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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
Jason Kettler
We're here in the private jet. We're on our way to Ibiza. Got the passport? Got the prosecco? You want to be rich like us? Learn how to do journalism. You take our online course. Publish articles, you get subscribers. It's that easy. Follow us. Figure out how to learn more. You can be rich like us. Take our online course. Check out the dashboards. I'll show you.
- [00:48]
Emmanuel Myberg
You want proof?
- [00:49]
Jason Kettler
I'll show you.
- [00:54]
Sam
Hello and welcome to the four four Media podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. Four4Media is a journalist founding company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to Four4Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 4 Media co. I'm your host, Sam today. Joseph is out this week, and with me are four Form Media co founders Emmanuel Myberg.
- [01:24]
Emmanuel Myberg
Hello.
- [01:25]
Sam
And Jason Kettler.
- [01:27]
Jason Kettler
Hey, what's up?
- [01:29]
Sam
And we have two crazy, wacky, cool stories, both from Jason today. Jason is paying penance for being out the last couple weeks.
- [01:41]
Emmanuel Myberg
I'm gonna grill Jason about this story, which is a fan favorite and I'm a fan. The headline for it is How I Bought a Private jet by selling $10 subscriptions to Four4Media. First of all, congrats, Jason, on your private jet. I can't wait to fly it to various festivals and conferences like Davos and such. I mean, let's just stay at the top. Jason does not have a private jet. Unfortunately, he was doing something called LARP influencing, which I believe you learned about via social media. Can you tell me where you first ran into this?
- [02:24]
Jason Kettler
Yeah. So I guess I've been thinking for quite some time that a lot of the Hustle bros, which I guess I'll define as people who are like, I make a lot of money on the Internet by doing something, whether that be making an AI influencer, whether that be be like, day trading, whether that be doing, like, Airbnb hustling, whether that be crypto stuff. Like I've had the sneaking suspicion that a lot of them are lying and that they are not wildly wealthy. But I think that if you are one of these people, very often you post videos of yourself driving luxury vehicles, being in a private jet, being, being in like really exotic locations, like you know, being in Bali, things like that. And the story goes that, you know, they got all this money to buy the Lambo, to buy the private jet by doing some sort of online hustle. And they can teach you to do that online hustle if only you'll buy their course. And their course, you know, usually costs like $30 a month or a hundred dollars a year or more than that. And I suspected for quite some time that this was fake or that a lot of these are fake, that, you know, these people don't actually have private jets. They don't actually have Lamborghinis. And you know, I knew that you could like rent a Lamborghini for a day, that you could like ride on a yacht and take pictures of a yacht. But on my TikTok feed one day I was basically served a piece of software that allowed you to like fake a dashboard for Shopify, for OnlyFans, for Stripe, which are these, you know, different online payment processors and platforms where you can sell subscriptions. And basically they allowed you to fake the dashboard, which is like the page that shows you the analytics of how much money that you're making. And I clicked into this account and the entire account was about LARPing, which we can define in a second. But it's basically like pretending to be rich when you're not rich. And so it had all these tips for how to pretend to be rich when you are not rich.
- [04:48]
Emmanuel Myberg
It reminds me of, I also ran across this on social media, but there's this company, I forget the name of it, but all they do is sell fake, fake cash and various cases to display your stacks of bills. And it's like it's their entire business. It's like a pretty high end service. And as you can imagine, it's like if you're shooting a video and you want to hold half a million dollars and pretend that you have that in cash, you could just go to them and get that. This has been a thing for forever in music and flexing on social media and so on. And I think everyone understands like a suitcase full of cash. You've called this in the piece the new economy. And I think a sign of that is it's not just a Lambo, it's not just a private jet, which we can get into. It's not just cash. It's these dashboards. And like, that says a lot about the state of the economy, I suppose. What are some of the dashboards that you can fake? How do you fake them? And I guess, like, more philosophically, what do you think it means that, like, showing the back end of an. Only fans or a. What's another popular one? What would we do? A strike stripe.
