Far More Famous Influencers Are Fake Than You Realize

Simone and Malcolm Collins expose how viewbotting, clip spamming, and manufactured engagement are completely warping our perception of what's popular online. From Twitch streamers (80% of top creators allegedly botted) to music giants like Beyoncé losing billions of fake views, "woke" games with 200 peak players, Substack subscriber farms, and Kick's massive clip-spamming campaigns — the internet is far faker than most realize.We break down the economics (why botting is a rational business decision), real-world examples (Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Caleb Hammer, Clavicular), how algorithms get gamed, and what this means for discovering authentic content in 2026.Dead Internet Theory just got an upgrade.Show Notes* According to some analysts, for the first time in over a decade, bots now generate the majority of internet activity* At 51-53%* This is according to multiple reports and sources (see note at the end)* Note: Breakdowns often separate “good” bots (search engine crawlers, SEO tools) from “bad” ones (malicious scrapers, credential stuffers, ad fraud). Imperva notes bad bots alone rose to ~40% of total traffic in 2025 (up from 37%)* BTW: Cloudflare’s data (which focuses on HTTP requests they observe) shows a lower but still rising bot share—around 31–32% in Q1 2026 (up month-over-month)—with AI crawlers as the fastest-growing segment. Their CEO has publicly predicted bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027, aligning with the broader trend. Some analyses of Cloudflare data cite >50% of HTML page requests as bot-driven in 2025* There are literal view farms (this is one Brazilian one that was raided two months ago, in March 2026: * For any platform you can imagine, you can buy viewbots with varying degrees of sophistication, including viewbots that have widely varied IP addresses that have detailed histories, leave comments, mute/unmute while watching streams, etc.Fame is manufactured* Major music labels and artists are using botting to look bigger than they are* An example: Drake accused his own label (UMG) of conspiring with third parties (including Spotify) to bot streams for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” to harm him. UMG called it “untrue” and “illogical.” Defamation claims were dismissed; the broader case is ongoing. Drake has also faced separate accusations of using his Stake partnership to fund botting for his own catalog.* When major companies DON’T use viewbotting, you see embarrassing situations like the pilot episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which got ~16,000 views in its first 11 hours after release on YouTube. A separate report also said the live premiere peaked at roughly 1,300 concurrent viewers.* Even major viral figures, like Caleb Hammer and Clavicular, are manufactured to a great extentLet’s explore just how bad it isViewbotting on Twitch* Around 10% of Twitch streamers with at least 50 average viewers show clear, persistent signs of viewbotting, according to the most comprehensive independent analysis available (Streams Charts / Audiencly 2025 whitepaper, covering Q2 2025 data)* It’s worse for big creators: Streamer/analyst Devin Nash (and his agency) analyzed the top 500 Twitch streamers and estimated 400–430 (roughly 80%) show signs of viewbotting or being botted (30–40% of viewers as blatant bots + another 5–15% via embeds).* This is based on chat activity monitoring, user-list sampling, logged-in/out ratios, and known botnet cross-referencing* Creators argue Twitch is a platform where viewbotting ia necessary for survival; if you’re not doing it, you’re not competitive* Doesn’t help that discoverability is very lowDevon Nash on the Unit EconomicsIn a recent video, Devon Nash, a professional on the brand marketing side of the equation (he’s Chief Marketing Officer at Novo), explained how viewbotting is a no-brainer smart decision for streamers and agencies based on the unit economics:* Viewbots cost approximately $0.01 to $0.02 per viewer hour, which translates to about $135 to $185 per week to add 500-750 viewers to a stream. This weekly cost includes features like chatting and custom chat messages to make the viewers appear authentic. For a full month of viewbotting, agencies spend less than $800 to artificially inflate viewer counts.* Twitch sponsorship rates typically range from $1 to $3 per concurrent viewer (CCV), with $1.50 to $2 being the standard rate for a 2-hour gaming sponsorship. For a streamer with 1,000 viewers at $2 per CCV, a single 2-hour sponsorship generates $4,000 in total revenue. The agency typically takes 20% commission, earning $800 per deal, while the streamer receives $3,200.* Nash demonstrates how agencies can achieve massive returns by combining viewbotting with multiple sponsorship deals.* Starting with a 300-viewer stream and adding 700 botted viewers creates an apparent 1,000-viewer stream for approximately $150-180 per week. If the agency secures just two 2-hour sponsorships for that inflated audience, they earn $1,600 in commission while spending less than $400 on viewbots.* This creates what Nash calls “a money printing machine” where agencies multiply their investment several times over.Viewbotting on SubstackThere are websites that sell Substack subscribers (as low as ~$0.02 each), sometimes claiming they use “real people” added manually rather than pure bots. Whether these are organic or farmed/incentivized accounts, they still represent artificial inflation* here’s one: you can buy low, medium, and high quality subscribers).* You can also buy comments, likes, views, shares, plays, restacks, searches, comment likes, comment restack, comment shares, aves, messages, comment replies, and save as imageIn April, the Observer covered how Andrew Tate’s Substack saw its total follower count drop from 1.1 million to 980,000 after analysis of a sample of 1,000 paying subscribers found that 75% had no biography, publications, or visible activity—and half were created in a 16-day window. Investigators concluded he had imported a pre-existing (likely harvested) email list. Substack’s standards and enforcement team reviews bulk email imports and acts when they appear illegitimate.Earlier, creator Rebekah Jones lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers in apparent purges (documented on X in 2025), with charts showing dramatic drops after bulk fake additions.Viewbotting on YouTubeFake views have existed since at least 2009, with media attention by 2011 and a major 2012 purge in which YouTube removed billions of fraudulent views, including over 1 billion from Universal Music Group artists (e.g., Beyoncé, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj).Physical view farms continue operating globally in 2026. In March 2026, Brazilian police raided a large-scale YouTube view farm with dozens (or hundreds) of smartphones rigged to ceilings, running 24/7 to loop videos and simulate views/interactions. (IT LOOKS CRAZY) Similar operations have been documented in Vietnam and elsewhere, often targeting music videos or algorithm gamingA 2024 academic study analyzing nearly 100,000 YouTube videos from over 1,000 French channels over 1.5 years found fake view removals (“corrections”) on ~90% of channels and 78.5% of videos. These corrections occur in daily batches (often around 5 p.m.) and frequently happen late in a video’s lifecycle—after most organic views have accumulated—rather than in real time. Notably, videos corrected later tended to be more popular overall, suggesting fake views can temporarily boost algorithmic recommendations and perceived popularity before being stripped.Clip SpammingDevon Nash also changed how I view YouTube discovery with his breakdown on how people—including Clavicular and Caleb Hammer—are manufacturing virality by spamming clips of their work on platforms like YouTube (see: Exposing the New Manufactured Viral Content Industry)The video explains how a paid “clipping economy” is artificially hijacking short‑form algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X to manufacture viral influencers and promote the streaming platform Kick,How the clipping system works* Campaigns run inside large Discord servers (20–30k+ people) or invite‑only groups where each campaign corresponds to one streamer, podcaster, or brand.* Clippers pull 30–120 second segments from long‑form streams and upload them as shorts on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and sometimes X, under their own accounts.* They are paid on a flat CPM basis, typically around 0.10–0.40 dollars per 1,000 views but sometimes up to 2–3 dollars or specific bounties like 3,000 dollars per million views for particular clips.* Payment usually happens in USDT and often only once a minimum aggregate view threshold (for example 100,000 total views across all the clippers’ uploads) is reached, incentivizing people to spam 50–100 clips across multiple accounts.Because the CPM is on top of the platform’s own ad revenue, this can be decent money for clippers in lower‑income countries, and the servers are generally run in a professional, non‑scammy way with visible campaign caps (for example 10,000–20,000 dollars budget per campaign).Scale of manufactured viralityNash uses the case of Clavicular” to show the scale.* In one recent month, this streamer allegedly generated 2.2 billion views from about 69,000 clips posted across platforms, with 1,600+ paid clippers involved.* Averaged out, each clip might get around 31,700 views, but the real point is the volume: tens of thousands of separate uploads all about the same person in 30 days.* Even if a significant fraction of views are “free” (below payout threshold), running such a campaign still costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per month at around 1 dollar CPM, implying millions per month across all similar campaigns.This sheer volume tricks recommendation systems: algorithms treat topics with tons of uploads and engagement as globally relevant (like a major news event), so when 50–70k clips pop up about one guy, the system concludes he must be important and pushes him everywhere.Who is funding it and whyNash concludes that the primary funder for the biggest campaigns is the streaming platform Kick, not the streamers themselves.