Is Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Controversy and the Rest of the Internet Fake?

Summary

Infamous Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: Is Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Controversy and the Rest of the Internet Fake?
Date: July 16, 2026
Hosts: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Natalie Robehmed
Guest: Lane Brown (New York Magazine Journalist, author of "The Feed is Fake")

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the shadowy world of “clipping”—the undercover industry of paid, stealth marketing campaigns that dominate our social media feeds. From pop stars to streaming shows, and even political candidates, the episode exposes how much of what we think is viral and authentic online is actually manufactured—often cheaply and at mass scale—by anonymous marketers and agencies. The hosts interrogate the fake nature of online trends, the ethical and regulatory failures, eye-opening case studies, and what it means for culture, democracy, and the average person’s sense of reality.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Secret World of Clipping and Trend Simulation

Timestamps: 00:39–05:56

• What is Clipping?
  • Marketers pay agencies to slice up content into short clips, which are then posted by normal-seeming accounts to flood feeds and create the illusion of organic virality.
  • “A slew of stealth marketing campaigns designed to make moments and pop stars go viral. There are actually entire advertising agencies operating thousands of dummy social media accounts… shaping the narrative.” (Natalie Robehmed, 01:12)
• Trend Simulation vs. Guerrilla Marketing
  • “This is a category change… This is almost more like hiring actors to follow you around and sort of talk loud enough to be overheard to try to do product placement.” (Vanessa Grigoriadis, 03:38)
• Scale and Prevalence
  • 80-90% of what seems a trend in music or culture is likely paid for and fake (lane’s source).
  • Example: Justin Bieber’s Coachella set was seemingly supported by clipping campaigns, flooding teens’ feeds regardless of genuine fandom.

Notable Quote:

• “These clips are posted by normal looking accounts, but they're actually ads in secret. And clipping's cheap, right? Like it's cheaper than any form of advertising that's ever existed.” (Natalie Robehmed, 05:29)

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2. Case Studies: Who’s Doing This and How It Works

Timestamps: 06:13–08:08 | 15:13–16:29

• Big Names Involved:
  • Justin Bieber, Geese, Bad Bunny, Zayn Malik, Fleetwood Mac, Shania Twain, Netflix’s “The Night Agent”, Apple TV’s “For All Mankind”, Michael Jackson, and even political campaigns.
• Mechanics of Clipping:
  • “I found these clipping agencies that had set up campaigns where they're paying normal teenagers from all over the world. They're paying them a dollar per thousand views.” (Lane Brown, 06:54)
  • Agencies create campaigns in Discord servers, targeting young people to act as “fake fans.”
• Hollywood, Music, and More:
  • Not just music—streaming, political campaigns, live events.

Notable Moment:

• “I did kind of wonder, after Coachella, it's like, where are all these videos coming from in my feeds?... I was actually able to just basically trace that back to a couple of Discord servers.” (Lane Brown, 07:24)

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3. The Fleeting Realness of Online Trends

Timestamps: 08:08–12:11 | 21:27–22:12

• Fake Virality and Astroturfing
  • “Popular opinion is being formed, measured and manipulated all at once… every signal… can be fabricated by unseen actors with hidden agendas.” (Natalie Robehmed, 09:24)
  • Even “organic” seeming trends often have promotional marketing roots.
• Narrative Campaigns:
  • Beyond clips, agencies astroturf opinions, backlashes, and debates to sway public conversation or force a “monoculture.”

Notable Quote:

• “We've locked ourselves into the stupidest possible version of Plato's cave.” (Natalie Robehmed, 09:52)
• “This is a different category. This is just faking fans.” (Lane Brown, 18:00)

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4. The Business and Its Legality

Timestamps: 10:44–12:53 | 26:02–27:36

• Business is Booming, Laws Ignored:
  • “There are technically laws against this very thing, but nobody has ever been punished.” (Lane Brown, 10:44)
  • Agencies like “Chaotic Good” have seen campaigns double after media coverage.
  • Artists are “embarrassed” to admit they use these methods; publicists go silent.
• Regulation:
  • The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) declined to comment (12:43).
  • Secret advertising (paid content not disclosed as ads) is technically illegal—but platforms and regulators don’t seem interested in enforcement.

Notable Moment:

• “Every single music artist I reached out to just completely ignored my emails.” (Lane Brown, 12:17)

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5. How It’s Done: Human and Bot Networks

Timestamps: 16:40–17:30

• Two Basic Methods:
  • Mass outsourcing to real people (often via Discord or WhatsApp)
  • Farms of physical phones managed by a handful of workers, complete with VPNs to mask activity.
  • “There are other companies that just have a thousand phones in a closet someplace…” (Lane Brown, 16:41)
• Evolution With AI
  • The next stage is bot networks and AI-generated clips: even more industrialized, even less organic.

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6. Impact on Real Artistry, Journalism & Society

Timestamps: 18:00–24:41

• Real Talent Vs. The Algorithm:

  • “How can any just regular person… compete?” (Natalie Robehmed, 19:22)
  • The playing field is so rigged that “even Justin Bieber” needs to pay for virality.
  • The endless manipulation distorts what’s truly popular and who rises to the top.