- [06:17]
Jason Kettler
Stripe. Yeah.
- [06:18]
Emmanuel Myberg
Like, what do you think that says. Says about the current state of things?
- [06:23]
Jason Kettler
Well, I think that this has so basically, like, for a while, people who were LARPing. Let's also just say LARPing stands for live action role play, like, historically and is part of, like, gaming culture and is, like, appropriated from gamers, very broadly speaking, and then also appropriated from, like, people who, like, reenact, like, sword fights in parks and things like this. Like, what do you guys. What do you guys know LARPing to be? Because the. The use of it as, like, LARPing as a rich person is new and that is, like, gone viral in the last only few months, I think. But, like, it now seems to be kind of the dominant way that term is used, at least on like, TikTok and Instagram.
- [07:13]
Sam
I mean, you think of, like, battlefield reenactors, right? Or like sword and sorcery fantasy. Like, those are the two LARP worlds that I think of.
- [07:23]
Emmanuel Myberg
Civil War reenactment, I would say, is like the OG LARPing, but the term itself is popularized by literally taking the rules of Dungeons and Dragons and bringing it to, like, the physical realm. Yeah. And, yeah, the park. When you go to the park and you see people beating each other with foam swords and saying like, fire. Fire spell. Fire spell. That's. That. That's. That's LARPing.
- [07:51]
Jason Kettler
Yeah. Famously in the movie Role Models is, like, where I learned about it.
- [07:56]
Emmanuel Myberg
But yeah, there's also, like, a good documentary, I think, where. Where it really, like, caught on in popular culture. But I think it just. I mean, to. Your question about why it became such a popular term to describe other things is that it's a very powerful metaphor. You know what I mean? For someone pretending to be something that they clearly are not. And like, no offense, I'm into it. I don't personally do it, but nothing but respect to my various wizards out there. But it's just like, to an outsider, it seems pretty pathetic to be like, I am a knight, but you're just a guy in a.
- [08:36]
Sam
It doesn't have a good reputation. For sure. It's not like seen. It's not looked upon as a cool thing to do, definitely. But people get really into it and I think it is super interesting that there's this emergent modern day LARPing as an aspirational thing. It's like the new wizard is this dude with a broccoli haircut who's got a really fat stripe account. That's so strange for me. But I guess it makes sense because that is like the status that marker that we have now.
- [09:13]
Jason Kettler
I'm going to answer your question about the dashboards, Emmanuel, but I think first, like, I asked that because now you can like larp as anything. Like you can larp. It's like you take on the role of an onlyfans model, of like a music producer, as an actor, as an influencer, as a celebrity. It's like this idea of fake it till you make it. And the idea of pretending to be someone that you're not online goes back forever to time immemorial. And for a while, when people were larping as rich people, like when they were being like, hey, I got rich doing this stuff on the Internet, what they were doing was they were downloading these clip packs. And so what that means is they were basically just buying stock footage of fancy places. And then they were like editing tiktoks and Instagrams using this footage that either they stole from somewhere else or they bought from someone or that they got from Pinterest. And what happened was people started being like, you bought that. Like, you're LARPing. This is fake. Like, where's the proof? Where's the proof? And so what has become the proof has been like, I will show you a screenshot of my account and my account will say that I have tens of thousands of subscribers. It will show that I'm making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It will show that I'm making that I made a million dollars last year on OnlyFans or whatever. And like, honestly, when I was writing about AI slop and people making a lot of money on Facebook and that sort of thing, a lot of the times people would be like, I made $20,000 by having this image on Facebook go viral. And then all the comments would be show dash, show dashboard, show dashboard. Like, where's the dashboard? Like, where's the proof? And so the rise of this dashboard, like faking has been in response to that, where basically what the software is, is it is a modifiable backend that looks like stripe that looks like Shopify that looks like OnlyFans and you can type anything you want into it. You can type that you sold $3 billion worth of whatever product yesterday if you want. To you, it's literally just typing stuff in. There's graphs and you can like click and drag them to show whatever. So if someone was like, sees a footage of you on your yacht and they say like, where's the proof? You can show them this. And not only can you show them a screenshot, but you can show them a video of your laptop because it's literally software that is emulating and mocking the actual back end. And so, I mean, I think one, it's like a culture where we, where people think that it's like cool to be on a yacht, but they also think it's cool to just like show screenshots of their bank accounts or their, in this case like their Stripe accounts or whatever. But also the larping has like gone so far, the faking has gone so far that they're like, people are creating fake software to fake this so that people can fake their lifestyle so that they can sell a fake course and presumably try to make some real amount of money by doing a pyramid scheme where it's like, look, you want to get rich, just emulate me, buy my course. And then like, of course their course is bullshit. Like almost always.
