#adventures in tagging

[atmosphericradar]

Found another odd tag — keyed off the word "hiding" — and this time it's a long one!

So, the full tag is:

#blac chyna is hiding true feelings about her ‘rebirth’ makeover – her ‘lip clamps & droops’ are the proof

This sounds like a celebrity gossip headline! And sure enough, this tag is full-to-bursting with this article exclusively.

I got this from the desktop site, because it's wild to see. It's just a wall of the same article, all the way down, for multiple pages.

They're all from early November 2023, and all from blogs with names that end in *-polycom, *-mag, or *news. It seems fairly self-evident that this is the work of some kind of tabloid, but I'm a curious cat. I want to dig deeper.

Digging Deeper

Most of these posts tell you (they don't provide links!) to go read the full article on POLYCOM. Ok, what is a POLYCOM? I don't think it's Poly Inc., maker of video- and teleconferencing appliances, but a few cursory Google and DuckDuckGo searches yield no evidence of anything else.

The most recent post tells us to go track down the article ourselves on "IN TREND", but provides no URL or link. Searching around for "IN TREND" on the web is fairly difficult, returning results for well-known fashion publications, trend analytics, and a brand of clothing called "Intrend". Searching for "In Trend Today" returned more interesting results, including an InTrendToday YouTube Channel and Facebook page. The Facebook page seems to have stopped posting in late 2018, but the YouTube Channel last posted a video on Dec 18, 2023. I'll talk more about the YouTube Channel under the cut at the end of this post.

Some of these posts do have "read more" links pointing to posts on Wordpress, all of which claim to be "on MAG NEWS". Each *-mag blog links out to a separate Wordpress account which seems to be re-uploading the same story. All of these Wordpress Accounts are deleted (for violating Wordpress ToS), and all of these linked posts are gone (here are two examples):

Somehow, I doubt this is some covert arm of the Maricopa Association of Governments newsroom.

Digging down into the results on Tumblr, I found a copy of this post made by the blog vouxsportsnews. They link a Wordpress article from another dead Wordpress account:

BUT, their most recent post on their blog (a gossip article about Zendaya posted on Jan 5, 2024) does have a working Wordpress link, to vouxsportsnews.wordpress.com (clever 🙄):

This is an archetypal internet-based gossip rag. I didn't know these still existed! I guess Wordpress is hunting them down for sport?

The "Read More ..." link in the article goes to a website called top.neotrends.today, which is a sketchy link I will not be clicking on. The "full article" is apparently hosted on www.primesky.media, which I also will not be directly navigating to. I did manage to get a screenshot of the front page of primesky today (Jan 8, 2024) using a webtool:

I blurred the article shown on this page to preserve the privacy of the person it featured.

Primesky is hosted on a Cloudflare virtual private server, and no public info is available on who owns the primesky URL. A search for "redroads amag" on DuckDuckGo leads back to primesky. A search of the same on Google leads to a website at www.clickhere.world, which is immensely sketchy and looks identical to primesky. At this point, I'm going to end my search for a culprit.

Conclusion

I thought I could find the tabloid hydra's body, but I just found more heads. I'm not surprised the operators of a gossip rag bot network on Tumblr are also playing dirty on Wordpress, and covering their digital tracks well. Sometimes it's best to just report spam and go on with your day.

It should go without saying, but DO NOT NAVIGATE to these websites! At worst, they will give you every virus. At best, they will mine crypto in the background of your browser (and rot your brain).

The YouTube Channel Digression

The YouTube channel intrendtoday was created on Oct 4, 2017, and it has more than 53,000 subscribers as of my posting this post (Jan 8, 2024). However, the earliest video on the channel was posted on Nov 7, 2023. That is suspiciously close to when all of these Blac Chyna spam articles went up.

Given that the videos posted get less than 50 views on average, I think the grossly-out-of-proportion subscriber count is evidence of bot subscribers. Maybe the channel re-branded and deleted a prior back-catalog? Archive.org has no snapshots of this YouTube channel, but SocialBlade claims they lost nearly 3.5 million video views in early September of 2023 (indicating they deleted a lot of videos).