* A Kick‑backed streamer openly states they receive “over six figures a month” of clipping budget, and that Kick pays high bounties (20–30 dollar CPM) on some clips.* Internal Kick clipping program materials (from invite‑only servers) require clippers to use a precise Kick logo overlay; incorrect placement can get the clip rejected and unpaid, ensuring the Kick brand is visible on every short.* Kick’s strategy, derived from its close association with the crypto gambling site Stake, is to pay to flood short‑form platforms with Kick‑branded clips, both to grow selected streamers and to funnel some fraction of billions of impressions back to Kick.Nash contrasts this with Twitch’s older model of paying select streamers big contracts and expecting them to bring their own audience. Kick instead spends its marketing budget directly on mass short‑form distribution and lets streamers benefit as a side effect.How this affects algorithms and the creator ecosystem* Algorithms heavily weight volume and multi‑channel chatter, so campaigns that generate tens of thousands of clips effectively override organic audience “voting” based on interest and quality.* As a result, extremely mediocre or even unlikeable personalities can dominate feeds purely through paid volume, while more interesting creators without budgets get buried.* The user experience becomes “interest media” rather than social media: you are no longer curating your own feed or following friends, but passively consuming what algorithmic signals (distorted by ad‑like campaigns) decide to show you.Nash thinks this makes live‑streaming in particular a “rigged game” at the top end: small creators can still grow by doing a mini version (a few friends clipping them), but competing with industrial‑scale campaigns is extremely difficult.What Should We Take Away From ThisThis is not* Individual creators* Agencies* Looking to boost their cut of revenue* Platforms* Like Kick, looking to drive in viewers* Don’t trust views or engagement, ESPECIALLY on streaming platforms like Twitch or KickSources on Internet Bot Traffic* Imperva/Thales 2026 Bad Bot Report (full-year 2025 data, released 2026): Automated bots accounted for more than 53% of all web traffic (up from 51% the prior year). Human activity: 47% and continuing to decline. This is the most comprehensive and widely cited benchmark.* Fastly Threat Insights Report (January 2026): Bots made up 49% of web requests (51% human). Nearly all (99%) of this bot traffic was classified as unwanted/unverifiable (scrapers, attackers, etc.).* Human Security 2026 State of AI Traffic Report (2025 data): Automated traffic grew 23.51% YoY—8× faster than human traffic (+3.10%). AI-driven traffic volumes surged 187% monthly across 2025 (nearly tripling), with agentic AI exploding 7,851% YoY. Over 1 quadrillion interactions analyzed; >95% of AI traffic concentrated in retail/e-commerce, streaming/media, and travel/hospitality.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m very excited to be talking with you today, ‘cause I kinda feel like I need to completely reevaluate the way that I browse the internet, and that everything’s a lie, and I that internet theory doesn’t even begin to really describe what’s going on.And we, we need to... I need, I need help. I need help. You’re gonna help me. So according to some, some analysts, for the first time in over a decade now, bots generate the majority of internet activity, like 51 to 53%. This is according to multiple reports and sources. I have in the show notes on Patreon and Substack all the, all the sources.I, I can link to them. Breakdowns sometimes separate the, the good bots, like search engine crawlers and SEO, from the bad, and the bad ones still control up to, like, 40% of internet traffic. Cloudflare’s data has it a little bit lower, like 31 to 32%, but that’s insane. Anyway th- there are literal view farms of just, like, walls of phones of just people generating fake traffic.Very sophisticated fake traffic.Speaker 2: agora. Celular [00:01:00] até o teto. Meu Deus, parece uma colmeia.Simone Collins: . A literal view farm. Oh,Malcolm Collins: no, I have seen this. Yeah. No, but it’s, it’s worse than this because what I want to use this- Phones on walls. So yeah, there wasSimone Collins: this Brazilian one that was raided two months ago, and, and police go in, and it’s just, like, these walls of just phones wired up.It just looks like something fake. Like, if I saw it in an anime, I’d be like, “Yeah, no, like, no one actually...” No, no, we just, we’re just gonna, like, put grids of phones on a giant wall and, like, control them. And for any platform you can imagine, you can buy viewbots with varying degrees of sophistication.This includes viewbots that have widely varied IP addresses, that have detailed histories, that leave comments, that mute and unmute while watching streams. Like, the, the extent to which it’s hard to actually track whether or not this is real too. ‘Cause I came into this being like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard viewbotting’s a problem.I guess I should just look at, like, engagement on a thing, and then if there’s a lot of, you know, like, what seems to be real human behavior, it’s gotta be real.” No, [00:02:00] no. This is- So what IMalcolm Collins: wanna use this conversation to talk about, like, the meta of this conversation for me- Yeah ... is how much of what we perceive to be popular on the internet is a lie.No, this is so true. Both in terms of the left and the right. Yes. And this has been really evident in a lot of things like recent games that are still trying to appeal to a woke audience. Oh, boy. And we haven’t gotten as much a chance to go over these, as I would like. We may do a whole episode on them if people really want to.Yeah, let us know in the comments ... one of the ones that crashed out recently after, like, every main person, it’s made by Larry Ellison’s daughter in the industry talking about how good it was. It got, like, all perfect reviews, like, 10 10s. Mm-hmm. And it was called Mixtape, and it had a high, a player streaming high of 2,000.Oh, ouch ... another one that came out recently called Aphoria, right? To, to, to give you an idea of, like, how bad these things do. So it had a [00:03:00] developer team of it looks like around 60 people. Mm. And it was in development for I think four years, okay? Oh, my lord, okay. So this game came out a month ago, and if you look at the, the peak player count on it, okay?Simone Collins: Okay. ItMalcolm Collins: had a peak player count, this was 15 days ago, so it only recently came out, okay?Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Of 219 people. Oh, God. If you look at its current player count- Mm ... 21 people. That’s about a third- Right now That’s about a third the people who are currently playing rfab.aiSimone Collins: That’s like people riding a bus.That’s, that’sMalcolm Collins: bad. This came out- This is really bad ... 15 days ago from a team of 60 people who made it, right? It, it, estimated- This is like oneSimone Collins: public school classroom of children. I...Malcolm Collins: Yeah. For years. And keep in mind, all these people likely had salaries of like 60, [00:04:00] $70,000 or something like that. You know, you’re talking- Probably more than that.I think, yeah ... like okay, say they paid them cheaply, like $20,000. The game is estimated to have made, I think, around $40,000 in total or like $45,000 in total. Ooh ... like astonishingly low amounts of money. How is this happening? Oh, my God. This is made by a major studio, by the way, right? Arts- Well, and it’s not just, it’sSimone Collins: not just game studios ei- either.Like, a, fame in general is manufactured. Like, major music labels and artists are, are using botting to look bigger than they are. So even when you’re like, “Oh, well, of course, like Beyoncé is famous,” like no, there was this big... Back in 2012, there was this really big basically like view bot erasing, and, and figures like Beyoncé lost like billions of views, just like, “Oh, by the way, those were fake.”Like, the, even these, these huge people- Mm-hmm ... their hugeness is to an extent, i- it’s, and it’s impossible to say how much, because so much of this is both very hard to measure and kept very under wraps [00:05:00] manufactured. Another example, Drake accused his own label of conspiring with third parties, including Spotify, to bot streams for Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us to harm him, and while UMG called it untrue and illogical they, they dismissed defamation claims, and the broader case is still ongoing.And Drake has also faced separate accusations of using his stake partnership to fund botting for his own catalog. Like, it’s just so pervasive that like everyone understands it’s happening, but most of it’s just gone underground. Yeah. And also, it’s, it’s, the, the extent... And this is, this is another really good way of, of understanding how true this is.When major companies don’t use view botting, you see extremely embarrassing situations like the pilot episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy- Yeah ... which, th- whoops, someone forgot to pay the view botting company. And itMalcolm Collins: came out at lower than our episode count for that week in terms of views.Simone Collins: Yeah, they got 16,000 views in the first 11 hours after release on YouTube, and a separate report also said the live premiere [00:06:00] peaked at roughly 1,300 concurrent viewers.Now, Leaflet, on one of our streams at like 2:00 in the morning, we’ll have like a low of 1,000 viewers, right? Like- Yeah, soMalcolm Collins: I, I do streaming with Leaflet on, now every other Friday, so we’ll be doing it this Friday early, early in the morning, so like 3:00 AM- Yeah ... on a Sun- W- w- what is Saturday? Saturday is right after Friday.Okay. It’s SaturdaySimone Collins: morn- yeah.Malcolm Collins: Saturday, 3:00 AM. Generally we’re at around like 1,500. That’s where we typically are. So we- Yeah, and well,Speaker 4: The stream tonight will start at 8:00 PM EST. Um, and something I got wrong here is the 1,500 is just her concurrent views on Twitch. I forgot that they’re probably about equal or larger on Kick, so she’s typically doing about twice-- Or I guess we are doing about twice as wellSimone Collins: welcome to Starfleet Academy territory. At 3:00 AM ... heavily marketed, et ceteraMalcolm Collins: Are beating Starfleet Academy, which had- Yeah ... hundreds of millions of dollars go to it.Yeah. Our episode that came out the day it came out, and keep in mind we do episodes every f*****g [00:07:00] day, okay? And they had- Yeah ... one premiere, had more views than them. Well, itSimone Collins: checks out. