A super PAC run by teens is demolishing Trump with memes on TikTok
Shona Ghosh/Samantha Lee/Business Insider
- A Gen Z super PAC run by teens is demolishing Trump on TikTok and with meme-focused tools.
- MemePAC is run by 17-, 18-, and 19-year-olds who want Trump out of office.
- The group's TikTok account is bigger than The Lincoln Project, the super PAC funded by Republicans.
- "We're focusing mainly on unseating Donald Trump by trying to sway youth votes with comedy and technology," said founder Jackie Ni.
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Jackie Ni is one of a number of politically literate high school students who decided 2020 is the year to try and effect change.
The 18-year-old, who just graduated from high school in the United States, has decided to use skills she learned at school to try and remove Donald Trump from office.
Ni is the founder of MemePAC, a self-christened super political action committee (PAC) that is youth-focused – "similar to how the Lincoln Project focuses on Republicans," she told Business Insider.
The Lincoln Project is the Republican-founded super PAC that has proven to be a major thorn on Trump's side. It recently hired out an embarrassing billboard targeting Jared and Ivanka Trump in the middle of Times Square in New York, and is currently fighting legal threats from the pair.
A year ago, Ni didn't know what a PAC was: it took a college class in AP government to teach her. "After seeing the impact of The Lincoln Project, I wanted to create my own super PAC that focuses on the youth," said Ni.
She deliberately chose to become a super PAC because financing rules allow her to receive more donations.
It was also at school that she learned the skills that have helped her code the games, widgets, and services that have helped MemePAC explode in popularity in recent weeks.
"I learned most of my coding knowledge through my AP Computer Science class, watching online videos, and attending hackathons," she explained.
Ni has been the primary coder of MemePAC's 19 tech-related projects hosted on their website, including a tool that replaces the by-now instantly recognizable red "Make America Great Again" hats Trump supporters wear with blue "Biden 2020" ones, a satirical Tinder game from the point of view of Trump, and Trump Trivia, a daily text message or email blast containing memes used to inform people of the current president's ineptitude in office.
More than 30,000 people have signed up for Trump Trivia messages. Ni hopes that a recent agreement with another grassroots political group, SettleForBiden, will build the subscriber base further.
But it's on TikTok that MemePAC has had the most impact, with more than 5.5 million views of its content across social media, and more than 300,000 followers on the app. The Lincoln Project has around 33,000 followers by comparison.
The videos posted on TikTok combine memes about the election campaign with plugs for MemePAC tools.
One co-opting an anti-Trump meme popular with players of Among Us, the viral video game, has been seen 3.6 million times alone. It's designed to promote a tool that ejects a visual representation of Trump into space every time MemePAC's TikTok account is followed.
"TikTok worked so well for us because it has a huge base of youth and loves comedy — the exact audience our PAC is built upon," said Ni, who turned 18 two weeks ago, and set up the super PAC with two other team members: Theodore Horn, a 2019 high school graduate who goes to Northwestern University, and Vera Kong, a 2020 high school graduate who goes to Columbia University.
Ni herself is taking a gap year, allowing her to code the projects and work on building MemePAC – as well as managing the 15 new volunteers who have signed up to help MemePAC in the final week of the campaign.
She estimates she's spent approximately 10 hours a day, seven days a week on the project for the last two months.
"I wanted to get involved because I've always been a politically-active student — attending Bernie rallies, speaking at anti-gun violence events, and volunteering at [California congressional candidate] Shahid Buttar's campaign," she said.
"I've been seeing what the current administration has done in terms of COVID-19, to civil rights, and to democracy and I want to use my skills to make a difference, no matter how small."
And she downplays any idea that just because she's posting memes, she's not participating in the political process.
"Memes actually have a large impact on online political discourse and were contributing factors to Trump's election in 2016," she said. "This year, I want to flip the switch on memes — using them to unseat rather than help Trump and support progressive causes."
The rise of MemePAC is part of a wider political youth movement on TikTok, exemplified by the huge popularity of Claudia Conway, daughter of former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.
"Youth activism on TikTok has been a powerful force in 2020 — much more powerful than either the Trump or Biden campaigns seem to have anticipated," said Rebekah Tromble of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University. "TikTok facilitates a type of creative, irreverent messaging that served as an expressive outlet for many young Americans when the coronavirus pandemic hit."
TikTok's role on the 2020 election seems to have caught both campaigns by surprise.
Tromble noted that TikTok hasn't courted a position as a political space, and "both presidential campaigns essentially overlooked the significance of the platform in the early days." TikTok doesn't allow paid political ads, although non-paid posts like Meme PAC's appear to be permitted.
MemePAC has raised $3,000 so far and has bigger goals. "We will pivot towards House and Senate races, as well as other progressive issues," Ni said.
As for Ni herself, she also had lofty targets. She wants to reach 10 million total views of her content before election day, and doesn't plan to stop engaging with politics.
"I used to really be into computer science, but over the course of the gap year and working on MemePAC, I really want to study political science or public policy," she said. "My ultimate dream is running for the House at 25."
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