Either Fake or Being Paid

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: "Either Fake or Being Paid"

Date: September 10, 2025
Host: iHeartPodcasts
Co-hosts: Armstrong & Getty

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Armstrong & Getty take a deep and often humorous dive into the changing landscape of influence on social media—particularly focusing on how AI-generated influencers are overtaking real people and exposing the shadowy, often paid underbelly of political and cultural influence across platforms. The hosts grapple with issues of authenticity, manipulation, and the philosophical implications of who shapes our opinions online.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

The Unbearable Stickiness of Being

• [01:15-03:27]
  • Getty shares his strong dislike for stickiness after eating a caramel bread treat:

    "Everybody's picking them out of there with their fingers and you get caramel on your fingers and my hands are sticky and I can't get rid of it. Sticky." — Getty [01:29]

  • Armstrong relates, telling a golf story about sticky steering wheels and how universally appalling the sensation is:

    "He's appalled. It's not like, oh, that's weird. It's wet. No, it's like, oh my God, why is it sticky?" — Armstrong [02:31]

  • They muse humorously about whether this revulsion has evolutionary roots, joking about diseases and even dinosaurs.

AI Influencers: Real Money, Fake People

• [03:35-07:45]
  • Armstrong brings in a New York Times piece about AI influencers, like Lil Mikayla and Mia Zilou, who boast millions of followers and real-world income despite being entirely virtual constructions:

    “They mention that a couple of these people...have millions of followers and are generating serious income despite the fact that they don't exist. They're entirely created by AI.” — Armstrong [04:13]

  • Armstrong and Getty are both amazed and slightly perturbed by how lucrative this "fake fame" has become:

    “A Brazilian AI influencer with more than 8 million Instagram followers...rakes in $34,000 per post, while Lil Mikayla...makes about $74,000 per post.” — Armstrong [06:20]

  • Armstrong jokes about planting a fake conservative AI influencer. Getty points out the potential of a "fake baby trying out baby products" as a goldmine.
  • Getty’s take is bemused but resigned:

    “This has got to be scaring the hell out of actual influencers that—whoa, is this over already? Did the era of the influencer come and go this quickly?” [06:09]

The Deeper Issue: Who Pays the Real Influencers?

• [07:45-12:27]
  • Armstrong transitions to another article about paid political influencers, focusing on both left and right wing actors who are paid (often secretly) to push talking points:

    "There's this organization called Chorus that pays as much as $8,000 a month to these people to just constantly hammer left wing talking points online." — Armstrong [09:11]

  • Getty lays out the rules of these secret contracts:

    “Part of the deal is you're not allowed to say we're paying you. Well, of course.” [10:38]

  • Armstrong relates how the nonprofit status of organizations shields the identity of funders and enables message coordination at scale.
  • The discussion broadens to include foreign influence campaigns, referencing the notorious Russian disinformation campaigns:

    "We caught a fleeting glimpse of how foreign money is spent on the right...Russian intelligence used Canadian cutouts to recruit...to record commentary pieces about topics the Russians selected and scripted to advance Russia's geostrategic interests among the MAGA right..." — Armstrong [11:57]

  • Armstrong delivers a memorable analogy about hidden influence:

    “Let’s stick to the sort of unpleasant insectoid analogy...if you see one inside your house, rest assured he brought company. There is far more and worse that you can't see lurking, hidden within your walls...” — Armstrong [12:17]

The Big Question: Who Can You Trust?

• [12:27-13:53]
  • Armstrong reads a reflection from the article casting doubt on the authenticity of all influencers:

    “I ponder the message coordination of so many rhytoid influencers and I begin to wonder. I wonder who on my side, or anyone I’ve taken on good faith, in fact secretly practices the world’s oldest profession.” — Armstrong [13:03]

  • The hosts joke about how easy it would be to sell out for money, riffing about suddenly praising random regimes if the price was right.
  • Getty closes the bit by looping back to the baby joke, adding a humorous touch to the heavy topic.

