Oh, yep, that's fake too

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Hello and welcome to Shameless, the Pop Culture Podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff. You're joined as always by Melbourne writers, Michelle Andrews. That would be me. And Zara, we don't know that would be you. Hello, Michelle Andrews. And hello, producer, Eilish Gilligan. Hello. Hello, Gill. Coming up on today's show, Clipping Culture. Some of you may have seen the viral piece about Clipping Culture around this week. So in today's episode, we are going to ask the big question, is everything we see on the internet really fake? It turns out the answer is kind of complicated. I thought it was going to be more complicated, though. I thought that maybe the sentiment on the internet this week, which is, oh, everything is fake now, was a bit overblown. Seeing all I think it is overblown. Oh, I'm not sure it is. I think we'll argue about this later. Right. I'll see you there. I'll see you there. Before we get into it, I quick shout out to our sponsor, Nespresso, and their new virtual app, Coffee Machine, inspired by style and discovery. It has got many a fan in the shameless office. Thank you, Nespresso. All right. So when we decided to do this story, we thought, let's open with an example of Clipping Culture because this stuff can feel amorphous or confusing. Also, if I'm honest, before the weekend, if I heard the term Clipping Culture, I wouldn't know what you meant. So if you are listening to this and you're like, I feel like we've jumped three steps and you're referring to this term I don't understand, do not stress. We will explain that too. But we thought we'd start with a good example to kind of root this in something. So of course, we're starting with Justin Bieber and Coachella. Yeah. So it cast your minds back to the first weekend of Coachella a month ago, maybe, a month and a half ago. So the feed that weekend was a wash with clips of Justin Bieber's performance. So you might remember Justin Bieber had this very bad back performance compared to Sabrina Carpenter. He was scrolling through YouTube. It was pretty ad hoc, pretty off the cuff and very, very viral. Super viral, so viral that even, I mean, I got around that. I think I posted it on my own Instagram. And I don't really post it on my Instagram anymore. And our head of socials, Nima, even on the weekend decided, no, we, we shameless needs to get around this. Collated a bunch of videos from the internet posted it on our own channels. Yeah. So did we know at the time that a lot of the online sentiment and excitement about that set may not have been entirely organic. So some experts in the online world say nothing we see on the internet is organic. Yeah. And as you say, like there was, there's been a lot of chatter about whether that, that kind of sentiment around Justin Bieber has been organic or if it was completely concocted behind the scenes. I mean, the answer to that question probably is a little bit of Colomé, but of Colomé. Given I posted, we posted it all very organically. But that's what we're going to deep today. What we want to do is kind of deep the article we keep referencing in a moment. This article from Vulture that was all over my Twitter feed. If you guys didn't see it, don't stress, we're going to explain what it means. But we wanted to share a passage up top at the very top of this episode. So you can see where we're coming from with this Justin Bieber Coachella conversation. So the articles called The Feed Is Fake, it was written by journalist Lane Brown. We will put a link in the show. No, it's Lane Brown did some incredible work in this story. Lane wrote. Coachella is the biggest stage in pop music save only for the Super Bowl, the kind of event that in theory generates its own attention. And yet, on both weekends, a discord server I've been monitoring hosted paid campaigns for Justin Bieber's Coachella performances, offering Clippers as much as $1,000 per thousand views. The announcement for one campaign read in all caps, this is so viral, go, go, go, go. So what the hell a clip is? What does it mean to have a paid campaign in this context? How can something go viral but be fake simultaneously? We're not fake. Some of it's fake. We're not fake. We could be AI. Imagine that. We haven't done a live show in a while. It's so true. We haven't been spotted. I was about to draw a robot voice. I was like, "Dore, let that intro support win." Please. We are AI. Oh. I felt bad. You wanted it. I knew it would be bad. Yeah, so true. You go then. You be a robot. We are not. Oh. It's not a robot. It's not a robot. Not a robot. Non-chalant. That's just like a robot re-burning. Oh my god, by the way, before we get to the serious part of this episode and the clipping culture, because we are going to kind of deep all of that in a second. Do you see the video of the robot performing Michael Jackson who fell over? Yes, girl, past it. Oh. What? It's so funny, Mish. Explain what happens. The robot's dancing to Michael Jackson and then trips. No, no. It's more deep than that. Yeah, come on. So he's dancing this robot and he's like dancing badly, first of all. And then he stumbles a bit, but then he saves himself. And then he ends up tripping over and then he gives up. And you know how robots just like kind of