You Can’t Buy Memes

Yesterday, WorldStar Hip Hop, the content aggregator and music blog with 22.1 million followers on Instagram, posted a video of a boy taking his girlfriend’s photo while she poses in front of a graffitied wall. As the video goes on, the camera zooms in on the boy’s phone screen, and rather than images of a young woman in a baggy sweatshirt, it shows only the words “This is a bloomberg ad.” The caption, written in the style of a popular SpongeBob SquarePants meme, reads “#sPoNsoReD: bY @mIkEbLoOmbErg.” And the video has been viewed more than 500,000 times as of writing.

Mike Bloomberg, the Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City mayor, has paid for sponsored Instagram posts on at least 20 major meme accounts , all by ’ Taylor Lorenz. The first round of posts were styled as fake direct-message conversations between the account owners and Bloomberg himself, offering to pay for memes that would make him “look cool for the upcoming democratic primary.” In an image on @kalesalad (3.5 million followers), Bloomberg’s fake pitch includes the promise “I’ll give you a billion dollars.”