The success of click-bait channels both fascinates and horrifies me – for the simple reason that disproving their lies should be the easiest thing on the planet, 99% of the time without doing any additional research. One doesn’t need an IQ of 160, or even full brain functionality, to see that the content of a video does not substantiate the claim made in the title. It’s that straightforward.

Professional content creators (read people whose closet skeletons have not yet been revealed to their voracious audiences) need a high output to keep generating ad revenue. One might think the size of a channel’s audience implies quality content – quite often, it’s the exact opposite. The need to upload as frequently as possible results in a superficial approach towards any subject; when it’s combined with a lack of scruples, it may well end in the defamation and harassment of innocent people. In fact, it often does.

It should be no surprise that when quantity is the priority, some channels resort to the following:

  • Publicising rumours about public figures (especially outrageous ones); baseless murder accusations are not excluded;
  • Creating narratives based on very little or nothing at all;
  • Exaggerating and distorting irrelevant issues to pretend they are news;
  • Giving airtime to stories pushed by sources they know are utter rubbish (trolls), just to get people to click;
  • Milking a story until the cow goes mad (for weeks, months or in pathological cases, even years);
  • Riding every available hate train, until it leaves the planet and ends up somewhere on Pluto.

The latter is particularly disgusting, as they are naming and discussing real people who can be affected in real time by the madness and vitriol they feed to outrage-hungry idiots. Those idiots, in turn, take to social media and spread whatever the grifters had come up with that morning on the toilet, just to have something to talk about.

Once a smear campaign gets going and actual hatred is fomented, the crowd doesn’t stop until theories to further vilify the target have gone beyond psychotic. Unless someone is a proven public menace, it is absolutely irresponsible to start and fuel communal hatred. It poses a risk not only to that person’s mental health, but to their physical safety as well.

What is more aggravating, grifters often hide behind the veneer of genuine preoccupation for social issues such as abuse of power, sexual harassment, domestic violence, protecting minors, achieving justice for victims of crime and so forth. Through that, they cultivate virtuous facades, when in fact, these people couldn’t care less whether what comes out of their mouths has any truth to it. They just need it to be entertaining enough to reach the numbers they’re going for.

Millions of people interact with this type of content daily. And whereas some channels are formulaic and easily recognised as click-bait, others manage to turn their distortions into multifaceted grifts. Have a look at the many ways Popcorned Planet (commonly abbreviated as PCP, like the hallucinogen) exploits viewers after providing nothing but speculation and tabloid rubbish:

This Linktree list can be dubbed the 12 ways of grifting. In one instance, Signore asked viewers to donate money to Alex Romero (Depp’s doorman, who had entertained them with his bizarre testimony) via CashApp, using his referral code, so he could skim off the top. Hence donations to others can also be a grift. To that, one can add the occasional sponsor – recently, for instance, they used a fake and defamatory tale of a satanic orgy (complete with a thumbnail superimposing Heard and Musk to Maxwell and Epstein) to sell knickers:

In his channel description, Signore mentions pop culture justice. This can be translated as raising and fuelling a mob against the target of the day.

Free speech heroes…?

A few days ago, Alex Jones was finally on trial for the conspiracy theory he spread about the Sandy Hook school shooting – namely that it had been fake, the children who had died had never existed and their parents were crisis actors. The damage done to these people at the worst time in their lives is impossible to put into words – or even imagine. They were harassed and threatened for years by Jones’ QAnon audience, convinced that the US deep state had staged the shooting to enact laws banning and confiscating their guns.

Thankfully, Jones, who was pushing this insane narrative to promote a right wing agenda but also to sell a vast array of products, lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay around 50 million dollars in damages.

Whereas smaller grifters on YouTube seldom have the same impact (unless they band together, as they did during the Depp v Heard trial), they use the exact same playbook to portray themselves as persecuted independent journalists.

Channels such as PCP – or PP, if you prefer – and That Umbrella Guy use known right wing tropes: the mainstream media is corrupt and lying; correct information must be spread by alternative sources at their own peril; the masses should support those sources generously, lest they be brainwashed.

Under that umbrella, no pun intended, they can spout any lies originating from mysterious sources, which include very serious allegations, such as people committing crimes and being investigated by state authorities. Their audiences, convinced that the mainstream media is lying 24/7, somehow muster up the belief that these (often anonymous) unaccountable strangers must be telling the truth. They gobble down any claims without requiring evidence. The level of viewers’ stupidity and superficiality is astounding.

That Umbrella Guy, for instance, who as of 2 months ago had made over 600 videos about Amber Heard (and still makes at least one daily), often uses this formula:

  1. He finds a tweet from a rando, commenting negatively about Depp, Depp’s legal team, Depp’s supporters etc; he screenshots it;
  2. He pens a title using words such as “attack”, “plot”, “harassment”, to suggest an ample and significant action against those being criticised;
  3. He attributes the entire imagined caboodle to Amber Heard, who obviously had nothing to do with a stranger’s tweet;
  4. He creates a thumbnail with an unflattering photo of her and his fabrications.