just die? Yeah, robots aren't very resilient. No, I think that was the point. And Gil is right. It was deeper than that because everyone's like, firstly, it's always funnier to see a robot fall over than a human. And I agree with that sentiment. That is true. It is always funnier. Like you fucking idiot. Yeah. You don't climb up. You don't climb. Clanky clank clank. And I think then it's the resilience point to be like a human could never. Like if you wouldn't just fall over and then lie there, a human has to get up and keep going. Yeah. Right. Anyway, after the break, what is clipping? How may have that impacted the sentiment around dust and peepers performance and how is that impacting almost everything we see on the internet every single day? We're going to get into it after a word from today's sponsor. Ziz, for many of us, coffee is the best part of the day. That first sip. Literally nothing compares. No, literally nothing compares, but it's also so much about the ritual, like sipping on your morning coffee while you get ready for work, meeting in the work kitchen for a mid afternoon coffee in Yapp and the rest in A.S. Our office. If they love anything, our office loves a coffee and a Yapp. Yeah, which is why we've been fan-gallowing over and espresso at the moment. Do a lip bar is fronting their latest campaign. That wasn't enough. It's all about mixing up your coffee ritual. Yeah, there are over 30 coffee blends to choose from in the virtual range and all you have to do is press to explore. You can make your usual latte, go nuts with lavender vanilla decaf or ask yourself, what else can I make? The quality is there too. Nespresso roast, grinds and seals high quality coffee into aluminium capsules for freshness. And bonus points because you can recycle them later via Nespresso's dedicated recycling program. The espresso have also just released their new virtual art machine, which is so sleek, smart, and easy to use. It reads the capsule to make the perfect cup and even lets you personalise your coffee. So Clevver, visit nespresso.com for the full virtual range. And thank you so much to Nespresso for making this episode of Shameless Possible. OK, so quote unquote clipping culture is a phrase that seems to have gone mainstream overnight. It feels new, but there have been conversations about this evolving for years. In fact, I did see on my Twitter lots of female journalists say that they pitched a story on clipping culture last year, nobody picked it up and then all of a sudden this lane brown piece comes out. And of course, it's a brilliant piece. I'm not saying it's anything but brilliant. But a lot of female journalists were like, we have pitched this for a long time and all of a sudden this one story is being held up as like a beacon of culture commentary. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I've also seen similar stuff. I've also seen female journalists point out their own substats that have touched on this, which we will actually get into throughout the show today. But when it comes to this specific article that is being heralded as like at the forefront of clipping culture and kind of changing our perception of what's happening on the internet, as I said, the fetus fake is its title. It's written by lane brown and it opens with this joe limb estimates that 90% of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise and he should know the three years limb ran a company called Flutterfly, which at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social media accounts used to drum up attention on behalf of paying clients. On a typical day, he says, "Flatify posted 50,000 videos across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X, all of them designed to pass for the unscripted output of ordinary users." Yeah. So, that snippet mentions that Flutterfly operated 65,000 dummy accounts at its peak, but Flutterfly also offers clipping services in a different way. So, when you go to their website, which I did, I think I signed up to Flutterfly. The funny thing about these businesses is that you go on to the Flutterfly website and then you create an account for the accounts for the business of a different name and you end up on like a different, I don't know where I am. I have a clipping account now. Okay. Because I wanted to do some investigations to what the hell this thing is. So, it operates in a couple of different ways. You can make money in today's day and age by being a human person, creating a account with a business like this, clipping pop culture things. So for example, there was a Kid La Roy video that was like, "Clip this." Was it like a stitch? Well, this is the weird thing. There's different tiers of money. So, you could cut down a video that's already existing online and pop it up on TikTok. And you know, get money for that. You can get money for commenting and lacking videos. You can get the most amount of money, at least to my research, by stitching and reacting to existing videos to boost them in an algorithm. So none of this, it's not like your robot, your real person, but you're not engaging with this content and good faith, you're purely engaging with it because you want cash. - It's fascinating to me because when I read this piece and started to understand clipping culture, I'm not gonna lie, I felt like a bit of