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve watched, I’ve watched so many hour- I’ve, I’ve, I mean, p- like, days worth of, of Leaflet. And I love Star Trek.I’ve not watched a minute, I’ve not even watched the preview of Starfleet Academy. I don’t, I don’t like- Yeah ... it’s, but anyway, so that’s just, d- again, to be clear it ma- you, you, you can’t obviously know how much these like, big media companies and, and famous celebrities are investing in viewbotting and fluffing up their own subscribers and views and engagements and likes and shares and comments.But I, I wanna turn to asking you- But you can see what happens in the absence of it, and it’s not just, like, professional, like, or mainstream media figures. Viral figures like Caleb Hamer and Clavicular are manufactured to a great extent, and we’re gonna get into that too It’s insane Oh,Malcolm Collins: oh, hold on. I wanna get into Asmongold’s take on this before we go any further.So- Okay. Okay ... I think it’s very interesting. So-Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: he was going over viewbotting on Twitch, and he’s like, “Almost every- Yeah ... large player on Twitch is viewbotting.” Yes. And [00:08:00] so he was saying you know, “You’ve got these people where they realistically have, like, 1,000 people watching.” And I’m just like, “Dude, should we just, like, get into viewbotting and then start a Twitch, right?”And he’s like- ... “But Twitch doesn’t wanna shut it down because it makes their numbers look higher.” He’s like, “They say they wanna shut it down.”Simone Collins: Yeah, they w- yeah, they’re very disincentivized from, And there, there are Twitch streamers who have been, like, publicly been like, “Oh yeah, I viewbot.” Like, “There are probably, like, three people watching this right now, but it looks like there are 1,000 people.”Like, so transparent, and they’re friends with Twitch’s, like, CEO. Like, it is very, it- But what,Malcolm Collins: but what was more interesting about Asmongold’s take on this is somebody was like, “Well, these people who buy ads on them, right? And they think that they’re getting, like, thousands and thousands of views, but it’s, like, less than 1,000 concurrent viewers.”And Asmongold was like well, actually, they’re not really getting screwed.” And he, the guy was like, “Well, what do you mean by this?” Mm-hmm. And he’s like, “Well, consider who actually signed the contract to buy the ads. It’s not somebody with equity in the company. It’s not the company’s CEO. It’s the head of marketing or whatever, right?”Yeah. “And he just needs to show the next [00:09:00] guy above him how many people watched it for X amount of money.” Right. “They don’t care how many people are concurrent.” But those who areSimone Collins: savvy enough to be able to somewhat sophisticatedly track if they’re getting a bump to a product, like, I get it ... and, and they’re not seeing it.Like, they’re, people are starting to realize that, and, and people like Devin Nash, who I’m gonna reference multiple times, ‘cause he’s actually really good at parsing out what’s going on here being somewhat of an in- industry insider, more than somewhat. Some advertisers are discovering this, and they’re super not cool with it.So there is a tension there. Which I, I won’t comment on more. Actually,Malcolm Collins: hold on. This explains something I didn’t fully understand. Oh? But our Discord is hugely bigger than other equivalently sized influencers. Oh. And I’ve been very surprised by this. Hm. And now I’m realizing, “Oh, sh- were we supposed to beSimone Collins: viewbotting?”No. Like, it, it’s really good that we weren’t. I’m, I’m really glad that we’re not. But I mean, now I, I get also maybe why a lot of people are like, “Why is your channel a lot bigger?” Because I think they’re used to seeing [00:10:00] other similar- Yeah, they’re used to viewbotting stuff ... content creators who are viewbotted.And so, like, when you see that someone doesn’t have like, “Oh, where’s your, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of...” Well, you’re seeing mostly people who are paying for that, ‘cause it’s also incredibly affordable, and I’ll get into that, too. But- Yeah ... yeah, to go over Twitch, around- And we’re talking just normal creators, like small creators.Around 10% of Twitch streamers with at least 50 average viewers show clear, persistent signs of viewbotting according to the most comprehensive independent analysis. And I, again, this is all linked in the show notes. It’s worse though, as you pointed out, as Asmongold says, for big creators. So Devin Nash, again, he really knows what he’s talking about they analyzed the top 500 Twitch streamers and estimated that 400 to 430, that is roughly 80% of them, show signs of viewbotting or being botted.Now keep in mind, many streamers do not know they’re being votted, botted, and I’ll get into this. Yeah. Okay. So 30 to 40% of, of viewers are blatant bots, and then another five to [00:11:00] 15% via embeds. And this is based on chat activity monitoring user list sampling, logged in and out ratios, and then known botnet cross-referencing.Creators argue that Twitch is a platform where viewbotting is necessary for survival. Basically, if you’re not doing it, you’re not competitive, and this is because unlike on YouTube, and many, os- ma- like probably most other platforms- Yeah ... discoverability is basically just impossible on Twitch. The way they’ve designed it, you will not, you will not be discovered on Twitch, period.And that’s why I feel like breaking into it is, is really hard now, especially if you’re not, like, already super famous and... Basically, I think the way people get big on Twitch is they have huge audiences elsewhere to start now, and then those audiences come over to Twitch. I don’t even know how much viewbotting would really help to jumpstart it.But Devin Nash went into the unit economics of this in a really fascinating way and, and showed how basically it’s a no-brainer smart decision for a streamer’s agency to [00:12:00] viewbot them because they will put in- Like, $1 and then get $1.50 back. Like- Mm-hmm ... it, it, it pays back. It would be stupid to not do it.And he understands this ‘cause he’s a professional on the brand marketing side of the equation. Yeah. I think he just left them, but he was at least former chief marketing officer at Novo, which is an agency. And again, he represents not the, not the streamer side, but the brand side, so he’s also keen on delivering actual results to brands so that they can keep, you know, trust him and keep working with him.But so he pointed out that view bots cost approximately one to two cents per viewer hour, and that translates to about 135 to 185 per week to add 500 to 750 viewers to a stream. And then the weekly cost includes features like chatting and custom chat messages to make the viewers appear authentic.And so for a full month of view botting, agencies spend less than $800 to artificially inflate viewer counts. That’s pretty reasonable. Yeah. Now, Twitch sponsorship rates, and again, he knows this, he’s worked in the industry, they [00:13:00] range from one to $3 per concurrent viewer, with 1.50 to two being, like dollars, being the standard rate for a two-hour gaming sponsorship.So for a streamer with 1,000 viewers at a $2 per CCV, a single two-hour sponsorship generates $4,000 in total revenue. The agency typically takes a 20% commission, so they earn 800 per deal while the streamer gets 3,200. So Nash demonstrates how agencies can rece- get basically massive returns by- Yeahcombining view botting with multiple sponsorship deals. So starting with a 300-viewer stream and then adding 700 botted viewers creates an apparent 1,000-viewer stream for approximately 150 to 180 per week. And if the agency secures just two-hour sponsorships for that inflated audience, they earn 1,600 in commission while spending less than $400 on view bots.And so it’s, it’s... He calls it a money printing machine. It [00:14:00] is. I, I just, I, I can’t believe it.Speaker 5: And I think that this is an easy way to tell who’s viewbotting and who’s not viewbotting is who’s doing sponsorships. People who aren’t doing sponsorships, there’s virtually no reason for them to viewbot. , And this is why I think when you’re looking at our communities, , you see individuals who are big enough easily to do lots of sponsorships, like say an Esma Gold, but you almost never get them., Or a Leaflet, and you almost never get them. , And it’s being right-wing in the way that we’re right-wing. Like, if you’re right-wing in like the way Ben Shapiro, it’s your episode on him where I point out heavy evidence that his audience could be as much as 90% botted. , There’s a huge reason to viewbot, , and the financial backing to do it., And no, when people are like, “Wait, so his entire organization is just fraudulent?” And I’m like, I don’t really think that’s it. I think what’s going on with him is, , that The Daily Wire should be thought of more the way we think of an organization like The Heritage Foundation, where it’s people giving it money to influence politics [00:15:00] and not really something with a large organic audience., By the way, if you’re, if you’re wondering, like, why I am so certain that his channel is heavily botted, if we are to believe his channel really, he does a daily hour, hour and a half, hour ep- e- episode, okay? About two-thirds of the views for his daily episodes are arriving the day after they’re released.Speaker 10: And then after that, they get virtually no views. That makes no sense. I could see almost like in our videos, the majority of the views happening on the day they’re released for a daily episode, but who’s reliably watching daily episodes always the day after they’re released instead of the day that they’re released?Speaker 13: And I’m not saying that it’s impossible