SocialBlade also indexes this channel under the name "demattradinginfo", not "intrendtoday". Archive.org doesn't have records of a YouTube URL for the channel demattradinginfo, but a Google search of that name shows results for Demat Accounts, which are a type of financial account commonly used in India to hold securities and trade stocks.

It's possible that whomever is behind the gossip news spam is also in control of this YouTube channel. I wouldn't be surprised, given how frequently people offering financial advice on social media are either scammers or spammers (and sometimes both!). However, I have no proof that the people behind this YouTube channel are the same people behind this social media gossip spamming.

[delicatebluebirdruins]

knew there was going to be a post that calls johnny depp a abuser at some point but god is it still annoying

context fantastic beasts 2nd film people forgetting that yes JKR is a shitty terf who should step on all the lego yes... she was also a victim of abuse who revictimised by the scum newspaper (the sun the uk newspaper who called johnny depp a wife beater interviewed her abusive ex)

[sennamaticart]

Blue Moon

[doomedyuri-69]

why do kids cartoons always have the best most nuanced and layered plots and characters and adult cartoons are always just “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck”

[stealingpotatoes]

I was absolutely befuddled when I saw someone say they loved your Eunuch so I went on your page and saw it was your cat and I was like "oh okay that makes sense now." I must say your Faithful Eunuch is exceedingly adorable.

LOL honestly it's really funny seeing how much tumblr loves my cat bc he has that effect on people irl too, including but not limited to the vets

[alkallier]

The Galax-Sea belongs to the Captain

【Original Prompt】 「by @novelistwriter 」

【Prev】

[windwenn]

Im so happy with how this turned out dont talk to me.....they are my good luck lesbians......*sobs*.......

[chez-cinnamon]

Ideas ideas ideas....

Thinking of adventures that could take place in my AU, a fancy ball adventure sounds perfect!!!!!!

There would be more but I had a busy and stressful day lol

[sundaesprinkles]

Yknow one thing about the minecraft movie I do like is the interactions I get to have at work because of it (I work in a movie theater)

That being said, never felt more like a villager than in this moment

[mikqchoux]

"You were... everything."

[luca-is-a-pengu]

Take public transportation, they said. It will be fun they said.

I actually went away from my assigned colours and gäbe Tim a new oufit. Mainly cause I feel like he loves baggy clothes.

My working title for this was "Tiny Tim"

[atmosphericradar]

Here is a screenshot of a misspelled tag (relating to AI art) that is popular enough to show up automatically, in case anyone was under the impression that porn bots are the only ways people spam Tumblr.

For context, Tumblr forgot all of my tags across all platforms a week or two ago. I know at least one other person whom this happened to. I have never (to the best of my memory) used this tag, and certainly not in the last two weeks. I tag AI art "algorithmically generated images" when I reblog it, because I'm a contrarian and I have compunctions against image generators.

This tag is the result of someone who is creating many posts with this tag. And a quick search yeilds that the blog @ai-pin-up-art has been rapid-firing posts for a few months recently, stopping only in July and going completely dead silent. I'm willing to bet the whole blog is automated; the misspelt tag seems like a scripting mistake.

A few other blogs have used the tag only once, which could either be mistypes, or clicking on the same misspelt suggested tag that I was given.

I wrote all this for a few reasons:

1) I went on a little sleuthing expedition and wanted to record my findings.

2) I think that one blog's actions influencing the mechanisms of Tumblr to that degree is both illuminating and kind of spooky.

3) I suspect that AI images are currently being astroturfed into all major social media ecosystems, alongside honest posts from actual adopters. This blog could be run by a technologist who just automated one of their blogs, which just so happens to post and reblog exclusively algorithmically generated porn. Maybe.

[keferon]

Don’t mind me I just like to see him go bananas about cartoonish Autobot rules

Maaan…..if Prowl was in tfp he would spontaneously combust at least once a day

[zwm8604]

I've had these stored, might as well start off 2025 in the most heinous way possible lmao

[tawnyevergreen]

me when the gay people love each other

[elbdot]

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In tHIS house we appreciate mega evolution as a showcase of a STRONG and LOVING BOND 😤✊ But how will the boys take it?

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