• Even Journalists Are Fooled

  • Newsrooms and journalists source stories from the same manipulated feeds as everyone else.
  • “Sometimes I wonder if this entire thing is just a psyop on journalists if we're the only ones still on social media looking for the next story. And it's like we're just, we're the ones being fooled by all of this.” (Vanessa Grigoriadis, 22:25)

• Shortform Content vs. Real Connection:

  • Metrics on platforms are inflated—viral clips don’t guarantee real fans, ticket sales, or real mindshare.
  • Example: Artists are “canceling tours because they have an inflated sense of their success from these clips and short-form stuff. But then it doesn't translate to actually butts in seats.” (Vanessa Grigoriadis, 23:20)

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7. The Sydney Sweeney/American Eagle Controversy

Timestamps: 28:36–30:04

• Manufactured Outrage:
  • Campaigners manufactured debate around Sydney Sweeney’s “great genes” slogan, with AI bot firm analysis showing a small number of accounts responsible for the majority of the uproar.
  • “It seemed an awful lot like this was all totally inorganic. There were a small number of accounts that were basically responsible for… three quarters of the actual content.” (Lane Brown, 29:38)
• Financial Incentives:
  • American Eagle’s stock actually jumped 10% during the “controversy”—manufactured drama can be lucrative.

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8. The Future: AI, Regulation & the “Dead Internet Theory”

Timestamps: 27:36–32:02

• What’s Next?
  • AI agents may soon automate even the paid participation; networked bots will “talk” to each other and themselves.
  • “This all seems incredibly bleak and incredibly depressing… does this contribute to dead Internet theory? That the Internet is just going to be bots talking to bots and AI talking to AI, and we're all going to get offline and actually, like, hang out with each other?” (Natalie Robehmed, 27:36-28:08)
  • Even ChatGPT’s recommendations could be gamed by uptake in discourse rather than real cultural movement.
• Endless Loops of Inauthenticity:
  • Narrative campaigns create feedback loops, endlessly amplifying astroturfed stories.
  • Public’s only defense may be awareness and skepticism.

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9. How Can We Respond?

Timestamps: 30:35–33:08

• Host Advice:
  • “Get out of your feeds… Touch grass.” (Vanessa Grigoriadis & Lane Brown, 30:35–30:40)
  • Use RSS readers, bookmarks, and actively seek out information; don’t passively consume algorithmic content.
• The Scary Part:
  • “There's not really a safe place to go and hide from it. It's fooling actual legitimate sources of journalism. We have a real problem here…” (Lane Brown, 30:48)
• Form Your Own Opinion:
  • “Think about who… what you're watching benefits and, I don't know, form your own opinion.” (Natalie Robehmed, 31:40)
• But, warns Lane:
  • “This will make you crazy. When you really start to think about this stuff… you will get suspicious of things that, you know may not even necessarily be paid advertising, because everything at a certain point looks like it.” (Lane Brown, 31:47)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “80 to 90% of what you think is a trend in music or culture is being paid for and fake.” (Natalie Robehmed citing Lane’s reporting, 03:22)
• “We've locked ourselves into the stupidest possible version of Plato's cave.” (Natalie Robehmed, 09:52)
• “This is a different category. This is just faking fans.” (Lane Brown, 18:00)
• “Sometimes I wonder if this entire thing is just a psyop on journalists…” (Vanessa Grigoriadis, 22:25)
• “Get out of your feeds. I would say touch grass if there weren’t a fertilizer company that was probably responsible for putting that phrase into the zeitgeist.” (Vanessa Grigoriadis, 30:35–30:40)
• “How much of what we know or what we think we know about culture in the last five or ten years is just total astroturf.” (Vanessa Grigoriadis, 32:53)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:12 – Explaining how “Clipping” works
• 05:29 – Clipping as cheap, stealth advertising
• 06:54 – Discord servers, fake accounts, and teens paid for “virality”
• 09:24 – The modern infrastructure of manipulated opinion
• 16:41 – Phone farms & bot networks for clipping
• 18:00 – The difference between traditional payola and fake fan creation
• 19:22 – Artists and regular people can’t truly compete anymore
• 21:27 – Narrative campaigns & fake opinions going viral
• 23:20 – Vanity metrics vs. real audience (“butts in seats”)
• 28:36 – The Sydney Sweeney “jeans” manufactured controversy
• 30:35 – Practical advice: get out of algorithmic feeds
• 31:47 – The madness of total skepticism
• 32:53 – Redefining what is “real” in a culture of astroturf

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Final Thoughts

This episode paints a bleak—but important—picture of the inauthentic state of the internet, where what trends and what doesn’t is less the work of grassroots passion and more the outcome of paid manipulation. It leaves listeners with a sobering call: step outside algorithmic feeds, question who benefits, and don’t assume that the “viral moment” is what it appears to be. The very texture of culture, consensus, and even political debate may be more artificial than ever before.

End Note:
“I think awareness does help because it's always surprising when you learn how much you're being manipulated. In the media and entertainment spheres these days, it seems to be endless.” (Natalie Robehmed, 31:27)

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For more behind-the-scenes content, visit Campsidemedia.com/join — and remember: in today’s internet, skepticism is survival.

Transcript

[Commercial Announcer]

This summer, serve up the cookout classics, Oscar Mayer hot dogs and Heinz mustard. Grill up a dog, add classic yellow mustard or Loaded Chicago style. We all know it's not a cookout without Oscar Meyer and Hines.

