In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American investor and social media commentator, Malachy J. (@The_Real_Fly). He's best-known for his extensive history as an investor blogger, for his extreme xenophobia and for spreading pro-Kremlin narratives on social media.
1/18
Mal has been involved in the investment world for a long time & for example @TheStalwart published a story on Business Insider about his massive losses in the market already back in 2014. In the article, he was described as "a well-liked member of the community for years".
2/18
His blog, "Trading with the Fly", has been active since 2007, and since then he's posted around 4 blog posts a day, and he's even published two books, "Journey into Fear: when the dot com bubble burst" and "In a Car Made of Dynamite, Racing Towards the Sun".
3/18
Mal has gone the distance trying to erase the traces of his real identity online, using a fake name in the blogosphere ("George Hamilton"), that was even picked up by @rcarrick for The Globe and Mail article published in 2008.
4/18
His blog, iBankCoin, was very popular among investors back in 2008, and it was even voted as the most popular investing blog back in the day. Malachy aka The Fly was described as a "source of reliably rude but smart investing commentary and musings".
5/18
Malachy's worldview seems to be coming almost completely from various pro-Kremlin narratives & conspiracy theories. He's not the most influential account on X,but he's a perfect example on how tendency to believe in conspiracy theories leads to believing in the Kremlin's BS.
6/18
Already back in 2016, he was promoting Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory suggesting that a pizzeria in DC was a meeting place for Satanic ritual abuse. Incidentally, the theory involved Hillary Clinton & spread online like wildfire just days before the US presidential election.
7/18
He also seems to believe in The Great Reset and The Great Replacement conspiracy theories. The latter is very popular among the far-right and is of course supported by X's owner, @elonmusk. Malachy also thinks that the moon landing was a hoax.
8/18
As is tradition, Malachy's also keen on conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 vaccines. He also promotes the idea that "Liberal Jews" are pushing "anti white [sic] agenda", and that George Soros is some kind of mastermind trying to ruin America.
9/18
He's also extremely hostile towards any sort of "wokeness" in the US, suggesting that the US military is weak and the Western societies are collapsing because of it. Malachy's own son appears to be some sort of "pro Halo gamer", so I don't know if that's somehow better.
10/18
Next, let's look at some of Fly's posts related to the Russo-Ukrainian War: he's claimed that Navalny was "100% a CIA asset", that Ukrainian drones have dropped chemical weapons on a Russian soldier, that Ukraine is "full of Nazis" & that Zelenskyy is a drug addict.
11/18
But that's not all! There's of course the classics like "Finland joining NATO is escalation", "secret US-funded biolabs in Ukraine", "2014 Revolution of Dignity was a coup", and that the war in Ukraine is actually a civil war.
12/18
Apparently he considers Putin to be some kind of crusader that's fighting against the "decadent West" & that all the beforementioned phenomena are the consequences of this "decadence". Mal may know something about the market, but it seems that he has no clue about Russia.
13/18
In addition to being pro-Kremlin, Malachy is also extremely xenophobic, especially towards the African-Americans and Mexicans. Which is weird, considering that his wife and her mother are allegedly Latinas and that they mostly speak to each other in Spanish.
14/18
Malachy belongs to the pro-Kremlin, conspiratorial, disinformation-ridden circle-jerk that includes accounts like @geromanAT, @endwokeness, @dom_lucre and @CensoredMen. He personally appealed to Elon after the Serbian-Austrian communist Roman G aka @geromanAT was suspended.
15/18
Based on his online activity, Mal is chronically online. On average, he tweets 37 posts daily, and still has time to write for his investing blog on an almost daily basis. That's quite a lot of Internet time for an almost 50-year-old family man.
16/18
And since he's American, there needs to be some kind of grift or business involved in all this craziness. Malachy is aggressively promoting Stocklabs, some sort of investment platform that has "AI Based [sic] Market Timing Algorithms" and other completely made up shit.
17/18
Because who wouldn't want to take financial advice from someone who believes that the moon landing was a hoax, that the "Satanic elites" are having sexual rituals in a pizza place, and who thinks that Putin will save the West from its "decadence"?