- [12:59]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah. I think before we move on to some of the more old fashioned physical larping you did to just like linger on the, on these fake dashboards for a minute. I think it's interesting that people are not saying, oh, like let me get a fake capital one dashboard to show you my bank account. It's about these platforms. Everybody's aware of the rich people or the people who are getting rich on these platforms, like whatever Star on onlyfans or whatever Star on Twitch or people on Stripe or Patreon or you know, even something like Ghost that we use, everybody wants to get rich that way. And that is the fantasy that is being sold to you. But it is. If you, if you spend like just like two minutes thinking about it, you can come to the conclusion that it's a scam because the, the numbers of how many people get that wealthy from these platforms is kind of out there. And they're all extremely lopsided in the sense that there's like 1% or half a percent of people who make a lot of money and then the rest of them make no money. Right. It's like this is why you see OnlyFans stars say in their bio that they're like top 1% on OnlyFans or you know, everybody talks about how much most Twitch streamers have like under five or no viewers watching them. That's like the vast majority of people on the platform. And I'm guessing it's just like. Is this what you're referring to by the new economy? It's like this idea that people are not getting rich by getting a great job or even owning a great business. It's just like I am the winner in this dogpile on OnlyFans which I mean if you get rich, great, most likely you will not. But I feel like the, the effect of like these fake dashboards is like net positive for all the platforms, right?
- [15:28]
Jason Kettler
Like, well, it's become a flex. I mean it's become a flex to show this and I think it's become more of a flex to show your only fans backend than it is to show your Chase account backend or whatever. Because I think, I think it is because there is like some sort of cachet that comes with like I am a self made person who like made this money because I'm popular on the Internet versus like I don't know, a Chase account. Like maybe you inherited that money. Maybe it came from working a cringe W2 job like a 9 to 5 or something. And here it's like I created something out of nothing. Like on the creator economy, like on YouTube, I became a big YouTuber, I made like all this money. Like here's why you should trust me versus like if I was just showing you, hey, I have a lot of money. It's like, well maybe it's your dad's money. Maybe it's like maybe someone died and you inherited it. Like whatever. And here it's like, well I'm like a self made person who figured out the secret to the Internet. Like I figured out how to game the algorithm or like if you're making a, an AI only fans model or actually they sell fan view dashboards as well, which is like what AI models are using. Because only Fans doesn't allow AI models. At least last I checked. Sam, do they allow now?
- [16:53]
Sam
I mean you have to, you have to have like a, a real ID attached to your account no matter what.
- [16:59]
Jason Kettler
Yeah.
- [16:59]
Sam
It has to match the content that you're making.