[Podcast Host 1]

Campsite Media. From sony music entertainment and campsite media. This is infamous. Hi, I'm natalie robomet.

[Podcast Host 2]

And I'm vanessa grigoriadis.

[Podcast Host 1]

So if you're even slightly online, which I'm going to guess most of you listening to this are, it's pretty likely that you spend a good amount of your time watching short form clips, or at least scrolling past the beginnings of them. I'm talking about TikToks, Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts, you know the kind of thing. Like this morning I opened up my TikTok and I saw clips of of Zara Larson dancing, Rihanna performing at Jay Z's recent Yankee Stadium residency. Love Island's Melanie getting some real talk from her family. More Brianna Charli XCX writhing around in the mud on set of a new video. Amy Poehler talking on her podcast. More Charli Xex and so on. A lot of these clips seem to be from random fan accounts, and none of these posts are from accounts I follow. They're all just recommendations tailored for me by my algorithm. Kind of embarrassing. I guess. I didn't know I was such a Rihanna or Charli XCX or even a Tsar Larson fan. Or maybe someone is really trying to make me a fan of Charli XCX and Zara Larson and Rihanna, because there's actually an entire secret economy to clips like these. A slew of stealth marketing campaigns designed to make moments and and pop stars go viral. There are actually entire advertising agencies operating thousands of dummy social media accounts with the sole purpose of drumming up attention on behalf of paying clients and, quote, shaping the narrative around said clients. To do so. They use a practice known as clipping, where they cut bits of songs or podcasts or movie trailers into short clips that get posted to social media by normal looking accounts. It's all part of the increasingly commercialized Internet where almost everything you see is advertising, even if you don't know it. So how does clipping work? Who is paying for it and why? Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York Magazine, wrote an incredible story uncovering the hidden industry of clipping called the Feed is Fake. And he's here to talk about all of that and more. Lane, welcome to the show.

[Lane Brown]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Podcast Host 2]

Okay, lan, you and I have known each other a while.

[Natalie Robomet]

I know you know a lot about culture. But I had no idea that things that I see on my Instagram reels are not actual trends. They're not like actual, you know, oh my God. So many people are seeing it that the algorithm is trying to pick this up and show it to you.

[Podcast Host 2]

Middle aged mom.

[Natalie Robomet]

They are something called trend simulation. And trend simulation is basically what we

[Podcast Host 2]

used to call guerrilla marketing.

[Natalie Robomet]

But I had no idea that it

[Podcast Host 2]

was going on every day with like a stat.

[Natalie Robomet]

Like 80 to 90% of what you think is a trend in music or culture is being paid for and fake.

[Podcast Host 1]

That's according to someone you spoke to

[Lane Brown]

with a vested interest in trying to find new customers.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But I would maybe quibble a little

[Lane Brown]

bit with this is like the new version of guerrilla marketing or this is a new kind of advertising. I think this is a category change.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

This is a new and different thing. Guerrilla marketing is like hanging up posters

[Lane Brown]

on the way to a music venue or something.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

This is almost more like hiring actors to follow you around and sort of

[Lane Brown]

talk loud enough to be overheard to try to do product placement or something.

[Podcast Host 2]

Right, okay.

[Natalie Robomet]

Because what you're saying is basically these 45ish minute second things that we all see on TikTok or on Instagram, even YouTube shorts scrolling past that have nothing

[Podcast Host 2]

with like our friends making these videos.

[Natalie Robomet]

Those people are people who are walking

[Podcast Host 2]

behind Charli XCX yelling like, oh my

[Natalie Robomet]

God, Charli XCX is so cool.

[Podcast Host 2]

Check out this meme I made about her.

[Lane Brown]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

You know, I'm sort of getting up there. I used to be younger and cooler

[Lane Brown]

and so I thought, is this just me getting older and these new pop artists that are sort of coming out of nowhere seemingly. It's just because I'm 44 now and not as hip as I once was.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And I started looking into it, it turns out no, I'm still is co as I ever was.

[Lane Brown]

There is actually something. There's actually something going on here.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so basically it's been happening for

[Lane Brown]

a few years now. But this is a brand new, totally creepy, different kind of thing than what we've had before with other different nefarious or you know, sort of line blurring kinds of marketing. This is new and creepy.

[Podcast Host 1]

So how does clipping work exactly?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Clipping is when you pay a whole

[Lane Brown]

bunch of anonymous people around the world to, to chop up clips of like a song or a movie trailer or a podcast or whatever, and you basically flood strangers feeds with it, hoping that they'll engage with it and then it will sort of push that content even Further, it's meant to look like the real output of actual real fans, but it's not. It's stuff that was paid to be there by marketers.

[Podcast Host 1]

These clips are posted by normal looking accounts, but they're actually ads in secret. And clipping's cheap, right? Like it's cheaper than any form of advertising that's ever existed. You write, right?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Pretty much, yes. Everybody I talked to said, you will

[Lane Brown]

not believe how cheap this is.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

This is basically a tenth of the

[Lane Brown]

cost of any other type of advertising on a per view basis. And so a really big campaign, even something like Justin Bieber at coachella, it'll cost $5,000 and then it'll get incredible

[Natalie Robomet]

results to get like million. Hundreds of millions of people will see these short form videos for $5,000.

[Podcast Host 2]

That is all he has to pay or whoever's behind him. Okay, wow, that's crazy.

