Dem
47
GOP
53
There is something of a gap between "what many right-wingers think women should be" and "what most women actually are." And an aspiring orthopedic surgeon from India, currently studying in the United States, and identified only as "Sam," came up with an interesting way to illustrate that.
Medical students, of course, do not make much money, and often struggle to make ends meet. Sam, coming from a very impoverished background, was no exception. But medical school takes a lot of time and energy, and does not leave much of either commodity left over for working a part-time job at, say, McDonald's. So, Sam tried to find time-efficient side hustles. He sold copies of his course notes to other students, and he also tried to make some money as a YouTube influencer, but those did not make much of a dent.
Sam's next venture was to try to sell salacious pictures created with the help of AI. Salacious enough to be of interest to potential customers, but non-salacious enough to be post-able to Instagram. His early efforts went nowhere, until he decided to create "Emily Hart." Ms. Hart looks like Jennifer Lawrence, is a registered nurse, and liked to post sexy pictures to Instagram. Her pictures were invariably accompanied by MAGA rhetoric, like: "If you want a reason to unfollow: Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported."
Sam didn't actually expect the scheme to work out, since he thought it was "too obvious." But, in something of a demonstration of Poe's Law, MAGA men ate it up. The Instagram account was eventually shut down for fraudulent activity, but by then "Emily" had a Facebook page, an OnlyFans account and a lineup of t-shirts and other merch. Eventually, Sam was making thousands of dollars a month. This is all MAGA money, going to a brown-skinned immigrant who believes in vaccines.
Sam is not above targeting men on the other side of the political aisle, but his liberal counterpart to "Emily" went absolutely nowhere. Sam's explanation for that is that Democrats recognize AI slop when they see it, but that "The MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people—like, super dumb people." The various experts interviewed for the linked article don't quite see it that way, but they do say that MAGA is unusual in the extent to which they will bend and twist and turn to make things "true," even if they make no sense, such as "demure, devout Christian who nonetheless likes to show off her breasts to strangers."
Sam, by the way, has largely gotten out of the content creation game. He's raised the money he needed, and besides, "Emily" spawned a bunch of imitators. He did do a little research into creating a MAGA girl who is also a Nazi, and he thinks there's probably some money to be made, but he's just not willing to go there. Looks like that will have to be a project for Elon Musk and Grok. (Z)