- [17:01]
Jason Kettler
So yeah, so basically it's like it's like I made, I made an AI girl who's like so hot that like all these people wanted to subscribe and like here you should, you should listen to me. And that I think that's kind of like why this has so much cachet behind it. I'll also say that, like, after I published the story about these fake dashboards and things like that, I didn't write about this because I just got the tip. And I think it's maybe too small to do, but like, one of our readers figured out that you can just like break into these dashboards and not pay for them because they're vibe coded and they're just like really shitty. But like they are being put together to like fill some sort of like hole in the market. And so it's like not clear how many people are doing this, but they're quite expensive. It's like the, the Shopify fake dashboard is $149 a month. And it's like, you gotta sell a lot of so much. It's so much. It's crazy. And it's just like, it's unclear like, how many people are doing this. And it's funny because on the website itself they're like, we're almost sold out of these dashboards because we're keeping them really, you know, like exclusive only. And only a few people are allowed to buy it because we, we want to keep this secret. And so like, there's an air of exclusivity to all of that as well. It's, it's very silly. And then I, I want to talk about one other piece of software before we talk about like what I did in real life, but there's another one called Fake Notifications. And I bought this one on Telegram and this one was a bargain. This was, I think $100, but it's a lifetime use, so I don't have to, I didn't have to cancel the subscription. But basically it's a web app that you install onto your phone. So it's a mobile website, but then you install it as a bookmark. So it looks like an app on your phone. And you give it notification, the ability to send your phone notifications and it spoofs notifications from Shopify or from Stripe, and you can make that notification say anything. And you basically like go into your, into this little app, you type what you want it to say and then you type how many notifications you want it to send your phone. And then you can also have it generate random email addresses, presumably using AI like fake email addresses. And so I can like click a button on my phone and I can just send myself tons of notifications that make it look like people are like buying my product. And so this also allows you to be like, I am making so much money that I am like getting notifications as we speak. And I'm pulling it up on my phone right now. I can send myself like hundreds of notifications. Like I'm going to send myself 3, 300 notifications right now. And it's just like, this is the back end. You can maybe see a little bit of it.
- [20:17]
Emmanuel Myberg
But it's like you're blowing up right now.
- [20:18]
Jason Kettler
I'm blowing up. It's just like, new subscriber, new subscriber, new subscriber. And it's, it's that, it's like even that can be faked. You know, I want that, that would
- [20:29]
Sam
like fix my social media addiction. I think my little pacifier of dopamine.
- [20:36]
Jason Kettler
Honestly, I felt something when I was using this.
- [20:39]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah.
- [20:40]
Jason Kettler
I was just like, oh my God. Like, yeah, here we go, like making a lot of money. Because as, as we'll talk about, it's like I turned this into fake 404 Media subscribers. And then I clicked a button. I was like, wow. New subscriber, new subscriber, new subscriber. And to be clear, like, we use Stripe as our backend. And this is the notification. Looks the exact same as the real one is. Fully, fully spoofed. I was gonna say. Should we take a break there to talk about the physical larping?
- [21:16]
Sam
Yeah, let's take a break.
- [21:27]
Jason Kettler
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- [27:57]
Emmanuel Myberg
Jason, Please tell me about your private jet.
- [28:00]
Jason Kettler
Yeah, so I learned that these fake softwares existed and this like notification app existed and all of this. And I started sending myself notifications, making myself feel like I was making lots of money. And I was changing the dashboard to like look like I had a lot of subscribers. And I, you know, typed 404 media in, but I was just like sitting in my bedroom while I did this. And it didn't feel very luxurious. It didn't feel as though I were rich. And I had seen enough of these TikTok accounts where I was kind of like, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to go try to get some content, I'm going to go try to film some content, show people that I actually am rich, that and just basically copy what these guys are doing to see like how difficult it is. And because I live in LA and so much of the economy of LA is influencer focused and also Hollywood focused, there's a lot of photo studios. And so I googled private jet photo studio and there was one. And it's never, it's almost never booked out. It was $60 for an hour. And I was just like, I'm gonna book, I'm gonna book this photo studio and I'm gonna go take pictures in a private jet. And so to be clear, it's not actually a private jet. It is like a warehouse in a like relatively poor part of LA that you are basically like, you book it, you're sent a code to enter. The code didn't work. Like, it was a nightmare getting in and out of this place and you like open this creaky old door and then there is like the interior of a private jet and lights there and you can just like take photos in there pretending like you're rich.
