Daniel Lurie simply cannot stop posting.
A week ago, our mayor (or, more likely, his team, but for convenience sake, let's just say our mayor) was boasting incorrectly that the first Pop Mart in San Francisco had just touched down for Labubu stans; on Monday, Lurie staged a video-op with Jimmy Butler at the Warriors star’s new coffee shop at the old Lucca spot. Both posts have gone uber-viral on Instagram and TikTok; neither is about anything of consequence during this very consequential time in the city.
What Lurie has not posted about once is the biggest thing that matters to San Francisco right now: The interminable, despicable ICE grabs taking place minutes from City Hall or the recent revelation that San Francisco police illegally provided license plate data to ICE. To be fair, he’s certainly been busy with the city budget, among other things, but he’s posting like he has some free time. He’s posting about tap water!
Lurie’s silence on the ICE invasion of his city is damning. It’s also depressing. (Lurie's office did not respond to a list of questions from Gazetteer SF, including a question about criticism regarding his non-statements on ICE, by publication.)
Rather than show some public backbone against ICE, Lurie is posting like someone who just found out about getting TikTok famous in the year of our lord 2025. The mayor is chasing micro-trends and linking up with celebrities. He is not posting anything of value, which is fine for an influencer with a six-figure follower count, but totally not fine for the mayor of a major metropolitan city in a time of crisis. Already, he has a sports podcaster in his comments asking him if he wants to collab.
He’s not to blame for being on social media. At this point, it’s standard practice for any politician. Lurie’s team sets the narrative — that San Francisco is so back — without having to involve the meddling local press and the doom loop-hungry national media. A social media presence can help to bolster political messaging when done correctly. On the other side of the country, Zohran Mamdani has shown the powers of social media to mobilize thousands of young people, so much so that he’s totally freaked out the Democratic establishment here and in DC.
But a key tenet of influencerdom is that you have to read the room. When the ICE raids in Los Angeles crested, run-of-the-mill LA microcelebs were getting pilloried online for failing to speak out. These were people who had benefitted from moving to the city, who had gained clout by being there, online critics argued. Why not use your influence to condemn the people kidnapping your neighbors? With great follower count comes great responsibility.
If influencers are now expected to opine about the ICE raids, the bare minimum is that electeds who are active on socials should be required to post something, anything about them. It’s a bit embarrassing for Lurie that a local influencer like Mario Riveira, the man-on-the-street interviewer who asks folks on Market Street and at Giants games to do their best “ho-yeah,” has done more to condemn ICE and offer resources than our own mayor.
When I’ve seen Lurie’s posts lately, I often think about another sitting mayor who’s constantly sharing content: Eric Adams. This is a man who gets rightfully clowned on the regular for seeking virality and being a celebrity hanger-on, a man who caught heat for doing an interview with Kai Cenat, the second-biggest Twitch streamer in the world. This is the man who tried to record his morning routine, seemingly in response to that viral morning routine, and got clocked for it. Eric Adams, when he wasn’t lying about where he lived or being a true friend to Turkey, pretty much invented being a mayor who chases micro-trends and links up with celebrities. Not exactly the kind of role model a newbie politician should follow.
