About

Sad Bernie Sanders is a photoshop meme based on a photograph of former Democratic presidential candidate watching the broadcast of the first round of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Debates between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton on September 26th, 2016. Upon entering online circulation, the photograph quickly drew sympathetic responses from his loyal supporters on Twitter and went on to inspire a series of photoshopped parodies on Reddit and Imgur.

Origin

On September 26th, 2016, Bernie Sanders tweeted a picture of himself watching CNN's coverage of the moments before the first Presidential debate of the 2016 United States Presidential Election with the caption "It's #debatenight so it's time to #DebateWithBernie,"^[1] recalling the hashtag Sanders used to tweet during the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary debates. The tweet, shown below, gained over 12,000 retweets and 30,000 favorites in a day and a half.

Spread

On Twitter, people immediately began reacting to the tweet as it stirred feelings of sadness. Many people responded to the image by wishing Sanders were on the debate stage instead of Trump and Clinton,^[2][3][4] while others joked about how sad the image was.^[5][6]

After the debate, a /r/PhotoshopBattle thread surfaced on Reddit, ^[7] challenging others to make "Sad Sanders" parodies. The thread gained over 5,000 upvotes within 48 hours. Some of the top posts featured Sanders watching a clip from the YouTube survivalist web series Primitive Technology (below, left), struggling with modern televisions like a grandfather (below, center) and playing Overwatch (below, right).

The following day, dozens of news publications published pieces about the popularity of "Sad Bernie Sanders" memes, including Buzzfeed,^[8] Mashable,^[9] Paper Magazine,^[10] Complex,^[11] Elite Daily,^[12] and more. Sad Bernie Sanders memes had also become a Twitter Moment^[13] the following day.

Various Examples

External References