[Lane Brown]

A normal ad on TikTok will cost you, you know, $10 per thousand views, and this is $1 per thousand views.

[Podcast Host 1]

Typically you mentioned Justin Bieber, who is obviously a huge global superstar. And as you write in your story, like you'd kind of thought, well, why would Justin Bieber need to pay for clipping? But according to the research that you've done, he actually did seem to be running some clipping campaigns for his Coachella performance. Can you tell us what clipping Justin Bieber was apparently doing?

[Lane Brown]

So his Coachella set, He was the headliner at Coachella this year in April. And as far as I can tell,

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

and I should preface it and say I don't know that it was Justin

[Lane Brown]

Bieber himself who actually paid for these campaigns. It's sort of blurry. It may have been his publisher, it may have been his record label, but

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I did reach out to all these

[Lane Brown]

people and none of them would reply to me, which is sort of its own story. And so, yeah, so he performs at Coachella over two weekends. And every social media platform you can name is just totally flooded with clips from these two sets of. And once I went looking, I went into these Discord servers and I found these clipping agencies that had set up campaigns where they're paying normal teenagers from all over the world. They're paying them a dollar per thousand views for this.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so I did kind of wonder, after Coachella, it's like, where are all these videos coming from in my feeds? I'm not a, I guess I am not a Justin Bieber fan, but I'm

[Lane Brown]

not such a fan that it should just be completely taking over my every feed. So I was actually able to just basically trace that back to a couple of Discord servers. And it's like, okay, this is where it came from apparently, right?

[Podcast Host 1]

Like you have in your story, the announcement for one campaign read in all caps, this is so viral.

[Podcast Host 2]

Go, go, go, go.

[Podcast Host 1]

And you know, Justin Bieber was listed as a client on one of these companies, Chaotic Good projects that runs these sort of clipping campaigns for artists.

[Narrator/Expert]

Today, many of the gatekeepers are gone and now music discovery is largely dictated by the whims of algorithms, especially those on TikTok. That's where chaotic Good and other digital marketing companies like IT have come in. They're hired by record labels to come in and find a way to crack the algorithm.

[Podcast Host 1]

I mean, I guess that brings me to my next question, which is like, how prevalent is this? Like, if Justin Bieber's doing this, is everyone doing this? What are new acts doing?

[Sports Commentator]

You know?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Yeah, that's kind of the scariest thing

[Lane Brown]

to me a little bit is just

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

that if even Justin Bieber has to

[Lane Brown]

do this, it sort of suggests that so many people are doing this that the Internet is now this wasteland of, you know, paid for stealth marketing. And you sort of have to overcome that, even if you're a real artist with real fans, someone like Justin Bieber. And so, you know, what hope does some normal person sort of peddling their own podcast or magazine article have when, you know, even Justin Bieber has to pay to make his clips go viral?

[Natalie Robomet]

Yeah, I mean, I think it is crazy. You bring up the band Geese, which,

[Podcast Host 2]

you know, my 14 year old daughter was super into and I told her the other day, did you hear that like Geese maybe actually was just seeding

[Natalie Robomet]

all this virality and that's why you found out about this band. And she was like, oh, whatever, you

[Commercial Voice]

know what I mean?

[Natalie Robomet]

Like, she wasn't like, oh, that I

[Podcast Host 2]

feel so taken advantage of.

[Natalie Robomet]

She was like, yeah, they're a little

[Podcast Host 2]

more like hardcore than I like to listen to anyway.

[Natalie Robomet]

You know, it brings up this question, of course, like, how much do people care? Because you have in your story, you know, these, this great passage where you say shady marketing and propaganda aren't new,

[Podcast Host 2]

but what is new is that the

[Natalie Robomet]

entire infrastructure of public conversation has been quietly captured by both on social media. Popular opinion is being formed, measured and manipulated all at once. Every signal, the trending song, the backlash, a talking point, a feeling that, quote

[Podcast Host 2]

unquote, everybody is suddenly talking about.

[Natalie Robomet]

The same thing can be fabricated by unseen actors with hidden agendas. We've Locked ourselves into the stupidest possible

[Podcast Host 2]

version of Plato's cave.

[Natalie Robomet]

So the idea of Plato's cave being like, everybody's looking at those shadows on

[Podcast Host 2]

the wall and they don't realize that they're human beings that are actually behind them.

[Natalie Robomet]

Right. Making those shadows. You know, you just mentioned, oh, you know, these people wouldn't talk to me.

[Podcast Host 2]

That's in a story in itself.

[Natalie Robomet]

In this story, over and over, you say, I had an interview with this major agency that does this and they canceled five minutes before. Tell us about the reporting process. I'm assuming the word went around.

[Podcast Host 2]

There's this guy named Lane and he's

[Natalie Robomet]

to us, kind of not Kane Brown.

[Podcast Host 1]

Lane Brown.

[Lane Brown]

Exactly, exactly. Trying to fix my Google results.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But yes, a lot of interesting dynamics

[Lane Brown]

here in the reporting process because some

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

of the agencies were really excited to talk to me.