an idiot. I felt like in this job, I was like, I should have been able to see this because I see cut downs or clips of video podcasts all the time, particularly American podcasts. - Absolutely. - And I've always asked myself as someone who has a podcast that also does video content. I'm like, who are these random accounts that just post these viral videos from different interviews or different, like the canceled podcasts, for example, I'm not accusing them of clipping. I know that podcast doesn't even exist anymore. It was Tanimojo and Brooks Gofield. They had so many random accounts resharing clips of canceled segments. And I used to wonder, it's like I kind of do a lot of audience development stuff here. - Yeah. - I used to be like, why do people do that to us? No one takes our clips. No random account takes our clips and posts it on their own feed. - Completely. And I felt at the time when we went into video that that was the real risk that people could cut up your stuff and take it out of context. We had conversations about it. - You were nervous about it, yeah. - Yeah, we had conversations about it to be careful with your words because people can be doing this because I assumed it was people randomly deciding what they loved or hated about podcasts. And then inflating it in reality, what's happening more often than not is that there are campaigns existing, as you said, to pay people to do this. Now that sometimes that can come from, for example, a label, I guess a record label on behalf of an artist. But really, it's so murky right now that who is actually pushing what and why? - So one clipping company calls their practice narrative campaigns. So basically it means that the paid for clips have a certain narrative about them. So say I'm a music label, one of my musicians performs on SNL. I put up a campaign on Discord to say, hey, share this clip of this SNL performance and explicitly write in your caption or your title that this is the best music performance of the year. All of a sudden thousands of accounts post that, well thousands of accounts get behind that. That narrative is set. And then real humans see that narrative and it takes flight with them. - Yeah, because I would see that and say, well, if all these experts are saying this is the best SNL performance of the year, then they must be right. The internet sentiment must be right. It's, I guess, like that sense of when you watch a video, you feel like you are forming an opinion in your brain about that video. You click into the comments and realize that everyone's disagreeing with you and you think, oh gosh, I must be wrong. That sense of group thing on the internet is getting stronger and stronger and scarier and scarier. Now it goes without saying, these clips are not disclosed as paid ads, even though that's exactly what it is. This is advertising in a different form. - And what was really curious to me is when I was on this clipping website yesterday with my brand new account, it could plug in directly to my TikTok account. So I also have questions. - Uh-huh. - Do the social media platforms have a vested interest in this economy? Do they get some kind of kickback from this economy? 'Cause it sounds huge. This sounds like something that has been happening particularly in Hollywood four years now and it's only getting bigger. It's only getting more mainstream. Why would TikTok make it so easy for me to plug in my account? Like I just have to scan a QR code and all of a sudden it's completely synced to my TikTok. - It's confusing as well because in this story, like Lane Brown goes to all the social media apps, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and ask them specifically about what they're doing about this. And TikTok came out the strongest in opposition. They were the ones that came back to them the fastest. Lane Brown reported that Instagram were actually, I don't wanna exaggerate my wording. I would say slightly the shadiest or maybe the most unwielding-- - Oh, yeah. - To offer comment on it. Whereas TikTok were like, oh, came back straight away and had responses and said we wanna try and pull this stuff down. Where Instagram have only really responded in a way where they've said on their platform, they will deprioritize content that looks repurposed. So if it's not original. - Yeah. If you're wondering listening to us, okay, well, who's doing this? The answer is kind of everyone. - Everyone. - Yeah. - Per that Vulture piece in a couple of weeks of lurking in these clipping communities, ISIL campaigns scroll pass for bad bunny, Zane Malik, Fleetwood Mac, Shania Twain, Luke Combs, Noah Khan, Tiana Taylor, Teddy Swims, Dominic Fight, Kane Brown, Netflix's The Night Agent, Apple TVs for all mankind, The Horror Movie in City of Six out of the Further, The Michael Jackson, BioPick, Michael, the betting platform, Kelshi, the Met Gala among others. So I guess the big question becomes, is culture all bought now? Is culture actually just paid advertising? - Well, there's no such thing in culture as organic virality almost anymore. It feels very much like if you wake up one day and suddenly a certain thing, a person place or thing, a company, a celebrity is everywhere, out of nowhere. I used to think that that could just happen on these algorithms. Now I'm realizing, for example, the betting