Zohran Mamdani’s ascent to the mayoralty of New York City owes a remarkable amount to his carefully cultivated digital footprint. His victory was not the outcome of simply existing online but of mastering the complex art of presence in an increasingly crowded digital arena. Commentators have repeatedly remarked on his aptitude for social video—a medium that rewards precision, brevity, and charisma. Mamdani crafted a coherent narrative for himself, adhered to that message with discipline, and skillfully modified it to fit the rhythm of diverse formats, from short video clips to platform-specific snippets. Yet perhaps the most distinctive feature of his online strategy was not his adept use of the internet, but his intuition for restraint—his discernment in knowing when silence or absence from the screen would convey more authenticity than constant engagement. In an era when political life often feels mediated through filters, algorithms, and endlessly looping content, New Yorkers chose a leader who appeared refreshingly capable of looking up from his device and reconnecting with the tangible world beyond the glow of a monitor.
By contrast, the political environment of 2025 has become overwhelmingly characterized by what many have dubbed the “extremely online” phenomenon. This phrase—aptly capturing the perpetual digital immersion of much of contemporary politics—has come to describe an administration and culture steeped in virtual spectacle. Since returning to office earlier that year, the Trump administration, already deeply intertwined with the fringe corners of the internet, has seemingly dissolved even further into a reality composed chiefly of memes, AI-generated content, and self-referential digital theater. Their communication strategy now unfolds through photoshopped images, whispered ASMR addresses, absurdist podcast soundbites, and viral, meme-ready propaganda surrounding inhumane policies. Ironically, this obsession with digital display has frequently undermined the administration’s own operations, as its officials appear more preoccupied with performance than governance. The integration of generative AI has accelerated this descent. At the time when the federal government slipped into the longest shutdown in national history, the president’s most prominent public appearances consisted of artificial videos portraying himself in outlandish scenarios—images so detached from reality that they illustrated, metaphorically and literally, the administration’s estrangement from the physical world.
This same digitally warped aesthetic was mirrored in the behavior of Mamdani’s independent rival, Andrew Cuomo, whose campaign resorted to synthetic spectacle over substance. In the closing days of his electoral effort, Cuomo released a barrage of AI-generated attacks on Mamdani via X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Among them was a video titled “Criminals for Mamdani,” which indulged in the glossy unreality typical of machine-generated visuals. The production cobbled together absurd caricatures—such as a stereotypically portrayed shoplifter and a retro-styled pimp driving a van full of fictional victims—to suggest endorsements for Mamdani. It culminated with an uncanny digital replica of the candidate himself, portrayed devouring rice in an apparent allusion to xenophobic jabs spread by Republican commentators about his heritage. Although the video was swiftly removed, its brief existence distilled the essence of synthetic politics: the process of taking an age-old accusation like being “soft on crime,” then transforming it into a surreal tableau stripped of any real human presence or accountability. The final product, circulated across social platforms, was not merely fiction—it was anti-reality, a performance devoid of moral or factual substance.
In stark and telling opposition, Mamdani’s campaign embodied a reaffirmation of physical presence and authenticity. His digital messages showcased him not as a detached avatar confined to the sterile confines of a recording booth, but as a flesh-and-blood participant in the living organism that is New York City. His videos often placed him outside—walking among the boroughs’ neighborhoods, meeting people, appearing in familiar urban landscapes rather than the lifeless glow of digital backdrops. During the primary, he collaborated with candidates like Brad Lander, whose own public activism lent a sense of texture and realism to Mamdani’s messaging. Unlike figures such as California’s governor Gavin Newsom—who tends to blur the line between politics and podcast celebrity culture—Mamdani refused to adopt the performative tropes of the internet’s right-wing influencers. His videos circulated widely online but never appeared to have been conceived purely for virality; they retained the grounded informality of content forged in real environments. Even their brevity conveyed substance rather than emptiness, offering relief from the endless, hollow churn of online political performance.
Context also favored him. The timing of his campaign coincided with a city regaining its footing after the pandemic, when public closeness and street-level community had once felt perilous. Moreover, New York’s visual identity—its dense and cinematic geography—naturally lent itself to vivid storytelling. Still, Cuomo enjoyed access to these same assets yet squandered them in favor of ill-conceived AI renderings of subways and avatars. The difference lay not in resources but in perspective: where Cuomo embraced simulation, Mamdani embodied presence.
Other figures in contemporary politics have likewise rediscovered the power of physical engagement. Kat Abughazaleh, a congressional candidate widely known online, has distinguished herself through visible participation in real-world protests against ICE operations, paralleling Lander’s own public acts of civil disobedience. Their actions contrasted sharply with the current trend toward digital escapism; by literally placing themselves in contested spaces, they restored a measure of accountability and corporeal sincerity to the political process.
This does not mean that Mamdani or his peers embody a pure or untouched authenticity—no political enterprise, after all, is free from mediation. Even “real” events can be curated, edited, or misconstrued. Mamdani himself is no stranger to digital culture; his past as a SoundCloud rapper speaks to his familiarity with online performance. Yet his campaign has highlighted an enduring truth: however mediated our communications may become, contact with the physical world remains indispensable. The more politics drifts into synthetic abstraction, the more corrosive its detachment becomes.
Nowhere is this rupture between reality and digital self-display more apparent than in the Trump administration’s second term. His first presidency had already demonstrated an instinctive fluency with internet culture—his tweets and televised outbursts fed an endless meme economy. But whereas earlier he filtered his narratives through traditional media outlets like Fox News, tethering his messaging to some form of terrestrial reference, his current administration flourishes in a sealed informational ecosystem dominated by influencers, AI content, and algorithmic echo chambers. The result is a politics that increasingly consumes its own simulated image.
The consequences of divorcing online theater from offline reality are disastrous. Strategically, officials repeatedly derail their own agendas through compulsive oversharing—whether in self-incriminating leaks, reckless podcast appearances, or posts that turn policy decisions into viral stunts. More fundamentally, an administration driven by the impulses of content creators rather than public servants inevitably neglects substantive labor. The Federal Communications Commission, for instance, has devolved into little more than an instrument for partisan spectacle, prioritizing flashy ideological gestures over its statutory obligations such as regulating corporate consolidation or ensuring affordable prison phone access.
Against this backdrop, Cuomo’s AI-saturated campaign appears as both a symptom and a cautionary tale. His team found it difficult to discuss urgent material concerns—New York’s acute housing crisis, for instance—without translating them into artificially generated buzz. Policy was sacrificed to novelty, seriousness to spectacle.
Mamdani’s platform stood in bold relief. His proposals, while ambitious, were palpably concrete: rent freezes, municipal childcare and transit, publicly run grocery stores. These were not abstract slogans or clever memes but promises articulated in the language of physical improvement. Whether or not he can deliver them remains an open question—many idealists have been broken by the machinery of New York City politics. Yet, for now, his triumph represents a subtle but profound restoration of the tangible over the virtual, of substance over simulation. In a cultural landscape colonized by digital artifice, Mamdani’s victory suggests that, at least momentarily, genuine things—real actions, places, and people—still have the power to prevail.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/policy/814065/zohran-mamdani-nyc-mayor-race-victory-online