[Lane Brown]

A lot of them don't realize that they're doing anything wrong here.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

There are technically laws against this very

[Lane Brown]

thing, but nobody has ever been punished. And so they've got this business to run. Seems to be going gangbusters. And so I think they just wanted to put the word out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And my story, as far as I can tell, did fairly well on social media. And so I'm a little bit suspicious that some of the. Some of the people I quoted in the story may have added a little

[Lane Brown]

bit of gas to the fire.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I think that they were pretty excited

[Lane Brown]

to talk to me.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Although as I was reporting the story, I did get kicked out of a

[Lane Brown]

few of the Discord servers.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But yeah, the agencies themselves, I think

[Lane Brown]

they were all too happy to sort of talk to me and sort of get the word out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And I will say I think I've

[Lane Brown]

made this a little bit worse because I've seen that they seem to have gotten some new business since my story went up.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Like from whom Campaign today for Kanye and Don Toliver. There is one for Jason Derulo, Jesse Wells, Machine Gun Kelly, the Backstreet Boys, just basically estimating.

[Lane Brown]

It looks like they're probably about double as many campaigns as they had before I mentioned them in my story. So you're welcome to the Clippers out there.

[Natalie Robomet]

I did notice that some of these

[Podcast Host 2]

guys websites though, like the Chaotic Good

[Natalie Robomet]

website now, when you go to get a list of who they work with,

[Podcast Host 2]

it says, please, you can send us

[Natalie Robomet]

an email and we'll give you a list.

[Podcast Host 2]

But we're not just like posting it up here to say like, Justin Bieber is a client.

[Podcast Intro/Outro Voice]

We are kind of studying the Internet and TikTok and seeing what's working organically and then trying to recreate it at scale inorganically. TikTok is entirely based around trending audios.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Well, so it's the agencies. Yeah, I think we're pretty happy to

[Lane Brown]

talk to me, but I think the artists themselves are sort of embarrassed by having to do this.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so pretty much every single music

[Lane Brown]

artist I reached out to just completely ignored my emails.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Typically, music publicists are among the pushiest at emails, and yet none of them

[Lane Brown]

were able to find the time to reply to my questions about this topic.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But, yeah, so I name a bunch

[Lane Brown]

of artists in the story and I saw their campaigns and none of their reps ever got back to me, which I don't know for sure that that means that they paid to make this happen, but they were definitely free to sort of clear that up before the article ran or even after. And I haven't heard from any of them.

[Natalie Robomet]

And the ftc, of course, sent you a little note just saying, we're not going to comment. You were like, this seems to be advertising.

[Podcast Host 2]

That is not disclosing that it's advertising. And they just basically said, hi, we're passing, we're not commenting.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Which it kind of makes sense.

[Lane Brown]

It's like this is happening in politics too. And so I would imagine that this would probably open some Pandora's boxes. If they start, you know, started going after geese, then people might wonder, well, why aren't you going after some. Some other people?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But yeah, it's.

[Lane Brown]

There are laws against this exact thing that are just not being enforced.

[Podcast Host 1]

Well, speaking of politics, I'm here in LA and we recently had the mayoral primaries, I guess, and Taylor Lorenz reported that Spencer Pratt was actually running two clipping campaigns to kind of try and juice his mayoral race.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Well, I will say to give. To give Spencer Pratt a little credit on the campaigns themselves.

[Lane Brown]

It was disclosed this is paid for by the Spencer Pratt campaign. Although I don't know if the clips themselves that ended up on platforms were marked than that. I suspect, not to give some credit, you know, most of these campaigns have no disclosures whatsoever about who's. Who's paying for them.

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[Sports Commentator]

And we're live on match day as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it. It just taste better. Match days deserve Pepsi.

[Podcast Intro/Outro Voice]

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

[Podcast Host 1]

I do just want to, like, reiterate the scale of this. When you were in these clipping communities, you saw campaigns for Bad Bunny, Zayn, Malik, Fleetwood Mac, Shania Twain, Luke Combs, Tiana Taylor, Dominic Fight, Kane Brown, your Google search nemesis, as well as shows like Netflix is the night agent, Apple TVs for all mankind, and the Michael Jackson B epic Michael. So it's not just music, it's not just politics. It's Hollywood as well. This is just on an epic, epic scale.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

It's.

[Lane Brown]

Yeah, everything that feels like it's going viral or whatever that means at all. It's like this could be the explanation. It is. It really is. Everybody. I was kind of shocked at just how far and wide this one. There's one part of my story too, where I. I said, YouTube spokesperson, you know, are you concerned at all about clipping on YouTube? And they sent me this statement. I don't have it directly in front of me, but they said, basically, we care very much about the integrity of our platform and we do everything to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And then the next day, in one

[Lane Brown]

of the Discord servers I'm following, there

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

was a new clipping campaign for the Google I. O conference.

[Lane Brown]

Google obviously is the parent company of YouTube. And the spokesperson said, yep, that's us.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so they added a hashtag ad to the campaign. But if even the, you know, the

[Lane Brown]

platforms themselves or the companies that own the platforms themselves are using this, then this is. I think we've. We've Lost a war here that we didn't even know that we were in.

[Podcast Host 1]

So how are these companies even doing this?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

There are a few different ways to

[Lane Brown]

do this, and some clipping companies, yeah, they just sort of outsource this and have people in discords doing this or WAP doing this. There are, you know, other companies that just have a thousand phones in a closet someplace and they can do this. And it's totally out of public view, which is even kind of scarier.

