Mamdani-inspired videos about NYC are going viral on TikTok

It was 1 a.m. on election night last month when Sophia Deocampo-Sumaray, 24, fell down yet another TikTok rabbit hole.

Deocampo-Sumaray’s feed was flooded with videos calling out some of the reactions to Zohran Mamdani’s primary win: right-wing users yelling about everything from “sharia law in Queens” to video creators predicting the “Statue of Liberty in a burqa.”

So Deocampo-Sumaray, who supported Mamdani in the election, made a video of their own.

“I was like, let me just poke fun at everything that is happening because it was ridiculous,” said Deocampo-Sumaray, who uses they/them pronouns.

They titled the sketch: “What rich ppl in New York think will happen if Mamdani is elected mayor.”

In it, they poke fun at how critics have incorrectly described Mamdani’s policies: millionaires must transition “into a transgender,” car owners are run over by buses, kindergartners are forced to read “gay smut” and landlords are burned and turned into eyeshadow palettes.

The satirical video went viral almost overnight, garnering 1 million views and compelling New Yorkers from seemingly every borough to leave comments.

Mamdani was catapulted into the winning spot in the Democratic mayoral primary last month by engaging a shocking surge of first-time, Gen Z voters. His own social media campaign has been described as one of the best in modern politics. So it's little wonder that his vehement supporters are themselves turning to their favored social media platform — TikTok — to muse about what life would be like under a Mamdani mayoralty or to mock those who don’t get the vision.

Some of the satirical pro-Mamdani videos depict Bushwick filled with mosques, while others show Manhattan residents dropping to their knees on prayer rugs. Opponents have rushed to catch up with their own version of tongue-in-cheek negative videos.

On the surface, it all might look like your typical “brain rot” Gen Z humor. But in the context of Mamdani’s rise, these posts double as political commentary, with irony and memes as Gen Z’s native tongue.

Dr. Katherine Fry, a professor of media studies at Brooklyn College, said throughout history political messages have adapted new communication technologies. She compared Mamdani’s social media success to Barack Obama’s messaging in 2008, which famously used Facebook, YouTube and catchy emails.

Scholars still debate how the young, telegenic John F. Kennedy used television more effectively than his opponent Richard Nixon. And even President Donald Trump has mastered social media to speak directly to voters, often in humorous, everyday language.

For Gen Zers who have grown up around memes their whole lives, TikTok videos are the best way to communicate a point. And their posts — even the most bizarre — aren’t just mindless entertainment or marketing campaigns. They’re a new political language, and attention is the currency.

Older people just don’t get it, said Deocampo-Sumaray, who added that social media has the power to change society for good. In fact, they wrote an undergraduate thesis on how social media could be an “anti-colonialist tool.”

“I submitted my thesis and a professor told me it wasn’t plausible,” Deocampo-Sumaray said. “And I remember thinking, how can you possibly say that social media can’t change things for the better? People who didn’t grow up online just don’t get how important it is.”

‘The establishment doesn’t take our needs seriously’

Omar Elhoriny, who grew up in Queens, also created a viral video about an imagined version of New York City under Mamdani, titled “Zohran’s NYC.” It depicts Union Square, encircled by several mosques.

Elhoriny said he was trying to poke fun at Islamophobia he saw online, “like they're gonna wake up in November and Bushwick is gonna look like Cairo or something.” He understands that not everyone will get it.

“I think nowadays that is the currency in itself, just staying in the news feed and staying public,” he said.

Vikas Kumar, who lives in Brooklyn, also made a viral video reimagining a future under Mamdani. His video features Mamdani as Godzilla with glowing red eyes and rainbow lasers shooting out of his mouth. The meme includes a hammer and sickle, a Palestinian flag and a Charli XCX "Brat" style sign that reads “Jihad.”

It drew the attention of celebrity influencer and left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, who commented on TikTok: “Keep 'em coming, king.”

For Kumar, 31, the post is political — even if others just find it entertaining.

“I think people are frustrated that the establishment doesn’t take our needs seriously. They call anything ‘socialism’ or ‘extremism,'” said Kumar, who supports Mamdani. “This is satire, but it reflects something real. That’s why people engage with it.”

‘No one on the Cuomo team was trying to make edits of Andrew Cuomo’

Hayden Cohen, 27, made a viral TikTok joking that he was “shaved from the neck down” before heading out to vote in the slim chance he’d run into Mamdani. It was a parody of the kind of excitement the fans of popular 2010s band One Direction had before concerts, in the wild hopes Harry Styles would notice and they’d get lucky later that night.

“There’s a decent overlap between those who wanted to see One Direction and the people in New York excited to vote for Zohran Mamdani,” he added. “It just lands generationally.”

Cohen said that when someone is famous, young people expect to see them on the internet “everywhere.” And when they become fans, they want to participate in boosting hype around the celebrity.

“No one on the Cuomo team was trying to make edits of Andrew Cuomo,” he said. “No one on Eric Adams’ team is trying to make edits of Eric Adams. That’s not how we interact with elderly politicians.” (For the record, Cuomo is 67 and Adams is 64.)

Mamdani, 33, feels familiar to people like Cohen. He’s young, relatable and often described as handsome. He met his wife on Hinge.

“His charm is part of it,” said Kara McCurdy, 31, a New York City photographer who shot Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji’s viral wedding photos and has worked with Mamdani since 2019.

“But Gen Z doesn’t feel like politicians are talking to them. They don’t feel like the grown-ups care. Zohran offers something else: hope.”

So it doesn’t really matter whether that message is delivered through a think piece or a meme.

‘Most trends last 24 hours. But Zohran was able to continuously capture that attention and build on it.’

Bushra Amiwala knows a thing or two about political virality. In 2019, Amiwala, then 21, became one of the first Gen Z women ever elected to political office, winning a seat on the Skokie School District Board of Education in Illinois. She was the youngest elected Muslim official at the time.

Back then, it was Facebook that carried her into people’s awareness. She sees similarities in Mamdani’s success.

“Gen Z has social media ingrained in our collective and shared identity. When something is trending, we’ve all either seen it or heard of it,” she said. “Most trends last 24 hours. But Zohran was able to continuously capture that attention and build on it.”

Experts say Mamdani’s rise is due to something more than a great social media strategy: It reflects a generational fluency in what some call the “attention economy.”

“He's not using memes and gifs because the kids are into it, and it's their language,” Isra Ali, a media professor at NYU, said in an email. “It's his language. And as with any native of any subcultural phenomenon… the members develop a whole vocabulary of signs, images, text, gestures and tics that are only understood by other members of the group.”

And Mamdani’s campaign has been successful, she said, because “nothing creates and maintains attention like authenticity.”