- [30:02]
Emmanuel Myberg
What do you mean by the interior of a private jet? Like what, what is it? Actually,
- [30:09]
Jason Kettler
that's a very leading question. It is, it is just like a room with some shitty pleather couches in it and like some circle, like some air airplane window, like cutouts. But they're just, they're not actually windows, they're Made to look like windows, but they're just LED lights that are in a circle form.
- [30:33]
Emmanuel Myberg
Right. I'm just saying like there's actually. There are real. Either for movies or for whatever. There's like decommissioned jets that people use for this purpose. I was a PA Once in a production where we had to wire a decommissioned jet to look like a functioning airplane for a movie. And we did it on an actual decommissioned airplane. This is not that it's like there's no part of an actual. It's like just a piece of plywood.
- [30:59]
Jason Kettler
You're in an un air conditioned room in a warehouse that has been built like with two by fours and styrofoam. And it's funny because a few weeks ago my brother was visiting and I went. I went on a studio tour. Like that's another popular thing to do in L. A is like you go to the paramount studio, you go to the sony studio. So we went to the sony studio and like they let you see some of the sets that they build for like Hollywood movies. And the entire time like the tour guide is like, yeah, it's all made of styrofoam. It's. And you can just like you see this like load bearing wall, like and he just like shoves it over. It's like weighs nothing. And like basically it was that. And I mean, I think that's one of another reason why like LA has so many of these is that it has tons of people who work in film who make different sets for movies and TV shows. And so presumably that skill transfers out to like building a fake private jet interior. And yeah, you like walk in and it's like concrete floors and one side is like a dressing room where you can like get ready to go in your private jet. And then the other is just like an open. Like there's a partition and it's open and it's just another room. And it has like a little bit of a lower ceiling and it has like airplane signs in it where it's like don't bother the pilot like it says on the wall and things like that. But yeah, to be clear, like you can go to the Santa Monica airport for example, where there's there were. There's real private jets and you can like take photos there if you pay someone who has a private jet. Which is something that that's like. Other advice given in the larping community is that like you can pay actual like significantly more than $60 to do this. I found one that does photo shoots in real private jets for influencers and for, like, engagement photos, things like that. That was like a few hundred dollars. I could have easily done that, but I was just like, I'm gonna do this as shitty and as quickly as possible and see what it looks like. Yeah, it's like basically like tr. Like they felt like Amtrak tables, like the cafe car of an Amtrak. And then like, people. These white, like, cracking pleather, like ottomans,
- [33:33]
Emmanuel Myberg
basically, to be fair, as bad as that looks. And my favorite part is that it just like. Yeah, it's like somebody bought some love seed on Wayfair and put it in the room and that's like the. The airplane seed. But when. When you. The final product, like the thing that you use these photos for, these photos and videos, it doesn't. I mean, I don't think you need a private jet. Like, it. It works. You know what I mean? Like, on camera, it looks like a private jet. It looks like you're living the dream, dude.
- [34:09]
Jason Kettler
I think it turned out pretty good, honestly. Like, if you put a really shallow depth of field, like, the background is blurred and it's like. I put on a suit top. I put on the suit top that I wore to Sam's wedding, and I brought a bottle of Prosecco that I had in my house that was like leftover from a party. And I was like, I don't know. I feel like I'm Feel like I'm on a private jet. It's like 8,000 degrees in here. And I had to keep. I had to keep stopping filming because I could hear a power saw going, like, because they were building another set next door and these things are not soundproof, like, whatsoever. And so it was, like, not so luxurious. I also was fully by myself, which I think made it a lot funnier because, like, these exist so that you can show how much fun you're having with your friends. It's just like I was like, by myself with a tripod, like, using the self timer on my camera.
- [35:07]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the reason it works is that you sold it and that you looked really happy. I was like, damn. Jason's really. He's really feeling it. He's living the life.
- [35:18]
Jason Kettler
I was really happy because sometimes I start working on a story and I'm like, this is so ridiculous. Like, this is, like, so stupid. And I was like, I. I am having a good time legitimately, so let's
- [35:32]
Sam
play a clip of it before we move on. Let's play a clip so people can hear the joy in Jason's. In Jason's voice and see the.
