‘You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ Kamala Harris memes get their moment

It’s a Kamala meme summer — coconut tree and all.

Following Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic announcement that she’d seek the country’s highest office, a meme that started off with negative connotations quickly became unofficial campaign iconography among Gen Z supporters and other hyper-online constituents.

The meme isn’t new: It’s inspired by a May 2023 speech Harris gave at the White House focused on advancing Hispanic American opportunities.

Toward the end of her address, she spoke about how the initiative would center on young people, but also needed to account for the needs of their families and communities.

“Everything is in context,” Harris said, adding that the efforts to give young people more opportunities can’t live in silos. This is where the quote kicks in.

Harris said her mother used to give her and her sister a hard time growing up: “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?” Harris said with a laugh. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

That portion of Harris’ speech was clipped and featured in a GOP War Room YouTube video where it received roughly 23,000 views in four months, according to Know Your Meme. The snippet was prominently shared across Twitter later, starting around February, largely surrounded by negative context. Within a few months, it was co-opted from the hard right to sillier corners of the internet.

Know Your Meme reported a slew of “Fell Out of a Coconut Tree” memes, including TikTok dance remixes and pop culture references.

Now, following her announcement that she will pursue the presidency, supporters are using the coconut and palm tree emojis in their screen names and bios as a sign of solidarity.

And while the coconut tree meme is perhaps the best known, new Harris memes are just Kamencing.

Amid pop singer Charli XCX’s “Brat summer” — named after her popular Brat album — the artist tweeted her endorsement for Harris in a post that read “Kamala IS brat.” Unofficial brat-themed merch in its signature neon green followed with a group of supporters on Fire Island already repping “kamala” crop tops.

And it appears HQ understands the assignment.

The former Joe Biden rapid response social media pages, titled Biden HQ, have been rebranded to Kamala HQ — and are also bratty, leaning into Charli XCX’s aesthetic in its announcement post.

Political social media strategist Annie Wu Henry, a former campaign staffer for Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) who ran his campaign TikTok and later worked for U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), said Kamala HQ’s aesthetic is strategic.

“The thing about having a candidate people are excited about is that you can actually have fun + be creative on socials because people will embrace it rather than finding it embarrassing,” she tweeted. “The header. the bio. LOVE IT.” Wu Henry went as far as adding a coconut and palm tree emoji to her own screen name.