“CarpeDonktum”
Welcome to 2019, where it takes just 19 hours for a faked homemade video of Joe Biden to travel from the keyboard of a pseudonymous “memesmith” to the president of the United States.
The video, which splices footage from Mr. Biden’s recent apology for unwanted touching of several women with older footage of Mr. Biden, ricocheted around the pro-Trump corners of the internet. First on Twitter, then across Reddit forums, before getting picked up by White House director of social media Dan Scavino, Donald Trump Jr. and, finally, the president, who appended the caption “WELCOME BACK JOE!”
The video has been viewed 31 million times and counting and forced Mr. Biden to respond in a tweet, “I see that you are on the job and presidential, as always.”
Yep, a grainy, edited parody clip of the former vice president that’s made to look as if he’s kissing his own neck and creepily massaging himself will now be forever preserved by the Presidential Records Act. It’s a perfectly unbelievable and dispiriting artifact of our fractured and chaotic political media ecosystem, where politicking is conducted through viral memes and retweets.
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The entire event is at once silly, trivial, offensive and, thanks to Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, something we’re now begrudgingly made to pay attention to. The same goes for the video’s creator, a stay-at-home dad in his mid-30s, who goes by the pseudonym “CarpeDonktum.” As his handle indicates, the meme creator is purposefully outrageous and yet, seemingly now has an indirect line to the Oval Office. And his elevation — from a Kansas City keyboard warrior to right-wing internet fame as the president’s unofficial meme maker — is a telling example of how the internet has fully blurred the lines between meme posting and business of politics.
“It’s definitely an organic process,” CarpeDonktum told me over the phone shortly after Mr. Trump tweeted his video. “Dan Scavino follows me on Twitter, but there’s no formal relationship there between me and the president. If there’s something I want to make sure [Scavino] sees, I’ll wait for him to post a tweet and try to be the first to reply, linking to what I want to show.” He said that he doesn’t get paid for any of his videos (other than his Patreon crowdfunding account and occasional YouTube ad revenue) and has no relationships to outside politicians.
Back in February, Mr. Trump tweeted out a CarpeDonktum video, mocking liberal members of congress during the State of the Union speech. The video, set to the tune of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts,” was removed from the president’s account for copyright violations, sparking outrage in pro-Trump spheres over allegations of censorship. The controversy bolstered CarpeDonktum’s reputation among the #MAGA crowd.
“If a political campaign wanted to hire me to do viral marketing stuff for them, that could be interesting,” he mused. I asked if he’d work on a Trump 2020 campaign. “It depends on the specifics,” he said.
CarpeDonktum started…
