Fake likes

[ExMagic]

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

[hieronymous7]

From this post:

Thank you, the reaction's been great. For a long time seeing all the posts with zero responses have been keeping me from posting here. Now I think I can handle the zeros.

I also like that the thread seems to be mostly cats talking with a blurry tree.

The whole thread has been an unexpected delight. Keep posting what you made, too. I know that personally, I can't always find something to say for whatever reason, but it's always a huge joy to be able to sit down with a cup of coffee and listen to a selection of other peoples' creations, however conventional or bizarre.

To this post:

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

was like riding a roller-coaster! That is such a sad story. But I kind of get it - my more normal (relatively) online persona has been getting anywhere from 300 views for a regular video to close to 2000 for shorts - it can be really emotional, my insecurities come out - I like to think I have perspective, yet it still hits hard sometimes when I don't get as many views/listens.

I am SO GLAD that I didn't have this stuff when I was a kid! I was messed up enough as it was...

[chaosium]

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

[Kattefjaes]

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

Yes, it does not reflect well on them at all, who the hell does that?

[chaosium]

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

Yes, it does not reflect well on them at all, who the hell does that?

The only phrase i can think of to describe the phenomena is "townies", not so much the idea of people not leaving their hometown but the practice of only associating with the people of your youth no matter how much they are assholes to those around them. We all may learn associates better as we age and they either change for the worse or DON'T their solipsistic assholery from school days, but everyone refuses to disassociate from them because "they've always been around". There's a lot of those people who just hang out and do the same stuff as they did when they were 18 but older and the abuse just increases because it's either never hit them directly or they can use force of will and manipulation to cause people who report abuse to get sanctioned.

I don't blame the victim of the abuse, but hopefully that poor guy has actual friends now.

As tough as building social circles is in adulthood, and as nice as it would be to have that one's friend's house to hang out at regularly, building a varied life with vastly different scenes and interests helps give you perspective and options.

Anyway, "fake likes" is definitely a concept I've never really worried about mostly because I'm not going hard for social media and have avoided Soundcloud for music (Youtube mostly), I still want to get a bandcamp set up as a musical CV, but in a time when attention economy means people are getting content freebased whether they want that or not, I should play more live with people if I want to expose people to my tunes!

My spouse just created an insta for their art, and since they used hashtags they're getting 99% bot comments promoting NFTs, aliexpress "brand ambassador" scams, and "ADD THIS TO SO AND SO COMMUNITY"

[ExMagic]

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

They never laughed at him,
The Only told him because he was starting to be wreck less financially talking about bills can wait, cleaning his account to build a studio, but more so he took the rockstar think to far and started insulting people based on how he “knows” what’s good and what isnt

[chaosium]

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

They never laughed at him,
The Only told him because he was starting to be wreck less financially talking about bills can wait, cleaning his account to build a studio, but more so he took the rockstar think to far and started insulting people based on how he “knows” what’s good and what isnt

I don't think that context really helps a ton, if the guy was that fragile and starting to take things in a bad direction for himself the "next round of likes" comes off a more dehumanizing prank.

I wasn't there of course, don't know the guy. But from the sounds of things they fucked up pretty bad at reading their friend at best.

[ExMagic]

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

They never laughed at him,
The Only told him because he was starting to be wreck less financially talking about bills can wait, cleaning his account to build a studio, but more so he took the rockstar think to far and started insulting people based on how he “knows” what’s good and what isnt

I don't think that context really helps a ton, if the guy was that fragile and starting to take things in a bad direction for himself the "next round of likes" comes off a more dehumanizing prank.

I wasn't there of course, don't know the guy. But from the sounds of things they fucked up pretty bad at reading their friend at best.

They were only trying to help from what I gathered.
And apparently it was out of character for him to be aggressively egotistical

[chaosium]

I had a buddy not close but a friend, his other circle (offline)actually friends bought hims 1ooo likes for each of his 4 posted track secretly to boost his spirits, the guy instantly got all ‘rockstar’ on everyone myself talking about his tracks blowing up and he was gonna be the David Bowie or some sh!+

Unfortunately after another round of fake bought likes, he embellished he story to getting a record deal… and the guys wound up telling him they bought all 8ooo likes
My friend totally had a mental break down, apparently smashed his laptop first by accident the started smashing it and smashed his acoustic too, deleted all his music from home and online, and then did the same with all his online accounts.