Memorable Quotes & Lighter Moments

• [08:21] Getty: “Our dog ate all the Scrabble pieces the other day. We had to take him to the vet. No word yet.” (Repeats at [13:53])
• [13:09] Armstrong: “My only question is when do I get my prostitute myself?”
• [13:24] Armstrong: “Put your scruples aside, take the sad Russian money, and tell everybody online how Putin's really standing up for Christianity.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:15] – Getty on why stickiness disgusts him
• [03:35] – Intro to AI influencers and their huge earnings
• [06:09] – Actual influencers reacting to being replaced by AI
• [09:11] – Paid influencers and secret contracts (left and right)
• [11:57] – Foreign/hidden influence and analogy of pests
• [13:03] – Philosophical question: Who is truly authentic online?
• [13:53] – Segment closes with lighthearted humor (baby joke reprise)

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Tone & Language

The conversation is irreverent, skeptical, and quick—Armstrong & Getty blend dry humor with moments of genuine concern about authenticity and manipulation in the digital age. They punctuate serious points with banter and self-deprecation, making complex issues both accessible and engaging.

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Useful for Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode explores the startling rise of AI-generated influence, lifting the curtain on hidden networks of paid shillers across the political spectrum. It’s both a warning about manipulation in the age of deepfakes and a playful meditation on how little we can trust what we see (or who we follow) online.

If you're interested in how AI is changing culture, politics, and even humor—or just need a laugh about sticky fingers and baby jokes—this one’s for you.

Transcript

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[Armstrong]

Yeah, they're either fake or they're being paid. It's one more thing.

[Getty]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Armstrong]

One more thing before we get to whatever that is.

[Getty]

I think I know the answer to this question. I don't know if I can set you up for it. I don't know if I would be the right way to set you up for it. I know what your answer is though. That one of your least favorite sensations is no stickiness. Sticky. And so Jensen, who's our fill in news person while Katie is out, made these delicious treats she brought in and they're great. They're like some sort of bread, Cinnamon bread with caramel and nuts and apple. Apple, yeah. Oh, but they're cut into little finger squares. Everybody's picking them out of there with their fingers and you get caramel on your fingers and my hands are sticky and I can't get rid of it. Sticky. Why is. And then I was thinking about, why is sticky so annoying from an evolutionary standpoint, is there some reason, would human beings just naturally be appalled by being sticky?

[Armstrong]

You know, it was funny. Appalled is exactly the right word. I was playing golf not long ago with a buddy of mine and we were in his golf cart and he's like, oh my God, my steering wheel is sticky. How did this get sticky? Why is this sticky?

[Getty]

What happened?

[Armstrong]

He's wiping at his hands and he's just, he's appalled. It's not like, oh, that's weird, it's wet. No, it's like, oh my God, why is it sticky?

[Getty]

So there's gotta be something.

[Armstrong]

Maybe.

[Getty]

Did I Don't know. Did dinosaurs leave sticky residue or. I don't know what it was, but we didn't. We didn't coexist with the dinosaurs, so that couldn't be.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, I was just gonna let that go. I'm potass, but I'm not that pedantic. Could it be that something's on you and it's staying on you?

[Getty]

I don't know. You know, in a way that, like.

[Armstrong]

If you're wet, it'll dry.

[Getty]

Disease the plague, something. I'll bet there is some disease that being sticky was. You didn't really want that. The creeping crude. Yeah, I don't like sticky. You're right. Sticky steering wheel, the worst.

[Armstrong]

Yeah. Because you have to keep touching it.

[Getty]

Why is that sticky?

[Armstrong]

So a couple of stories and I can't decide, you know, I was gonna go big on the radio show with them, but they're both fairly lengthy. One is, excuse me, I believe I will be coughing for the rest of my life. One of them is at the. From the New York Times talking about these influencers. Both of. Both of these stories are about quote, unquote, influence culture, whether it's on Instagram, which is huge, or TikTok or X or whatever. And they mention a couple that of course, I've never heard of because I'm mostly repulsed by all of that. And it seems phony and shallow and stupid to me, but they mentioned that a couple of these people's Lil Michaela and Mia Zilou have millions of followers and are generating serious income despite the fact that they don't exist. They're entirely created by AI.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Oh, wow.

