It is the 9/11 of the blue ticks, the Hindenburg of the grifters, the dotcom bubble of the slop-peddlers.
The influencer industry has been left reeling by a new function on X which allows readers to see the location from which any given account is operating. The latest update makes it possible to establish when and where an X account was set up and whether it has changed its name since then.
A sensible measure, you might think, but not if X is where you make your living and do so by inserting yourself into other countries’ internal politics. There are no firm figures on how many earn a crust this way but even the most cursory glance through the Hellsite Formerly Known as Twitter will tell you the number isn’t insignificant.
It’s near impossible to scroll down the “For You” stream without spotting an account with US flags in the profile and header pics and a litany of posts, images and especially videos highlighting the worst of US political, cultural and racial divisions. Yet while this is posed as the output of Americans frustrated by one thing or another, it is sometimes – perhaps often – the work of foreigners who do not live in the United States, never have, have no connection to the country whatsoever, but who have figured out a way to make bank off the need of very online Americans for validation of their pre-existing attitudes.
This is the result of Elon Musk allowing users to monetize their accounts via a premium subscription. Flipping the blue tick from an imprimatur of an account’s authenticity to a marker of someone on the make ought to have been sufficient warning for users, but on social media as in commerce the emptor seldom heeds the caveat.
And now everyone can see just how many of those blue ticks aren’t what they seem.
You’ve got to admire their entrepreneurial pluck. It’s all too easy to sit back and coast at your nine-to-five, but these guys have identified a gap in the market and created a whole new industry serving up rageslop to Westoid midwits who can be roused to anger about anything – race, gender, Jews, chemtrails, White House refurbishment – other than the civilization crumbling around them.
Farming culture-war engagement is a slog, especially when you work to build an audience for one grievance then events (or impressions data) require you to pivot to another one. It’s more effort than reward in most advanced economies but in poorer climes pandering to prejudices and pathologies can bring in a nice chunk of change. First World problems pay Third World mortgages.
And is there really all that much harm done?
If you’ve been following @Zoomer_Rhodesian, who claims to be a twenty-something e-girl from Galveston, for her “Is it them again, Yogi?” memes and her keen interest in Waffle House CCTV footage, does it matter that the account is actually the work of Manjeet, a Gen-X father of eight from Ghaziabad?
If you’re in the market for a desperate Gazan whose only son is shot dead by the IDF every few weeks, and someone in Romania is happy to play that role for engagement, what have you to complain about? You created a market and the market responded accordingly. Service sought, service rendered, cash collected.
The follower of such an account is being deceived, of course, but only in the same sense that the subscriber to OnlyFans is deceived when his favorite camgirl confesses with a moan that he gets her so hot.
Where phony accounts can be a source of harm is when their fictions are amplified without verification by the mainstream media. The greatest risk of this comes with accounts which purport to document issues journalists care most about, from a perspective journalists most strongly agree with, in parts of the world where access for journalists is restricted or financially prohibitive. Which is a long-winded way of saying “Palestine.”
Even here, though, the substantive harm is not done by the Indonesian random inventing ever more lurid stories about Israeli villainy but by the journalist who fails to do that most basic of diligences: check your sources.
The origin update isn’t all downsides, though. If you’ve ever been unjustly accused of being a foreign influence op, Elon’s latest innovation brings sweet vindication. I should know from my own X account. Contrary to what I’m sometimes told, I don’t tweet from an air-conditioned basement suite at the Mossad headquarters – more’s the pity – but from across the pond in good old Blighty. Look, I have the certificate to prove it.
This, however, raises another possibility: that accounts flagged as American or otherwise Western will now become very valuable, valuable enough for Westerners to make a fast buck of our own flogging our log-in details to Indian influencers and Ghanaian grifters. Finally, globalization is working in our favor again.