- [35:38]
Jason Kettler
The.
- [35:38]
Sam
The jet that we're talking about.
- [35:39]
Jason Kettler
We're here in the private jet. We're on our way to Ibiza. Got the passport, got the Prosecco. You want to be rich like us, Learn how to.
- [35:47]
Emmanuel Myberg
So there's no point in you shooting in this fake studio if you didn't post it somewhere. So tell me how you actually produced this, like, sizzle reel of your rich lifestyle and your pitch to do journalism and get rich.
- [36:11]
Jason Kettler
Well, let me tell you the other two things that I did, because they were good, too. I'll be quick. I went to the jewelry district in L. A, which is, like, uncut gems, vibes. Like, there's this kiosk and, like, tons of gold there and stuff. And I had bought some jewelry there, like, five years ago. And when I talked to the guy, he was like, you ever need anything? Like, come back here? And I told him I was a journalist and showed him my Instagram. Like, I don't know. That's just like. He was like, oh, cool. Like, you want to do a photo shoot sometime? Come back. And I was like, maybe he'll let me hold a bunch of gold. But he wasn't there. So I was leaving kind of, like, dejected. And right next to the jewelry district, there is a jewelry box wholesaler that just sells jewelry boxes and jewelry bags. And so I bought empty box. Empty jewelry boxes and empty, like, fancy bags to put the jewelry in for, like, $8. And I put. I just, like, carried them around and filmed myself as though I had just, like, bought. Bought a bunch of jewels. And then I went to a marina that's kind of near my house where rich people have yachts. And I just, like, stood outside of it filming myself. I did this all in one day. I was just bopping around. But I say that because I basically, like, filmed a bunch of videos of myself, and then I just dumped them on a person that I found on Fiverr, who does this for a living. As in, like, Fiverr, which is the gig work platform, has an entire category of people who just make, like, hype videos on Instagram. And is that the category?
- [37:56]
Emmanuel Myberg
Is that. Is that what we're talking about? Is that what you made?
- [38:01]
Jason Kettler
I. I. Yeah, it was like, vertical video advertisement category, editing.
- [38:07]
Emmanuel Myberg
Like, but, like, type video is the genre. It's like, it's. It's the. It's the thing.
- [38:11]
Jason Kettler
I'm. I'm calling it hype video, but, like, basically everyone on Fiverr, like, you kind of, like, click through different profiles and people show examples of the type of video that they make. And some of them, some of them make like straightforward advertising for malls or like I, I will do like, I will cut down a clip of your city council meeting for the public access channel or something. And those are like boring ones which are very thankless and that sort of thing. But then there's some that are like action. Like they advertise in their Fiverr profile that they, they do like high energy Instagram video editing.
- [38:54]
Emmanuel Myberg
Basically the, the person, what's their name?
- [38:57]
Jason Kettler
Let's give it credit, Ejaz.
- [39:01]
Emmanuel Myberg
So Ejaz clearly understood the assignment. It did not feel like the first time that he made a video like this. Like, I've definitely seen this type of video on Instagram. It seems like he has made something like this before. Did you give him special instruction or you were like, make me one of those.
- [39:20]
Jason Kettler
So I made a Google Drive of footage. I dumped it in there and honestly I was. It was late at night and I was like, I don't really know what to say. So here, here's what I wrote. I said, hi, Here's a lot of footage. Basically I want a few videos that highlight the private jet, the jewelry and becoming rich. It is very important that the notifications and stripe dashboard are shown. The video should also feature Quick Scrolls of 404Media Co, our website, and a lot of transitions. And that's all I said. And he turned around three incredible videos based on like, they, they were like, they were great. They were really great. And they're all like 16 seconds long and they're full of like cuts and sound effects and things like that. And they are basically exactly the type of video that I've seen all of these LARPers and hustle bro Influencers make. So yeah, he understood the assignment. There was. I had no edits for him. Like, it was truly one of those things. No notes, vibes. I think I paid $60 for three videos. I got the sense that he did this in his sleep because, like he sent me one and he was like, is this good? And I said, yes. And he said, okay, I'll do the other two. And then like 20 minutes later he sent me the other two. So I mean, hopefully it was something where he just gets a lot of work from doing this sort of thing. But the reason that I did Fiverr and not like edited myself or had Evie on our team edit it is because I wanted to be true to form. Because that's what a lot of these people do, is they go on Fiverr and they find people to edit their footage for them and make them look rich. Basically.