platform, Kelshi, came out of fucking nowhere in my life. - All of a sudden it was just everywhere. - Yeah. - And then you realize that there are campaigns about betting platforms like this and everything starts to click into place. It makes me think a lot about other narratives that pop up that don't make a lot of sense to me. For example, the idea or the thing that comes to mind in the last week or two is the conversation about Olivia Rodrigo's baby daughter. And if you haven't seen this story, Olivia Rodrigo performed a week or two ago in this cutesy little baby daughter. And suddenly the conversation went from why she wearing a tumbles clothes to like this incredibly inflamed conversation about how she's buying into low-leader tropes and it becomes something about genuinely like child abuse. And you're watching on or I was certainly watching on being like, how did we get here? - Like how did this get so inflamed so quickly? - Yeah. - It's so viral so quickly. - While acknowledging that obviously fashion is political in this sense, it just very much feels like the style that she is leaning into with this new album. Now people can have issues with that. You hated the dressing world. - I don't like it. - No, I don't like the styling. - I do like it. - I do like it. There's a bit of like sort of punk rock girl about it too. And I was watching this and I was so confused about how this story just took flight in the way that it did and then in the wake of this article, it makes you think, is there someone deliberately pushing this kind of idea? I mean, it may not be, but now it would be remiss of anyone. - To not question it. - To not raise an eyebrow when you see stuff that just gets everywhere. And it's not what you and your friends are talking about or maybe what you and your friends actually believe. - Yeah, it's always that it's like, well, why does the discourse online look so different and different to what I'm actually saying in the office or to my friends in our group chat? - Totally. - You guys are wondering how this actually functions. So the Vulture piece explains an agency will announce a new campaign specifying where the clips should run, usually TikTok, Instagram and YouTube and what they will pay. Members then have a few days to make an upload as many clips as they can, hoping at least one will go viral. A clip-up who posts a single video might earn nothing. If it flops or thousands, if it hits. The founder of One Agency tells me his top clipper has earned over six figures publishing across thousands of accounts, which brings us back to Justin Bieber who we mentioned at the top of the episode. Justin Bieber has been listed as a client of one of these clipping agencies. He's not alone. We don't want this to come across it. Justin Bieber is like the bad guy in all of this. - I don't think there'd be a single singer now. - Would you do this? Because otherwise, I imagine that feel like that happened away a time on the internet. - And it's said in the article, one of the top five singers in the world is notorious for this, who I'd love to know who that is. But yeah, Justin Bieber has been a listed client of a company called Chaotic Good Projects. So has Jua Lipa, so has Sean Mendez. After clipping cultures started to kind of be a bit fuzzy and get spoken about a lot in the last couple of weeks, Chaotic Good Projects has removed their client list from their website entirely. In a quote to Lane Brown, they said, "So our artists partners don't get wrapped up in false accusations or misconceptions about how their music was discovered." - I went to Chaotic Good Projects' website last night, because I was like, how does a company like their sell-it services? Incredibly. You'll have a field date with this. Basically, there's nothing on the website at all anymore. You click into the tabs and it's like, contact us if you want more information. So it's a really strict back website. They're about paid when they describe what they do. It's really funny to me, because it is just words-alid. It is complete words-alid. Do you want to read it to you? - Yes, please. At Chaotic Good Projects, we believe in a harmony between tasteful intentionality and efficient execution as a boutique digital agency, resolute dedication to the pursuit of understanding informs our strategies across endeavors. - Oh, please. - What is that? - They can't say it. - They can't say it. - They can't say, hey. So they just put words together. - We will get you to go viral, because we'll pay for you to go viral in a way that is inauthentic and a bit shady. - Well, it's again, the legality of it is in completely murky if we're talking about advertising that's not disclosed. And here's the thing when I was reading this article, part of me was like, are people actually making money from this? When you were scrolling next to me yesterday, you were like, I can just get paid to post. Like it doesn't matter how it performs. Other people, as you mentioned earlier, do get paid more if it performs really well. But in the vulture piece, Lane included screenshots of ads from these discord communities, and I think it might be helpful for us to outlay how the money works. Well, yeah, because I think a lot of these are tied to the music industry, which I also want to get your thoughts later on, girl, that a lot of