After years of sitting on the sidelines, content creators became a part of the mainstream political media this year, delivering election news, analysis, and political commentary to their online fans'all while sidestepping the traditional press. Eighty-one-year-old Joe Biden was serenaded on camera by the delightfully cringe TikTok singer Harry Daniels. Bernie Sanders stumped for Kamala Harris on a Twitch stream cohosted by an anime catboy VTuber. Donald Trump collabed with the quintessential creator brothers, Jake and Logan Paul. Instead of making time for traditional sit-down interviews with the mainstream press, Harris and Trump relied on creators to galvanize votes and spread their campaign messages. 'There's just no value'with respect to my colleagues in the mainstream press'in a general election to speaking to The New York Times or speaking to The Washington Post, because those [readers] are already with us,' Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager for Harris, told Semafor in...
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