Episode Details

Simone and Malcolm Collins expose how viewbotting, clip spamming, and manufactured engagement are completely warping our perception of what's popular online. From Twitch streamers (80% of top creators allegedly botted) to music giants like Beyoncé losing billions of fake views, "woke" games with 200 peak players, Substack subscriber farms, and Kick's massive clip-spamming campaigns — the internet is far faker than most realize.We break down the economics (why botting is a rational business decision), real-world examples (Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Caleb Hammer, Clavicular), how algorithms get gamed, and what this means for discovering authentic content in 2026.Dead Internet Theory just got an upgrade.

Show Notes

* According to some analysts, for the first time in over a decade, bots now generate the majority of internet activity

* At 51-53%

* This is according to multiple reports and sources (see note at the end)

* Note: Breakdowns often separate “good” bots (search engine crawlers, SEO tools) from “bad” ones (malicious scrapers, credential stuffers, ad fraud). Imperva notes bad bots alone rose to ~40% of total traffic in 2025 (up from 37%)

* BTW: Cloudflare’s data (which focuses on HTTP requests they observe) shows a lower but still rising bot share—around 31–32% in Q1 2026 (up month-over-month)—with AI crawlers as the fastest-growing segment. Their CEO has publicly predicted bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027, aligning with the broader trend. Some analyses of Cloudflare data cite >50% of HTML page requests as bot-driven in 2025

* There are literal view farms (this is one Brazilian one that was raided two months ago, in March 2026:

* For any platform you can imagine, you can buy viewbots with varying degrees of sophistication, including viewbots that have widely varied IP addresses that have detailed histories, leave comments, mute/unmute while watching streams, etc.

Fame is manufactured

* Major music labels and artists are using botting to look bigger than they are

* An example: Drake accused his own label (UMG) of conspiring with third parties (including Spotify) to bot streams for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” to harm him. UMG called it “untrue” and “illogical.” Defamation claims were dismissed; the broader case is ongoing. Drake has also faced separate accusations of using his Stake partnership to fund botting for his own catalog.

* When major companies DON’T use viewbotting, you see embarrassing situations like the pilot episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which got ~16,000 views in its first 11 hours after release on YouTube. A separate report also said the live premiere peaked at roughly 1,300 concurrent viewers.

* Even major viral figures, like Caleb Hammer and Clavicular, are manufactured to a great extent

Let’s explore just how bad it is

Viewbotting on Twitch

* Around 10% of Twitch streamers with at least 50 average viewers show clear, persistent signs of viewbotting, according to the most comprehensive independent analysis available (Streams Charts / Audiencly 2025 whitepaper, covering Q2 2025 data)

* It’s worse for big creators: Streamer/analyst Devin Nash (and his agency) analyzed the top 500 Twitch streamers and estimated 400–430 (roughly 80%) show signs of viewbotting or being botted (30–40% of viewers as blatant bots + another 5–15% via embeds).

* This is based on chat activity monitoring, user-list sampling, logged-in/out ratios, and known botnet cross-referencing

* Creators argue Twitch is a platform where viewbotting ia necessary for survival; if you’re not doing it, you’re not competitive

* Doesn’t help that discoverability is very low

Devon Nash on the Unit Economics

In a recent vid