musicians seem to be doing this. So one post began like this. Earned money by posting clips and edits of Dominic Fike breaking down the meaning of his song "White Keys." It went on to detail that this is a TikTok-specific campaign. You have to post a video that's minimum seven seconds long. The payment details were as follows. $1 per 1000 views that you get, or $100 per 100,000 views, with the minimum payout triggered once a series of clips reach a total of 5,000 views. So, clip is, could earn a little over $1,000, apparently, if they did well on this campaign. I would imagine this is in US. That's true. Thank you, Zara. Yeah, here's the thing. It's like it's not particularly tough work. If you're sitting at home trying to make a bark, you can imagine why people are pulled into this. I wonder how many Jens Zedders? It feels like this is the biggest over in America, which is, I know, how a lot of these culture things kind of roll out is massive in America than kind of trickles down to other countries. I wonder how many Jens Zedders are at home and this is their work. Genuinely. If you were really literate in social media, which so many Jens Zed people, I was going to say kids. No, sorry. Jens Zed people. Ah. It's a decent way to earn money. I was looking at some of the offers when I signed up yesterday, being like, yeah, I'm going to take me very long. It wouldn't take me very long to get that $300. Wouldn't it take me very long to get that $400? No, there are hard ways to make that money. In the voucher piece as well, I think the really important piece of this puzzle is that clipping is cheap. When you compare it all to the cost of traditional forms of advertising, you compare it all to billboard out of home advertising. You even compare it to TV ads or even paying influencers to post disclosed ads. This is the cheapest way to get eyeballs. Here's a quote on that. The co-founder of the Clipping Agency spade clipping told me that one of his recent campaigns cost the client less than $10,000 and resulted in nearly 100 million views. Why is anyone spending money on a billboard? He asked me, when I can get your brand in front of people for a fraction of the cost. Mm. After the break, we're going to talk more about this and I think we may actually disagree on one of the big questions, but first a word from today's sponsor. Since we discovered that apparently, apparently according to Michelle's math, I am basically the same length as a 65 inch TV. It felt only right to commit to the semi-big TV life, but in a way that still appears to my inner interior designer, I cannot wait to set up my new Samsung, the frame in my new place, unlike some TVs that completely take over a room. This one is designed to blend in beautifully. It's framed to look like a piece of art. So when it's switched off, it elevates your space. There are over 5,000 artworks from famous galleries and artists to choose from. How good is that? Even the TV's frame color is customizable. I have gone with brown to match the sort of warm vibe I'm going for in my Ling Room, but there are plenty of options to make sure your TV fits in with your style. Go to Samsung.com to check out the 65 inch, the frame, or go nuts if you really want to with a 98 inch, let it take over your whole space. Thank you so much to Samsung for making this episode of Shame was possible. - All right, guys, so another example of clipping culture, having an impact on just general culture is the indie band Geese. This is not the first time we've mentioned Geese on shameless. Do you know when we last talked about them? - No. - Olivia Rodrigo was packed. - Did we talk about that on shameless? Did we talk about that? - I think we said, oh, well, she's been photographed with this Cameron guy from the band Geese. - Yes, well, I definitely knew that. I can never remember what we talked about. I don't know if that's what I'm going to show. Yeah, she was packed with him. And now that pop shot looks like it was dropped or taken in interesting timing. Because the band Geese have had a pretty breakout year in the last sort of 12 months. Cameron Winters, who we mentioned just then, is their front person. He's also had a pretty successful solo career. They are really legitimate. That's the thing we need to be clear about in these conversations. Is this a band that pitchfork really like? They're a critically acclaimed band. - People love them? - Yeah, they do. - Yeah, they do. - Okay. - So I just say, yeah. - Thank you, Gil. All right, but despite all of that, despite the critical success that they have had, at South by Southwest this year, two guys, one named Jesse, one named Andrew. They're the co-founders of chaotic good projects. The ones who have that tagline. - Potentially wrapped you a lever and Justin Bieber. - Oh, yeah, potentially wrapped people on behalf of. - Yeah, thank you. - You're welcome. - They gave a live interview with a Billboard journalist in which they explained their trademark, quote unquote, trend simulation. So they essentially explained how they make money by manufacturing thousands of fan accounts for their clients, one of which was Geese. This interview made people very mad because they were looking at Geese's, I guess, I don't know, this indie came from nothing music group and yet all of a sudden they were finding out that