The Snoopy fan account political war

+ AI baby peacocks, Elon's fake texts, and how nostalgia accounts are destroying pop culture history

Over the weekend, @snoopyweekly, a semi popular Snoopy fan account that shares a stream of uplifting and funny images of the Peanuts character Snoopy, came out in support of Trump for president. 

"This election season, @snoopyweekly proudly endorses Donald J. Trump for President of the United States," the account posted on Saturday. "We want better for our family and our great country. Make America Great Again."

The account immediately faced a wave of backlash. "Twitter user snoopyweekly you will burn for the dirt you have thrown on an innocent name," one person posted. 

"Using an AI ripoff of Schultz's art style to endorse someone anathema to everything Peanuts strived to communicate for 50 years? Oh you're going to achieve levels of sued AND haunted never before imagined, holy hell," another said.

Over the past year, the character Snoopy has amassed a hyper-engaged online fandom among Gen Z. The TikTok account @snooopyiscool went viral last year for its Snoopy fan edits, which have amassed millions of views, and similar accounts sharing short Peanuts clips featuring the dog have taken off online.

Soon, retailers like Urban Outfitters and Kohl's began selling out of Snoopy merch. A CVS exclusive Snoopy plush toy sold out nearly overnight across the country and was listed for 4x to 5x the price on sites like eBay and Mercari. CVS employees posted on Reddit about fielding dozens of phone calls daily from young people begging for the Snoopy plushie. 

Snoopy as a character is highly emotional, appreciates the little joys in life, and loves to daydream. It's these aspects of his personality that resonate most heavily with Gen Z and younger Millennials. “I love Snoopy because of the way he engages with his creative side, his interests, and his curiosity. He’s a silly roleplaying weirdo but he’s also charming and chill and a great best friend. He’s also cute 🥰,” one Snoopy fan explained.

Like any viral craze, opportunists quickly swooped in to capitalize on Snoopy-mania. Suddenly, countless Snoopy-themed accounts cropped up online, siphoning off online attention by feeding the Snoopy craze through a steady stream of Snoopy posts.

Of course it was only a matter of time before it all got political. Since Elon hid likes in June, it's been harder to read the tea leaves on anonymous account political leanings, but judging from the accounts tagged in @snoopyweekly's post, it's clear that the admin has fallen down a right wing grifter rabbit hole. SnoopyWeekly tagged End Wokeness, Tucker Carlson, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, multiple members of the Trump family and Hulk Hogan in its announcement. 

The main reason the SnoopyWeekly endorsement reads as so absurd and outrageous is because it's so out of line with the largely young and progressive fandom that has coalesced around Snoopy.

Other Snoopy accounts have been loosely politically engaged in activism for a while. @DailySnoopys, one of the larger Snoopy accounts on Twitter with over 121,000 followers, for instance, regularly promotes fundraisers for Palestine, Sudan, and other humanitarian crises. These posts have (rightfully!) received almost no backlash. 

But the emergence of political messaging from anonymous fandom accounts like @snoopyweekly shows how anon theme accounts can build often large, loyal followings by centering on a beloved character or interest, then pivot to political messaging with a built-in platform of engaged followers.

This particular method of political influence has been used effectively by the right for years. This is why you often see theme accounts about things like ancient architecture, organic living, or nature content suddenly incorporating right-leaning political messaging. But for the entire schtick to work, it has to be subtle. SnoopyWeekly's fatal flaw was that it came out too hard and fast for Trump.

That said, SnoopyWeekly might have at least a few political allies in the broader Snoopy online fandom. @badsnoopy__, an account with an AI generated Snoopy avatar, openly identifies as conservative. Other Snoopy accounts are pushing dubious Snoopy-themed crypto projects. 

Snoopy IP is controlled by Peanuts Worldwide LLC, which operates as a joint venture between WildBrain (a Canadian media, licensing, and entertainment company), Sony Music Entertainment, and the family of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz. So far they've kept the brand largely apolitical and don't seem to be cracking down on fan accounts. However, I imagine if some of these accounts become more brazenly political they could risk takedown notices. 

As of Monday, SnoopyWeekly was already sharing misinformation about the Michigan voter registration deadline.

As the author Jamie Loftus put it. “For those outside the Snoopy community, snoopyweekly recently made an aggressive fascistic push, @dailysnoopys is the way to go.”

Elon Musk took the @America handle from an X user to promote Donald Trump

Just hours before Musk appeared at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler Pennsylvania this weekend, he began promoting his pro-Trump Super PAC, called America PAC, using a brand new handle: @America.

Musk promptly updated his Twitter bio to, “Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President." 

But the @America handle wasn't new, it belonged to a Twitter user before Musk used his power at X to unceremoniously seize it and use it for political purposes, Matt Binder reports on his new Substack. This is not the first time Musk has seized a username since his tenure began. 

What does a baby peacock look like?

If you search the phrase "baby peacock" on Google the results are polluted with a ton of AI-generated slop.

As I wrote last year, Google is increasingly populating its search results with images and videos taken directly from social media posts on sites like TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit and more. The issue is that many of these social platforms are currently being overwhelmed by low quality AI generated content. And though other sites like Adobe label images like the current top result for "baby peacock" as AI on their website, Google search results don't do the same. 

Fake texts are taking over twitter

The right-wing Twitter influencer formula these days involves posting a screenshot of a text from unknown friend or colleague as original source material, Scott Nover notes.

It's all very Facebook circa 2011 and wouldn't be concerning, except that the collective media literacy has declined so significantly over the past few years that a substantial number of X users believe these dubious texts to be real. This problem is exacerbated by influential, high profile tech leaders like Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital's Shaun Maguire tweeting this stuff out. 

Nostalgia accounts are destroying pop culture history 

On the latest Power User entertainment critic and writer Coleman Spilde and I explored how nostalgia accounts are rewriting pop culture history. We dove deep into the growing market of pop culture accounts on X that are falsifying their posts for a payout and the downstream effects of pop culture misinformation has on culture and our shared concept of history. 

Coleman writes, "taking these rumors at face value is a major problem not just because they’re inaccurate but because they feed a larger degradation of the importance of culture. If you’re a person who cares about pop culture—someone who appreciates artistry and the work it takes to make media compelling enough to be deemed genuinely impactful—you know how significant the moments surrounding it are. The times before, during, and after are all part of the history of whatever individual piece of art we examine. So placing that art outside time, or concocting fallacies about its artist’s intentions, has the potential to skew our perception of the art moving forward.”

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