Perhaps more so than in any presidential election that has come before it, the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has unfolded online.

From the moment in May when President Joe Biden’s team announced that it was looking to hire a meme manager, it was clear that campaigns were taking internet strategy seriously. But Biden struggled to break through online, and it wasn’t until Harris rose to the top of the ticket that nominees for both parties began to wield their influence there.

Images went viral. Online personalities and influencers took center stage. Awkward blunders, old interview clips and sometimes quite serious moments became memes, whether or not the candidates particularly wanted them to.

The Nelk Boys, a group of prank-pulling internet stars with a popular podcast, popped up at the Republican National Convention, and Trump played a viral round of charity golf with popular YouTuber and professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau. Harris was absorbed into the online hype around British pop star Charli XCX’s summer album, “brat,” and her campaign embraced it.

In pursuit of viral moments, the candidates appeared on TikTok shows and dueling podcasts. (For Harris, “Call Her Daddy” and the Brené Brown podcast “Unlocking Us.” For Trump, “Impaulsive,” hosted by YouTube prankster-turned-professional wrestler Logan Paul, and “The Joe Rogan Experience.”) Both sides maintained official campaign TikTok accounts, churning out loose, timely videos that felt diametrically opposed to the more slick look of conventional ads.

Although online campaign efforts in the past might have felt cringey — see Hillary Clinton’s call for voters to “Pokemon Go to the polls” in 2016 — this time around, campaigns seemed better equipped for the flexibility required to thrive online. What followed was an election that can be measured in TikTok dances and video views, hashtag fights and a specific shade of lime green.

Members of The New York Times’ Styles staff took a look back at some of the online moments that stood out.

The bloody photo

A photo snapped of Trump in the immediate aftermath of an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, took on a life of its own. The image of Trump, with his fist raised, his ear bleeding and Secret Service agents surrounding him, became inescapable, with Trump supporters using it as a symbol of resilience and social media users, inevitably, finding ways to incorporate it into jokes.

Kamala gets ‘brat’-coded

On July 21, shortly after Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Charli XCX posted a three-word manifesto on the social network X: “kamala IS brat,” a reference to her album “brat.” Harris’ supporters ran with it. They churned out memes in the album’s signature shade of green and remixed its synth-heavy songs with audio of a viral quote from the vice president: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” An official X account for the campaign soon changed its banner to a Kamala-fied version of the album cover. “Brat” memes became a vehicle by which enthusiasm for Harris’ candidacy rocketed across social media and a defining symbol of a very online campaign.

‘Childless cat ladies’

JD Vance claimed in an interview with Fox News in 2021 that the country was run by “childless cat ladies” such as Harris, who had no stake in its future. Three years later, that clip became a rallying cry online, with childless cat ladies around the country wearing the moniker like a badge of honor. The peak moment came when Taylor Swift — a cat person with no children — signed her Instagram endorsement of Harris with the phrase.

‘That’s my dad’

“That’s my dad,” Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was seen exclaiming on camera during the Democratic National Convention in late August after his father, Harris’ running mate, discussed his family during a speech. The emotional moment — the younger Walz was visibly weepy — inspired a viral hashtag, #ThatsMyDad and prompted much debate across social media. Although it was largely praised as a genuine moment of pride, some Trump supporters were more critical. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter posted and deleted a message on X that described Gus as “weird.” In an election with many different representations of masculinity on display, the younger Walz presented one more.

The bear (not the television show)

The admission was as odd as it was unexpected: In early August, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — scion of the famed Democratic political family and a long-shot presidential candidate — posted a video on X telling comedian Rosanne Barr that he had once collected a dead baby bear by the roadside, after seeing the cub getting hit by a van. But that wasn’t the most peculiar part: Kennedy, who was anticipating a negative story in The New Yorker, then said he deposited the cub in Central Park in an attempt at humor, alongside a spare bike he just happened to have, to make it appear it had been the victim of a bicycle-related accident.

Barr’s expression — a mixture of bemusement and bewilderment — said what many were thinking about Kennedy, who previously made headlines for being an opponent of vaccines. Kennedy, whose uncle was John F. Kennedy, would later shock in another way: endorsing Trump and campaigning for the Republican nominee.

‘Eating the dogs’

Trump’s untrue claims during the September presidential debate about Haitian immigrants eating pets — a claim that originated in a Facebook post before being amplified online and picked up by the Trump campaign — were remixed into a catchy tune. (The duo behind the song, Casa Di, had previously gone viral for remixing a quote from Vance into another song.) On TikTok, there was even a dance routine with participants pantomiming eating with a spoon from a bowl while mouthing along “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.”

Into the Manosphere

Trump’s appeals to the internet have primarily focused on a particular brand of right-wing masculinity. When his campaign joined TikTok — the platform Trump tried to ban as president — his first videos featured Dana White, CEO of UFC, and Paul, king of the bro influencers. Along with appearances on Rogan’s and comedian Theo Von’s podcasts, it was another salvo in Trump’s attempt to woo young men.