🥥🌴 / Coconut and Palm Tree Emoji (Kamala Harris)

About

🥥🌴 or Coconut and Palm Tree Emoji refers to a comment copypasta and emoji combo that represents Kamala Harris supporters online, which stems from her Fell Out of a Coconut Tree meme and the slang term Coconut-Pilled. The emoji combination started to be used online in mid-2024 as a show of support for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States Presidential Election, particularly after Joe Biden dropped out and endorsed her.

Origin

On May 10th, 2023, the GOP War Room YouTube^[1] account posted a video of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivering a speech in which she cited a story from her mother, who, when talking about young people, said, "I don't know what's wrong with you young people, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?" The clip amassed over 344,000 views and 4,200 likes in a year.

In late June 2024, President Joe Biden's contentious performance at the 2024 CNN Presidential Debate resulted in many Democrats and others voicing online that Harris should step in and replace Biden as the nominee in the upcoming election.

Around this timeframe, the earliest known examples of the coconut and palm tree emojis being used to reference Harris began appearing on Twitter / X. On June 28th, 2024, Twitter / X user @QueenRayna1337^[8] responded to a tweet by user @hopelesslystoic with an early example that included the emoji combo in addition to the Coconut-Pilled term (shown below).

Coconut and palm tree references related to Harris' meme grew exponentially after Biden announced on July 21st, 2024, that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris to take his place as the Democratic presidential nominee. That day, Colorado Governor Jared Polis posted one of the earliest viral mentions of the coconut and palm tree on X^[2] with an American flag icon supporting Harris. The post (seen below) amassed more than 10,700 likes and 1,100 reposts in two days.

Spread

Following Harris' Democratic presidential nomination, the coconut and palm tree emojis became a staple of her supporters across social media. For example, on July 21st, 2024, X^[3] user @MichaelDrummey posted a "Kamala Is Brat" fan edit captioning it, "BRAT SUMMER into KAMALA PRESIDENCY 💚💚💚🥥🌴🇺🇸." The post amassed more than 1,100 likes and 250 reposts in two days (seen below).

In the following days, many X and Reddit users started to update their account names and bios with the coconut and palm tree emojis to show their support for Harris (example shown below, left). The practice also angered some netizens, like X^[4] user @moalusi_victor, who tweeted on July 22nd, "I'm just going to start blocking people with '🥥🌴' in their usernames when I come across them" (seen below, right).

On July 23rd, 2024, Redditor^[6] Username_II commented on the influx of coconut and palm tree emoji combinations on X user accounts in a post to /r/OutOfTheLoop, asking, "What's up with kamala harris' supporters putting coconuts and coconut trees on their twitter user names?" The top-voted answer, which received over 220 upvotes in 15 hours, stated, "Answer: she made a joke about coconut trees once and people made a meme of it."

Also in late July 2024, the /r/KHive ^[7] subreddit (a sub for supporters of Kamala Harris) added a flair tag using the "🥥🌴" emojis for Redditors to use in the community.

Coconut and Palm Tree Emoji Backlash

Following its spread in late July 2024, the coconut and palm tree emoji combination received some backlash on social media after some users claimed it could be interpreted as racist. For example, on July 22nd, 2024, X^[5] user @eclecticbrotha tweeted, "It's a racist allusion calling people of Indian descent brown on the outside but white on the inside. It's like calling Black people Oreos." The post (seen below, top) received more than 4,300 likes and 970 reposts in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References