Is Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Controversy and the Rest of the Internet Fake?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Long, hot summer is in the middle of the village market. The best children's event of the Finnish summer is Million Tivoli. 52 days of joy and excitement. The village market offers Tivoli Sariola day tickets for free to all children under the age of 13. So there we go, where we get the joy for free. So to the village market. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous.
I'm Natalie Rubimet. And I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. So if you're even slightly online, which I'm going to guess most of you listening to this are, it's pretty likely that you spend a good amount of your time watching short form clips, or at least scrolling past the beginnings of them. I'm talking about TikToks, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, you know the kind of thing. Like this morning, I opened up my TikTok and I saw clips of Zara Larsson dancing, Rihanna performing at Jay-Z's recent Yankee Stadium residency, Love Island's Melanie getting some real talk from her family , Charli XCX writhing around in the mud on set of a new video, Amy Poehler talking on her podcast , and so on. A lot of these clips seem to be from random fan accounts, and none of these posts are from accounts I follow.
They're all just recommendations, tailored for me by my algorithm. Kind of embarrassing, I guess. I didn't know I was such a Rihanna or Charli XCX or even a Zara Larsson fan. Or maybe someone is really trying to make me a fan of Charli XCX and Zara Larsson and Rihanna. Because there's actually an entire secret economy to clips like these. A slew of stealth marketing campaigns designed to make moments and pop stars go viral. There are actually entire advertising agencies operating thousands of dummy social media accounts with the sole purpose of drumming up attention on behalf of paying clients and, quote, shaping the narrative around said clients. To do so, they use a practice known as clipping, where they cut bits of songs or podcasts or movie trailers into short clips that get posted to social media by normal-looking accounts.
It's all part of the increasingly commercialized internet, where almost everything you see is advertising, even if you don't know it. So how does clipping work? Who is paying for it? And why? Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York Magazine, wrote an incredible story uncovering the hidden industry of clipping called The Feed is Fake. And he's here to talk about all of that and more. Lane, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
Okay, Lynn, you and I have known each other a while. I know you know a lot about culture, but I had no idea that things that I see on my Instagram Reels are not actual trends. They're not like actual, you know, oh my God, so many people are seeing it that the algorithm is trying to pick this up and show it to you, middle-aged mom. They are something called trend simulation. And trend simulation is... basically what we used to call guerrilla marketing, but I had no idea that it was going on every day with like a stat, like 80 to 90% of what you think is a trend in music or culture is being paid for and fake. That's according to someone you spoke to.
with a vested interest in trying to find new customers but i would maybe quibble a little bit with this is like the new version of guerrilla marketing or this is a new kind of advertising i think this is a category change this is a new and different thing guerrilla marketing is like hanging up posters on the way to a music venue or something this is almost more like hiring actors to follow you around and sort of talk loud enough to be overheard to try to do product placement or something i'm
Right. Okay. Because what you're saying is basically these 45-ish minute second things that we all see on TikTok or on Instagram, even YouTube shorts, scrolling past that have nothing to do with like our friends making these videos. Those people are people who are walking behind Charli XCX yelling like, oh my God, Charli XCX is so cool. Check out this meme I made about her.
Exactly. Yeah. You know, I'm sort of getting up there.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:55
2
What is 'clipping' and how does it shape the short-form feeds we see every day?
4:55–28:37
3
How cheap is clipping compared with traditional TikTok or ad buys?
28:37–32:30
4
Why are major artists and labels using clipping even when they seem already popular?
32:30–33:07
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Infamous
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