actually Geese was the definition potentially of an industry plant. - Well, that's the thing, right? For so long, we've spoken about industry plants and how it's an internet term that feels kind of reductive and what does it even mean. But then in the context of how we're buying eyeballs or our eyeballs are being bought at the moment. - Or e-holes. - E-holes. - E-holes. - E-holes. - E-holes. It does now feel like we can have a legitimate conversation about what an industry plant is in me. - Well, yeah, if a production company or a management company is going to put tens of thousands of dollars behind you and get you 100 million views as a music group, you are an industry plant, right? - Well, yeah, completely. In the aftermath, musician and writer, Alizamak Lam published a now viral substack article about the interview. Here's what she wrote. I have no doubt these artists could have ascended without the assistance of chaotic good because they are great musicians and many people enjoy their music. I believe this could have happened in the same way. I believe my friends and bands who play at bars could be the biggest musicians in the world if the industry were willing to facilitate their exposure. She went on. But the industry has changed. Being heard is not about putting out music or even promoting it. The gatekeepers hardly matter anymore. SNL performances and favorable pitchfork reviews don't move the needle. TikToks about those things do. So in this new landscape is creating hundreds of fake accounts just path for the course of being a good publicist. 'Cause that's the other complicating factor here is you have to still get onto the SNLs and have to still get the pitchfork review in order for the content to be made about that stuff. So you have to have the legacy media outlets pumping them up in order for the content to be created. - Not necessarily though. - Often though. - But like, I think one of the big challenges with this is that if you are viral enough online and if there is a perception that everyone's talking about you, legacy media can then legitimize you after that. - Well, it can happen both sides, right? So it can happen at the start because genuinely SNL might see something in this band and think they're actually quite good. We're gonna put them on the show and then that is artificially boosted on the internet or something is artificially boosted on the internet. And then the legacy brand goes, well, this is something people are talking about. - Yeah, journalists, legitimate journalists, look at that and go, oh, this is this underground thing that's becoming super popular, like the Vicular, the looks, Max, or whatever. - Yeah, you guys know what I'm talking about. He was mentioned in this Volta piece as someone who potentially leaned into clipping culture, was artificially inflated online, then made legitimate because the New York Times looked to him and went, what's happening with this clavicular guy? Let's write a whole profile about him. And then that's what made real humans go, oh, what's clavicular? - Yeah, like me. - I was like, like me. - Like who is clavicular? I think when it comes to Gees, no one really knows what to do about this band now. Elaine Brown pointed out in that Volta piece to skeptics chaotic good projects seem to provide the missing explanation for the group's unexpected ubiquity. Why had called Gees's success a sigh-up, which triggered pace to defend the band in a peace headlined congratulations you discovered digital marketing? I wonder if the founders of chaotic good projects actually had no sense of how little we all knew about this. So when they got on stage at South by Southwest, and they spoke very candidly and in a way that was perceived as quite cynical about how the internet functions and how eyeballs are bought, I genuinely don't think they would have done that thinking that all of us would be like, what? I think they actually underestimated or actually overestimated the opposite what we knew. - I think it's that classic thing of they probably tailored their message for that room of people who probably did know. - Who probably did know? Probably a room of very tech savvy social media savvy innovators who know of the clipping culture that has been booming in silence over the last few years. What those two founders didn't anticipate was billboard putting that elsewhere to other members. I had no idea and I feel stupid. I feel so stupid for running a media company and not knowing that this has been going on for a long time and seemingly almost everyone is doing it. - Yeah, completely agree. And then you have to wonder of other podcasts in particular are doing this. How much have we been trying to push our own stuff organically against a machine that you just cannot compete with? - But you can. That's where I think you would-- - I would disagree. - No, I think, no, no, I don't disagree with, I think what you're about to say. - This idea, and I know this article is suggesting that 90% of the feed is fake, I flatly refuse to believe. I was taking that number into my head scrolling through my own TikTok feed last night. There's absolutely guys, and I mean it. But there is absolutely no way 90% of my feed has been artificially inflated. I think what they're saying is 90% of social media activity is inflated. That's fine. But