Bernie Sanders in First Class

About

Bernie Sanders in First Class, also known as Bernie Sanders Listening to Music, is a viral photograph of Senator Bernie Sanders wearing white earbuds while seated in first class on a commercial airplane. The image has inspired numerous memes, including an image macro series hypothesizing what is playing on his device (similar to Mayor Pete Buttigieg Wearing Headphones).

Origin

On July 7th, 2019, Twitter ^[1] user @CCarrGOP tweeted the photograph with the caption "First class flight and first to board. Socialism has been good to
@BernieSanders." The post received more than 22,000 likes and 8,500 retweets in less than one year (shown below).

Spread

That day, Facebook ^[2] account LibertyHangout shared the photograph. The post received more than 1,000 reactions, 985 shares and 550 comments in less than one year.

On October 15th, Instagram ^[5] user @sonny5ideup shared the image with the caption "me hitting my vape on the bus." The post received more than 37,000 likes in less than one year (shown below, left). Similarly, Instagram^[6] user @virjuulablow shared a variation with the caption "me trying to hit my juul secretly." The post received more than 2,100 likes in less than one year (shown below, right).

Bernie Sanders Listening to Music

On February 23rd, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @tonybonesarelli tweeted the picture with the caption "what song is bernie listening to in this pic?" The post received more than 2,700 likes and 150 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Following the post, people began sharing answers on the platform. For example, on February 24th, Twitter^[4] @poetastrologers tweeted, "Norman Fucking Rockwell on repeat during Mercury Retro." The post received more than 23,000 likes and 4,500 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Over the next week, people continued to share variations of the meme, placing the photograph of Sanders with a screenshot of a phone-based music player showcasing an album or podcast (examples below, center and right).

On February 25th, 2020, Junkee^[7] published a report on the meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References