After going viral earlier this month for shaking a dog’s nose, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg is going viral again — but this time it’s on purpose.
Bloomberg has already spent unprecedented money on his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination: nearly $188 million in just two months, according to Quartz, but it’s not all going to traditional campaign expenses like labor and television ads. Lately that money has been going down a path that’s new to the campaign trail: sponsored memes.
The money is going to the Meme 2020 project, to be exact. Meme 2020 is a company formed by popular meme influencers across the web, The New York Times reports.
By working with Meme 2020, the Bloomberg campaign has been able to post sponsored memes, in the form of direct messages that appear to be from Bloomberg, but while they are sponsored campaign posts, they’re not directly from Bloomberg himself, just made to be a humorous way to get the attention of people across social media, Business Insider reports.
But are the memes actually funny? We’ll let you be the judge. Most of them follow a common theme: Bloomberg wants people to make him look hip and cool in order to appeal to young voters and he’s not afraid to flaunt the fact that he has a lot of money.
Here’s some of Bloomberg’s latest officially sponsored memes.