9 and a half million views in only 5 days? Is this astroturfed or do people really want to hear a guy with 90 acres sing about how much he hates taxes and people on welfare?
Chuds really are working overtime to bring in working class votes with this nonsense.
I don’t really understand modern country music. It seems to me that the people who listen to it are more interested in the amount of drama that comes from it. I heard this song and immediately thought it sounded like the average “stripped down” country artist until he complained about people on welfare and then boom. The south is the poorest part of america and it seems like to me they all hate poor people
country music (that gets airtime) has been primarily in-group signaling for at least two decades
all other intents (like quality) or purposes are secondary
There is no fucking way that is organic. Not because I don’t think there are 9 million people that are shitty enough to identify with him, but in 5 days? Nah that’s astroturfed to hell and back.
I come from a blue state and my dad, his family, my family, everyone I’ve ever met despises the poor. These are blue Biden voters. I can only imagine what it’s like in the south.
An even bigger part of it is how quickly songs like this disappear off the charts. That’s just not what happens to a song that legitimately gets that many listens.
It’s gone viral, both with positive and negative reaction. Not saying there isn’t some botting going on, but it’s possible just as many views are people screaming while masturbating, versus saluting the flag and masturbating.
The trillbillies were talking about the recent rightwing astroturfing of media (like Sound of Freedom where they crowdfunded ticket purchases that no one ended up claiming). It’s wild.
Country music has gotten so much more blatantly racist, it’s comical.
It’s Astro-turfed beyond belief.
As at the same time, we had an actual viral song with that DJ Crazytimes bit. That took time to spread.
The whole Oliver Anthony thing was INSTANT. As getting onto Spotify and such can be fast, but this was instant. The Twitter account? All of it.
It’s also a shit song.
popular music has always, to a certain extent, been engagement bait, but usually that took the form of “sex sells”
it’s interesting to see politics enter the sphere as exploitable for listens (although of course you had hacks like Macklemore doing “One Love”, so I suppose it’s not that new) (I guess you could argue there was an angle to this with artists like Neil Young, but it didn’t seem as by-the-numbers to me, might be bias.)
in a few months this is just going to be every country song
It really was astroturfed:
Where I come from
everybody dies in a helicopter crash
just a simple life
cookin’ to death in helicopter gas