How this man’s channel still exists, given the level of deception, is beyond me. Imagine someday I was sworn at by a Catholic in passing, and then went on to make a video claiming the Pope had hired a squad to throw Molotovs at my neighbourhood. That is the level of exaggeration and distortion, creating events out of thin air, for clicks and ad revenue. Her name sells. Her face sells. So why stop now?

Take the following example from just two days ago:

The only “evidence” of the “attack” is one critical tweet from a random person, mentioning the snarky behaviour of juror 15 during the trial and describing it as biased and inappropriate. One small opinion, without the Twitter handle, meaning it could’ve been posted by anyone – that’s it. His comment section is full of idiots decrying the harassment jurors are facing and expecting Amber Heard and her legal team to face repercussions for something that isn’t happening.

He does this day in and day out, and somehow, no one in his audience seems to notice.

It’s a phenomenon worth studying, really. One would think that for extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence is required. For these people it’s the exact opposite: they are anesthetised by the sheer volume of scandalous claims thrown at them daily. They step into the parallel narrative this man has created, in which every single claim makes sense.

Here’s another one from yesterday:

The PR plot? Well, there wasn’t any, and the situation he refers to – once again – did not involve Amber directly. It didn’t stop him from using her name and face, and making another scandalous claim.

A few weeks ago, a Twitter account going by Kamilla started posting threads in support of Amber, at times showing parts of the recently unsealed pre-trial documents, which proved that Depp was far from innocent and had engaged in egregious conduct. She did not reveal her identity and as a photo, she used a cartoon depicting a Black woman. Her threads were so well organised and so impactful they became bothersome to Depp’s camp. She had to be found and silenced.

A genius and fellow Waldman puppet known as Laura B, in attempts to find Kamilla’s identity and dox her, started going through employee profiles at the PR firm Amber had hired. For some God forsaken reason, Laura B decided to claim (publicly) that a Black female employee just had to be Kamilla. This lady, who stated she was not involved at all and had been falsely identified solely by her skin colour, found herself targeted by an avalanche of harassment. She put out a statement clarifying matters and got lawyers involved.

Despite the fact that Laura B is likely in the process of being sued for what she has caused this unsuspecting woman and her family, That Umbrella Guy puts out comments and videos about a PR plot orchestrated by Amber.

If this man genuinely believed all these stories, against all evidence, he would appear to be in need of sectioning. Of course, the more plausible explanation is that he knows exactly what he’s doing and doesn’t care.

“Opinions” and “entertainment”

A few weeks ago, a successful creator known as Sloan, who pumps out videos on very serious topics almost daily, found it suitable to upload this:

This baseless conspiracy theory is about a decade old and exploits the death of singer Lina Morgana, who either jumped or fell from a hotel rooftop while Lady Gaga was thousands of miles away, in a different state. The alleged motive itself is ridiculous – apparently Gaga was jealous of Lina’s fame and wanted to replace her, copying her style. I won’t even go into how cretinous such allegations are.

Arguably, Gaga isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, as her style has often been based on shock value. When Satanic panic content was very popular, she was being accused left and right of using “Illuminati symbols” and other such nonsense. However, jumping from finding her style a tad sinister to accusing her of murder is a stretch from here to Saturn. The arguments Sloan brought in favour of this theory included comparisons between these women’s poses and outfits. Not kidding.

Comments, minus a handful, were overwhelmingly in support of this insanity, which I’m sure Sloan knew would happen.

Some people justify this content by labelling it an opinion, open discussion, conspiracy theory etc – even though in practice, it involves using someone’s name with the word “murder” next to it. Suggesting that it may have happened, with no evidence at all, involves entertaining the possibility and looking for arguments in favour of it. It’s utterly irresponsible to put this idea in people’s heads (700k of them), offering it as a viable version of reality, just for a quick buck, instead of encouraging rational thought.

I needn’t mention that people who believe this stuff are not necessarily the brightest or most stable tools in the shed. They would accuse or even convict someone of anything based on vibes and folklore. Remember Pizzagate?

Please note that one of the comments refers to Sloan as a reporter (perhaps because he uses legitimate sources for some of his content and may come across as thorough half the time).

To conclude this post, when sifting through content which might influence your opinion, please consider the following when it comes to creators:

  1. They are not accountable to anybody for lying. They can put out any rubbish they like as long as audiencens tolerate it.
  2. Charisma and honesty/genuine research are very different things.
  3. Making a living out of stalking one person is not normal in real life; it shouldn’t be normal online either.
  4. Every single one of them is in it for the money, whether they create honest content or not.
  5. As Waldman’s smear campaign has proven, some of these people act as mouthipeces, cementing false narratives and mobilising viewers to spread them, at times for political agendas.
  6. Most importantly, this is not journalism.