral race. But the phenomenon also points to ways in which the upcoming 2024 election campaign will be one taking place on much shakier ground when it comes to digital media, as the tools continue to improve, and everyday users continue to gain experience in using them.
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