that anyone would have this behavior. I suspect, you know, maybe one tenth of our audience would have a [00:16:00] behavior like this, , if we’re talking like on the larger side. But two-thirds of your audience or more than two-thirds it seems like often? Mm-mm.Speaker 10: Or I could be like, well, maybe he’s got a really long tail. And so that way you would see views trickling in for a long time after the video.Speaker 14: Which we also don’t see. Views basically stop the moment a video hits around half a million views, uh, which almost always happens on day two or day threeSpeaker 10: But this indicates basically they’re paying someone to promote it in a linear fashion.Speaker 5: That doesn’t make sense for daily episodes, especially if they’re daily episodes that have a fanatical long-term following, which is what we have to assume because the longer form episodes are doing so much better than the shorter form episodes, which typically doesn’t make sense in the YouTube algorithm unless it’s, like, a dedicated following waiting for them.Speaker 8: Oh, side note here, some people were looking up YouTube statistics and they thought that Simone got the 85% decline in Ben Shapiro’s numbers wrong, even if you don’t [00:17:00] include view botting. , And there was some debate about it on the Discord, and at first I thought that they were right and that she had got it wrong, and then she pointed out, “Malcolm, I upload all my notes to the show notes.Go to it.” And so then they went to it, and then they kept arguing for a while, and then they came to an understanding that Simone wasn’t wrong. , But it had to do with the way that she worded it. I don’t get it exactly. The point being is that if you think on a surface level we’ve gotten something wrong, , especially if it’s Simone because she’s the more diligent researcher out of the two of us, do check her show notesSpeaker 6: So another online conservative voice I had heard was fake when I was doing research on the Ben Shapiro one, , where it seems pretty clear that Ben Shapiro has a smaller real audience than we have, , was Louder with Crowder. And I used to like, , Crowder a lot. Um, I, I watched his show regularly and then it just got boring., So I was like, “Okay, that, that seems believable. Let’s look into this.” So here, , I pull up an episode. So this episode’s from 10 days ago. I wanted to get one that looked, like, fairly representative for the channel. , It’s got [00:18:00] 104,000 views, , and it’s got 529 comments. Okay, let’s look at one of our videos to get an idea if that makes sense.All right, so we’ll just go through one. So there’s a video that came out yesterday. This one had 12,000 views. It’s already at 553 comments. So more than a video with over 100,000 views of his that came out 10 days ago. Okay, maybe that’s an anomaly. Let’s go before that. The one from the day before that, 16,000 views, over 1,000 comments, 1,077.Okay, the day before that, 16,000 views, 443 comments.Like, it’s- Pl-- no, it’s not plausible. It’s not plausible that he’s 10X larger than we are and has less interaction than we have. It shouldn’t even be close. If it was three times our interaction, I’d still find that suspiciousSpeaker 7: And I think your perception, , and my perception of who’s big in certain culture war [00:19:00] spaces is heavily warped and heavily manipulated and often very not true. , And I think a lot of the sort of moldier, more boring, more pearl-clutchy conservative figures who previously I thought were like a giant political battle that we’re fighting against, , are, , not real.Their, their base is not real. Their-- th- this ideology is entirely astroturfed. , Not that it didn’t have, , support at one point. I’m just talking about within the current online environment. And, , I was thinking about this recently in the context of, , ‘cause I was talking with Leaflet about this and like, oh, you know, should we be worried when, you know, X, Y, and Z people are mad at us for our views or whatever?And it-- I’ve just gotten to the point of it’s like, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to care about them. They’re not going to have a place in space. , If their views lead them to disengage with technology or not actually find partners and have kids, , it’s [00:20:00] not a political battle worth fighting because they’re just not long-term relevant.I need to focus on groups that are thriving and do have a possibility of building those spaceships with my descendants.Simone Collins: Well, and IMalcolm Collins: think that this is why th- when we look at, like, our cultural movement, right? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Like this techy, right-leaning cultural movement the impact it seems to have within online culture- Yeahis so much bigger than you would expect from the- Right ... view counts. Yeah. Yes,Simone Collins: yes, yes. It’s been... Yeah, I’ve been like, “Wait, why are, like, why have we been referenced here and there when, like, our views are so low?”Malcolm Collins: And yeah, yeah. And what I’m realizing is- Our culture, like for example, you look at Leaflet Streams or something like that.Mm-hmm. Leaflet doesn’t really do sponsorships. And because she doesn’t do sponsorships, she doesn’t have a reason to viewbot in the way that other people do.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah, there isn’t that same incentive. ... Although, and we’re gonna get into it- Yeah ... it is not always, even if you don’t have an agency, and [00:21:00] even if you don’t have sponsorships, you might still be viewbotted without your consent.And we’ll talk about that too. Go over it. Come on, let’sMalcolm Collins: go.Simone Collins: Yeah. But no, I, first I wanna talk about s- I just, I also wanna be clear that this is... I think a lot of people, the, the discourse is, “Oh, Twitch viewbotting, Twitch viewbotting.” Whereas I just wanna reiterate, and, and this is even older discourse, that Facebook, full of viewbotting, and also even more so Spotify and like just streaming music, viewbotting so huge.But here’s the one place where I was like, “Oh, well, here’s a place where Substack couldn’t...” You know, like s- where, where viewbotting isn’t a thing, Substack. I’m like, “Well, Substack is too new, and the way it works like with email platform delivery and all these other forms of engagement, like Substack has got to not have viewbotting.”But no, it totally does. So there are websites that sell Substack subscribers for as low as two cents each. And sometimes they claim that they use real people that they add in manually rather than pure bots. Whether they’re organic or farmed, it, it’s still artificial information. And I I found [00:22:00] one just like one website where you and I just now if we want to can go to en.misterpopular.net to buy...you can choose low quality, medium quality, or high quality subscribers. They don’t really s- I haven’t poked around their site aMalcolm Collins: lot, but they’re, they’re- But so, and so, I told you. Like we had a family member who all of a sudden had like 80,000 followers on, on- ... Substack, and I was like, “This is fake.”He had four articles- I- ... and like three comments on each.Simone Collins: I know Like- I, I didn’t wanna believe it, and now I’m like, “Oh my God.” Because, but it’s, and it’s not, yeah, it’s not just subscribers. You can buy comments. You can buy likes, views, shares, plays, restacks, searches, comment likes, comment restacks, comment shares.You can buy messages. You can buy comment replies. You can buy save as image. You can buy a ton of different ways to be like, “Yeah, look at all these... Like it, clearly this isn’t fake. Who would, who would bot save as image?” Like, that is how sophisticated this... I’m just really impressed. And, and, and there [00:23:00] are already high-profile examples, recent ones, prominent ones, of people totally faking their Substacks.So in April, The Observer covered how Andrew Tate’s Substack saw its total follower count drop from 1.1 million to 980,000 after analysis of a sample of 1,000 paying subscribers. Paying subscribers. Found that 75% Had no biography, publications, or visible activity, and half were created in a 16-day window.So, eh. Wait ... they, HisMalcolm Collins: paying subscribers, 75% were fake. Andrew Tate- That I, yeah ... no, and I believe this. When I look at Andrew Tate’s comment being as popular as it is, it doesn’t make sense. He’s not that smart. No, and like Andrew- He’s like, “Do you find that interesting?”Simone Collins: It’s not even that, though. I- i- it shouldn’t also be...I mean, ‘cause his whole thing is sort of like faking things, you know, pretending to be a, a, a thot you know, using like a girlfriend’s images and then like chatting to men on OnlyFans or something. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that’s kind of his thing By the way, Simone,Malcolm Collins: I was just checking out our, our, our [00:24:00] Substack right now.Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I mean, first of all, do you know how many paid subscribers we have?Simone Collins: We have a lot, and they’re cool. Dude, every- We- By the way- Just on Substack ... every time we get a paid subscriber- Just, just ... I, I will, and, and some of them are a little bit more secretive than others. I totally stalk them. I find their Instagrams.I find their, like- You do, yeah ... I’m obsessed with them. Yeah. So we are at nowMalcolm Collins: 99 paid subscribers on Substack. Yay. You wanna be number 100. Yeah. I, I, I actually think our Patreon is slightly better than Substack. I don’t know, like if we offer more on- I treat them,Simone Collins: I treat them equally. I read every comment.I b- I, I add each n- new paid subscriber to our personal, like network, like, you know, in our personal CRM. I email them personally from both of us. There’s an open line of communication via email. I, and do you wanna knowMalcolm Collins: what our, what our yearly income is- I stalk them ... just from Substack? What? I was, I was surprised by this.