No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.

But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination. Donald Trump’s lead appears prohibitive, but then again, no candidate has ever won his party’s nomination while facing four (so far) separate felony indictments. (Then again, no one has ever lost his party’s nomination while facing four separate felony indictments either.) Ron DeSantis has not budged from his position as the leading challenger to Trump, but his support has weakened, encouraging a large field of Republicans who are hoping for a lucky break, a Trump collapse, a VP nomination, or maybe just some fun travel and a cable-news contract down the road.

[David A. Graham: The first debate is Ramaswamy and the rest]

On the other side, Democratic hesitations about a second Biden term have either receded or dissolved into resignation that he’s running. But his age and the general lukewarm feeling among some voters has ensured that a decent-size shadow field still exists, just waiting in case Biden bows out for some reason. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also running, ostensibly as a Democrat, but while employing Republican consultants and espousing fairly right-wing views. Even so, he has hit double digits in some polls.

Behind all this, the possibility of a serious third-party bid, led by either the group No Labels or some other candidate, continues to linger. It adds up to a race that is simple on the surface but strangely confusing just below it. This guide to the candidates—who’s in, who’s out, and who’s somewhere in between—serves as a road map to navigate that. It will be updated as the campaign develops, so check in regularly.

REPUBLICANS (Joe Raedle / Getty) Donald Trump

Who is he?
You know him and you love him. Or hate him. Probably not much in between.

Is he running?
Yes. Trump announced his bid to return to the White House at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.

Why does he want to run?
Revenge, boredom, rivalry, fear of prosecution, long-standing psychological hang-ups.

[Read: Trump begins the ‘retribution’ tour]

Who wants him to run?
A big tranche of the GOP is still all in on Trump, but it’s a little hard to tell how big. Polling shows that his support among Republicans is all over the place, but he’s clearly not a prohibitive front-runner.

Can he win the nomination?
Yes, but past results are no guarantee of future success.

What else do we know?
More than we could possibly want to.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Ron DeSantis

Who is he?
The second-term governor of Florida, DeSantis was previously a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run in a trainwreck of an appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on May 24.

Why does he want to run?
DeSantis offers the prospect of a synthesis of Trump-style culture war and bullying and the conservative politics of the early-2010s Republican Party.

Who wants him to run?
From the advent of his campaign, DeSantis presented the prospect of a candidate with Trump’s policies but no Trump. But his fading polling suggests that not many Republicans are interested.

[From the March 2023 issue: How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?]

Can he win the nomination?
He doesn’t look like the Trump-toppler today that he did several months ago, but it’s possible.

(Roy Rochlin / Getty) Nikki Haley

Who is she?
Haley, the daughter of immigrants, was governor of South Carolina and then ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.

Is she running?
Yes. She announced her campaign on February 14, saying, “Time for a new generation.”

Why does she want to run?
Haley has tried to steer a path that distances herself from Trump—pointing out his unpopularity—without openly attacking him. She may also be the leading foreign-policy hawk in the field.

[Sarah Isgur: What Nikki Haley can learn from Carly Fiorina]

Who wants her to run?
Haley has lagged behind the first tier of candidates, but her strong performance in the first debate could help her.

Can she win the nomination?
Dubious.

(Dylan Hollingsworth / Bloomberg / Getty) Vivek Ramaswamy

Who is he?
A 38-year-old biotech millionaire with a sparkling résumé (Harvard, then Yale Law, where he became friends with Senator J. D. Vance), Ramaswamy has recently become prominent as a crusader against “wokeism” and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on February 21.

Why does he want to run?
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy said in a somewhat-hectoring launch video. “Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like COVIDism, climatism, and gender ideology.”

Who wants him to run?
Ramaswamy has come from nearly nowhere to poll surprisingly well—in national polls, he’s currently third (if distantly so) behind Trump and DeSantis, and he dominated the first debate.

Can he win the nomination?
Probably not. Ramaswamy no longer seems like a mere curiosity, but his slick shtick and questionable pronouncements will remain a drag on him.

