Biden campaign faces a mind-boggling challenge: How to make Joe go viral

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How does a campaign take a 77-year-old man — who admits he needs his granddaughter's help with his cell phone and pitches himself as sober and reasonable — and make him go viral?

That perplexing challenge has become a consuming focus of Joe Biden’s campaign as it tries to finally up its digital game to compete against a challenger who not only understands intuitively how to generate clicks and buzz — but boasts a massive and sophisticated digital operation to amplify his message.

So far, Biden’s paltry digital team of about 25 people has decided to mostly eschew the combative fare preferred by the president’s campaign in favor of uplifting content designed to inspire. The rub, as no one understands better than Trump, is that the social media platforms — and the algorithms that power them — reward bombast and conflict. Amid the collage of newly published saccharine videos posted on Biden’s Facebook page, it’s the Trump-bashing ones that usually have the most views.

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But Biden's campaign is betting that its strategy — which reminds one of Upworthy, the go-to site for feel-good news — has the benefit of being true to Biden and more effective in creating a core of enthusiastic supporters online.

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