What Happened When I Tried to Find Someone Who Bought a Bloomberg T-Shirt
Who is buying and wearing T-shirts for the late-entering moderate billionaire candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination?
Something curious happens when you visit the official campaign website of Mike Bloomberg: There’s no direct donation button! (Probably because he is a billionaire.) But, if you’re an ardent supporter of the former New York City mayor, you can still support him by purchasing some of his ton of merch, including T-shirts with the slogan “Facts over fiction,” “In God we trust, everyone else bring data,” and, “I like Mike.”
In 2016, the infamous, bright red “Make America Great Again” hat became a sort of Rorschach test for voters — do you see power, hate, or something else entirely? — and since then political merch has morphed into a way to project not only which candidate you support but who you are.
Bloomberg announced his presidential bid less than a month ago. In the days since, I have scoured social media to find voters who boasted about buying a Bloomberg T-shirt. Searching for combinations of terms on Twitter (such as “bloomberg tshirt bought,” “bloomberg shirt bought,” “bloomberg shirt i,” and many more) were pretty much unsuccessful. Instagram was…