(Alex Wong / Getty) Asa Hutchinson

Who is he?
Hutchinson, the formerly longtime member of Congress, just finished a stint as governor of Arkansas.

Is he running?
Yes. Hutchinson announced on April 2 that he is running. It would have been funnier to announce a day earlier, though.

Why does he want to run?
At one time, Hutchinson was a right-wing Republican—he was one of the managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment—but as the party has changed, he finds himself closer to the center. He’s been very critical of Trump, saying that Trump disqualified himself with his attempts to steal the 2020 election. Hutchinson is also unique in the field for having called on Trump to drop out over his indictment in New York.

Who wants him to run?
Old-school, very conservative Republicans who also detest Trump.

Can he win the nomination?
Unlikely.

(David Becker / The Washington Post / Getty) Tim Scott

Who is he?
A South Carolinian, Scott is the only Black Republican senator.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign in North Charleston, South Carolina, on May 22.

Why does he want to run?
Unlike some of the others on this list, Scott doesn’t telegraph his ambition quite so plainly, but he’s built a record as a solid Republican. He was aligned with Trump, but never sycophantically attached.

Who wants him to run?
Scott’s Senate colleagues adore him. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, is his first highish-profile endorsement. As DeSantis stumbles, he’s gotten some attention as a possible likable Trump alternative.

Can he win the nomination?
Scott is solidly in the second tier; he’s perpetually said to be on the verge of breaking out but never quite there.

(Megan Varner / Getty) Mike Pence

Who is he?
The former vice president, he also served as the governor of Indiana and a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He formally launched his campaign on June 7 with a video and an event in Iowa.

Why does he want to run?
Pence has long harbored White House dreams, and he has a strong conservative-Christian political agenda. His launch video is heavy on clichés and light on specifics beyond promising a kinder face for the Trump agenda.

Who wants him to run?
Conservative Christians, rabbit lovers, but not very many people overall.

[Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence]

Can he win the nomination?
It’s hard to see it happening.

(Ida Mae Astute / Getty) Chris Christie

Who is he?
What a journey this guy has had, from U.S. attorney to respected governor of New Jersey to traffic-jam laughingstock to Trump sidekick to Trump critic. Whew.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on June 6 in New Hampshire.

Why does he want to run?
Anyone who runs for president once and loses wants to run again—especially if he thinks the guy who beat him is an idiot, as Christie clearly thinks about Trump. Moreover, he seems agitated to see other Republicans trying to run without criticizing Trump.

Who wants him to run?
Trump-skeptical donors, liberal pundits.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Doug Burgum

Who is he?
Do you even pay attention to politics? Nah, just kidding. A self-made software billionaire, Burgum’s serving his second term as the governor of North Dakota.

Is he running?
Apparently! He formally
launched his campaign on June 7 in Fargo.

Why does he want to run?
It’s tough to tell. His campaign-announcement video focuses so much on North Dakota that it seems more like a reelection push. He told a state newspaper that he thinks the “silent majority” of Americans wants candidates who aren’t on the extremes. (A wealthy outsider targeting the silent majority? Where have we heard that before?) He also really wants more domestic oil production.

Who wants him to run?
Lots of people expected a governor from the Dakotas to be a candidate in 2024, but they were looking at Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Burgum is very popular at home—he won more than three-quarters of the vote in 2020—but that still amounts to fewer people than the population of Toledo, Ohio.

Can he win the nomination?
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” he has said. “That’s a competitive advantage.” But it’s even better to have a chance, which he doesn’t.

What else do we know?
He’s giving people $20 gift cards in return for donating to his campaign.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Will Hurd

Who is he?
A former CIA officer, Hurd served three terms in the House, representing a San Antonio–area district.

Is he running?
Yes. Hurd announced his campaign on June 22.

Why does he want to run?
Hurd says he has “commonsense” ideas and he is “pissed” that elected officials are dividing Americans. He’s also been an outspoken Trump critic.

Who wants him to run?
As a moderate, youngish Black Republican and someone who cares about defense, he is the sort of candidate whom the party establishment seemed to desire after the now-discarded 2012 GOP autopsy.