[Armstrong]

When Nancy Pelosi, whoever came up with.

[Getty]

This idea first, and that might have been two months ago, was really smart. Why didn't I do that? As soon as our friend Craig showed us how to do the AI thing, I should have created an influencer. Yeah, good looking dude who can play the guitar or whatever and. And then built a thing around him.

[Armstrong]

Right. But is like super conservative or whatever.

[Getty]

Yeah.

[Armstrong]

MAGA Guitar Jim here with another, you know, whatever the hell he's wearing. A red, white and blue cowboy hat, I assume. Anyway, um, so for instance, Nancy Pelosi was at the Outside Lands Music Festival taking selfies and took a selfie with a popular influencer as 2.4 million followers. Me vibing to Gracie Adams. And I look up and it's literally Speaker Pelosi said the influencer goes by Lil Mikayla. She captioned the photo in which the two are seen smiling. Catch. Of course is that she isn't real. She's one of a slew of influencers created through AI who have gained popularity in recent years despite the fact that they don't exist. Mia Zulu Zellu Zillou, a blonde haired, blue eyed AI influencer with 167,000 followers, recently made headlines for attending Wimbledon. A recent report by the online creation platform Cap Wing found that a computer generated celebrities are amassing millions of followers and millions of dollars in revenue for the teams behind them.

[Getty]

This has got to be scaring the hell out of actual influencers that. Whoa, is this over already? Is the era of the influencer. Did it come and go this quickly?

[Armstrong]

Listen to this shit, would you? A Brazilian AI influencer with more than 8 million Instagram followers who serves as the voice of the Brazilian retailer Magalu, rakes in $34,000 per post, while Lil Mikayla, who again doesn't exist, makes about 73,000. Well, $74,000 per post. Hey, I just got a cute little handbag. It's absolutely amazing. Goes with all my outfits. I was out clubbing, blah, blah, blah. And here it is. $74,000 per for this quote, unquote influencer who doesn't exist.

[Getty]

You know what? It'd be good as a fake little kid that tries out toys. You know how I like the, the, the, the babies, the babies thing there was. I saw one the other day. This one was impossible to not like. You'd have to have a heart of stone to not like because it was bab.

[Armstrong]

Think that's entertainment for idiots. I reject the entire genre, but there's.

[Getty]

Nothing cuter than babies laughing. And there are. These were babies telling jokes to each other and they were laughing. And the laughing babies might get me. The laughing Babies was 100% dead on. And I mean, you can't not enjoy a baby laughing, but these babies were telling each other like corny jokes and just dying laughing. Oh, I enjoyed that. But if you could create a fake baby who's trying out baby products, oh, that's a gold mine.

[Armstrong]

So this little Michaela thing was introduced in 2016. Maybe. The original AI influencer has appeared on magazine covers, released music, and served as the face of campaigns for Calvin Klein and Prada, all while purporting to be a Brazilian American teen from Downey, California. She now identifies as 22, created by a tech company called Dapper Labs, which specializes in creating video games and collectibles, Whatever the hell that means.

[Getty]

You want to hear one of the jokes that the babies told the baby Told the other babies to make laugh.

[Armstrong]

I absolutely do. Yes.

[Getty]

Baby sitting there with a straight face talking to his baby friends. Oh boy. Our dog ate all the scrabble pieces the other day. We had to take him to the vet. No word yet.

[Armstrong]

Oh, he's like a little baby. That's right, Mr. President.

[Getty]

That's a pretty good joke that, that, that is.