things do not make it to my feed unless they're legitimately good content. And I think probably one in a hundred, maybe one in a thousand clip campaigns end up actually going viral. - Yeah, I think a quote like that is not gonna go viral unless it's like pretty reductive. So when they say 90% of what you see on the internet is fake, I think there's a way to tease that out for in some way that to be true. But I don't think it's 90% of the things that I see on my feed of fake. Does that make sense? - So you get on your feed are genuinely things that should be viral. - BIRALITY though is largely concocted and culture is largely concocted. Do I think it's 90% no, but I think what this has done has made me think a lot about who we're talking about and why. And it's really complicated because if you look at the example of someone like Clavicular for example, and if there are conversations about his following and his feed or whatever, his video is being artificially inflated by clipping maybe allegedly for a while, that is still finding an audience that's real. That is still finding an audience that we don't want to be going down these internet rabbit holes young men in particular. That is then still worth talking about. And so in the context of our job in this show, I felt kind of complicated over the last few days 'cause it's like, well, do we need to be extra discerning about what conversations we bring on? Or do we still just have to reflect the stuff we're seeing online? - I view clipping campaigns now as just fuel on the fire. - Yeah. - I think the Clavicular story, a personality would have become a fire no matter what. I think human brains will find something's interesting and something's not. The speed and the reach of the Clavicular looks maxing story, yes, has had fuel on it from clipping culture. Do I think it would have become big no matter what? Yes, I do. - See, I completely disagree. I don't just see it as fuel. I see them as artificially in some ways. Sometimes it's fuel, like in Justin Bieber's Coachella set was always gonna be in people's feats. Like you've got how many people, there are 100,000 people there watching a set in a TikTok generation, that's gonna be on people's feet. So that is fuel on the fire. I definitely see a world, the world we're in right now, where it's not just that, where this is completely artificially inflated conversations that make us think we care about it. And I think that's what's kind of scary to me in that we can be convinced we should care about things. - I just think with stories like this, it can be very easy to go, "Everything's fucked, everything's fake." The whole world is changing when actually, I think, this is important to be wary of, but I do believe human attention will only go to things that deserve human attention. The number of campaigns I was scrolling through last night on this website that I signed up to, I can go, like none of them, none of them will ever be something that reaches either of your feeds. 'Cause it was shit content that people don't care about that person I don't think to be really blunt, will go viral in the way clavicular goes viral. I think clavicular has gone viral because he's got a message that is edgy. He looks a certain way that will grab attention. And he has something, he has a genocent who has something that is unquantifiable about him, that the average human will go, "I'm gonna pause on this video." - Again, that could just be your example of fuel on the flyer. Like, do you know what I mean? I'm saying there are some examples of that. I also genuinely believe that some stuff will jump on. When you post, when "Flightify" itself says it's posting 65,000 videos a day, and that's just one company, there's gonna be a lot of shit in there. - But I actually think, guys, 99% of that, you will never see the light of day. That will live in a corner of the internet that is purely, like, utterly humanless. - Yeah, but that doesn't, I think the rate or percentage that maybe we're fixating and doesn't really, I think it's kind of a moot point to me. It's the stuff that does stick, that does matter. And I think we disagree slightly or a lot on why it's sticking. I do believe that our minds are more malleable. I wish I didn't, but I do believe group think is far more malleable than any of us would like to think. I don't know, that's a little depressing, but I think it's true. - I think when it comes to the music industry, specifically, clipping culture is incredibly powerful. It seems to me like if you're talking about a musician, if you're talking about a performance on TV or whatever, Coachella, that seems to be very inflated by this online activity. And I wonder, Gil, how you feel as musician? When you, I guess you've probably always felt the industry is unfair, is that a fair term to use? Does this story make you feel even more negatively about it? - It's funny, we were just talking about this over coffee this morning. And I have to transparently say I actually don't really know how I feel about this. Because I love that passage from Melizon McLembe, where she's saying that, you know, I go to the bar and I watch my friends and I think they could make it, then they're so brilliant. And that really spoke to me because I've been at that bar watching my friends being like, why does this person have