Can he win the nomination?
No.

(Mandel Ngan / Getty) Francis Suarez

Who is he?
Suarez is the popular second-term mayor of Miami and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Is he running?
No. He suspended his campaign on August 29, less than three months after his June 15 entry.

Why did he want to run?
Suarez touted his youth—he’s 45—and said in October 2022, “I’m someone who believes in a positive aspirational message. I’m someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.”

Who wanted him to run?
Is there really room for another moderate-ish Republican in the race? Apparently not! Despite dabbling in fundraising shenanigans, Suarez failed to make the first Republican debate (or any other splash).

Could he have won the nomination?
No way.

(Drew Angerer / Getty) Larry Hogan

Who is he?
Hogan left office this year, after serving two terms as governor of Maryland.

Is he running?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Hogan ruled himself out of the GOP race on March 5, saying he was worried it would help Trump win the nomination, but he is now rumored as a potential No Labels candidate, even though such a run might hand the presidency to … Trump.

Why does he want to run?
Hogan has argued that his experience of governing a very blue state as a Republican is a model: “We’ve been really successful outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction.”

Who wants him to run?
Dead-ender centrists.

Could he win the nomination?
No.

(John Locher / AP) Chris Sununu

Who is he?
The governor of New Hampshire, he’s the little brother of former Senator John E. Sununu and the son of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

Is he running?
No. On June 5, after weighing a campaign, he announced he would not run. Warning about the dangers of a Trump reprise, he said, “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working.” Points for taking his own advice!

Why did he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and saw his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism. He is also a prominent Trump critic.

Who wanted him to run?
Trump-skeptical Republicans, old-school conservatives.

Could he have won the nomination?
No.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Mike Pompeo

Who is he?
Pompeo, a former member of Congress, led the CIA and was secretary of state under Trump.

Is he running?
No. On April 14, Pompeo announced he wasn’t running. “This is not that time or that moment for me to seek elected office again,” he said.

Why did he want to run?
Pompeo has always been ambitious, and he seems to think he can combine MAGA proximity with a hawkish foreign-policy approach.

Who wanted him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.

Could he have won the nomination?
Maybe, but probably not.

(Misha Friedman / Getty) Glenn Youngkin

Who is he?
Youngkin, the former CEO of the private-equity Carlyle Group, was elected governor of Virginia in 2021.

Is he running?
Probably not. He said on May 1 that he wasn’t running “this year.” But he seems to be rethinking that as Ron DeSantis’s campaign sputters.

Why does he want to run?
Youngkin is a bit of a cipher; he ran largely on education issues, and has sought to tighten abortion laws in Virginia, so far to no avail.

Who wants him to run?
Rupert Murdoch, reportedly.

Can he win the nomination?
Certainly not if he isn’t running.

(Sam Wolfe / Bloomberg / Getty) Mike Rogers

Who is he?
Rogers is a congressman from Alabam—wait, no, sorry, that’s the other Representative Mike Rogers. This one is from Michigan and retired in 2015. He was previously an FBI agent and was head of the Intelligence Committee while on Capitol Hill.

Is he running?
No. He thought about it but announced in late August that he will run for U.S. Senate instead.

Why did he want to run?
He laid out some unassailably broad ideas for a campaign in an interview with Fox News, including a focus on innovation and civic education, but it’s hard to tell what exactly the goal is here. “This is not a vanity project for me,” he added, which, okay, sure.

Who wanted him to run?
It’s not clear that anyone even noticed he was running.

Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Larry Elder

Who is he?
A longtime conservative radio host and columnist, he ran as a Republican in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Is he running?
Allegedly, yes. He announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on April 20. He’s barely been heard from since.

Why does he want to run?
Glad you asked! “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable,” he tweeted. “We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President.” We don’t have any idea what that means either.

Who wants him to run?
Impossible to say at this stage, but deep-blue California is a tough launching pad for any conservative, especially an unseasoned candidate. This recall campaign also dredged up various unflattering information about his past.

