Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Asian Pacific Islander American Vote Presidential Town Hall election event at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. Credit: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images
Gay Twitter serves up countless remixes of Kamala Harris’ ‘coconut tree’ meme
From hearty laughs to iconic “Coconut Tree” lyrics, Kamala Harris is taking the queer pop scene by storm with her meme-enhanced remixes.
From the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” to Mariah Carey’s “Emotions,” Ariana Grande’s “Nasty” and Beyoncé’s “Heated,” gay Twitter remixers have been giving hits a Kamala twist, quoting snippets from Harris’ May 2023 speech on education.
In the meme, Harris “ijboling” (short for “burst into laughter”) and then asks, “Did you think you fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in everything that lives and everything that came before you.”
The quote comes from a speech Harris gave to the President’s Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence and Economic Opportunity for People of Hispanic Origins, and it powerfully sums up how the classroom experience is inseparable from students’ other experiences: at home, in their communities and in their lives across the country.
But there’s no serious topic that gay Twitter can’t turn into a fun one. Users on Twitter (formerly Twitter) took a clip of Harris’ speech from May 2023 and turned it into a full-blown meme, including one aimed at endorsing the Biden/Harris ticket in this year’s historic presidential election, by putting it over a remix of pop hits. Check out some of the results!
Cillian Meloy is an associate arts editor and staff contributor for EDGE Media Network. He serves on several professional organizations, including the National Association of Lesbian & Gay Journalists, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, the Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theatre Critics Association’s Elliot Norton Awards Committee.