$10,700. Wow. I mean, you can’t live off of that, but that’s, that’s really meaningful, guys. I appreciate it.Simone Collins: No, like for real, the, [00:25:00] the support, yeah, we, like a- and yeah. And and I, I, these people have histories. Like, I wouldn’t be able to stalk them if they weren’t real. So anyway, I was just kind of shocked that you could, that you could fake Substack as much as you can.And, And our biggest growth- This isn’t, it’s not just Andrew Tate ... you know, during our campaign- ThereMalcolm Collins: was also this- ... where YouTube tried to take us off for a bit.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, that was, that was the biggest, And you got so mad at me that I madeMalcolm Collins: like an arc about that, and I was like, “No, it’s so fun. Come on.”Simone Collins: Yeah, but we got a lot of subscribers, and thank you for everyone who did show support then, ‘cause we really thought we were done on YouTube. We wereMalcolm Collins: incredibly demoralized. Well, we have one, weSimone Collins: have one of three strikes, I’m just saying. Huh. It’s gone now. It’s gone? Did it fall off? It did not fall off.If we’ve been withoutMalcolm Collins: strikes for long enough that the strike where we said Hitler was bad because he was progressive- No ... that’s gone.Simone Collins: Hold on. It must have, ‘cause I just saw it like three days ago, it was still there. No. You’re right, it’s gone. Oh, our record has been cleared. Okay. Well, I [00:26:00] hope that doesn’t mean people are not gonna consider subscribing.I mean, immediatelyMalcolm Collins: as soon as it’s cleared, Leafly gets a strike for one of our videos, but, Oh,Simone Collins: no, I feel really bad about that ... she was clearMalcolm Collins: She... Oh, right, she was. Thank God. Yeah, Asmongold got it cleared for her or something. ISimone Collins: know, but like, you know, she took cash social chips or that. I don’t,Malcolm Collins: I don’t know.Anyway. I don’t think cash social chips. I think a bunch of people on the right created content about it. Rev says, “Jesse, you nuts.” Like, everybody was creating content about it. It’s part of the cycle. No, but hopefully itSimone Collins: was good for her. Yeah, yeah. As long as it’s good for her. I never want anything bad to happen to her.She’s the best. Okay, so also there was this creator called Rebecca Jones who lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers it- when they did a bunch of purges, and this was documented on X in 2025. Like, it’s, it’s a thing. I just didn’t know it was a thing. I was, I was very surprised. But so in terms of viewbotting on YouTube fake views have existed on YouTube since around 2009.And they’ve been getting media attention since 2011. But this major 2012 purge in which YouTube removed billions of fraudulent views, including over one [00:27:00] billion from Universal Music Group artists like Beyoncé, like Rihanna, like Justin Bieber, like Nicki Minaj. It’s so crazy to me that, like, I look at them and I, I, I never had a reason to question.I’m like, “Well, of course, it’s like Justin Bieber. People are crazy about him.” But like- But whoMalcolm Collins: listens to Justin Bieber anymore? I watch Justin Bieber AMVs. I don’t watch Justin Bieber. You watch Justin Bieber AMVs. I don’t care what he has to say anymore.Simone Collins: That tickles me. Yeah. Anyway and, and then you have, like, literally these, these physical view farms that I...You... I hope you can include the, the Brazilian, View farm ... recently raided. No, they’reMalcolm Collins: everywhere, right? Yeah ... you know what’s interesting is, is so I’ll be, I’ll be transparent with people here. Mm-hmm. We tried, like, a version of viewbotting with our books. Oh,Simone Collins: totally. Yeah, we, we’ve talked about this before.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We’ve never tried it with YouTube or Twitter. It’s called book laundering.Simone Collins: Like, the... yeah, this is a whole nother thing of, like, if you, if... Like, anything, all the, all the proof that we used to use to think, like, “Oh, this must be good. [00:28:00] It’s a New York Times bestseller. It’s a whatever bestseller.”No, no. Completely fake. Look up, like- The,Malcolm Collins: the ru- Yeah ... the way we topped the Wall Street Journal bestseller list was, was this sort of stuff, right? It- And people are always confused as to why our Wall Street Journal bestseller book is the lowest reviewed of any of our books. Like, clearly- I know ... the worst selling of any of our books.Mm-hmm. It’s because we had to launch it in a really stupid way. Like, not on Amazon, because Amazon didn’t count. Yeah, we had toSimone Collins: launch through Barnes & Noble. And then- dot, dot, dot. Well, I think there’s, like, a lot of offering it for free, but then I’m sure they have, like, a lot of fake purchases in there.We, you know, we paid someone to help us with this, so we’re not ab- we’re not above this. But, but- I mean, we’re tooMalcolm Collins: lazy to do it with Y- the, so people wondering why we don’t do it with YouTube. The reason why we- Well, I alsoSimone Collins: just want to, like, actually engage with our com- our community on YouTube.Malcolm Collins: No, but there’s, like, a reason.It’s really bad for your long-term algo. Yeah ... it, it, when you do it- Well,Simone Collins: eh, so there was this one French study in [00:29:00] 2024 where they, they analyzed nearly 100,000 YouTube videos from over 1,000 French channels over 1.5 years to find fake view removals, so corrections on 90% of channels and about 78.5% of videos.The corrections occurred in daily batches around 5:00 PM, and they frequently happened late in a video, video’s life cycle after most of the organic views had accumulated. And it, it appears that videos corrected later tended to be more popular overall, which suggests that the fake views, views can temporarily boost algorithmic recommendations and perceive popularity before you get stripped.So no, actually. In many cases, getting that early social proof that tricks algorithms- Mm ... has been to the benefit of the creators. And this was, this, again, this was published in 2024. I would like to think that YouTube has gotten better at this. I don’t wanna risk it. I don’t wanna put our channel at risk, because one of [00:30:00] the ways that YouTube is fighting this, and many other platforms fight this, ‘cause it is incredibly hard.You know, the, the cat and mouse game has gotten so sophisticated that what many platforms are doing is basically you’re guilty until proven innocent. And- Yeah ... I, I mean, like, we’re already at risk of being taken down if something were to go suspiciously viral, even naturally, just because platforms are trying so hard to fight against this.But yeah, I mean, there, I’m, I’m just trying to say there is some, there’s some, there are many instances, I mean, like on Twitch and now with this example on YouTube, where people are being rewarded for doing this, this bad behavior. But now I wanna get into a different version of manufactured viral- By the way, I, I was highlyMalcolm Collins: suspicious, I was just ‘cause we were doing a video on Ben Shapiro recently and so I was looking at his views.Uh-huh. I suspect he’s heavily view botted because the pattern in his videos didn’t make any sense. Mm ... most of his videos were at around the view count of our videos. Yeah ... and then he would do these, like- and these were like- But when they’re him,Simone Collins: when his name is on them, they get a lot, they get a [00:31:00] lot of views When they had hisMalcolm Collins: name, they were like an hour long and it was like- Oohthe podcast. It was like half a million views. Yeah. Uh-huh. And I was like, “This doesn’t make any sense. Why are your videos that should be doing better in the algorithm-” Yeah, theSimone Collins: short form algo-friendly videosMalcolm Collins: I think that he’s entirely astroturfed, if I’m gonna be honest at this point.Simone Collins: Mm, you never know.Malcolm Collins: I mean, who’s still watching... When have you heard a human being say- ... “I am, I, I continually watch Ben Shapiro, even today”? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, if you look at our content, I, like, k- I, a lot of people, we go to like a conservative convention or something like that, and a lot of like the staffers will run up to us and be like, “Oh my God, we love you guys,” even though Daily Wire tried to freeze us out of all of them.See our video on that. But like, like clearly people watch our... And I can see why you would watch our stuff. Like, this is the thing. With the people who I watch who don’t appear to be viewbotted, you know, like Leaflet or Asmongold or something, or Nexador I can understand why people watch their content, right?No, totally. With these [00:32:00] people, I just don’t get it. Who’s watchingSimone Collins: this? Yeah, I can’t bring myself to watch it. I’ll watch Brett Cooper not infrequently. But no other- Steven Crowder, for example.Malcolm Collins: Who’s still watching Steven Crowder? Not me. Yeah. And I used to like his stuff. Like Tim Pool, I used to like his stuff.I cannot imagine who’s still watching their stuff. It’s so formulaic now.Simone Collins: Hm. