About

Barnie Sandlers is a fictional presidential candidate parodying the junior United States Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primary election, the character gained a following online through novelty social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, which frequently reference various ironic memes.

Origin

On July 29th, 2015, the Barnie Sandlers Facebook^[1] page was launched, which received upwards of 19,700 likes in the following four months. The pages contain posts written from the perspective of a fictional politician, often accompanied by photographs and image macros of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The same day, the @BarnieSandlers^[2] novelty Twitter feed was created and the website BarnieSandlers.com^[5] was launched with a "dank maymay" image macro generator (shown below).

Spread

On July 30th, 2015, the character participated in an "ask me anything" post on the /r/circlejerk^[3] subreddit. On August 14th, a parody video featuring an interview conducted by television host Larry King was posted on the Barnie Sandlers Facebook^[7] page, in which Sandlers discusses Internet privacy and memes (shown below). Within three months, the post received more than 1,000 shares, 860 likes and 240 comments.

"When I'm president, the NSA is going to get memed on."

On August 19th, the news site Fusion^[4] published an article about the Barnie Sandlers parody account. On August 27th, BodyBuilding Forums^[6] member BieberFeverBrah submitted a post about Barnie Sanders. On October 1st, the Barnie Sandlers Facebook^[8] page uploaded a parody of the "DuckTales" theme song titled "Dank Memes" (shown below). Within two months, the video gained over 850 likes, 775 shares and 230 comments.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References