Andrew Cuomo is going all in on MAGA influencers
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WIRED has a great new story out on how Andrew Cuomo is partnering with some of the same exact MAGA influencers who helped Trump win the White House last year.
Makena Kelly reports:
Over the past week, right-wing creators like Logan Paul, the former vlogger turned podcaster and WWE wrestler, and Emily Austin, an influencer and sports commentator, have published content featuring Cuomo as a guest on their shows. The appearances have marked a new investment by Cuomo’s team into cultivating attention online as a means of competing against the social media–savvy Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani. But instead of trying to cleave off Mamdani’s online support, Cuomo appears to be trying to siphon off support from GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa.
“It’s a desperate swing,” says one Democratic strategist who spoke to WIRED under the condition of anonymity to speak candidly without involving the firm where they work. “The clear desire to align himself with power at all costs, wherever that power might be, is one of the reasons he’s getting rejected so hard online. It’s a misunderstanding of the moment.”
Cuomo’s collabs with conservative influencers comes days after the former governor’s campaign brought on pro-Israel creator Zach Sage Fox to run his “social media campaign,” according to a recent post from Fox on X. According to Fox’s LinkedIn account, he’s the chief executive officer of a company called Fat Camp Films which describes itself as “the production arm for viral internet hubs,” including fuckjerry and LADBible, two massive social media brands and Instagram accounts that aggregate viral content from across the internet.
… Cuomo’s “media director came from running meme pages, which tells you everything,” Stefan Smith, a digital strategist and the former digital director for Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, tells WIRED. “They know modern political strategy isn’t about message quality—it’s about content volume feeding the algorithm.”
What would it take to make IRL events safer for women creators?
A week ago, popular cosplay Twitch streamer Emiru was assaulted at a meet-and-greet during Twitchcon. The incident was obviously a catastrophic failure when it comes to keeping women creators safe But, after the Emiru incident, tons of big content creators began piling on on Twitter, pushing out of context clips attempting to show lax security at the event and calling for Dan Clancy’s resignation. They began weaponizing the attack on a woman creator to push their own reactionary agendas.
Kat Tenbarge has been covering gender-based violence for nearly a decade and she joined me to break down what exactly went down at Twitchcon, what is going on with women creators, how attacks on women creators silence women and prevent them from speaking and expressing themselves freely, why more security doesn’t exactly lead to more safety for women, and what the true issue at the heart of all of this is.