Sorry babe, I'm monitoring the situation

On Saturday, the US and Israel launched Operation Epstein Fu— sorry, I meant Operation Epic Fury. I’m sure the reasons for America’s newest forever war will change over time, but the official reason right now is that the Trump administration wanted to “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program and, at least in theory, support the protests that have broken out in the country over the last few months. Though, President Donald Trump this morning is telling reporters it was also payback for an alleged Iranian assassination plot against him in 2024.

Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei is dead, as are, apparently, every candidate that the Trump administration wanted to replace him with. The conflict has immediately spiraled into chaos. Over 150 children were killed at a school in Tehran in one of the first airstrikes. Iran is attacking neighboring countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. And three of our fighter jets just shot themselves down by accident in Kuwait. Oil prices are already soaring. And US law enforcement is claiming that a mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, this weekend was connected to the conflict. Just another weekend wondering if we’re watching the start of World War III.

Which is actually very exciting for the deeply pathetic armchair experts on X, the everything app, who have started referring to moments like this as “monitoring the situation.” They’ve been fantasizing for months about some kind of bar where they could stare at a bunch of OSINT dashboards and, well, mostly just gamble on world events. Like a Buffalo Wild Wings, but for profiting off human misery. Which, I guess, is already the business model for Buffalo Wild Wings.

X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, bragged on Saturday that it was “the biggest day on 𝕏 in history.” Unclear if that means it was also the biggest day in Twitter’s history, but I assume it wasn’t.

If you haven’t been paying attention to this particularly noxious pocket of X, it’s a bunch of self-described “founders,” CEOs, investors, dropshippers, scammers, and reactionary propagandists who have, like all gentrifiers, discovered a more expensive, worse version of something normal people used to do mostly for free. Or, in this case, out of some sense of civic or professional duty.

The analysts, experts, and journalists that populated Twitter and made it an unparalleled resource during breaking news cycles have largely been replaced by capitalist strivers, who pay to get paid to post. They make money directly from X’s Creator program, regardless of whether or not their posts are accurate. A report from WIRED found that the bulk of the misinformation about the conflict with Iran this weekend came from monetized Verified accounts. And many of these same users — and, of course, a bunch of Trump admin insiders — now also race to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket to cash in on whatever new event has moved us closer to a nuclear apocalypse.

There was half a billion dollars in trading volume, according to The New York Times’ Mike Isaac, on prediction markets this weekend. One Polymarket user named Magamyman, obviously, made more than half a million dollars over the weekend, betting that Khamenei would be “out as Supreme Leader of Iran by March 31st.” Kalshi, for its part, is refusing to pay some users for the same bet, saying that it won’t allow “people profiting from death” — got some bad news for you on that one.

It’s hard to overstate how much all of this is just large-scale COVID trauma. In 2020, the country’s managerial class was forced to sit at home in the profoundly lonely desolation of their own lives for a few months, got even more addicted to Twitter than they already were, and decided, like rich guys tend to do, that they didn’t want to compete with normal people for attention and just bought the game. And Twitter, now X under Elon Musk, has basically been frozen in time ever since. Everything on the site is treated like COVID waves. They talk about AI like it’s COVID. They talk about crypto like it’s COVID. And, now, they’re talking about war with Iran like it’s COVID. “People ask ‘how did you catch Iran nine minutes early’,” One user posted on X yesterday. “While you were: Checking Twitter for ‘breaking news,’ waiting for Reuters headline, asking Discord ‘should I enter,’ I was already cashed out.”

An X user yesterday called the current conflict in Iran “post-modern war,” writing, “No unifying narrative. Why are we at war? Who with? Is it a good idea? When did it start? Is this even a war? No one agrees on anything.” But the “why” doesn’t matter if you can bet on it, can be entertained by it. Until, of course, it arrives on your doorstep. Just ask all the capitalists and influencers that ran off to Dubai to avoid income tax how secure they’re feeling this morning.

—by Adam Bumas

The company that creates MrBeast content is now so big it has its own insider trading scandals (an editor made Kalshi bets about the videos he was working on). It’s also big enough that CEO Jeff Housenbold went on CNBC last week, saying that the channel’s YouTube videos had been viewed by 1.45 billion people in the past 90 days. Which caught the eye of fellow YouTuber Rosanna Pansino, who’s served as a MrBeast watchdog before. She quoted the figure on X, asking “how many of those views were bought?” 

Buying artificial views or subscribers is a serious accusation among YouTubers. We regularly use our GDMI data to investigate channels where the engagement numbers don’t add up. But Pansino later clarified she was unhappy with Housenbold not mentioning the hundreds of paid ads MrBeast has run on YouTube as key to the channel’s success, not claiming the views were fake. She’s said she wants clarity, but has no problem promoting a YouTube channel with ads — good thing, since once upon a time she was the face of YouTube’s first ad campaign.

Pansino cited a full-length article published on X, the everything app, by the account @MrBeast_Stats. Which shows that MrBeast’s views and subscribers get a direct boost from ads targeted to India and Southeast Asia, so she’s right about that. But calling that “buying views” wasn’t the smartest way to say that on X — or anywhere, really. Pansino had a checkered past with MrBeast long before she started muckraking. Given her choice of words, her entire point has been largely written off as YouTuber drama.

Which isn’t unexpected (woman on the internet, sing if you know the tune) but is also a pity, because the broader issue is worth talking about. The data shows MrBeast isn't buying fake views. But more than one of his closest competitors seem to be.

We’ll have more data on this in Friday’s monthly Garbage Intelligence report. Which paying readers can access. Hit the green button below for more info.

And if you want to work with GDMI and our research team, you should absolutely reach out to [email protected].

Last month, Bitcoin’s price had a catastrophic drop. It wasn’t totally clear at the time why. Contrary to what most crypto evangelists say, cryptocurrency is not some totally pure reflection of The Market. In reality they are deeply manipulated and have been basically from the beginning. Most crypto traders know this and when there’s an especially big collapse, they aren’t shy about calling bullshit. They do, however, immediately go back to trading widely unregulated crypto coins the minute they put the pitchforks away.

Anyways, a villain of the last big Bitcoin drop has emerged. Trading firm Jane Street has been accused of insider trading in a lawsuit issued by Terraform, the company behind the TerraUSD stablecoin. This has ballooned out into a wide-reaching conspiracy theory that Jane Street has been using Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, to manipulate Bitcoin’s price since 2022.

For what it’s worth, some analysts have tried to put this theory to the test and had some issues proving it. The truth, it seems, is actually much funnier. Bitcoin’s peaks and slumps are pretty much one-to-one with the NASDAQ lol.

I’ve seen more than a few users on X claiming that Brazil is having a Japan moment currently. As in, gringos are sharing aesthetic, aspirational posts about Brazil and fantasizing about visiting. Of course, this is X we’re talking about. So, in the post screenshot above, the third picture is actually in Argentina. I’ve been to one of the bookstores in that post though, the Livraria Cultura and, yeah, it’s amazing.

I’m actually curious how this started. I can definitely say that it’s a thing that’s happening. But I’m not entirely sure why it’s happening now. Could be that social feeds are full of fun pictures from Carnival, which just wrapped there. Could also be that Americans are realizing how aesthetically ugly our country is and have stumbled across Brazil’s genuinely breathtaking art deco architecture. Which is perfect for aspirational posting on social feeds. But if any readers have noticed this and have any ideas let me know!

P.S. here’s the wife emailer.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***