to 300 follow us on Instagram? This is fucked up. And the great thing about the music industry at the moment is that it's very accessible. Anyone can buy a Mac and get Ableton and like make their own music in their bedroom and you can make a TikTok and you can do it all yourself. You don't need these big labels. But the downside of that is that so many people are doing that and the industry is so saturated that it's only natural that these kind of unnatural clipping campaigns, these kind of shady digital marketing services are going to thrive because even it doesn't matter if you're the best musician in the entire world, it doesn't matter if you're writing good songs, none of that matters. Like genuinely, it doesn't matter. What matters is being at the right place at the right time, getting eyeballs on what you're doing and just that genus aqua that you're talking about. Which has always been the case with any industry. Do you think like in many ways I look at that? And I'm like, this is again to your term, Michelle Fule on the fire, it's kind of amplifying something that already existed, which is to say, when Eliza McGlam wrote, "I look at my friends in the fire and I wish it was them." It's like, well, the music industry has always had to pick and choose who they're going to amplify. Amplify. I agree with that. I think I push back slightly because I feel like the industry has never been so saturated because music is so accessible now. Yeah. It's like this double-edged sword where it's like great that anyone can make music and anyone can go viral, but it also means that anyone can make music and anyone can go viral, which means there's hundreds of thousands of people trying to do the same thing at the same time. And I think that is a different environment than it was in like the '90s. Yeah, that's so fair. I mean, in the Vultrapiece, Jo Lim, who we opened this episode by talking about from "Floodify," said, "Everyone is doing this now and if you're not, you're behind." I imagine that's an incredibly difficult thing in the music industry. Well, I'm feeling it as someone in the podcasting industry. Totally. I'm genuinely now like, oh, hang on. Is this what competitors have been doing? And I would love to know as well is this something happening in Australia or is it mostly a global thing right now? Because it has stuck in my mind for so long what is going on with these podcasts and clips. Yeah, absolutely. Why are these clips everywhere? How are they so popular? Who is spending their time going into a YouTube video and cutting it up into a 60-second bit and then posting that on TikTok? I mean, someone could argue that because we don't have the creator fund here that other people could think that that's a way for them to make money on TikTok with the creator fund. If they're particularly good at grabbing bitey, call her daddy clips or whatever. But it feels more far fetched now that I know this exists. Yeah, because I was going through, again, TikTok last night with this lens, being like, okay, what's fake? What's fake? An edit of Kylie Jenner came up and it was this like, lovable, likable clip of her on Jake Shane's podcast. And I clicked into that account and it was just an account with positive videos about Kylie Jenner. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Positive photo kind of carousels on TikTok have great outfits she's worn recently. Yeah, right. Podcasting clips where she comes across really well. Clips from her YouTube, clips from the Kardashians TV show. And I was like, okay, well, is this clipping culture? Like is what I'm looking at a clipping account that it sounds like it? Yeah, or is it just a fan? You could just be a fan who knows that if you live in America and you get enough views on your videos, you could make money that way. I know. So that was one of the examples. That was the only video I could find yesterday scrolling through to be like, I think that's an example of clipping culture, but I can never be sure. And that's the whole point. I don't think any of us can ever be sure with this. That's why we haven't been able to nail it down this entire time and didn't know about it. Like little idiots. Little silly idiots. Yeah, should we be sucked? I was like, God, I'm not doing my job very well. I felt the same. Both from both perspectives, both as someone who comments on culture, but also someone that runs a meat business. I'm like, from both elements, how am I looking at this being like, oh, I mean, we were talking about bot campaigns, but I think that was too reductive. A lot of this stuff isn't bot. It's just narratives being bot. When Justin Belldoreny's team said we're not doing bots, we're doing something more sophisticated. Yes. I read that. I was thinking about that a lot. I was thinking about that. I ring this page so much. I was like, this is more sophisticated than a bot campaign. It's way more sophisticated. sophisticated, way harder to trace. I know about it now and I still don't know where the fuck it is or how it's happening or when it's reaching my feet. Exactly. That's all we've got time for, Gil. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mishinx. Sazzy. Thanks, Gil. We'll be back in your ears on Thursday. Bye. See ya. This podcast was recorded on Warrongery land. Always was always will be Aboriginal land.