Data centers are in the midterm meme spotlight as posters joke about turning them into daycares and community colleges

· Business Insider

Data-center memes spread across X after Democrats’ midterm wins, as the industry faces growing political opposition.

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  • X users joked about slowing the AI boom and converting data centers after the Democrats' midterm wins.
  • Users suggested turning them into community colleges, daycares, and homeless shelters.
  • The Democrats are generally less in favor of data centers, which were a key ballot issue in many states.

After Democrats' midterm wins, data-center memes spread across X as users joked that the buildings powering the AI boom could face a tougher political climate.

Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, while candidates who called for tighter rules on data centers won several governors' races.

Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms called for a statewide pause on new development, while Texas’s Gina Hinojosa campaigned against the rapid expansion of data centers.

Ohio’s Amy Acton backed a conditional moratorium that would require developers to meet standards, including covering their own utility costs.

The world's richest man, Elon Musk, was among those posting about the results. "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now," he wrote on X.

Musk has skin in the game: he spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing Republican candidates in the midterms, and his company, SpaceX, has been pursuing plans to put AI data centers in orbit since 2025.

Musk's sentiment was echoed by others, with Musk commentator Sawyer Merritt saying he was: "Bullish on data centers in space."

Lihong Wang, founder and CEO of investing app Freeport, also weighed in, suggesting some already constructed terrestrial data centers could become homeless shelters.

Other posters used the blue wave to imagine different new futures for data centers, many jokingly referring to anti-immigration and anti-Islamic sentiment expressed by some Republican candidates.

One user, for example, joked that data centers could become mosques.

Other users suggested community colleges.

Or daycares.

Some jokes cast the facilities' computing equipment as public property, with posts telling people to claim their GPUs.

Investor Justine Moore, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joked that it was time to pivot to "Woke 3.0," alongside an image of a flag declaring, "NO DATA CENTER IS ILLEGAL ON STOLEN LAND," a reference to a popular meme format.

Another user suggested that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch advocate of data centers who has criticized voters who oppose them, should be made to live in one.

An October Heatmap Pro poll found that 71% of registered voters would oppose a data center being built near where they live.

The prospect of higher power or water bills was the most common reason respondents gave for opposing a project, while transparency and environmental harm were also concerns.

The opposition also appeared on the ballots: voters in at least 14 Ohio municipalities approved bans or other restrictions on data centers.

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