AOC as the 'Impostor'
Let's take it back really quickly to the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a difficult time to find connection, as we were all stuck home, but many turned to online methods of doing so. Me, personally, I remember being (now, embarrassingly) obsessed with a group of video game streamers. It was high school, by the way. Give me a break. My friends and I would blow up our group chat if any member of these Twitch streamers would post, start a stream, or make any announcements. These livestreams were deeply unserious, looking back, but it was a very fun and effective way to find some escapism for some of us. So, imagine our surprise when we tune in one evening to see Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), along with representative Ilhan Omar, on our laptop screens playing the popular video game Among Us.
The stream accumulated over 400,000 viewers in real time and millions of rewatches, contrasting the solely political streams done by other politicians on the platform. Both, Donald Trump and Joe Biden's past campaign events only received about 6,000 and 17,000 viewers, respectively. Now, AOC wasn't on to simply play the game. All the while, she was encouraging the notoriously hard to reach Gen-Z to "vote blue" in the 2020 presidential election. The context within AOC's appearance made all the difference to these young, potential voters. She was meeting them on their own, unpolished terms, aligning herself with online trends to do so.
This is not the only leveraging she's done with digital platforms, though. According to The New York Times, Ocazio-Cortez was the largest digital advertiser in 2019 as a House member. Her campaign, at the time, utilized Facebook's highly targeted ads as she spent millions on the tool. She has clearly seen the utility behind the online sphere. Like her (and her politics) or not, AOC has mastered a form of modern political communication by employing social media to her advantage.
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