Culture

These are the absolute best Bernie memes from the inauguration

As far as memes are concerned, the real winner of President Joe Biden's inauguration was... Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders is a lot of things to a lot of people; a beacon of working-class progressivism, a crazed, unabashed socialist, a curt, breath-of-fresh-air politician, and consistently, a goldmine of meme-able content just standing around, waiting to happen — or in the most recent case, sitting down.

Senator Bernie Sanders sitting on a folding chair waiting for the inauguration of now-President Joe Biden to start set the meme machine in motion.

If you've used the internet at all over the past few couple days, you've probably seen this picture of Bernie Sanders at President Biden's inauguration just... sitting. Looking cozy, if a little grumpy.

Most politicians might be able to escape this pretty inert picture without it snowballing into full-blown social media virality, but in Sanders' case, the snapshot has instead exploded into a deluge of memes sandwiching the senator into different settings, including a ton of movies.

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Bernie in Clerks.

Bernie in Forest Gump.

Bernie in The Big Lebowski.

Bernie in My Neighbor Totoro.

Also album covers...

Or miscellaneous Sanders...

The fixation on this picture has been nothing short of fanatical. While some people homed in on the extremely practical mittens Sanders was wearing (identified here), others took it upon themselves to spread the meme by creating transparent PNGs that can be transposed onto other images with ease.

Also, these earrings

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Someone even went as far as to make an app that allows you to superimpose Sanders onto locations in Google Maps by simply plugging in an address. Here's Sanders in front of Trump Tower.

Picture: Bernie-sits app.

It's hard to say exactly what makes Sanders so meme-able, but we're not going to argue with the results. Supporters of the senator can at least take solace in the fact that, though he didn't win the Democratic nomination, he's certainly still winning the internet.

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