Unfortunately about 3yrs later the guy hasn’t even touched and instrument and won’t talk to those guys anymore

TBH it is pretty cruel to do that then laugh at him for it.

They never laughed at him,
The Only told him because he was starting to be wreck less financially talking about bills can wait, cleaning his account to build a studio, but more so he took the rockstar think to far and started insulting people based on how he “knows” what’s good and what isnt

I don't think that context really helps a ton, if the guy was that fragile and starting to take things in a bad direction for himself the "next round of likes" comes off a more dehumanizing prank.

I wasn't there of course, don't know the guy. But from the sounds of things they fucked up pretty bad at reading their friend at best.

They were only trying to help from what I gathered.
And apparently it was out of character for him to be aggressively egotistical

Granted, the thing i couldn’t reconcile is why they doubled down and continued on when it was negatively affecting his personality beyond them finding it “funny” to fuck with him. Realizing it’d gone too far when he started ruining his life of course, but having a point at which it’s too much fuckery to continue is still pretty damning.

IDK, buy the dude a mastering session! Get him a Distrokid account! Hire his drone act for your sister’s wedding, nephew’s Bar Mitzvah!

[ExMagic]

From what I gathered the 2nd round was a scheduled thing. Like a “subscription likes” or something and he wasn’t as balloon headed by the time that happened. And I guess the second round of likes is what sent him overboard from just being confident and maybe a bit too cocky to being insane. And they made sure the 3rd segment didn’t happen or the great studio build…

[hieronymous7]

Yay! Fake likes! Reposts! Even a fake comment!



So weird - I appreciate it, it's a mini-boost to my ego - or is it purely random??? I'm not going to put in the effort to listen to the other stuff they repost. MieMie - did my track really take you on a journey? Did you even really listen?!! You're definitely a hottie - or maybe it's not really you?

[Samatha Dubs]

So weird - I appreciate it, it's a mini-boost to my ego - or is it purely random??? I'm not going to put in the effort to listen to the other stuff they repost. MieMie - did my track really take you on a journey? Did you even really listen?!! You're definitely a hottie - or maybe it's not really you?

The image of "MieMie" was generated with AI software. It's literally an amalgamation of a million girls (or more). I'm pretty sure the spammers use the Soundcloud tags to generate comments that somewhat matches the content (also using AI).

For example, I just asked the Perplexity AI:

Me: What's a nice short comment for an ambient piece of music?
Perplexity: This ethereal soundscape is a beautiful escape into a dreamlike world!

It looks just like something MieMie would say, doesn't it?

[hieronymous7]

So weird - I appreciate it, it's a mini-boost to my ego - or is it purely random??? I'm not going to put in the effort to listen to the other stuff they repost. MieMie - did my track really take you on a journey? Did you even really listen?!! You're definitely a hottie - or maybe it's not really you?

The image of "MieMie" was generated with AI software. It's literally an amalgamation of a million girls (or more). I'm pretty sure the spammers use the Soundcloud tags to generate comments that somewhat matches the content (also using AI).

For example, I just asked the Perplexity AI:

Me: What's a nice short comment for an ambient piece of music?
Perplexity: This ethereal soundscape is a beautiful escape into a dreamlike world!

It looks just like something MieMie would say, doesn't it?

BUZKILL!!! lol jk I actually appreciate the insight - it honestly didn't occur to me that it was AI related, though it totally makes sense. Hopefully the AI is enjoying the dark ambient electronic noise...

[Domin]

It looks just like something MieMie would say, doesn't it?

I've uploaded a new track and blocked her before she got to do anything. Unfortunately her friend managed to share. Fun.

[hieronymous7]

It looks just like something MieMie would say, doesn't it?

I've uploaded a new track and blocked her before she got to do anything. Unfortunately her friend managed to share. Fun.

I gave you a real like, before I listened to it. So was it real? Listening again now for the first time - yeah, it's real.

[chaosium]

From what I gathered the 2nd round was a scheduled thing. Like a “subscription likes” or something and he wasn’t as balloon headed by the time that happened. And I guess the second round of likes is what sent him overboard from just being confident and maybe a bit too cocky to being insane. And they made sure the 3rd segment didn’t happen or the great studio build…

Yeah, that context does at least make more sense. No more surprise gifts from that point on!