Fan cams and coconut trees: Kamala Harris memes are resurrecting the KHive

The internet has fallen out of the coconut tree.

Speculation that President Joe Biden will hang up his re-election campaign has triggered a wave of semi-ironic online support for Vice President Kamala Harris, with fan cams set to songs from Charli XCX and memes that riff on a string of memorable quotes from her last few years in office.

The “KHive” — the online grassroots stan-culture army of earnest supporters who fueled online rage and enthusiastic support for Harris when she launched her 2020 run for the presidency — was resurrected overnight. Now Americans are quickly become coconut-pilled, Kamala maxxing, “existing in context” and “unburdened by what has been.”

Following an emerging pressure campaign for Biden to exit the race, a flood of irony-poisoned jokers and exhausted voters joined in, clinging to some kind of relief while staring down the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency with only a deteriorating Biden in his way.

Social media users flooded timelines with out-of-context clips featuring Harris laughing, dancing, and remembering something her mother once told her:

“Everything is in context. My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” she said while laughing during a White House event in 2023.

She then whipped to a sincere and serious turn of phrase that has lived on in countless memes: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

And then there’s “we know what can happen and what is possible when we collectively have the ability to see what can be unburdened by what has been.”

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