- [41:23]
Sam
All this reminds me of. Do you remember like two or three years ago, I think it was like 2024, you wrote about the fake livestream viewers and how you could like create like a fake stream where it's just like you're getting so many views all the time.
- [41:41]
Jason Kettler
That is so true. I do remember that. I should have mentioned that in the article. But yeah, basically there was like this fake app where you could. It looked like you're on a live stream and it had AI generated comments and AI generated like usernames and things in that. And I mean, that was really gross for a million reasons, but it was specifically gross because it was like made by a pickup artist vibes. And the whole point of the app was for you to like show people at bars that you were popular and had like a lot of. Had a lot of streamers watching you and things like that.
- [42:16]
Sam
Like, yeah, it totally works. That's. Yeah, chicks love that shit. When you. And you're like, look how many viewers I have. And now I'm streaming you through my meta glasses. That's something that we can do now. Yeah, I don't know. That just came to mind. It's like this whole culture of like the new markers of success are social media success and really all they're doing, I mean, I like the point of all of this, which I guess we haven't explicitly said yet, is to buy your course. That's the whole idea is this multi level marketing idea of buy my course, Buy my course and be successful like me. Which is another thing. And you guys mentioned this earlier, but it's another thing that if you take two seconds to think about, doesn't make sense because the idea of it is to be the standout in a very crowded field. So why would you want more people to know how to do this? But the point of all of this is to buy my course. Not to fake being rich, but to actually like the idea is to tell you how to get rich, which they're not, so they can't tell you how to be. But also. Yeah, I mean, do you want to just talk about just like the end goal of all of this, I guess is to. To sell more grift.
- [43:28]
Jason Kettler
Yeah, I mean it's like it's a pyramid scheme on top of a pyramid scheme. Like actually. So where it's like nominally there is the, like, I'm going to teach you how to make an AI influencer by my course. Like that is a type of person on Instagram. Now, there's like a lot of them and all of them have these, like, $30 per month course. You get like a PDF that shows you which software to use. It usually includes, like, prompts and things like this. Like, we've done articles about these before and they usually, like, come with access to some sort of discord or something like that. And there are that. That's one of those examples where, like, the person making that is not getting rich with the AI girl. The person making that is getting rich selling the course for how to make the AI girl. And it's not clear whether they're getting rich or not, but it's like that is their business model. Their business model isn't like, I'm good at making the AI girl. It's like, I'm good at making marketing for my course. And often the course is like, shitty and AI generated everything like the PDF is AI generated. I've bought like 10 of these, by the way, like, over the course of 404 Media just while reporting on these things. And they're always terrible. So there's like that. That is a pyramid scheme. And now there's a pyramid scheme beneath that. Where they are. People are selling the dashboards and software and like the larping toolkits and all of this for that guy. So that guy can make a pyramid scheme and a course and all of that. And so, I mean, it does. Earlier, Immanuel said, I call it like the new economy. I think I actually called it, or I think it's like part of the depravity economy is. Is what I was calling it, where it's just like, really depraved. It's like scam on, scam on, scam. And it's every, like, inch of the market that is, like, underserved. Something will arise to, like, fill it, I think. And so, like, that's kind of, I think what is happening here, where it's like, I'm gonna go make this, like, whatever. I'm gonna make these tools for. For you to make your tools for this to make another tools. And it's like, it's just all like, so fucked up.