18/18
This investigation was done in collaboration with @UnintelAgency.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Swiss/French writer, Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral (@officielsoral). He’s best known for his rabid antisemitism and for his pathetic support for all the worst authoritarian regimes from Russia to North Korea.
1/22
Alain’s childhood was problematic, as his father has been characterized as a “narcissistic pervert” who beat his children and did jail time for fraud. Alain himself has said he was “programmed to be a monster.” Born Alain Bonnet, he took the stage name of his sister,…
2/22
… actress Agnès Soral. She wasn’t too happy about this, commenting “How would you like to be called Agnès Hitler?”. Like many grifters, he became a pick-up/seduction artist writer, à la late Gonzalo Lira, writing books and even making a B-movie, “Confessions d’un dragueur”.
3/22
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll explain the Alaska Fiasco and how it marks the peak of Trump’s two-year betrayal of Ukraine. What was sold as “peace talks” turned into a spectacle of weakness, humiliation, empty promises, and photo-ops that handed Putin exactly what he wanted.
1/24
Let’s start with the obvious: Trump desperately wants the gold medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, mainly because Obama got one. That’s why he’s now LARPing as a “peace maker” in every conflict: Israel-Gaza, Azerbaijan-Armenia, India-Pakistan, and of course Ukraine-Russia.
2/24
Another theory is that Putin holds kompromat — compromising material such as videos or documents — that would put Trump in an extremely bad light. Some have suggested it could be tied to the Epstein files or Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about engagement farming: a cynical social media tactic to rack up likes, shares, and comments. From rage farming to AI-powered outrage factories, engagement farming is reshaping online discourse and turning division into profit.
1/23
Engagement farming is a social media tactic aimed at getting maximum likes, shares, and comments, with truth being optional. It thrives on provocative texts, images, or videos designed to spark strong reactions, boost reach, and turn online outrage into clicks and cash.
2/23
One subset of engagement farming is rage farming: a tactic built to provoke strong negative emotions through outrageous or inflammatory claims. By triggering anger or moral outrage, these posts often generate 100s or even 1,000s of heated comments, amplifying their reach.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll cover the autocratic concept of “Good Tsar, Bad Boyars”: the idea that the leader is wise and just, but constantly sabotaged by corrupt advisors. This narrative shields the ruler from blame, and it’s used by both Putin and Trump today.
1/20
The phrase “Good Tsar, Bad Boyars” (Царь хороший, бояре плохие), also known as Naïve Monarchism, refers to a long-standing idea in Russian political culture: the ruler is good and benevolent, but his advisors are corrupt, incompetent and responsible for all failures.
2/20
From this perception, any positive action taken by the government is viewed as being an accomplishment of the benevolent leader, whereas any negative one is viewed as being caused by lower-level bureaucrats or “boyars”, without the approval of the leader.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian politician and First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia, Sergey Kiriyenko. He’s best known for running both domestic and foreign disinformation and propaganda operations for the Kremlin.
1/20
On paper, and in photos, Kiriyenko is just as boring as most of the Kremlin’s “political technologists”: between 2005-2016 he headed the Rosatom nuclear energy company, but later played a leading role in the governance of Russia-occupied territories in Ukraine.
2/20
What is a political technologist? In Russia, they’re spin doctors & propaganda architects who shape opinion, control narratives, and manage elections — often by faking opposition, staging events, and spreading disinfo to maintain Putin’s power and the illusion of democracy.
Let me show you how a Pakistani (or Indian, they're usually the same) AI slop farm/scam operates. The account @designbonsay is a prime example: a relatively attractive, AI-generated profile picture and a ChatGPT-style profile description are the first red flags.
1/5
The profile's posts are just generic engagement farming, usually using AI-generated photos of celebrities or relatively attractive women.
These posts are often emotionally loaded and ask the user to interact with them ("like and share if you agree!").
2/5
Then there's the monetization part. This particular account sells "pencil art", which again are just AI-generated slop.