This month, an image has been circulating on social media, depicting a screenshot of a Google Maps location that supposedly showed the location where US President Joe Biden had fallen off of his bike in the US state of Delaware.
On Google Maps, a ‘historical landmark’ on the Delaware coast appeared with the name ‘Brandon Falls’. However, ‘Brandon Falls’ is not an official US state-sanctioned landmark.
Google Maps has a feature which allows users to design public landmarks, meaning that it was possible to establish the new Delaware location - which has now disappeared - in order to mock Biden’s bicycle faux-pas.
Earlier in June, Biden tumbled from his bike after getting his foot caught in his pedal cage when coming to a standstill. At the time, the surrounding press appeared very concerned for Biden’s health, but he got back to his feet without any injuries. Since then, videos have emerged on social media of people deliberately falling off their bikes in the same location in an act now known as ‘Bidening’.
A Twitter account named ‘Old Row Viral’ was reportedly behind the new Delaware landmark, and the term ‘Brandon Falls’ is in fact a play on ‘Let’s go Brandon’, a conservative phrase in the United States which allegedly means ‘F**k Joe Biden’.
‘Let’s go Brandon’ was first heard in October 2021 at a Talladega Superspeedway event in the US state of Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter when the crowd behind him began inaudibly chanting. The reporter first innocently suggested they were chanting ‘Let’s go Brandon’ to celebrate Brown’s win that evening, although it then became apparent that the crowd were in fact chanting ‘F**k Joe Biden!’ in protest against the current president’s administration.
‘Old Row Viral’ is a content creator that specialises in conservative memes in the United States. They created the location on Google Maps in order to then encourage ‘Bidening’ to take off as a trend on social media to mock the president.
The ‘Brandon Falls’ location on Google Maps showed an image of an alleged bike shop named ‘Let’s go Brandon’. However, the image of the location is actually a residence in Florida, not a bike shop in Delaware.
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