Social media has become a full time job for a surprising number of people on the internet, but it can also be a great way of topping up your income on the side as one 22-year-old found out in an unexpected way.
Being a student is often difficult from a financial perspective – especially in areas without subsidized education – and for most people the best you can get is a part time job to balance alongside your studies.
One aspiring orthopedic surgeon found an effective yet arguably immoral method to make money online without too much effort, however, and has now come clean after exposing his own 'scam'.
As reported by WIRED, this student in question has called himself 'Sam' for anonymity's sake, yet he has been more than open about the insane amount of money he was able to earn by exploiting his MAGA (and often male) followers on social media.
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When looking for additional revenue streams he started out by making YouTube Shorts, as other creators have managed to make hundreds of thousands of dollars with minimal effort each week, yet this wasn't as effective as he'd hoped causing him to turn his eye to Instagram and AI.
Using Google's new image generation tool Nano Banana Pro – which is capable of producing frighteningly realistic results – he created 'Emily Hart', a registered nurse with outspoken Republican politics after Gemini suggested he lean into the MAGA audience as they are a 'cheat code'.
Photos of ice fishing and gun ranges were accompanied by captions praising the Second Amendment, Christianity, and general 'anti-woke' talking points, and it was almost immediately a success.
"Every Reel I posted was getting 3 million views, 5 million views, 10 million views," Sam explained when speaking to WIRED. He was also sharing softcore explicit content of Emily Hart using AI on Fanvue – a site similar to OnlyFans – alongside t-shirts featuring popular MAGA slogans.
All in all, what amounted to around 30 to 50 minutes of work each day allowed him to earn at least a few thousand dollars every single month, noting that he hasn't "seen any easier way to make money online."
This specific account has since been removed from Instagram and Fanvue, marking the end of Sam's money-making venture, but it's likely far from the only AI generated profile looking to profit off the thousands of easily-fooled MAGA supporters out there and is more than most other things an encapsulation of the current social media and political climate.