Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks to supporters Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020 in Detroit. The memes feature screenshots of messages from the Bloomberg campaign account, poking fun at Bloomberg's public persona.
Jerry Media's CEO Mick Purzycki is leading a collective of popular meme accounts, called Meme 2020, which has coordinated the meme postings on a variety of meme accounts, the Times reported. The memes paid for by the campaign feature screenshots of conversations with the Bloomberg campaign account, a parody of Bloomberg's public persona.
While the Bloomberg memes are self-depricating and an attempt at humor, one popular meme account owner criticized Bloomberg and his campaign. Josh Ostrovsky, whose Instagram account @thefatjewish has 11 million followers, commented on one of the memes that he was also approached by the Bloomberg campaign to post, but declined because of Bloomberg's past positions and policies on stop-and-frisk and drug enforcement for marijuana possession.
A Bloomberg campaign aide told The New York Times that the campaign is trying to match President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign strategy, and that they're "trying to break the mold in how the Democratic Party works with marketing, communication and advertising, and do it in a way that's extremely internet and social native." @kalesalad, 3.5 million followers