In his closing statement, Joe Biden told people watching the Democratic debate on Wednesday night to “go to Joe30330.” He bungled his words. Biden meant to tell viewers to text “Joe” to 30330.

Thousands of people visited Joe30330.com. For the first minutes of the website’s existence, it redirected to the campaign website of Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. Some jumped to the conclusion that Buttigieg’s campaign purchased the site as a snub against Biden.

In the next few minutes, Joe30330.com redirected to JoshForAmerica.com. At first glance, the site appears to be a presidential campaign website. “As the first Gen Z’er to declare candidacy for this office, you can trust that I’m the real deal,” the website reads.

It was all satire. Josh Fayer, a senior public relations major at Syracuse University, owns JoshForAmerica. Fayer is 21 years old, far from the 35 years required to run for president. At 37, Buttigieg is the youngest candidate in the race. 

Hey look ma, I made it. https://t.co/pvboPi4RIw

— Joshua Fayer (@joshuafayer) August 1, 2019

Fayer told The Daily Orange that his friend purchased the website domain about 70 seconds after Biden’s gaffe, beating others who also hoped to own the joke. The redirect to Buttigieg’s campaign wasn’t an endorsement of the mayor’s presidential bid. Instead, it was part of the website’s original purpose: a fake presidential campaign. 

He came up with the idea of creating a fake campaign while sitting in class on April Fools’ Day earlier this year. He created social media posts and a campaign video that gave it the semblance of a real campaign. Then the page was left dormant until Wednesday night. 

Fayer and his friend didn’t want to give the impression they were affiliated with Buttigieg’s campaign, so they quickly changed it. About 6,000 people visited Joe30330.com within the short time it redirected to the Buttigieg campaign’s website, he said.

After Fayer and his friend redirected the site to his fake campaign page, about a half hour passed before he got his first media inquiry from USA Today. 

CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe asked Biden on Thursday if there was anything he would like to change about his debate performance. “Instead of saying ‘Joe,’ I would have said ‘text,’” Biden said. “I was so focused on making the case for Joe, I said ‘Joe’ and I gave the number.”

But replacing “Joe” with “text” would have made Biden’s sentence just as confusing: “Go to text 30330 and help me in this fight.”

Let me be clear on this: the only joke here is a constitutional provision preventing me from becoming president for another 14 years.

— Joshua Fayer (@joshuafayer) August 1, 2019

Going into Thursday, Fayer has received many interview requests, including for a radio show. His friends have sent him links to stories from all over the world about Joe30330, even from German and Irish publications. Fayer and his friend knew the joke would get attention, but didn’t expect it to become “massive,” he said. 

“One of the things that blew my mind is seeing that some of the news agencies had reached out to Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg’s campaigns,” Fayer said. “Just the concept of something I did, making someone working for a political campaign do work. It was shocking.”

Fayer has engaged with people tweeting about his campaign. Some said he should be a write-in candidate on the ballot for the 2020 election. One person wrongly concluded Joe30330.com had been hacked. Fayer replied that “the only joke here” is that the Constitution blocks him from running for president at 21. That, too, was satirical, he said.

Asked if he thought his stunt would help his job prospects, Fayer said, “Well, fingers crossed, I suppose.”

Published on August 1, 2019 at 9:06 pm

Contact Casey: casey@dailyorange.com | @caseydarnell_