[Podcast Host 1]

When you say a whole bunch of phones, is there like literally a room with just a bunch of phones lined up on displays?

[Lane Brown]

Yeah, pretty exactly. It's like they just have a whole bunch of phones connected to a wall of chargers and they have somebody going through and they use VPNs.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And I should say, I been obsessed

[Lane Brown]

with this for a long time. I went pretty hard after a couple of months.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But there are techniques I'm sure that

[Lane Brown]

I didn't find out about. AI is now a new factor in this. And so there are a lot of different ways to do this, but even the low tech, easiest ways are still pretty terrifying.

[Natalie Robomet]

But this is all back, you know, in payola days, right? Like the record label guys used to

[Podcast Host 2]

come and they'd drop, you know, a bag of cash so that you would play their artists stuff.

[Natalie Robomet]

Or people paid for plays on Spotify.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Yeah, but it's like, I think there is a meaningful difference between paying to

[Lane Brown]

get something on MTV or the radio,

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

where it's like, I think people are

[Lane Brown]

skeptical, a little bit of gatekeepers like radio and mtv. Like, people are aware, I guess, of

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

aola or, you know, they know that,

[Lane Brown]

you know, bands have publicists and they know that.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Again, I think this is a different category. This is just faking fans.

[Lane Brown]

So they do pay bots, companies that basically send bots to Spotify to stream things.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so there's a very interesting investigation

[Lane Brown]

about Tidal, the streaming service a few years ago, where I think they found Beyonce album Lemonade and Life of Pablo, the Kanye album, where they found that

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

basically, if the stats that were published

[Lane Brown]

by the streaming services were true, then

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

every single paying title customer would have

[Lane Brown]

to have been streaming these albums like 45 Hours a Day for like, for like an entire month.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So every stat on all of these

[Lane Brown]

platforms, we should be suspicious.

[Podcast Host 1]

Isn't there? Just to play devil's advocate, isn't there an argument for this? Like, the person has to be good to begin with? I think you write this, a lot of what clipping does is help good artists find the audience who would have liked them anyway by accelerating the early excitement just enough to push them past the algorithmic threshold that decides who gets discovered and who doesn't. Right. But then you also say the problem is that everybody has figured this out now, so the threshold keeps moving.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Right. Sort of. The other. And this is me editorializing, of course, but this is so lame. It's like, what kind of psychopath loser wants to win this game? And yet this is. This is the way that we're playing it right now. And so, yeah, if you just want to do this with any honesty, it's

[Lane Brown]

like you just get swept away by the tidal wave of all of this nonsense.

[Natalie Robomet]

But how can any person compete? Like, how can any just regular person

[Podcast Host 2]

who's like, oh, I just want to

[Natalie Robomet]

start a, you know, a channel to talk about the problems I have with my sister, is this just sound and fury signifying nothing? When you think you're a content creator today, if you're on a small scale,

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

yeah, I think it's. It's pretty scary. It's like you. You want to believe there's some democracy

[Lane Brown]

to this or that you can be heard by the strength of what you're actually doing, but I really.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

It's almost not possible.

[Natalie Robomet]

Yeah, but it's like we did an

[Podcast Host 2]

episode really recently about Kim Kardashian and how the Kardashians made us all content creators and how be a good car salesman today, you have to be like, super photogenic and be able to go on TikTok and say, hey, like, this is what we're doing down at the dealership this week. And now I'm thinking, oh, my God, but is it just like one out of every million of those people was going to succeed, and now it's only like 0.00.

[Natalie Robomet]

One of those million of those people are going to succeed because they're. Everything else is so manipulated.

[Podcast Host 2]

There's no way to gain a real following.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And also, I mean, just we've been through enough of these cycles where in the social media, high traffic era of the, you know, the 2010s, I actually thought that 30 million people, 40 million

[Lane Brown]

people were visiting the website that I

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

edited a month, and turns out that was probably not the case.

[Lane Brown]

So we had this idea that, you know, we were speaking to these massive,

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

bigger audiences than anybody had ever had before.

[Lane Brown]

And that was just some weird quirk with the way that the platforms counted, you know, their. Their views.

[Podcast Host 1]

This is about fooling the algorithm. Right. And I think that's where these narrative campaigns come in. And when I say narrative campaigns. I mean, the idea that you're like having people control the discourse by posting specific things, and then that's like, oh, whether it's Blake Lively sucks, or like, this is the best SNL performance of all time. And then that goes and goes and goes. And then maybe people genuinely start engaging with that or thinking that that's an actual opinion they should have. And it's just this like, like ouroboros.

[Podcast Host 2]

It's just like an ouroboros of, I believe this and that, you know. Yeah, just people passing around ideas.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And also, also back in those days, it was easier to get a second opinion. Like today, so many real journalistic outlets

[Lane Brown]

are hidden behind paywalls. So it's like people obviously can't subscribe to all of these. And so they don't.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And people get so much of information

[Lane Brown]

directly from just these social media platforms and that's it. They probably never even bother to click on the link. They may see the link and they may see what somebody has, quote, tweeted about, you know, what, what is contained therein within that link, but they never bothered to check it out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so it's just trivially easy to

[Lane Brown]

sort of fake these, you know, enthusiasms or these, these fights or talking points or whatever.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

You see that. And then there's fewer and fewer places

[Lane Brown]

to again, like, go get this checked out or for somebody to debunk it.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And even if somebody does debunk it,

[Lane Brown]

in a lot of cases that'll be hidden away behind a paywall where you have to pay $6 a month and they just, you know, will never find out that this has been completely proven false.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So.

