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Did you know Pedro Pascal gropes women to deal with his anxiety? If you were online at all in the past week or two, you might have noticed this narrative going around, or people making memes about it, or sharing supposedly damning video evidence of such a thing. Maybe involving Vanessa Kirby, or possibly Willem Dafoe’s wife. And yet, when did Pedro Pascal ever actually say anything about anxiety? Who was making the accusations? The narrative didn’t quite pass the smell test from the start, and as it turns out, that’s probably because it seems to have been some kind of strange astroturfing campaign.

Kat Tenbarge wrote all about it in Spitfire News this week, and in this bonus podcast, I (Vince, that is) interview her all about the Pedro Pascal campaign, where it started, why it’s happening, and what it tells us about bots, the slop internet, and why it’s easier to manipulate celebrity news for bespoke political ends. In Pascal’s case, it all seems to trace back to his trans sister and some rabid JK Rowling fans (though possibly also Bella Ramsey and The Last of Us).

Of course, the Pedro Pascal smear campaign is only the latest in a line of these odd, fake-grass-roots social media influence campaigns which seem to have no higher goal than to make you think that, say, Blake Lively is kind of a bitch or whatever. It’s only when you dig a little deeper that you discover what seems to be the true motivation, like a messy legal battle between Lively and her former director. Something I actually got drawn into myself when a post of mine appeared to get artificially boosted, possibly as part of a larger influence campaign. Are these mini-viral moments just a way for reputation management firms to justify their paychecks, or is there actually legitimate damage being done?

And did this particular kind of shady reputation management begin with the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial, or does it go back even further? Even before Depp/Heard, why did writing about particular celebrities (Hugh Jackman, Tom Cruise, Kamala Harris) always seem to summon a flood of uncanny-seeming replies?

All this is Kat Tenbarge’s particular beat, and she hangs around for a wide-ranging discussion of celebrity culture and niche smear campaigns.

This one is free for everyone, but patrons get a good two hours of the hottest #content every week.