Episode
Far More Famous Influencers Are Fake Than You Realize
- Published
- May 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3610
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Summary
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…