- [45:49]
Emmanuel Myberg
Honestly, I feel like eons ago when there were ads for, like, shady here's how to make money schemes on tv, it was like, I don't know, go to trucking school, go to video game development college. And it's like they're kind of fake, right? It's like your chances of becoming a very successful video game developer Especially now are not really good. But at least the, the dream being sold is like, hey, you get a job and you learn a skill and that's how you make money. And now it's like I'm thinking about one person he wrote about a couple times I think is, his name is Musa, right? Like he, he does like short form video and like a whole part of his pitch is like, he described this day and he's like, I woke up, I posted a video, it took me five minutes and then I went back to bed and I made $15,000 that day. It's like the idea is you don't work, right? It's like. And I think that is part of the, the, the fantasy being sold. Like showing your bank account, showing like your Capital One bank account that suggests you got a job, maybe you went to school, maybe you build business relationships and now you work really hard and you make money. And it's like, who cares about that? It's like that that's not real. I just want to like, you know, post images or videos to social media and get rich that way. And I think that is really indicative of like, obviously this is not, this is not real. But like the economy or at least what people want to do is kind of pointing in that way because nobody has faith in the idea that you can like get a job and build wealth and yada yada yada.
- [47:29]
Jason Kettler
The story is always like, it's so easy if I'll show you how and you can do it from your phone. And it's like once it's like a. Set it and forget it, like automated recurring revenue, like all this sort of thing. Passive income. Yeah, passive income. And I guess the, the thing we didn't even really mention is that like in all my videos it was like, I'll teach you to get rich by being a journalist and blogging and all of that. Which is really. That was part of the joke because it's famously very difficult to get, make a sustainable journalism business, let alone like get rich doing it. Like selling blogs on the Internet. And I was like, take my journalism course. I didn't make, make a journalism course. There was no course. But maybe we should do that. That could be fun.
- [48:15]
Emmanuel Myberg
What's our three step journalism course? What are the three steps to becoming a successful journalist?
- [48:21]
Jason Kettler
Dude, I don't know. Right? Stunt blogging.
- [48:25]
Emmanuel Myberg
I think it's like, pick the worst profession in the worst time. Quadruple down on your bad decision. Yeah.
- [48:35]
Jason Kettler
Student loan debt.
- [48:36]
Sam
Yeah.
- [48:37]
Emmanuel Myberg
Have no other skills. Burn the boats and get Extremely lucky. Those are more than three.
- [48:43]
Sam
Find other psychos.
- [48:44]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah, exactly.
- [48:46]
Jason Kettler
Yeah. The last thing I'll mention is that, like, when I was doing this, the story ends on a very wholesome note, I feel, which is like, when I was looking for footage to send to Ejaz to make it look like I was rich and stuff, I was like, oh, I like my life. I've had a nice time. Like, there's. I look like I've taken some nice vacations in my time. Like, I've hung out with friends. I have been on boats before. Like, you know, boat rides. Not. I don't have a boat.
- [49:18]
Sam
Inflatable raft in the canal is not the same thing.
- [49:22]
Jason Kettler
I had a nice time. I had a nice time on it. What can I say? And it made me feel like, oh, I have, like, tricked myself into feeling happy by doing this. Done. So I don't know, what if the
- [49:38]
Sam
wealth is what you built along the way?
- [49:41]
Jason Kettler
It's very true.
- [49:42]
Emmanuel Myberg
The more you wear the wealth, your friends.
- [49:44]
Sam
Yeah, that's right.
- [49:46]
Emmanuel Myberg
Okay, should we take a break there and then do another story?
- [49:51]
Sam
Yeah, we'll take a break and we'll go back for the subscribers supporters section
- [49:56]
Jason Kettler
where we're going to talk about actual wealth. Unfortunately,
- [50:01]
Sam
as a reminder, for media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to Four Four Media and directly support our work, go to FourFormania. CO. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about bonus story each week. This podcast is produced by Alyssa mcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for this podcast. That helps us a lot. This has been WFUL media. We'll see you again next week.
- [50:44]
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Emmanuel Myberg
Wow.
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Jason Kettler
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Jason Kettler
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