Kamala Harris: Fighting for your vote and your short attention span

With the US elections coming up in three weeks time, Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is taking a bold, unconventional approach by experimenting with “overstimulation” content. 

These are videos that mix her speeches with eye-catching gameplay footage or ASMR visuals. This content format, as explained by know your meme, popularized on TikTok and is known as “sludge content” or “ADHD videos”. These videos are designed to capture short attention spans in the fast-paced digital environment. Harris’s team has been testing these ads across platforms like YouTube and Meta, and gaining thousands of views.

This strategy is reflective of the broader trends in how media is consumed today, particularly by younger audiences. The rise of these split-screen fast-moving content forms parallels the growing cultural attention on neurodivergence, especially ADHD. The internet has played a massive role in amplifying conversations about neurodivergence, and on “how neurodivergence became a subculture”. 

For Harris’s campaign, this tactic is a savvy way to capture the attention of niche online audiences and engage them in ways traditional political advertising may not. By tapping into the overstimulating media that appeals to viewers used to TikTok’s rapid content flow, the campaign not only embraces current digital trends but also demonstrates an understanding of how fragmented attention has shaped modern media consumption. This move could prove effective, especially in capturing younger, digital-native voters, who are otherwise hard to reach through conventional advertising methods.

In an era where attention is a rare commodity, Harris’s experiment with overstimulation ads could be a signal of how political marketing can evolve, using innovative tactics to connect with audiences in the digital age. It remains to be seen how this will impact her campaign’s success, but it clearly highlights the importance of adapting to the way people consume content today.