[Podcast Host 1]

But this is also fooling journalists.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So sometimes I wonder if this entire thing is just a psyop on journalists if we're the only ones still on

[Lane Brown]

social media looking for the next story.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And it's like we're just, we're the

[Lane Brown]

ones being fooled by all of this.

[Natalie Robomet]

I think it's also fascinating that clavicular,

[Podcast Host 2]

like the guy who, you know, shot an alligator in one of his streams and like, you know, says he hits himself in the face with a hamm to be handsome like that.

[Natalie Robomet]

He actually has hundreds of millions of people watching these little short form reel clips. But his live shows, I assume on YouTube are getting low to mid five figures. So it's like a fading cable news show. So what is so strange is the idea that short form is all it is now. That's basically what exists. Like, artists are canceling their tours because

[Podcast Host 2]

they can't sell tickets, right, because they

[Podcast Host 1]

have an inflated sense of their success from these clips and short form stuff. But then it doesn't translate to like actually butts in seats.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Artists are having to cancel tours because they think based on these huge numbers

[Lane Brown]

on Instagram or TikTok or whatever that they have these massive fan bases that actually don't really exist.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so you think about somebody like Clavicular or Nick Fuentes is somebody else

[Lane Brown]

I mentioned you could obviously name dozens and dozens of other influencers.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And there's this argument that, okay, clipping is all there is now. And so we're watching this stuff and

[Lane Brown]

it's like this is sort of a new popularity or whatever it is.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But it's like I. Every time I watch a YouTube video, I get a clip of like the Geico Gecko. Does that make the Geico Gecko the most important thing in culture ever? Not really. It's like I didn't come here for him. I'm not that interested in what he has to say and yet I see

[Lane Brown]

him 500 times a day.

[Natalie Robomet]

So wait, so you go on social media, you don't care if what the

[Podcast Host 2]

things you're seeing are fake or not?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

No, I really, I basically, I'm pretty

[Lane Brown]

much off social media.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I'm on there only so much that

[Lane Brown]

I need to be to report stories like this, but I have sort of weaned myself off of it and I found a different way to read the Internet as best I can.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I do watch YouTube videos, but I'm

[Lane Brown]

not looking for my next idea on Twitter or TikTok.

[Podcast Host 1]

Wait, how do you read the Internet then if it's not social media?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I have an RSS reader.

[Lane Brown]

I have a whole bunch of bookmarks.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

The best I can. Obviously I break my own rule sometimes,

[Lane Brown]

but I feel like at least I'm probably deluding myself, but I feel like I'm getting slightly better information if I'm like I feel more active and seeking it out than sort of passively ingesting it.

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[Podcast Intro/Outro Voice]

You're listening to Infamous from Campside Media.

[Podcast Host 1]

Obviously the big question in all of this is where is regulation? Like, what are the platforms doing about it? What is the FTC doing about this? If anything looks like per your story, they're not commenting or really doing anything. But who is regulating this? Because technically, as you said, and I do just want to underscore this, this is illegal. It's secret advertising that is not being disclosed as advertising. So what's being done about it?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Well, I, I think like there are

[Lane Brown]

a lot of stories about people deserting social media. And so you do really kind of wonder.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

It's like, are enough normal enough real,

[Lane Brown]

actual people using this stuff to make it worth these platforms, you know, worth their while or to make it worth their advertisers? While they ban these clipping agencies, then

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

there might not just be anything in people's feeds.

[Lane Brown]

And so it's a strange dynamic, I think.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah, they need this infinite scroll that comes from these clipping agencies just putting out slop, but it's also kind of undercutting them in some ways.

[Natalie Robomet]

Do they really need it? Wouldn't people be happier just seeing stuff

[Podcast Host 2]

from their friends and from like trusted news sources? I guess not.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Well, I will say the last time

[Lane Brown]

I opened Twitter, you have the, for you, the algorithmic feed and you can,

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

you can look at that. And that's like a never ending Las Vegas casino party with just crap that I never wanted.

[Lane Brown]

But it's, it's there all the time.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And then you go over to the people you're actually following. And I feel like lately I, I think I've got like 2,000 people or something that I'm following and it's just a ghost town. You just have tumbleweeds flowing through there. And so the people I used to follow in there I think have, they've

[Lane Brown]

mostly just kind of given up on It.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So I do kind of wonder how much they need this.

[Lane Brown]

It may be more than we might

[Podcast Host 1]

assume, and you mentioned this already, but right now we're in this place where it's real people making these clips that they're then posting from these however many accounts. But in the future, it might be AI agents replacing people doing the clipping. And this all seems incredibly bleak and incredibly depressing, but I'm trying to wonder if there's a way in which this is actually good and this kind of relates to what you're saying about people, real people, leaving social media. Like, does this contribute to dead Internet theory? That's the idea that the Internet is just going to be bots talking to bots and AI talking to AI, and we're all going to get offline and actually, like, hang out with each other. Like, is that the one positive we can take from this?

