In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American social media personality, Matt Wallace (@mattwallace888). He's best-known for simping on Elon Musk, and for spreading the most outrageous lies and conspiracy theories online, thus monetizing his social media accounts.
1/20
By his own words, Matt is a "successful entrepreneur and social media personality who creates high value content", but he's actually just a grifter who has allegedly made a lot of money with so-called pump and dump schemes related to cryptocurrencies.
2/20
Pumping and dumping basically means a situation where you promote a crypto/stock/whatever heavily to increase its price and then sell your share. Pump and dump schemes are extremely popular with cryptocurrencies.
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Incidentally, Wallace also tried to start his own crypto, Accept Crypto. The token naturally tanked, and they claimed to be making "a recission for investors."
The scam was also covered by Coffeezilla:
4/20 https://t.co/caI585tg9D
His strategy of staying relevant and increasing his engagement, in addition to spreading fake news, is sucking up to Elon. He's the "Elon reply guy", and often tweets about how "cool" Musk actually is, while farming for likes and shares.
5/20
Perhaps due to this,Matt is just another of the many conspiracy theorists who were accepted to the X/Twitter's subscription pool and also gets plenty of ad share revenue from the platform. All this revenue comes from the disinformation & conspiracy theories he spreads daily.
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The thing is, Matt doesn't even try the Russian method of mixing half-truths with lies - he just makes shit up. But don't take my word for it, here are some of Matt's outrageous claims without a single source:
- Obama's were connected to Epstein's trafficking ring.
7/20
- The Obama's were somehow connected to the death of one of their staff members.
- The anti-Semite conspiracy theorist and country star Oliver Anthony turned down deals worth 8 million USD.
- That he made 912 551 USD from X/Twitter revenue.
8/20
Matt has heavily promoted conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, Bill Gates, George Soros, Oprah Winfrey, and many other prominent figures. By connecting these lies and representing them as a "globalist conspiracy" has made Wallace one of the fastest growing accounts on X.
9/20
Lately his focus has been on conspiracy theories related to the Maui wildfires, in which he spreads lies about the whole incident being organized by the rich elites.
We can safely expect to see these fake images in the future, too.
10/20
And here's a perfect example of why X in its current stage is completely broken: Matt claims that in this video "Transgender student nearly kills female student after she said she did not want them in the girls' locker room/bathroom". An outrageous claim...
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...without actual proof, as @shayan86 showed. The tweet itself had over 12 million impressions, 57 000 likes and was shared over 20 000 times. It doesn't even have Community Notes. This is exactly how "rage farming" works: invoke strong emotions to garner a huge engagement.
12/20
Naturally, he has also spread lies and made-up stories about the war in Ukraine. He's hopped on the trendy "This is how Kyiv/Ukraine looks in the middle of war" bandwagon, but also spreads stories about Ukraine being a ...
13/20
...money laundering scheme, and claims that Ukraine is losing the war. All of this is completely cynical: he doesn't care about the war, but about the engagement and reaction he can get from these hot takes and outright lies.
14/20
It's worth mentioning, that apparently Matt was initially against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but at some point that changed, probably because the contrarian comments garnered more views, shares and likes. See in the screenshot, how his support for Ukraine in...
15/20
...Mar 2022 got mere 8 likes, whereas his latest lie about Putin banning OnlyFans got close to a million views and over 20 000 likes. The same has been evident from many accounts that turned pro-Kremlin, including Malaysian grifter Ian Miles Cheong aka @stillgray.
16/20
Wallace utilizes heavily the "Firehose of Falsehood" propaganda model.He creates content for basically every platform imaginable. In similar fashion to @jacksonhinklle,Matt also mobilizes his followers on TG & Patreon to promote his content elsewhere:
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Now, we shouldn't underestimate Matt's influence: he has over 1,2 million followers on X (this number was +300k in Jan 2023), his YouTube channels have 240k and 40k subscribers, IG has over 30k followers, and his Patreon has over 300 donors.
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To conclude: @mattwallace888 is one of the biggest accounts pushing conspiracy theories, pro-Kremlin narratives and lies on X/Twitter. The account is fully monetized, and supported by @elonmusk. All this lying and sucking up to Elon is actually making him a rich man.
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Therefore, Matt Wallace is a so-called "super-spreader" of disinformation and fake news.
Do check @hopeFlo55047951's thread on Matt, too:
20/20 https://t.co/hnKocs26IY
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