Clip-bait
Reacting to the reactions about faked reaction
It feels crass to paywall this one, but I’ve never claimed to be otherwise. The newsletter is called Selling Out, after all.
I’m glad that there are so many articles explaining the state of stealth propaganda these days, like Lane Brown’s for Vulture. Keep them coming! My first thought, after learning about the Geese, et al fiasco was: Challengers (2024). I haven’t seen anyone bring it up as an astroturfing example, but I personally remember spiraling over the amount of obvious sock puppet accounts hyping it for a time.
Two years ago, I insisted (in person, to friends) that no self-motivated human beings post such dorky, explicitly promotional memes—especially not about seeing a dark-edged Luca Guadagnino film “for the second time, with my two besties 👀.”
The covert marketing, which mirrored the previous year’s Barbie rollout, sickened me so much I avoided Challengers until on a plane, and was surprised to find it neither cloying nor terribly sensational, not even crowded with product placement, like the clips had suggested.
Most revealing was the threesome scene, or lack thereof. This is what a bunch of nameless zillennial girls tweeted that they used as foreplay for their own two-guy fantasies? My spiral reignited. Was I also meant to believe that the women posting about Challengers rewatches had hot straight male friends who would accompany them to the theater? Two of them?
Anyway, all the effort seems to have backfired, because for a minute, everyone was discussing a movie that probably deserved a more dignified launch, and the next minute, the movie was snubbed for any awards, then eclipsed by another Zendaya stunt-dressing tour, another clip-athon. Guadagnino’s subsequent films, Queer (2024) and After the Hunt (2025), weren’t nominated for anything, either, despite being award-baity and star-studded, and despite basically every other one of his movies winning something.
My point is, I was right (unconfirmed). Which hardly matters, now, but in the moment my possible wrongness felt like a symptom of some larger problem. No, I didn’t care about the particulars of the topic, I cared about what it meant for our future as internet users.