[Lane Brown]

Let's cross our fingers.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I hope that that's what's happening. It's a little bit hard to say, but, yeah, it feels like the new

[Lane Brown]

thing that everybody's doing is they're clipping for the benefit of LLMs. And so you.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

You ask ChatGPT, it's like, what indie rock artist should I listen to?

[Lane Brown]

And it'll say, oh, definitely geese, because a lot of people online are talking about it, right?

[Natalie Robomet]

Or it's like the Sydney Sweeney thing

[Podcast Host 2]

that happened with American Eagle. That whole slogan like, Sydney Sweeney has great genes.

[Natalie Robomet]

And then there were these accusations that

[Podcast Host 2]

that ad was saying that she was, you know, she was great because she was white. And then other people, you know, mock that backlash.

[Natalie Robomet]

And even President Trump got involved. And then there were a bunch of

[Podcast Host 2]

bots that were commenting on all of

[Natalie Robomet]

this and creating uproar. So how do we not know that

[Podcast Host 2]

we're just in this endless, endless cycle like that?

[Lane Brown]

We really don't, I think. So there's clipping and then there's this other thing called.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

It's basically narrative campaigning. I think it's almost too new for

[Lane Brown]

this to actually have, like, a real name. But narrative campaigning is what the people I spoke to called it, where it's

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

basically, you're commenting, you have a bunch

[Lane Brown]

of fake accounts that comment on something, or they retweet and they sort of amplify a certain narrative. And so one of them, yes, was this argument of the Sydney Sweeney jeans commercial.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And so, yeah, all of a sudden,

[Lane Brown]

last summer, this is like the loudest argument in America for a week.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And this AI bot detection firm that

[Lane Brown]

I talked to told me that we analyzed this, and it seemed an awful lot like this was all totally inorganic. There were a small number of accounts that were basically responsible for. For something like three quarters of the actual content.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So, yeah, it seemed like a real,

[Lane Brown]

you know, organic argument that people are

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

having and yet probably wasn't at all.

[Christy from Lululemon]

Right.

[Podcast Host 1]

And, you know, as you noted in your story, during the controversy, American Eagle stock rose 10%, adding roughly $400 million in market value. So I feel like I say this almost every episode now, but it's very P.T. barnum. All publicity is good publicity. So even if that uproar was accusing Sydney Sweeney and this ad of essentially promoting eugenic theories, it still ended up kind of benefiting the company in this loopy way. But with this all in mind, with this ouroboros of undisclosed advertising and astroturfed opinions, I mean, what would be your advice to listeners on how to navigate their feeds?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I'd say get out of your feeds. I would say touch grass if there

[Lane Brown]

weren't a fertilizer company that was probably responsible for putting that phrase into the zeitgeist.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Yeah, I don't have any. Good. I feel like people should be more

[Lane Brown]

panicked about this, though, because there's not really a safe place to go and hide from it. It's fooling actual legitimate sources of journalism. We have a real problem here that I feel like we have to deal with, but I have no idea how we ever will, so it's scary.

[Podcast Host 2]

Well, opting out.

[Natalie Robomet]

You can opt out.

[Podcast Host 2]

You can read a book. When you go to the pool party this summer, you can tell people about what you just heard here and say,

[Natalie Robomet]

look, that thing that you're chattering about

[Podcast Host 2]

right now and telling me, like, have you seen this crazy thing that went viral? Like, that might have just been a paid campaign. I think awareness does help because it's

[Natalie Robomet]

always surprising when you learn how much you're being manipulated in the media and entertainment spheres these days seems to be endless.

[Podcast Host 2]

But this is one that I agree has to be taken really seriously and more people need to know about it.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah. My two cents would be to think about who. What you're watching benefits and, I don't know, form your own opinion.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But this. This will turn you. This will make you crazy.

[Lane Brown]

When you really start to think about this stuff and then you. You are reading Reddit comments or you're on YouTube or you open up your feed, it's like you will get suspicious of things that, you know may not even necessarily be paid advertising, because everything at a certain point looks like it. Trust me, you can go off the

[Podcast Host 1]

deep end, be skeptical, but not conspiracy theorists.

[Natalie Robomet]

Yeah, this is like a really different

[Podcast Host 2]

level though, because, you know, used to be that I would say like, oh wow, Instagra. Instagram just knows that I really want to get like a good night cream.

[Natalie Robomet]

But now it's like this is culture itself.

[Podcast Host 2]

Like the things that we take seriously, the music that everybody listens to, the movies everybody's going to see, that is a different level. And it's quite frankly a little bit disorienting because we're already so siloed that you crave listening and watching the same things that everybody. Monoculture does.

[Natalie Robomet]

That's what people. Yeah, people want to be connected to what their friends are into, Water cooler

[Podcast Host 2]

conversation, all of that. And to manipulate that feels like a different level than just like, hey, buy this night cream.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And just the scary thing for me is like how much of what we know or what we think we know about culture in the last five or

[Lane Brown]

10 years is just total astroturf. It's like we have a lot of assumptions about what we think was popular and yet there might have been some manipulation happening.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So it's. Yeah. Very disorienting.

[Lane Brown]

I think that is the word.

[Natalie Robomet]

Okay, well, let's all get back to our lives. Try to make them as non weird

[Podcast Host 2]

as possible so we can combat this. Thanks so much, Lane.

[Lane Brown]

Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you, Natalie. This is fun.

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[Commercial Voice]

See terms.