[Armstrong]

I'm gonna tell that to my wife as soon as we're done here. And she would laugh like a little baby. So the other story I want to tell you, which is kind of similar, ish. Jeff Blair was writing about it, National Review and it's, it's about left wing influencers. But he points out there's absolutely this on the right. In fact there have been some cases of it that came to the fore on the right. So many of these people who are like lots of followers, super influential post all the time about politics and stuff are being paid by organizations. Like there's this organization called Chorus that pays as much as $8,000 a month to these people to just constantly hammer left wing talking points online. And Jeff writes, you know, I, here's a link to who these people are. He says, I haven't heard of any of them. But he says, I'm also not hip to like who's really moving and shaking among 20 year old college girls online. But yeah, these people are making thousands of dollars a month. All they have to do is submit all of their content to a shady progressive organization called Chorus for pre clearance and message approval while employing the appointed. I'm sorry, while employing the appointed talking points of the day and funneling all bookings through their secret paymasters. The contracts reviewed by Wired.com prohibit standard partnership disclosures declaring that creators will not publicize the publicize their relationship with Chorus or tell others that they're members of the program without Chorus's prior written consent. They also forbid creators from disclosing the identity of any funder. Then they get in. Sure.

[Getty]

Of course you'd make that part of the deal. We're going to give you $10,000 to spout this as a 21 year old about this political position. But part of the deal is you're not allowed to say we're paying you well, of course.

[Armstrong]

Right, yeah, yeah. And, and they get into in some of their documents how, hey, it's really great that we're, we exist as a non profit because we don't have to disclose any of our contributors, blah blah, blah, you can't, you can't disclose any of this.

[Getty]

Either I watch out for that. I don't understand. One of the reasons I don't understand how the only influencer thing works is don't you just assume that they're getting paid by whatever that thing is they're telling you is so great? That's why they're telling you it's so great. Not always, but a lot of the time.

[Armstrong]

So, yeah, a lot of the time. And it does happen on both sides of the aisle. And anyway, he says, and I'm gonna. I'm going to read this just because there are certain figures on the right who I find abhorrent to readers. There's an invisible world out there, a hidden hand, and it is driven by money. The d dark matter of politics. We caught a fleeting glimpse of how foreign money is spent on the right at least once over the last few years with the Tenet scandal. Recall that there, Russian intelligence used Canadian cutouts to recruit Lawrence Southern Tim Pool and moral horror show Benny Johnson, among others, to record commentary pieces about topics the Russians selected and scripted to advance Russia's geostrategic interests among the maga. Right. That was but one scandal discovered due to the carelessness of its practitioners. Let's stick to the sort of unpleasant insectoid analogy that began this piece and therefore recall the rule of pests. If you see one inside your house, rest assured he brought company with him. There is far more and worse that you can't see lurking, hidden within your walls or your floors. A world going on underground.

[Getty]

That's a pretty clever way to look at. Look at it.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, probably. And then you know what? There's one more part that I think is really good. It would be easy enough to laugh at Democrats, to dismiss this humiliation as yet more evidence that they are an unpopular group of sad frauds who need to pay for their online influencers the way maladjusted losers frequent brothels. But I ask myself where all that Qatari and Chinese money goes. And I ponder the message coordination of so many rhytoid influencers and I begin to wonder. I wonder who on my side, or anyone, I've taken on good faith, in fact secretly practices the world's oldest profession.

[Getty]

Good question.

[Armstrong]

My only question is when do I get my prostitute myself?

[Getty]

What do you want us to say?

[Armstrong]

Variety of loathsome regimes.

[Getty]

What do you want us to say for how much? Every day we're talking about how great Burundi is all of a sudden, but.

[Armstrong]

We'Re driving new cars. When my youngest was studying combination of law and foreign policy and that sort of thing and foreign relations. I told her, look, you go to work for loathsome regimes because they pay better. Put your scruples aside, take the sad Russian money and tell everybody online how Putin's really standing up for Christianity.

[Getty]

The dog ate Scrabble pieces, took him to the vet. No word yet. You get it?

[Armstrong]

That is so funny.

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[Armstrong]

Well, I guess that's it.

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