Can he win the nomination?
Having missed out on the first debate, any hope Elder had is gone.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Rick Perry

Who is he?
Perry was a three-term governor of Texas before serving as energy secretary under Donald Trump. He’s also run for president three times: in 2012, 2016, and … I forget the third one. Oops.

Is he running?
Oh, right! The third one is 2024, maybe. He told CNN in May that he’s considering a run. Nothing’s been heard since.

Why does he want to run?
He didn’t say, but he’s struggled to articulate much of a compelling case to Republican voters beyond the fact that he’s from Texas, he looks good in a suit, and he wants to be president, gosh darn it.

Who wants him to run?
Probably no one. As Mike Pompeo already discovered, there’s not much of a market for a run-of-the-mill former Trump Cabinet member in the primary—especially one who had such a forgettable turn as secretary, mostly remembered for being dragged peripherally into both the first Trump impeachment and election subversion.

Can he win the nomination?
The third time would not be a charm.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Rick Scott

Who is he?
Before his current gig as a U.S. senator from Florida, Scott was governor and chief executive of a health-care company that committed massive Medicare fraud.

Is he running?
The New York Times says he’s considering it, though an aide said Scott is running for reelection to the Senate. He’d be the fourth Floridian in the race.

Why does he want to run?
A Scott campaign would raise a fascinating question: What if you took Trump’s pose and ideology, but removed all the charisma and, instead of promising to protect popular entitlement programs, aimed to demolish them?

Who wants him to run?
Not Mitch McConnell.

Can he win the nomination?
lol

DEMOCRATS (Joshua Roberts / Getty) Joe Biden

Who is he?
After decades of trying, Biden is the president of the United States.

Is he running?
Yes. Biden formally announced his run on April 25.

Why does he want to run?
Biden’s slogan is apparently “Let’s finish the job.” He centered his launch video on the theme of freedom, but underlying all of this is his apparent belief that he may be the only person who can defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup.

[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

Who wants him to run?
There’s the catch. Some prominent Democrats support his bid for a second term, but voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t want him to run again.

Can he win the nomination?
Barring unforeseen catastrophe, yes. No incumbent president has lost the nomination in the modern era, and Biden has pushed through changes to the Democratic-primary process that make him an even more prohibitive favorite.

What else do we know?
Biden is already the oldest person to be elected president and to serve as president, so a second term would set more records.

(Bill Clark / Getty) Dean Phillips

Who is he?
Phillips, a mildly unorthodox and interesting figure, is a Minnesota moderate serving his third term in the House.

Is he running?
Probably not. In an August 21 interview, he said he was unlikely to run, but would encourage other Democrats to do so. He had said in July that he was considering it.

Why does he want to run?
Phillips, who at 54 passes for young in politics, has been publicly critical of superannuated Democrats sticking around too long, and he says Biden is too old to run again.

Who wants him to run?
Although it’s true that many Democrats think Biden is too old, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to do anything about it—or that Phillips is the man they want to replace him. Although Phillips claims he has “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement,” this looks more like a messaging move than a serious sprint at the moment.

Can he win the nomination?
Not in 2024.

What else do we know?
His grandmother was “Dear Abby.”

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Kamala Harris

Who is she?
Harris is the vice president of the United States.

Is she running?
No, but if Biden were to bow out, she’d be the immediate favorite.

Why does she want to run?
One problem with her 2020 presidential campaign was the lack of a clear answer to this question. Perhaps running on the Biden-Harris legacy would help fill in the blank.

Who wants her to run?
Some Democrats are excited about the prospect of nominating a woman of color, but generally Harris’s struggles as a candidate and in defining a role for herself (in the admittedly impossible position of VP) have resulted in nervousness about her as a standard-bearer.

Can she win the nomination?
Not right now.

(Matthew Cavanaugh / Getty) Pete Buttigieg

Who is he?
Mayor Pete is Secretary Pete now, overseeing the Department of Transportation.

Is he running?
No, but he would also be a likely candidate if Biden stepped away.

Why does he want to run?
Just as he was four years ago, Buttigieg is a young, ambitious politician with a moderate, technocratic vision of government.

Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg’s fans are passionate, and Biden showed that moderates remain a force in the party.

Can he win the nomination?
Not at this moment.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Bernie Sanders

Who is he?
The senator from Vermont is changeless, ageless, ever the same.

Is he running?
No, but if Biden dropped out, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t seriously consider another go. A top adviser even says so.

Why does he want to run?
Sanders still wants to tax billionaires, level the economic playing field, and push a left-wing platform.

Who wants him to run?
Sanders continues to have the strong support of a large portion of the Democratic electorate, especially younger voters.

Can he win the nomination?
Two consecutive tries have shown that he’s formidable, but can’t close. Maybe the third time’s the charm?

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Gretchen Whitmer

Who is she?
Whitmer cruised to a second term as governor of Michigan in 2022.

Is she running?
No.

Why would she want to run?
It’s a little early to know, but her reelection campaign focused on abortion rights.

Who wants her to run?
Whitmer would check a lot of boxes for Democrats. She’s a fresh face, she’s a woman, and she’s proved she can win in the upper Midwest against a MAGA candidate.

Can she win the nomination?
Not if she isn’t running.

(Lucas Jackson / Reuters) Marianne Williamson

Who is she?
If you don’t know Williamson from her popular writing on spirituality, then you surely remember her somewhat woo-woo Democratic bid in 2020.

Is she running?
Yes. Williamson announced her campaign on March 4 in D.C.

Why does she want to run?
“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” she said at her campaign launch. She has also said that she wants to give voters a choice. “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’ My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”

Who wants her to run?
Williamson has her fans, but she doesn’t have a clear political constituency. Also, her campaign is perpetually falling part.

Can she win the nomination?
Nah.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) J. B. Pritzker

Who is he?
The governor of Illinois is both a scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”

Is he running?
No.

Why does he want to run?
After years of unfulfilled interest in elected office, Pritzker has established himself as a muscular proponent of progressivism in a Democratic stronghold.

Who wants him to run?
Improbably for a billionaire, Pritzker has become a darling of the Sanders-style left, as well as a memelord.

Can he win the nomination?
Not now.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who is he?
The son of a presidential candidate, the nephew of another, and the nephew of a president, Kennedy is a longtime environmental activist and also a chronic crank.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run on April 19.

Why does he want to run?
Running for president is a family tradition—hell, he wouldn’t even be the first Kennedy to primary a sitting Democrat. He’s running a campaign arranged around his esoteric combination of left-wing interests (the environment, drug prices) and right-wing causes (vaccine skepticism, anger about social-media “deplatforming”), but tending toward extremely dark places.

Who wants him to run?
Despite his bizarre beliefs, he’s polling in double digits against Biden—though as he has gotten deeper into anti-Semitism and conspiracies, Semafor has deemed his boomlet over.

Can he win the nomination?
Not the Democratic one.

THIRD-PARTY AND INDEPENDENT (Tom Williams / Getty) Joe Manchin

Who is he?
A Democratic U.S. senator and former governor of West Virginia, he was the pivotal centrist vote for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term. I’ve described him as “a middle-of-the-road guy with good electoral instincts, decent intentions, and bad ideas.”

Is he running?
It’s very hard to tell how serious he is. He has visited Iowa, and is being courted by No Labels, the nonpartisan centrist organization, to carry its banner. He’s shown no signs of running, and would stand no chance, in the Democratic primary.

Why does he want to run?
Manchin would arguably have less power as a third-party president than he does as a crucial swing senator, but he faces perhaps the hardest reelection campaign of his life in 2024, as the last Democrat standing in a now solidly Republican state. He also periodically seems personally piqued at Biden and the Democrats over slights perceived or real.

Who wants him to run?
No Labels would love to have someone like him, a high-profile figure who’s willing to buck his party and has policies that would appeal to voters from either party. It’s hard to imagine he’d have much of an organic base of support, but Democrats are terrified he’d siphon off enough votes to hand Trump or another Republican the win in a three-way race.

