The ‘Black Insurrectionist’ account is run by a white man
+ Lily Allen's feet pic empire, Timothée Chalamet crashes his own look alike contest, influencers are monetizing cancer, and more
Over the past several months, an account on X called Black Insurrectionist has pushed a slew of viral conspiracy theories. The account’s profile photo is of a Black soldier with the tagline “I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS.”
The account has amassed over 352,200 followers on X, in large part by pushing false information about Harris, Tim Walz, and boosting Trump, Vance, and their Republican allies.
Brian Slodysko of the AP found the man who runs this account, and it turns out he’s a white man from upstate New York.
The Black Insurrectionist account is linked directly to Jason G. Palmer, who has his own questionable backstory, starting with the fact that he isn’t Black, according to an Associated Press review of public records, open source data and interviews with a half-dozen people who interacted closely with Palmer over the past two decades.
The records and personal accounts offer a portrait of an individual who has repeatedly been accused of defrauding business partners and lenders, has struggled with drug addiction and whose home was raided by the FBI over a decade ago. He also owes more than $6.7 million in back taxes to the state of New York.
As I’ve argued before, examples like this are why we desperately need more transparency in the creator economy.
Helen Mirren just wishes Kurt Cobain was alive to see all of this
Helen Mirren recently gave an interview to Evening Standard in which she talked about being “sad” that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain is no longer alive, because he never got the chance to experience GPS and its “magical” functionality.
“I always say, it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did, because he never saw GPS,” said Mirren. “GPS is the most wonderful thing, to watch my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”
The quote went viral because of how absurd it was. But what I think is more hilarious is how often Mirren seems to think about how Cobain would react to modern technology. According to Variety,
In 2014, she told Oprah Winfrey, “Look at Kurt Cobain — he hardly even saw a computer! The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. I’m just so curious about what happens next.”
A year later, she told Cosmopolitan, “I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the internet, and I’m totally blown away by that.”
In 2016, she said to the Daily Mail, “If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain [of rock band Nirvana] died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet! Incredible things are happening all the time and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”
‘This being universally disliked… feels like a culture shift’
Kim Kardashian hosted a private screening of the movie musical Wicked on Tuesday night joined by stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. She showed off her entire house decked out in green and pink with thousands of roses, streamers, elaborate balloon arches, decorations and treats. The entire thing looked like a massive Instagram activation that would have gone viral in 2016.
This time around, however, people hated it. She got dragged to hell in the comments and all over Twitter for overconsumption and being out of touch. I think the reaction to the event and Kardashian’s IG posts shows how clearly the vibe in culture has shifted from a decade ago.
“We’re tired of rich people getting free things when they’re the only ones who can afford them in the first place,” one Twitter user posted, summarizing much of the critique.
“This being universally disliked… feels like a culture shift,” YouTuber Tyler Oakley posted, “this isn't a personal attack on your fav, it's appreciation for the growth of the collective's class consciousness & the outgrowth of a culture of celebrity worship <3
Blue MAGA is sharing false conspiracies about media hiding a Trump story
Last week, a bunch of influential centrist liberal influencers began pushing a conspiracy theory about how the media is all colluding to hide a big “secret story” about Trump. I’m not even going to waste space debunking the many ways this conspiracy is deeply delusional, but suffice to say that if a media org isn’t running a blockbuster story that would undeniably amass them views and subscribers, it’s because that story doesn’t exist or they can’t confirm it.
The bigger issue here is that, as I wrote for The Washington Post this summer, there is a rampant conspiracism problem in centrist liberal anti-Trump influencer spaces.
Trump is a threat to democracy and the media does far too much to normalize his dangerous ideology. They regularly launder his image, fail to hold him to the same standards as other politicians, and don’t report on him critically enough. But liberal internet users’ have become increasingly comfortable adopting MAGA tactics and talking points in their efforts to attack him.
The phenomenon is known as BlueAnon, and in these centrist liberal anti-Trump influencers’ world, shadowy forces, including the mainstream media, are all part of a coordinated plot destroy Kamala Harris’ candidacy and usher Trump back into power.