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Because like when IMalcolm Collins: click on something, I’m like, I either wanna have my views affirmed in an interesting way, which is like Knucks or Asmongold, right? Yeah. Or I wanna learn something new, which I think is what we try to do as people.Like, we try to have... And people will like challenge us. They’ll be like, “Your new idea per minute in this video was low.” Right. Yeah ... and I was like, “You do a lot.” We’ll try better next time.Simone Collins: Yeah, I know, I know. We’re trying, guys. Well, well then let me introduce this to you, because this is so interesting to me, and I had mentioned this to you one morning earlier, but I didn’t really get into it, is I’m calling it clip spamming.It, this isn’t, it’s not like [00:33:00] a- term. But again, Devin Nash and I gotta start watching more of his videos ‘cause I just, as I was doing this research, I realized, like, all the best sources were coming from him. We, and I’d seen, like, two of his videos already. He, he totally changed the way, like, a week ago in how I view YouTube discovery in, in his breakdown of how- Rightpeople, including Clevver Killer and Caleb Hamer are manufacturing virality by spamming clips of their work on platforms like YouTube, and well, not, not exactly them, I should say. You can see the video. Again, I link to it in the show notes. It’s called Exposing the New Manufactured Viral Content Industry.The video explains how basically a, a paid clipping economy is artificially hijacking short-form algorithms on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and X to manufacture viral influencers and promote the streaming platform Kick rather than just like surface- Well, Kick’s, Kick’sMalcolm Collins: a great platform.Simone Collins: I know.Well, but and this is... And, and, and just, you know, like, a spoiler alert, Kick is just doing... This is, this is how Kick is growing. They’re not necessarily [00:34:00] asking Caleb Hamer like, “Hey, dude, are you cool with this?” They’re just, they’re just taking these, these clips, and, like, Caleb Hamer’s benefiting. But I think they sort of spot, like, who has the potential, and they use those as almost like non-consensual endorsers of Kick that drive people to the platform.Is Caleb Hamer- So here’s how it works ... onMalcolm Collins: Kick?Simone Collins: I guess. But you watch Caleb Hamer ... how it works is-Malcolm Collins: Why do you watch Caleb Hamer, Simone? Because you watched him before he became political.Simone Collins: He’s fun. Yeah. I... You, you bu- you build a parasocial relationship with him. You feel better about your own life and your own mistakes when you see just how- His stuffMalcolm Collins: just makes me feel terrible about the US economy.I’m like, “Jesus Christ- Yes ... I don’t wanna pay taxes.” Yes, butSimone Collins: it- After watching him, I just- I’m the one who manages our finances, and, like, I stress out about like, “Oh, have we saved enough? Am I budgeting well?” And then I, I see how these other people spend their money, and I feel a lot better about it. And I think a lot of people watch for that.You know, it’s just like, “Well, you know, f- inflation’s bad. Prices are going up, but, like, at least I’m not this idiot who bought, [00:35:00] like, a, a, a car with a terrible loan,” you know, that kind of thing. So but here’s how the clipping system works. There are these campaigns that are run inside large Discord servers.We’re talking 20 to 30,000 people or invite-only groups where each campaign corresponds with one streamer or podcaster or brand. Okay. And then the clippers who are in, in, like the people in these Discord servers, they will pull on- 30 to 120-second segments from the long-form streams. ‘Cause, you know, like a Caleb Hamer financial audit is, like, w- an hour plus, and their streams are even longer.And then they’ll upload them as shorts to TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts and sometimes X under their own accounts. So these are, like, widely dispersed accounts not affiliated with anyone else, just like some random person in Pakistan. And then they in turn- through this Discord server community are paid on a flat CPM basis around 10 to 40 [00:36:00] cents, I think per, per thousand views.But around $2 to $3 or specific bounties, like $3,000 per million views for particular clips. And then payment happens in the USDT. And there’s often, like, a minimum they have to reach in terms of views before they reach that threshold. Like, maybe they have to have 100,000 total views across all clipper’s uploads.And then that incentivizes people to just spam, like, 50 to 100 views a- across... Or sorry 50 to 100 clips across multiple accounts. And keep in mind he, he’s hanging out in the Discord servers to try to figure this out. Like, he spent, like, two plus weeks- Yeah ... just watching what was happening here.Super fascinating. And then so become the CPM is on top of the platform’s own ad revenue. This can be really decent money for clippers in very low income countries, which as we’ve, we wanna cover this. Not Altus Huxley sent us this graph of, like, the, the, the internet users of today and, like, so much of the people on the internet are just-Malcolm Collins: [00:37:00] Brazil’s a huge chunk.We need to go- Brazil ... at least, like, Brazil has- India ... like, half the internet users of the US.Simone Collins: Yeah, and we just don’t realize. Th- you know, we think, you just think, like, “Oh, like, it, it’s mostly, like, US and Europeans or whatever,” ‘cause, like, what we see is English. But no, there’s, like, it’s just, like, people in Brazil and Pakistan too.And w- like, hi guys too. I mean, like, a lot of the people watching Base Camp are in Brazil, and we love you guys. But, like, we just didn’t realize how many of you were there. And so but anyway, like, if you’re in a third world country where wages are really low, not necessarily Brazil, but, like, Pakistan or something you can make a decent income from, from uploading these clips and making them, especially if you’re leveraging AI and being smart about it.And so this is, this is run in a professional, non-scammy way. There are visible campaign caps. Like, they’re like, “Okay, well, this is a, you know, $20,000 budget campaign.” Like, the, people are making careers out of this. And then Nash uses a case of a Clavicular clip to, to show the scale. In, in one recent month, Clavicular allegedly generated 2.2 billion views [00:38:00] from about 69,000 clips posted across platforms with 1,600 plus paid clippers involved.And averaged out, each clip might get around 31,700 views, but the real point is this volume. You’ve got tens of thousands of separate uploads all about the same person in 30 days. What is that gonna tell an algorithm, right? Like, the, the point is that algorithms are cert- The way he, he described it in his video was, like, you know, how is an algorithm gonna know?Like, if you’re designing an algorithm, like, well, if there’s some earthquake or, like, a volcano explodes, like- Mm ... how, how am I gonna make sure my algorithm picks that up? Well, if suddenly a bunch of separate people all at once start talking about, like, a volcano- I, I should probably like promote that thing, you know, surface that content more.Yeah. And so that’s what they’re gaming with these really simple, on, on the surface of it, clip campaigns, is they’re tricking the algorithms into thinking, “Oh my God, this [00:39:00] clavicular guy, like he must be the most relevant thing in the world.” So just the sheer volume tricks the recommendation system. And then algorithms that, that treat topics with tons of uploads and engagement as globally relevant are just- Mm-hmmum, it’s this is just so fascinating. So in terms of who’s funding it it, it’s, it’s just Kick. It’s not the streamers. A Kick-based streamer will openly state that they receive over six figures a month of clipping budget, and then Kick pays high bounties, like 20 to $30 CPMs on some clips. And then internal clipping...Sorry, internal Kick clipping program materials from invite-only servers some of which I don’t- We should like go on Kick?Malcolm Collins: Is this what you’re saying?Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess if you’re gonna start streaming, stream on Kick. They can require clippers to use a precise Kick logo overlay, and then incorrect placement can get the clip rejected and unpaid, which ensures that the, the brand of Kick is visible on every Short.So if you see a Short and you see a cl- a Kick [00:40:00] logo on it, you know you’re being subject to this new tactic. And Kick’s strategy, which is derived from its association with, with Stake, which is a crypto gambling platform, is to pay to flood short-form platforms with Kick-branded clips, and then they grow selected streamers to funnel some f- some fraction of the billions of impressions back to Kick.And Nash, who is, is also, you know, our, at least my like go-to now expert on like Twitch botting he contrasts this with Twitch’s older model of paying select streamers big contracts and expecting them to bring their own audience with now this, I think, much more smart and sophisticated- Such a better modelmethod. Yeah. I mean, yeah, where Kick is just spending its marketing budget directly on mass short-form distribution, and then streamers just benefit as a side effect, but streamers are clearly benefiting. So what’s happening though is that algorithms that heavily weight volume and multi-channel chatter are just completely getting one-shotted by the tactic.And so you’ve got this [00:41:00] sometimes even like really mediocre or unlikable personalities are suddenly dominating feeds and getting all this paid volume, while more interesting creators just aren’t- Getting discovered. And then you get basically this, this random weird, like, fake viral stuff. Like, what... I, I, I find, like, some of the talk about Claviculars to be interesting, but then when I go and I watch his actual content I’m like It’s so boring.Like, I find him interesting conceptually. Yeah, like, there’s no charisma, nothing’s happening. This is really boring. Now, Caleb Hammer’s different. I think he’s actually fun. He’s, he, he’s good at, at, like, actually trying to deliver, whereas I think fundamentally Claviculars is an introvert autist who’s discovered his special interest, and kinda just wants to be left alone, but i- you know, understands that he’s getting a lot of money and reinforcement and attention, and is feeding into it, like, while he can.But I just wanna be clear, like, this is not, this is not some concerted thing. Like, this isn’t just a story of, like, [00:42:00] ah, like, all the celebrities you thought were real were manufactured. I mean, we all kinda knew that. Like, the Kardashians manufactured themselves, and, like, all the music labels are, they’re faking it.But I didn’t know how bad it was, but that’s still a thing. But then it’s also not like, oh, well all Twitch streamers are just faking it by viewbotting. ‘Cause no, often it’s their agencies- Yeah ... without even telling them just trying to get more of their cut. And then the, the streamers don’t even know it, and Asmongold has talked about this.Like, it’s not necessarily... And even sometimes it’s fans who are, like, a big stan of some creator, even if they’re really small, and they’re like, “Well, I wanna make them look bigger,” so then they’re going off and they’re buying bots. So, like, people are... So s- this isn’t even content creators. So sometimes it’s the agency, sometimes it’s fans, sometimes