Zahran Mamdani won because he knew when to go online and when not

Zahran Mamdani owes his election as mayor of New York City in large part to his victory Internet presence. Mamdani – as many writers have pointed out – is good at social videos. He picked a message, stuck to it, and adapted that platform with quick cross-media soundbites. But Mamdani’s best trait as an online communicator is that he doesn’t know how to use the Internet. It was understanding when no to use it. In an age of deadly synthetic politics, New York chose the candidate who still seems able to look away from his screen.

“Highly online” may be the two words most associated with politicians in 2025. Since taking office in January, the 4chan-soaked Trump administration has already slid into the purely digital world. Regularly communicated through Photoshop, ASMR videos, podcast clips, and concentration camp-ready branding Tension its own operations Via online positions. And generative AI has dramatically accelerated this process: The government officially entered the longest lockdown in history last night, and the president’s memorable public statements during it include AI-animated videos of himself playing the Blue Öyster Cult cowbell and dropping diarrhea on protesters from an airplane.

This aesthetic was on display with Mamdani’s independent challenger, Andrew Cuomo, who ended his campaign with a series of AI-generated attacks on Mamdani that were posted on X. One video, “Criminals for Mamdani“, showcased the glossy hyper-reality that has become synonymous with artificial intelligence. It depicted Mamdani’s fake endorsements from a series of disgusting stereotypes, including a black shoplifter and a 1970s-style pimp with a truck full of trafficked white women. It shows Mamdani mawlid, nibbling on a handful of rice, in reference to some people. Republican comment on Mamdani’s perceived foreignness that went viral on X.

The video, although quickly deleted, was a perfect example of synthetic politics. Start with a fairly standard, if trite, accusation: My opponent is soft on crime. Then, introduce it through a machine designed to perfectly reproduce distilled stereotypes, making the whole thing not just a fantasy scenario from the get-go, but one that lacks even the nominal humanity you’d get with live actors or animators. Sprinkle a digital dummy version of your competitor with a reference to the exact controversy on social media. Finally, post it on the mentioned social networking site. The result is something devoid of almost any connection to physical reality, whether you agree with the central premise or not.

The contrast with Mamdani’s campaign is striking. His videos aim to show him not just in the flesh, but in physical settings outside of the podcast booth and often out on the streets of New York. Earlier this year, he won the primary against Cuomo by teaming up with other candidates like Brad Lander, who has become a real-world minor character in his videos. Unlike California’s Democratic governor and roving podcaster Gavin Newsom, for example, Mamdani has not adopted the tone and strategy of Republican Internet culture or pursued Internet archetypes like “leftist Joe Rogan.” (By the way, Cuomo also tried and failed at podcasting.) His best videos spread across the Internet, but they weren’t clear. child Online – and as a result, even when they’re short and casual, they don’t have the endlessly recycled void that fills so much of the modern Internet.

Mamdani is clearly taking advantage of his timing and location. The last mayoral election cycle took place in the midst of the COVID pandemic Chilling with cats at bodegas It would be risky. New York is also a dense city full of instantly recognizable icons. But Cuomo had the same advantages — and we got them Video of its digital version In an AI-generated subway instead.

Other politicians have discovered the benefits of just getting out and doing something. Congressional candidate Kat Abu-Ghazaleh is another person widely described as an online influencer, but who has become known for ICE field protests — similar to Lander, who was arrested for protesting during the primary campaign. Instead of relying on remixed references or AI simulations, they put the look into the game.

Obviously, there is no purely “true” campaign strategy; All of these things are meant to spread across the Internet. Actual footage and events are no guarantee of truth; It is easy to twist or deform. Mamdani, a former SoundCloud rapper, is no digital recluse. But over the past few years, it has become painfully clear that even online connections to the ground truth of the offline world still matter — because the areas where those connections disappear are some of the ugliest places on the Internet.

The Trump administration is arguably the clearest example of this. Trump’s first term saw him rise as an internet celebrity and prolific tweeter, but he and his cabinet were not known to spend this much time Expendable Internet – Trump was relentlessly watching Fox News, which, while not a bastion of truth, had at least some realistic connection to the offline world. He now exists in an ecosystem full of social media personalities and pretty much looks like that Filling his media system With AI Slop.

Problems cut off from internet culture – which at this point He is Culture — From Reality Go much deeper than bad campaign ads. On a strategic level, Trump administration figures regularly undermine their own agendas because they can’t keep anything off the internet, from Kash Patel’s constant bragging about FBI investigations to Brendan Carr’s mafia threats on podcasts to Pete Hegseth’s Signal leaks to Trump’s publicly posted social truth messages.

More importantly, the government of complacent people and powerful people cares little about real work that is not worth feeding. For example, Carr’s FCC has abdicated almost all of the agency’s duties not tied to the flashy culture wars — approving media mergers conditional on pro-Republican coverage rather than mitigating the harms of the merger, and ignoring a legal mandate to reduce the costs of prison phone calls.

We will never know how Cuomo would have done in office. We know that his campaign found topics like New York’s severe housing shortage extremely boring Processing without ChatGPT.

Likewise, we do not know how Mamdani will perform in office – Ideal mayors It’s been broken on the wheels of New York politics before. But his campaign promises were often concrete: frozen rental apartments, free child care and buses, and city-run grocery stores. No matter how hard they are to realize, they are not feelings or memes, they are real Things. And for this moment at least, things won out.