Can he win?
“Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in April. If that is true, do not expect to see him in the presidential race.

(Frederick M. Brown / Getty) Cornel West

Who is he?
West is a philosopher, a theologian, a professor, a preacher, a gadfly, a progressive activist, an actor, a spoken-word recording-artist, an author … and we’re probably missing a few.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on the People’s Party ticket on June 5.

Why does he want to run?
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement video. West is a fierce leftist who has described Trump as a “neo-fascist” and Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal.”

Who wants him to run?
West was a high-profile backer of Bernie Sanders, and it’s easy to imagine him winning over some of Sanders’s fervent fans. The People’s Party is relatively new and unproven, and doesn’t have much of a base of its own.

Can he win?
Let’s hear from Brother West: “Do we have what it takes? We shall see,” he said. “But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.” Sounds like a no, but it should be a lively, entertaining campaign.

In 2020, a man from West Virginia decided not to cancel his Thanksgiving plans, even though the coronavirus pandemic was in one of its deadliest seasons in the United States. On Facebook, he’d written something vague about not buying into the media’s “narrative.” A year later, just before Christmas, his wife was dead from COVID-19. He posted again on Facebook, asking for prayers for his children as they faced a sad holiday without their mom.

At this point, someone, maybe one of the man’s friends, took screenshots of the posts about these two events and submitted them to the “Herman Cain Award” Facebook page, where an administrator shared them and linked to the man’s profile. “Comments are open [and] his page is mostly public …” someone wrote. This meant that the man could be targeted by the group’s members, who dedicate themselves—along with their compatriots on a Reddit forum with the same name—to lambasting “COVIDIOTS,” people who died of COVID-19 after denying its existence or downplaying its potential harms. The “award” was named for the Tea Party personality Herman Cain, who was such a person.

Members of this group have spent their time visiting pages for the deceased and writing things like “Another one bites the dust!” and “nAtUrAl ImMuNiTy,” or posting a bunch of laughing emoji or a meme of Yoda saying “Around, he fucked. Find out, he did.” One guy replies to old comments from friends and family members of the deceased and says, “You did not pray hard enough. He’s dead. Why didn’t you pray harder?” or “You sent only three pairs of praying hands. Jesus counts them on Facebook. other people sent four pairs.” Maybe it’s shocking to see comments like that, or maybe you’ve seen them all before. If you’ve spent any substantial amount of time on the internet in the past three years, avoiding them entirely would be difficult—a fact that is shocking in itself.

[From the September 2023 issue: How America got mean]

Some of the Facebook page’s more active users keep a Google Doc listing every profile that’s been shared since September 2021. It reached its 3,595th, and possibly final, addition in May of this year—nothing has been added since. “It’s becoming harder and harder to find people to feature,” Rick Salvatoriello, who once frequented the “Herman Cain Award” page, explained to me. “Maybe that means they’re all dead. Maybe that means that word’s got out that if you’re going to put this stuff online, people are going to find you and you’re going to have to deal with them. I don’t know.”

Even if the Herman Cain Award is truly done—fizzling out the same month that the World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID emergency—its spirit will linger on the internet. More than three years after the pandemic started, we’re left with the fact of these bizarre online spaces and their creepy rituals: a social-media page like “Herman Cain Award,” or the #DiedSuddenly hashtag, which conspiracy theorists use to warp family tragedies into “evidence” against the vaccines, or a library of viral videos of people melting down over their disagreements. As angry as the social-media discourse was at the start of the pandemic, the post-vaccine conversation might be even worse—a mess of internet-enabled political schadenfreude, which surely won’t be eased by the latest spike in coronavirus cases or the beginnings of another contentious presidential-election cycle. To really understand how this kind of behavior became common on mainstream platforms—not in the dark recesses of the web, but among your friends on Facebook—you have to speak to the people engaging in it.