Karl Folk, an independent researcher who studies authoritarianism and radicalization, said this “more conspiratorial mind-set has become more pronounced in liberal circles” in recent months. It’s an important reminder to be skeptical and question any unsourced claims built to feed into a preexisting belief system.
New conservative grifter just dropped
Maia Poet, a 25 year old Israeli-American, recently went viral for claiming that the Hamas attack on October 7th made her detransition and abandon the LGBTQ community. She claims that not having enough have time to squeeze into her chest binder in order to get to a bomb shelter after sirens broke out following the attack, awoke her to the “gender lies” in liberal society.
Now she’s advising parents of LGBTQ youth to “send their kids to a war zone” in order to “cure” them of their “gender ideology.” Poet’s entire feed is a mix of intense pro-Israel messaging and right wing misinformation about trans people. Her following is already up since going viral and now she has formally announced she’s backing Donald Trump. We’ll see how far she goes.
An AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said
OpenAI has claimed that its AI transcription tool Whisper has a near “human level robustness and accuracy.” But an AP investigation found that in reality it makes up massive chunks of text and constructs entire conversations from thin air.
More than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers have spoken out about the tool and claim it regularly hallucinates racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.
This is a huge problem because Whisper is being in a growing number of industries globally, including medical centers to transcribe patients’ meetings with doctors.
What I’m reading
There’s something off about this year’s “fall vibes”
Autumn is being eaten by a deluge of AI slop. - Vox
The new dark money: How influencers get paid big bucks to court your vote
On TikTok, Instagram and X, freelance creators profit from the murky practice of persuading their large followings to back Trump or Harris. - WaPo
How a tech mogul backed by JD Vance now bolsters Trump’s fortune
Trump relies on Rumble’s Chris Pavlovski for a key component of his media business. - WaPo
I created a chatbot of myself and had it answer my Instagram DMs. Boy, was I annoying.
Katie Notopolous discovered that her AI personality was peak millennial cringe and Meta’s bots aren't well-tested. - Business Insider
I am my own legal department: the promise and peril of “just go independent”
Independent publishing is one important facet of the media ecosystem, and while I love it, I know it is not the path for everyone. - Molly White
More fun stuff
Lily Allen makes more money selling feet pics on OnlyFans than she does through Spotify streams.
Timothée Chalamet showed up to his own lookalike contest.
The New York City government paved over the Bed-Stuy Aquarium :(
Wellness influencers are using their cancer diagnosis to push dubious products.
A fundamentalist christian influencer is going forward with her ectopic pregnancy because she’s anti abortion and now facing the possibility of dying and leaving behind 7 other children.
A artist Jordan Stone’s surreal and melodic TikTok videos have been called “post-corecore.”
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Aimé Leon Dore is running Instagram ads now.
Taking selfies in the cradle of the atom bomb.
This thread went viral for being written in intense social-justice lingo, here’s a helpful translation.
Listen to Naomi Klein on the state of the 2024 election.
Facebook pages of driving schools are overrun with perverts.
Some robot vacuums can be hacked to spy on you.
Elon Musk is charging developers $42,000+ per month to access X's API, which use to be free.
Most daters would dump someone over politics.
The Apple Vision Pro is a flop.
The FDA is reviewing complaints that containers of MrBeast’s lunchables competitor Lunchly are arriving full of mold.
Marc Andreessen has donated another $2 million to Donald Trump.
Please start giving people privacy!
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"the outgrowth of a culture of celebrity worship" ... it's still a culture of celebrity worship, it's just that the celebrities have changed. It was a bubble that we were living in from 9/11 onward that the same handful of celebrities remained relevant for so long, that had never happened before in American culture. A lot of that had to do with different kinds of 360 deals (which were new) where entertainment corporations had to keep certain celebrities relevant in order to profit off of those deals. Same thing with the sale of music catalogs, which began in the 90's with David Bowie Bonds against future royalties.
I hope Bogost gets all the leaf-blowing he deserves. Can't read the whole piece because I cannot in good conscience give The Atlantic any money, but leaf-blowers are terrible for the environment! They're not merely annoying.