A squall of Michael Bloomberg-approved “memes” swept Instagram virtually overnight, and all the thirsty hitmakers are here: FuckJerry, Shitheadsteve, Sonny5ideup, Four Twenty, kalesalad, Tank.Sinatra, thefunnyintrovert, and the grapejuiceboys. They’re not funny and they’re not technically memes, but they are content. Specifically, the campaign consists of mock screenshots of the billionaire presidential candidate sliding into the DMs and plying memefluencers with exuberant rewards. A typical example:
“Hello Juice Boys.
Can you post an original meme to make me look cool for the upcoming Democratic primary?”
“I don’t think so tbh your vibe is kinda off”
“I put Lamborghini doors on the Escalade”
“What?”
This is captioned: “I don’t get it ?? (Paid for by @mikebloomberg)”
“Michael Bloomberg” (the cool candidate) offers to Venmo FuckJerry a billion dollars to post a photo of him in shorts; he asks thefunnyintrovert to convert a binder marked “MEMES” to pdf form; he orders Shitheadsteve to fax him a meme before the markets close.
That’s Meme Bloomberg in a nutshell: a rich guy asking memers to makeover his pasty old Wall Streeter image, which they do by emphasising that he’s, again, r-i-c-h enough to afford that messaging. The online campaign launch immediately followed Bloomberg’s scrambling clean-up attempts over a recently-released audio recording of the former NYC mayor saying that “male minorities, 16-25” are responsible for most murders in “virtually every city” so it’s OK to “to throw them up against the wall and frisk them,” among other things. But look! FuckJerry’s posting their own content.
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The force behind this campaign, according to the New York Times, is an influencer-run company called “Meme 2020.” Naturally. Masterminding the operation is “lead strategist” Mick Purzycki, CEO of Jerry Media: an ad company which grew out of FuckJerry, an Instagram account that achieved peak virality by stealing comedians’ jokes. George Resch, founder of @Tank.Sinatra, is the “primary liaison” to the brain trust, endowed with the above accounts as well as “financial pop star” @MrsDowJones and the aptly-titled @GolfersDoingThings. Gizmodo has reached out for more details on Meme 2020’s business structure and affiliation with the campaign and will update the post if we hear back.
It’s also unclear how much Bloomberg is paying to share a stage with Stormtroopers and Kevin from The Office, but the Daily Beast spotted a campaign ad on Tribe offering micro-influencers (people with between 1,000 and 100,000 followers) $US150 ($223) for personalised sponcon. (We do know that at least one food and travel influencer turned him down.) Bloomberg correctly estimated that known joke grifters would take his money because one of those 15 million FuckJerry followers has gotta be a politically-motivated person of voting age.