Last year, I was telegraphed a subliminal mandate from the indie rock powers that be: I was supposed to like Geese. The young Brooklynites make good music, but are they the saviors of rock and roll, the defining rock band of Gen Z, the second coming of The Strokes? The buzz around the band would suggest so.
After their album “Getting Killed” came out in September, the band was unavoidable if you’re the kind of person who refers to concerts as “shows.” When frontman Cameron Winter played an “extremely sold-out” solo set at Carnegie Hall, people in the audience seemed convinced that they’d be able to look back on that night in 50 years and tell their grandchildren that they witnessed a seminal moment in American musical history — the birth of the next Bob Dylan. How could anyone live up to that hype? That’s why, when Wired reported that Geese’s popularity was a psyop, I felt vindicated — I was right!
I was smarter than everyone for only casually enjoying Geese! But it’s never that simple. The real story is that Geese worked with a marketing firm called Chaotic Good, which creates thousands of social media accounts designed to manufacture trends on behalf of their clients, which also include TikTok favorites Alex Warren and Zara Larsson.
This revelation has inspired a range of reactions, from feelings of betrayal to confusion at why anyone is mad about a band doing marketing, a normal thing that bands do. You just post trending audios. But artists can’t do that, because they want to promote their own music,” explained Chaotic Good co-founder Andrew Spelman in an interview with Billboard.
It’s not just the music industry taking advantage of this marketing strategy — young startup founders are following the same playbook. While preparing for an interview with the Gen Z founders of the fashion app Phia, I searched TikTok to see what real people were saying about the app. I found videos repeating the same talking points about how Bill Gates’ daughter created an app that helps you save money on luxury products, or how using Phia is like having a personal shopping assistant that wants you to get the best deals.
When I clicked on these accounts, I found that many of them only ever posted videos about Phia. It’s not like I caught Phia in some “gotcha” moment. Founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni aren’t trying to hide their social media strategy — this is just how marketing works now.
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