When his official portrait was released last month, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) experienced a routine Senate rite of passage.
But Ossoffâs legions of online fans, who had been anticipating the portrait for months, experienced something elseâa heady mix of emotions expressed through emojis with bulging heart eyes, the eggplant emoji, and the meme of Leonardo DiCaprioâs character in The Wolf of Wall Street biting his fist.
In the over-the-top worship of the 33-year old senator from Georgia, some observers might see proof of an online fan culture run amok. But a crew of progressive digital organizers sees something different: a bunch of easy marks.
Enter the âOssimp Patrolââa portmanteau of the senatorâs name and a popular slang term for effusive online adorationâa group of very online, mostly Gen Zers who have spent the last year turning an abundant quantity of online Ossoff thirst into campaign cash for Democrats.
Whenever someone offends, a few accounts are quick to respond to them directly with a link to a page on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue that functions like an online swear jarâif the offense were instead letting slip a few too many sexually suggestive emojis and GIFs in response to a tweet about Ossoff.
The revenue collected from that ActBlue pageâwhat organizers call the âbonk taxââis currently being directed to the campaign of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and organizations supporting voter registration and outreach in Georgia and Texas. While Ossoff is not up for re-election until 2026, Warnock faces Georgia voters again in November 2022, and his defeat could be a fatal blow to Democratsâ thin and hard-won majority in the Senate.

The organizer behind the main Ossimp Patrol Twitter account is pretty much who youâd expect it to be: an 18-year old U.C. Berkeley student. She declined to give her name for privacy reasons, but she said a similar effort to tap Ossoff superfans through guerrilla fundraising tactics yielded six-figure sums for the candidates during the 2020 runoffs.
âThe bonk tax is really effective for small dollar donations,â she explained to The Daily Beast over Twitter direct message.
The persistence of this effort after Ossoff and Warnockâs victories is a testament to the urgency that many Democrats feel to maintain their majorities in Congress, particularly after the events of Jan. 6.âand, yes, probably to the fact that there continues to be a bunch of people who find the nerd-chic senator attractive and are somewhat guilty about it.
The post-January feeling, said the Berkeley student spamming thirsty Ossoff fans, was âmore like, âWow, we were able to do that, we should do it again to protect our democracy.ââ
Ossoff himself seems puzzled by the whole phenomenon. On a recent day on Capitol Hill, The Daily Beast showed the senator the ActBlue page and the âYouâve been Ossimpedâ meme that accompanies it.
He paused for a moment, furrowed his brow, and said he didnât know anything about the effortâthough he did allude to the âgreat communityâ that had supported his 2020 campaign.
âThank you,â Ossoff told The Daily Beast, âfor bringing this to my attention.â
While the online fan community around the first millennial senator has clearly evolved in ways he did not anticipate, it is true that his especially savvy social media operation has allowed that culture to flourish.
In 2020, for example, Ossoff proved to be one of the first candidates anywhere to effectively use the video-sharing platform TikTok as a tool to reach younger voters. He managed to find a sweet spot of authenticity, with his videos surfing the platformâs meme of the month for surprisingly non-cringey videos that got his name out and, maybe, got the vote out. He currently has half a million followers.
In turn, Ossoffâs own presence on TikTok fueled a vibrant subculture around him on the platform, where videos set to pop music of Ossoff milling around on the Senate floor routinely draw 200,000 likes.
The organizers behind the Ossimp Patrol campaign lament that they canât bring their appeals to TikTok ahead of the 2022 election, due to the platformâs restrictions on link-sharing. Their current fundraising isnât what it was ahead of the runoffs, which is understandable, given that small donors nationwide forked over hundreds of millions of dollars to the Georgia Democrats during the two-month sprint. But people are still giving, and Warnockâs campaign posted a remarkable $6 million haul during the first three months of 2021.
The Berkeley student behind the effort said the crew of five to 10 people on Ossimp Patrol had full plans to bring the band back together as the 2022 race heats upâthey had dozens more during the runoffâand with no judgement towards those spending their time on Twitter swooning over Ossoffâs every move.
âPeople Ossimp freely,â she said, âbut since this is America, there is a bonk tax associated with it.â