After the journalist Billy Ball’s 6-year-old son died in January, the result of a cerebral-swelling condition, he wrote in this magazine, “My grief is profound, ragged, desperate. I cannot imagine how anything could feel worse.” In his essay, he described how the pain of this loss had been compounded by the arrival—on social media, via email, in the comments section beneath a link to his child’s online obituary—of anti-vaccine activists who insisted, with no evidence, obviously, that Ball’s child must have died because he’d been given the COVID-19 shot. Some trolled with animated GIFs (of Bill Gates clapping and smiling, for example). Others seemed enraged. “It isn’t cruel to state the obvious,” one wrote. “What’s cruel is to continue to promote a jab that has killed so many knowing that your own child died from it.” Ball was forced to wonder why so many people on the internet would write to him to tell him that he had murdered his child. Even if they were confused enough to think it, who could imagine saying it?

Most of this harassment happened on Twitter, after Elon Musk took over and expressed a commitment to “free speech” but before it became X, and much of it is still easily searchable and readable months later. There are hundreds of posts there, and more on Facebook. Some of them are delusional and apparently serious—written by people who genuinely believe that giving your child a vaccine makes you a “sick psychopath” who will one day “have to answer to God.” Many users posted under their real, full name, next to a picture of their face, complicating the easy narrative that the anonymity of the internet is what makes such behavior possible.

[Read: Andrew Tate is haunting YouTube]

When I wrote to some of the people who had harassed Billy Ball and other grieving parents earlier this year, some of them, as could be expected, didn’t want to discuss anything with me. But many of them did agree to talk. Luke Portell, a man I wrote to on Facebook, was a bit surprised that I would ask him about posts he’d made, when he felt his motivations were obvious. He defended a sarcastic tweet that he had posted when Representative Sean Casten’s teenage daughter died of a cardiac arrhythmia at the end of last year. Portell felt that the death was probably caused by the vaccine. And Casten’s office had been active in encouraging Illinoisans to get vaccinated as soon as possible. “The whole point of me tweeting that was because the vaccines don’t work,” Portell said in a phone call. “You don’t need to believe everything the government tells you. It’s that simple.” Dalton Stokes, the owner of a flooring company in Alaska, yelled at me on the phone for several minutes, arguing that anything he’d done had been done to punish the liberal elite, a group who deserved it. “I want them to hurt a little bit, because they wanted us in jail because we wouldn’t put a mask on,” he told me. He said he didn’t care if this was cruel and that I was probably going to die in an impending civil war.

Then I spoke with Julie Collins, an artist based in Mississippi, who was not a particularly savvy social-media user. She had no idea how one of Ball’s tweets about his son’s death had come across her feed in the first place. And she said she didn’t realize that a tweet she had posted in response—about how those “complicit” in the distribution of the vaccine were responsible for war crimes—looked like part of the pile-on. Her intention, she explained, was to critique the powers that be and to take some of the heat off of Ball’s personal decisions. “He looks like a nice father and this must be a terrible situation for him,” she said. “You’re right; it’s just awful.”

Her surprise underscored something important. While Billy Ball’s story ending up in her feed may have seemed like an accident, it wasn’t. The story was placed there because of the inscrutable machinations of a recommendation algorithm that was trying to guess at what Collins would engage with. It was also amplified by an aggressive anti-vaccine faction that is alert to all kinds of stories of unexpected death—whether on social media or in news reports—and draws special attention to those that come with compelling, exploitable details. These people had particular success with targeting Ball because he’s a journalist (“part of the establishment media,” as Collins put it to me), and apparently a liberal. He had also posted quite frequently in 2021 about the COVID vaccines and expressed his excitement about getting vaccinated. He later mentioned that he’d offered his kids candy after they put on brave faces for their shots. With some retooling, these posts were framed as ominous and damning (or, to the worst trolls, hilarious): The candy became a “bribe,” the excitement about vaccination became “bragging.” His essay for The Atlantic was reframed as “playing the victim.” In this way, like the father whose children lost their mother before Christmas, Billy became less person than trope: Smug liberal. Media elite. And the people who came after him were able to convince themselves that they were doing something defensible—even important.

Research has established that groups in direct opposition to each other are apt to take joy in the suffering of the other side. More recently, social scientists have tested whether this impulse is one of the motivations for online trolling. In 2021, Pamela Brubaker, an associate professor at Brigham Young University, published a paper that identified common motivations among trolls that she and her colleagues had surveyed via Reddit. They found that schadenfreude—or the desire to watch bad things happen to people you dislike—was a powerful predictor of trolling behavior. The people who were motivated by schadenfreude were also likely to think of trolling as justifiable and even productive. “Most of those people actually thought that trolling played some type of functional role in online discourse,” Brubaker told me. They think it’s important to disrupt the conversation by poking holes in arguments or poking fun at others, and they also demonstrate a narcissistic fixation on their own viewpoints and the importance of expressing them. “They’re not thinking about other people. In fact, they may have gone so far as to dehumanize others,” she said. “They’re being selfish … That’s kind of what it boils down to for me.”

The phenomenon of dehumanizing partisan “others” certainly didn’t begin with the internet—it has long been one of the social conditions that precedes political violence. But, at least in the United States, social media became a daily part of most people’s lives during a decade that also saw the gap between the two major parties widen, as ideological differences became more stark and various signifiers became more highly visible and well-known (the MAGA hat, the In This House yard sign).

[Read: Doxxing means whatever you want it to]

As much talk as there has been about whether or not social media has caused political polarization by steering people in certain directions and amplifying certain information with out-of-control algorithms (an assumption that recent scientific research calls into question), it’s useful to remember that even the most basic features of a social website are conducive to the behavior we’re talking about. Though Twitter’s new moderation-adverse management is obviously not helping matters, and Facebook has been far from perfect in its efforts to dissuade harassment, social media is meant for displaying your allegiances and affinities so that people get a rough sense of who you are just by glancing at your profile. If there’s a Ukrainian-flag emoji in her username, she’s a Democrat. He mentioned “the elite” because he is a conspiracy theorist. And from there, depending on what else is going on, maybe it’s also easy enough to say who is good and deserves to let off steam and who is bad and deserves to die.

I first spoke with Salvatoriello in April, after I came across numerous memes he’d posted on the Facebook pages of people who had recently died of COVID-19 (for instance, one in which a cartoon girl says “You can’t fix stupid” and then a cartoon coronavirus says “I can fix stupid”). At the time, he was checking the “Herman Cain Award” page two or three times each day. “For a lot of us, the Herman Cain Awards are very therapeutic,” he told me. He had developed a clear image in his mind of the type of person who was subject to the group’s ridicule.“They are almost universally white, Republican,” he said. “The men have goatees and are hunters and/or motorcycle drivers.” Some of them made racist or homophobic posts in the past, which makes them particularly villainous, but that’s not a requirement for someone to be featured. “If you’re anti-vax, then you’re fair game.”

This dry, almost pedantic expression of what’s fair or deserved was present on the other side as well. When I spoke with a writer named Jennifer Margulis, who had posted a picture of Ball’s son with screenshots of Ball’s tweets about vaccinating his children edited on top of it, she said she’d found the image on Facebook and didn’t have many qualms about sharing it. “You can make the argument—and I think it’s very valid and you might make it in your article—that it’s not fair to speculate about what caused someone’s death,” she told me. But she didn’t feel this way. While she said she didn’t agree with heaping blame on Ball, she was able to split hairs and stand by her post. “I think showing a temporal relationship between two things, which is what I did in that tweet, is appropriate.”

[Read: What if Rumble is the future of the social web?]

This logic—by which a person can treat everyone around them as so many bits of evidence in some grand conflict—is more characteristic of online life than offline life. But that doesn’t mean that it’s as simple as blaming social media or the algorithm or even the posters and influencer-hustlers who stir up trouble. Americans make choices when they put themselves in spaces that encourage that line of thinking. They can choose to spend their time in other ways.  

When I spoke with Salvatoriello for a second interview, in July, he said he was no longer checking the “Herman Cain Award” page quite so often. He’d cut back to just a couple of glances a week. “You can’t really sustain that level of frustration and angst and anxiety and maintain a healthy spirit,” he said. “A better therapy is to just not be on social media at all.”