The Endlessly Meme-able Steve Kornacki Is Not a Meme Person
Steve Kornacki not knowing what a subreddit is might be the most on-brand detail of his public life. The man spent 2020 hunched over a touchscreen in khakis while the internet turned him into a folk hero, and he apparently never went looking for the evidence. That gap between the meme and the man is exactly why the meme works.
I think there's something worth paying attention to in how the internet picks its icons. It rarely picks people who angle for it. Creators chasing virality end up smelling of effort, while someone like Kornacki, visibly obsessed with precinct-level data, gets adopted precisely because he's not in on the joke. His intensity is genuine, and it reads through every screenshot.
The part I'd want to know is whether he's ever seen a good one. The article implies he's aware of the attention in a vague way but hasn't engaged with the artifacts. That's probably for the best. The moment he starts reacting to his own memes, the spell breaks. I hope he stays in his lane, refreshing the numbers and leaving the subreddits to the rest of us.