"The intentionally repulsive color won over the internet, and then the summer, and then, at a pivotal moment, an entire presidential campaign."

"In a few short days, supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, memed chartreuse into an unusually potent political symbol.... 'I will aspire to be Brat,' Jake Tapper said on CNN to one of his correspondents, who had been holding up a slime-green meme printed out on a sheet of paper."

From "You Can’t Escape This Color/'This is not millennial pink. The energy behind it is alive'" (NYT)(free-access link).

I used the last of this month's NYT gift link allowance on that article. Why? Because I knew it was hard to understand without more explanation, but I didn't want to do the explanation.

And you'll need to go over there anyway to see the particular green in question. It's a color that's connected to this word "brat," which reminds me of a word from many years ago when I was a teenager: "groovy." It was new and cool and precisely expressive of youth for a very short time before it got seized upon by everyone old and it became embarrassing. 

From the golden moment before the collapse of "groovy":

Once the TV talking heads and political candidates start using your word, they've stolen it from you. You have to move on or use it ironically or do whatever it is you kids do today when the adults are annoying you. 

As for you political candidates, be careful using the word "brat" in Wisconsin. I remember when John Kerry screwed up.