it’s a music label.Sometimes- Thank you for, ifMalcolm Collins: you’re a fan of us, how risky it is to bot a show. Don’t. Don’t. Because you can get the entire thing knocked down. Don’t.Simone Collins: Yeah, don’t, don’t bot us. But sometimes it’s a platform. Sometimes it’s, like, Kick doing it, right? Like,Malcolm Collins: I’m up to running a bot experiment on Kick or Rumble or something, but not here.Simone Collins: Not, not here. Yeah, don’t. No. [00:43:00] Please don’t. Yeah. No, no. Again, we weren’t above it for Book Wandering, but... And again, books, right? So just... But, but what I thought I was gonna come away with this, like, my moral of the story was like, well, if you see, you know, a YouTube video that has a lot of views and you’re trying to decide whether or not it’s worth watching, like, actually look at the comments and see if they’re...But then that doesn’t even work. So I don’t know. Like, ‘cause I, I do. I, I fall for it. I will look when I, like, go through my YouTube feed and my recommended stuff, like, I will look at how many views something has, and if it has a lot of views I’m gonna be more likely to choose it. And now I’m, I know I can’t do that, and I don’t know.Like, what, what would, what do you do in light of this information to try to, to not be subject to that level of manipulation, and to not get caught in, in the deader than I knew internet? What do IMalcolm Collins: do? Huh. Well, I think watch content that’s actually entertaining Sure ... this is the, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Yeah This matters more than you [00:44:00] think, right?Like- Yeah ... I think discount content that when you go to it and you’re like, “I’ve heard X person is really big,” and they have a- Yeah ... reputation for being really big. Yeah. And then I go to their channel and I’m just like- It’s not ... this is kind of boring. Who’s- Yeah ... watching this?Simone Collins: Yeah, so basically even if people are talking about someone- I don’t wanna cash shade.I don’t, because- Even if people say they’re watching it, like that doesn’t... You have, yeah, use your own judgment. You know? So, so an exampleMalcolm Collins: of this, right? Okay ... I don’t wanna cash shade ‘cause, like, Smug Alana is like on team or whatever. Do you see that Smug Alana in the latest you know, Smug Alana the Vtuber, right?The- Yeah ... fox girl conservative Vtuber. Mm-hmm. So the latest li- what was it she went ahead stream, Yeah ... about Hasan crashing out Commentating onSimone Collins: Hasan crashing out. Yeah. That, it was fun to see them together. The, the stream she went on. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like, I go, I... While I like her politics and everything and some of her stuff, the reality is is she’s just not that entertaining, right?And if I contrast- No one’s entertaining with bleep fluid ... her [00:45:00] views with how entertaining she is, I’m like- Yeah ... “Oh, this is a little sus.” And I think that I- Mm ... need to be more open to in my head calling out when I’m like, “Who is watching this?” W- w- like w- w- what’s the entertainment value of this for people?Like at the very least with Nick Fuentes I’m like, I get the entertainment value. And I, it does seem- Mm ... that he’s heavily bodied, but specifically ‘cause he’s, like, cruel to his fans.Speaker 5: Like be- living the dream, three daughters. What dream? You’re the gayest guy ever.You’re gayer than gay guys. That’s crazy.Malcolm Collins: And I understand that, like, there’s the thing where there’s, like, the Hasan fans who are, like, women who like men demeaning them, and there’s the Nick Fuentes fans who are guys who like to be demeaned by people they look up to.I don’t, it’s like not my thing.Simone Collins: Speaking of S- Smug Alana the Vtuber like the automated VTuber rig creation [00:46:00] system that you’re creating for Reality Fabricator, rfab.ai, you should try it out. Malcolm’s building really cool stuff there. It should be working by the time this goes up ...Speaker 9: So it’s partially working right now. Right now it will work for generating the VTube rig, generating all the components for the VTube rig, exporting it in a file format that you can export to a VTube rigging platform, but you’re going to have to manage the deformations yourself. , Or I’m trying to automate that step right now.But, , yeah, I mean, you can get the basics with what we have right now.Simone Collins: well, I wanted to ask ‘cause, like, when when Smug Alana on that collab tried to bow she just like, just her, just her, her titties bounced.Is... Are you eventually gonna set up a rig that can do, like, full body tracking?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’ll do titty bouncing. I just don’t have it in for visual- No, notSimone Collins: titty bouncing. I just mean, like she wanted to bow- Oh, I will have the bounciest- ... but she couldn’t ... tittiesMalcolm Collins: you have ever seen Well, obviously it’s... Yeah You don’t even understand.I know. My titties- oh ... will be bouncing out of control with this [00:47:00] rig. Oh, I hope so. They will be the most luscious, the titty simulations you’ve everSimone Collins: seen. She... Titties, no. Look, they should never be luscious. That makes them sound like they’re hairy. You want- Luscious, you hear hairy? Yeah. You want buoyant titties.Well, not buoyant. That sounds- Buoyant? IMalcolm Collins: now think of, like, a woman swimming and her titties are, like, bobbing up in front ofSimone Collins: her. Well, they do. There’s this scene in the original Austin Powers movie where there’s, like, a woman in a hot tub, and I... Like, her titties do seem to float in this, like, one scene, and I just...Something, like, that’s, that scene sits with me where it’s like, do breasts float? And then they would- Well, they have a lot of fatMalcolm Collins: tissue in them, so they probably would They do, so theySimone Collins: would float, yeah, especially if you have, like, a jacuzzi bubbles. But, like, I just remember being like, “Huh.” Your breasts aren’t big enough toMalcolm Collins: have experiencedSimone Collins: this They really aren’t.My poor, my poor English muffins. So I’m, I’m gonna be honest.Malcolm Collins: I would find that disgusting. Th- like, there, I, I, there are guys who are confused by this. For me, like, the big... I, I find it so gross, so [00:48:00] disgusting.Simone Collins: Well, it’s for someone, and I hope that you build into that. But what my, my larger question is, clearly with VTuber rigs, titty bouncing is not something that hasn’t been solved.It, it exists. However, she clearly wanted to do a full body gesture and was prevented from doing that. Will you make it possible to, like, bow and dance eventually with that? No, that will take tooMalcolm Collins: much time.Simone Collins: Take...Malcolm Collins: Okay, fine. At least for the first version. Never mind.Simone Collins: A girl can dream.Malcolm Collins: You’ve gotta keep in mind what I would have to rig.I mean, I will eventually do this, but right now I’m just focused on the basics, okay? Okay. What we will have by the time this video goes live is if you handle the rigging yourself, the image output is all gonna be fine. Now, what I’m working on now is getting the auto-rigging set up as well.Simone Collins: Nice.And just for context... God, yeah, ‘cause no, some of our VTubers are people who use animated anime avatars of themselves, or animated characters. One is, like, an [00:49:00] orange, I think. Like, the biggest Twitch streamer, right, is just an orange. A potato A pota- a potato? Is thatMalcolm Collins: what he was? Yeah, Angry Orange was like an early YouTube thing which is not popular anymore and everyone- Oh, you’re right.No, he...Simone Collins: Okay, fine. He’s... He... What? He’s a thing. He’s a mo- But anyway, where you use an animated thing. Y- you, you... And, and, like, basically there’s software that tracks your face and then uses that to, like, puppet the, the illustrated puppet. And so typically what people do well, have done up to this point is you have to commission an artist to make every small part, the eyes, the nose, the ears, the different variations, and then you upload it to the software, and then the software is what you use to record your, your videos and streams and interviews, et cetera.What Malcolm is doing with Reality Fabricator is making it possible to submit a prompt to AI to create your own character, which you can then upload to that software and animate in all of your videos and interviews and streams without having to commission art from someone. And even if you have an existing VTuber setup, you can use AI to generate outfits or [00:50:00] accessories that you may not have had to save you time, to, to, to speed up turnaround.And it’s really cool. And, like, hearing him go through the creative process has been humbling and impressive. Bruno’s working on this too. It’s really cool stuff.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s see. I didn’t take down the site ‘cause I was doing an update right now. Yeah, it’s working. Great. Okay.Simone Collins: Anyway that’s cool stuff, but okay.I, yeah, I agree with you. And you know what? I think that, like, younger people and younger generations are already really hip to this. Something I’ve noticed with our six-year-old son, Octavian, is w- some, like... We were t- we were trying to find videos on YouTube explaining the, the, the feather dongle on quails’ heads, that little...It’s actually six feathers, at least on the California quail. But what’s going on over here, you know? Ba-doo-doo-doo. And so we were trying to figure out, like, why those feathers are there. There’s not really a good explanation. But we found all these videos about quails, and a bunch of them were AI slop.And I thought well, maybe kids wouldn’t really know when a video is AI, like, [00:51:00] generated. It, like, it’s obviously, like, a thing that I’ve always known. Yeah. But not bad quality. Like, they honestly weren’t terrible. It gave the information. They were better than many human-created videos, but it was still AI slop.And Octavian 100% with that, 100% accuracy was like, “Oh, this was made by AI.” And yeah. This is why it’s good to engage them with AI at a young age. Actually, yes and... ‘Cause he talks with AI all the time. Yesterday he was just talking with ChatGPT all night. It was really funny. ChatGPT is so sycophantic though.So yeah. Anyway I, I do think the younger generations are going to become much more sophisticated about this, and not only will they know when something is AI slop, and do they already but I think they’re gonna know, like, “Okay, this was served to me algorithmically, but it, it’s fake because it’s- It’s not hitting.And hopefully over time-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, things that don’t hit are fake.