Is Infrastructure

About

Is Infrastructure is a phrasal template based on a tweet by United States President Joe Biden. The initial tweet was made in reference to President Biden's proposed infrastructure financing, but soon inspired other to share nonsensical and absurd subjects that they humorously refer to as "infrastructure."

Origin

On April 5th, 2021, President Biden tweeted,^[1] "Broadband is infrastructure." The tweet received more than 162,000 likes and 20,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below). The tweet references Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which he announced the week prior.^[2]

Spread

Over the next week, President Biden's political allies and other Democratic politicians posting other areas in need of public funding, which they hope to be covered under the proposed plan. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted,^[3] "Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure." The tweet received more than 17,000 likes and 7,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below, left).

Conservative politicians refuted this proposal. Republican Senator Ted Cruz tweeted,^[4] "Abortion is infrastructure. Gun control is infrastructure. Forced unionization is infrastructure. Whatever the Left wants is infrastructure. You know what’s not? Roads & bridges. ONLY 5% OF BIDEN’s 'INFRASTRUCTURE' BILL IS ROADS & BRIDGES." The tweet received more than 14,000 likes and 4,300 retweets in less than two days (shown below, right).

The promotion of the format from well-known politicians inspired people on Twitter to parody the campaign. Many began adding nonsequiturs to the [X] Is Infrastructure snowclone. Twitter^[5] user @terryschappert tweeted a picture of a dog and wrote, "Larry is infrastructure!" The tweet received more than 1,300 likes in less than two days (shown below).

Several media outlets covered the campaign, including StayHipp,^[6] Yahoo,^[7] CNN,^[8] New York Post,^[9] NBC^[10] and more.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References