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like if you’re not feeling it... And I, but this is important ‘cause I think what’s happening with a lot [00:52:00] of people is they’re like, well, and ‘cause I do this all the time, like it’s not hitting with me, but I guess it’s still true or the zeitgeist or important because it has so many views.Mm-hmm. Or because it keeps getting served to me. Like, it just keeps showing up in my algo when I scroll. And one, this is just another argument, another point in favor of not scroll-based content. Like, if you are, if you are consuming content based on a feed, stop. You should be searching proactively for stuff that you like, and then leaning into channels and creators that clearly do their homework and are good and real and trying.And I, I... By real, I don’t mean that doesn’t use AI, whatever, but like, just per your judgment. But yeah. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s, it’s, there’s gonna be a lot of people- You did a greatMalcolm Collins: job by the way- Research ... researching today’s interview episode. Like, I didn’t know- Oh ... any of this. This is fantastic.It changed my view on a lot of things. I’m gonna be thinking about it for a long time. It’s, yeah. And that’s what I come to- It’s sobering ... [00:53:00] conversations with you for.Simone Collins: Oh. And you know what I need? Well, this is normally a you thing- I do need more- ...Malcolm Collins: but I wanted you to work on the VTuberSimone Collins: rigs, so.Malcolm Collins: I need a, a, a shorter sword that I can flail around on stream better.Simone Collins: Oh, ‘cause this is too large for your- Too, yeah ... little square- So I need something I can really- ... and can’t fit it in ... hit our kidsMalcolm Collins: with, if you know what I mean. Well, what if youSimone Collins: like, you need you need a butterfly knife and you need to learn... Oh, God, you’re gonna f*****g- You could watch me- You’re gonna cut your nose off.Sh- sh- Yeah, you gotta drink the whole- WatchMalcolm Collins: all my fingers. Like, by the end of this stream- ... I got no fingers left.Simone Collins: Your face is all bloody. Yeah, that’s sound’s gonna go. And then of course Toasty’s gonna get hit. That’d actually be like a greatMalcolm Collins: AI thing to have in the background. Of a guy, like, playing with a knife and, like, as the stream goes on, fingers start missing.JustSimone Collins: his face gets increasingly cut. Yeah. Honestly, though, I feel like a lot of streamers are just... I mean, watch a clavicular stream, right? At the end he’s hospitalized and yeah, he’s he’s dis- his face is descending ‘cause he, you know, gets all cut up. But it’s, God, it’s just so strange. All this is just so strange.We’re being [00:54:00] manipulated and puppeted, but there is no they. There is no man, you know, like Illuminati doing this. It is all these unique systems that are just performing in alignment with incentives. Oh, shoot. IMalcolm Collins: just realized my classmates who I thought had, like, immediately started bigger Substacks and, like, YouTube channels than us, were they botting?‘Cause I’ve watched some of their stuff and I’m like, it’s not very good. Colette- Is it I- ... is good.Simone Collins: No, Colette, no. Colette, I know. Like, one- It’s, it’s more like you, like- ... it, it may not hit with us, but per, no, per the, the internet revelation that we had thanks to not Aldous Huxley We know that the internet is, to a great extent, less educated third-worlders.Not to... Like, okay- But no- Not to be mean ... and KhalidMalcolm Collins: aims for that, but I’m talking about my other classmates who are not. They’re educated people who are- Oh, right, who are trying toSimone Collins: sell highbrow. Yeah, Khalid, Khalid caters to the everyman. The, the not even developed country everyman, just the everyman. Yeahand he’s great, and we [00:55:00] love him, and he’s very smart, and he, he’s amazing. We- he’s great. But yeah, the ones who are like, “I’m selling highbrow content. I’m selling interviews with founders.” IMalcolm Collins: got Mark Cuban on, on my stream. It’s like, who f*****g cares what Mark Cuban- ... thinks in 2026, man? Grow up.For real.But- I bet it’s all botted, now that I think about it. I hadn’t thought about it- Hmm ... because I hadn’t... When I saw my family member bot so callously, I was like, “You don’t think anybody f*****g exists.” You know,Simone Collins: I, I don’t know. Because they, they were also successful in generating viral content in the past. Like actual...Well, I don’t know. Let’s see. ‘Cause it was 2009 when, when you first saw viewbotting on YouTube. I’m gonna have to look at the timelines. I, I don’t know. Some stuff is really viral. Some stuff is not. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t... And I’m just having such a crisis of... but anyway, this episode is definitely dedicated to Devin Nash, who’s just...I, I, I have a lot of viewing to do. ‘Cause he, he’s done a lot of, like, per his [00:56:00] unique position as someone making money in this ecosystem- Yeah ... and understanding, like, the, the unit e- Like ‘cause Asmongold understands it’s happening, but he has no interest personally in, like, understanding the unit economics, going into Discord servers, like, watching, watching people work.Like, that’s, that’s a deep level. I just wanna explore this more, but I, yeah, I’m just... I, I’m never gonna look at the internet the same way again. ‘Cause I thought dead internet theory was mostly about content. Mm-hmm. And n- now I realize it is it is literally, it is engagement, it is restacks, it is image downloads.Like, it’s crazy. Yeah. But I love you very much.Malcolm Collins: I love you too. Yeah. You are an absolute princess, and I I guess I’ll go down and talk with Steve and Minkit right after this.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and work out, work out some dinner plans, and I will try to wrangle the younglings, maybe shovel some of [00:57:00] the sand out of our house.That’s the new thing. Are you going toMalcolm Collins: kill even the younglings? Simone going after the video. It’s, like, her lightsaber, like in that scene with Anakin. The younglings.Simone Collins: TheyMalcolm Collins: have crossed everySimone Collins: straw. Oh, they cr- they c- they crossed every straw Yes, they did. They did. They crossed the squad mission. No, I’m not goodMalcolm Collins: with the brain thing.This is like one of my failure zones of scenarios. Ooh. ISimone Collins: mean, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get it, ‘cause Tex is... Look, he’s like totally crashed out on my,Malcolm Collins: Oh, you can’t even move. Of course. ISimone Collins: can’t. I’m, I’m immobilized based on his... He’s just all... I can’t, I can’t... There. This is red sheet. I love you, Shawn.Yeah. I love you too. I’m just trying to go to bed earlyMalcolm Collins: tonight. You should try to go to bed early tonight.Simone Collins: God, I want to. I’ve had one long pounding headache all, all day that it just- Bye. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Give us money for her headache. Subscribe to Patreon or something. SubscribeSimone Collins: to take away my [00:58:00] headache. But actually, like, our subscribers are awesome.Thank you so much for those of you who do. Yeah, no,Malcolm Collins: for the ones who are subscribed, like, that’s really cool. Like, it makes it feel like you know, when people don’t like us on YouTube or whatever, it’s like, well, you know, at least some people like us. Like, at least we have someSimone Collins: friends. It’s more... We, we get so much of our episode content from them.And they’re smart- We do ... and friends, and like I actually- So we justMalcolm Collins: farm you for everything: content, money. We’re the worst ...Simone Collins: our fu- our future children’s spouse. It like- Yeah ... it’s bad.Malcolm Collins: It’s bad. Anyway, bye. Bye. For the Leaflet stream on Monday Me too. Two days, two days. Have you, have you watched any of my long streams with her? I’ve only seen clips. No,Simone Collins: I’ve... I have, my, my view, my view list is so freaking long. I- You don’t haveMalcolm Collins: time for 10-hour Crash Out streams?Simone Collins: Mm. They makeMalcolm Collins: me wanna do Twitch streaming, if I’m gonna be honest.Yeah. I’ve learned I’m really good at it. Like, I, I’m gonna be... I’ve, like, watched other Twitch streamers. I’m astonishingly good at it, [00:59:00] I’m tellingSimone Collins: you. Well, guess what? You- you’re gonna, you’re gonna discover quickly why maybe you’re not gonna wanna do that, but we’ll go into it, so I guess I might as well just start.Ooh. It’s all fake.Speaker 11: Okay, so you’ve got a store that you made here- Yeah ... with, like, little huts behind it and a- Yeah ... okay. This, this is the, this, that, that is the person bought spot, and that is the person buy place, too. And that, that is the, that is the, that is the place where you can get furniture. And do you see the carpet?Speaker 12: That is the carpet place. And you see a fridge? That is where all of the foods are. And you see above the fridge? That is the toy aisle. And right there- Oh, that’s the toy aisle? And, and right there is the hair salon. Oh, that’s the hair salon right there? The- And this is like, and this is my AI buying place right there.So- That is the AI buying place ... oh, this is where you get AI? Yeah, to buy. And what would you do with the AI that you bought? Oh, um, I’m gonna make it help me do stuff, to buy. [01:00:00] And this is the- Wait, so what is over here, Octavian? Oh, that is another home that someone who rented this store. Okay, so I wanna This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe