Lifestyle
When Posting Becomes Its Own Style of Politics
A growing number of conservative influencers are making content in which they claim to uncover fraud.
In December, the YouTuber Nick Shirley uploaded a video purporting to expose a scheme led by Somali refugees in Minneapolis.
It caught the attention of Vice President JD Vance, who shared the video online. Soon after, ICE was deployed to the city.
The video was inspiring to Amy Reichert, a 58-year-old San Diego resident, who started making her own videos claiming a similar scheme was afoot in her city.
She is one of many creators channeling populist rage and elite resentment into a style of posting.
It’s a mode of practicing politics some are calling “slopulism.”
Ms. Reichert doesn’t like to call herself a right-wing influencer.
She has a sizable following on social media (some 60,000 followers on X, and 80,000 on Instagram), where she posts videos of herself talking about what in her view is corruption in the Democratic-leaning city government of San Diego, usually while wearing rose-tinted aviator sunglasses.
Since the beginning of this year, Ms. Reichert, a licensed private investigator, has been making content that highlights what she thinks is a pattern of taxpayer fraud in her city’s child care centers. It’s a pivot she has made since watching the video by Mr. Shirley, the 23-year-old MAGA YouTuber, in which he claimed to have uncovered widespread fraud by a network of Somali Americans operating child care centers.
“I thought, How can I, as a private investigator and private citizen, do what Nick did in Minnesota?” Ms. Reichert said. “We are drowning in fraud in California.”
After just a few hours of researching state databases in early January, Ms. Reichert began to post screenshots on X of documents she claimed belonged to “ghost” day care centers in San Diego County. The posts spread widely. Soon, she was on television to discuss her work with the Fox News host Jesse Watters, and President Trump was sharing a clip of the segment on his Truth Social platform.
Then Ms. Reichert began making videos, sometimes standing outside the day care centers in question, in which she repeated the allegations while presenting little proof of wrongdoing. But her message — that foul play was taking place — was clear.
One video Ms. Reichert posted was quickly clipped and reshared on X by right-wing news aggregators. It earned close to half a million views — essentially a viral moment for a creator of Ms. Reichert’s stature.
She was also happy to see that Mr. Shirley, whose work Mr. Vance suggested was more consequential than Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, began to follow Ms. Reichert on X.
“Quite amazing, these past few weeks,” Ms. Reichert said.
Ms. Reichert is one among many conservative content creators who have become the internet’s busiest sleuths in recent weeks. They create videos that are light on evidence and traditional journalistic techniques but are filled with sinister-sounding claims that neatly align with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Armed with digital cameras and publicly available documents, they claim to be documenting patterns of elite corruption, taxpayer fraud, abuse of power and government waste across the country, hoping their posts and videos will cross into the feeds of elected officials, as Mr. Shirley’s did.
Some of the biggest names in MAGA media have fanned out across the country to make this content.
The influencer Cam Higby claimed to have uncovered a nearly identical case of fraud, undertaken once again by Somali migrants, in Washington State.
Benny Johnson, a creator with close ties to the Trump administration, set out looking for fraud within state-run homeless programs and misspent Covid relief funds in California.
On YouTube, Tyler Oliveira, a 26-year-old creator with over eight million subscribers, posted videos claiming to have uncovered a “welfare-addicted” township in upstate New York.
Even Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Trump administration official, has made a video in which he claims a $3.5 billion medical fraud operation is happening in Los Angeles.
What Is ‘Slopulism,’ Exactly?
It’s a novel form of political behavior that has left many political commentators and researchers struggling to articulate what it is. Though many are quick to say what it’s not: investigative journalism. It is also, experts say, more than misinformation or disinformation, terms that fail to capture the nature of these misleading posts and how they are filtering up into the highest echelons of government.
Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative magazine, called it “MAGA-muzak.”
Kate Starbird, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online spaces and extreme politics, has called it “participatory propaganda.”
“Try ‘entrepreneurial opportunism,’” said A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama with a focus on right-wing groups.
“The real novelty here is the synchronization between the movement, the party and the state — but there isn’t a buzzword yet,” Mr. Bauer added.
The sameness of this politicized content, created overwhelmingly by figures orbiting the conservative cultural ecosystem, is, to many on the right and the left, not unlike digital “slop.” The term, which refers to low-quality, low-information, A.I.-generated content, has gradually expanded to more generally describe the gruel-like mixture of online ideas, images and memes flooding our feeds.
That’s how you get another term, “slopulism,” which has of late become a buzzword with X users and Substackers, many associated with the right, during the course of Trump’s second term.
Slopulism, as described by these commentators, is a kind of political post that elides concrete political concerns in favor of the fast-acting satisfactions of social media rage and culture-war jargon. It’s a political tendency that offers followers emotional gratification through mindless, performative gestures online.
Many of the content creators, like Ms. Reichert, were unfamiliar with the terms slop or slopulism.
These days, on platforms like X, slopulism is a pejorative label often applied to posts by politicians and pundits alike, anyone who shares out lowest-common-denominator ideas designed to appeal to loyal political bases.
On the right, this can look like gleeful cruelty, sadistic memes, posts that “own the libs” or sensationalized claims about fraud and conspiracy. On the left, it could be social justice messaging, online identity politics or populist economic proposals to, say, tax the rich.
The new wave of fraud-themed content, made by creators like Mr. Shirley, invokes familiar themes of populist rage and elite resentment. It seems to be the latest evolution in a culture where posting is a primary method of practicing politics — except these posts appear to be made not only to get in on a trending wave, but also to provoke policy action.
“Slopulism works by harnessing the excitement and vibe of a moment,” said Neema Parvini, a senior fellow at the University of Buckingham in England who is considered to have popularized the term. He believes it’s a way for populist leaders, like Mr. Trump, to keep their bases content.
“It convinces supporters to invest their emotions in story lines rather than the substantive politics or structure behind it,” he said. “It doesn’t lead anywhere, it’s just entertainment.”
‘Building for Years’
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico. The annexation of Greenland. A proposal to turn Gaza into a glittering resort town. All of these ideas found their potency in the form of viral content, circulated by those on the right, before they were fully embraced by the Trump administration. The online right podcaster Alex Kaschuta called this “the vibes-based international order.”
“This dynamic has been building for years,” said Dr. Starbird, the extremism researcher. “But in the second Trump administration, this relationship is more direct, with policies clearly being motivated, shaped and justified by and through digital content creation.”
As with most viral content, the ideas emerging from these online environs can be fleeting. Mr. Mills, of The American Conservative, described the administration’s recent policy priorities as having a “flavor of the month” feel.
Some on the right pushed back against the idea that slopulism, or any dynamic like it, is driving the administration’s actions.
“It’s a misread of the situation,” said Jesse Arm, vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. He pointed out that something like the Greenland annexation, which is often described as meme policy, could be traced to “far more serious conversations” between the president and his advisers as far back as 2019.
“I don’t think President Trump is hyper-invested in what’s happening online,” he said. “His administration is paying attention to what happens online, sure, but only in the sense that this is the main arena to gauge policy discourse.”
In a statement, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Trump “always receives feedback and input from a variety of sources before making a decision that is in the best interest of the American people.”
Some see this as a positive style of governance, Mr. Mills said, adding, “It’s hyper-democratic in some ways: ‘Let’s look online and see what’s popular.’”
The content can have political consequences, but Mr. Bauer, the University of Alabama journalism professor, said he did not view its creation as a sincere political effort. Many of the creators he has observed making these videos aren’t highly ideological figures or even MAGA die-hards.
“They see an opportunity,” he said. “These are people that aspire to be famous online. They see that there’s a lot of desire and demand for right-wing content. And they are motivated by things like money and attention.”
Ms. Reichert said that the amount of money generated from her posts was “pathetically low,” but declined to offer further details.
Most of the fraud videos published in recent weeks resemble Mr. Shirley’s in both form and content. Almost always, the person suspected of wrongdoing is an immigrant or a member of a minority group, the most common ethnic category being that of Somali refugees, as in Mr. Shirley’s video about Minnesota.
While some, like Ms. Reichert, say they are inspired by Mr. Shirley, others deny any influence.
Until this January, David Khait, a conservative content creator with over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, posted mostly man-on-the-street debates and interviews, a confrontational content style popularized by the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September. But recently, he has begun making videos about what he says is voter fraud in Fulton County, Georgia.
“There’s been no pivot here,” Mr. Khait, 26, wrote in a text message. “Call my content what it is: confronting institutional failure head-on because that’s what’s staring Americans in the face.”
The slopulist impulse may be most acute on the right at the moment — owing to the Republican control of the federal government — but some have argued this mode of online political engagement has its origins across the aisle.
Sean Monahan, the founder of the trend forecasting group K-Hole, has traced it back to the rise of the so-called “dirtbag left,” an online set of leftists who came to prominence during Bernie Sanders’s presidential run in 2016.
“It was a style of politics presented to younger, left-wing consumers, things like raising taxes on billionaires or modern monetary theory or controls on rent,” Mr. Monahan said. “There was a presumption that you could lay out a policy goal with no political trade-offs, no constituencies to navigate and no downsides.”
One recent example of slopulism on the left, he said, might be the mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani, whose platform included a promise to freeze the rent.
“He’s a little bit slopulist,” Mr. Monahan said of Mr. Mamdani, adding, “This is the feel-good model of politics where the mechanics are less important than taking credit and celebrating.”
For some, it is likely to be one of the more rewarding ways to practice politics in modern-day America.
“I don’t want to live a life of quiet desperation,” Ms. Reichert said.
Mr. Shirley, in recent days, has been staying the course, too. While he has moved on from Minnesota, he’s still making videos about fraud aimed at immigrant-operated day care centers. But this time he’s in California and has a new collaborator by his side: Ms. Reichert.
Last month, she posted a photograph of herself and Mr. Shirley on X that has been viewed 1.4 million times. Using a flame emoji, she wrote: “California, here we come!”
Tracy Morgan, left, and Daniel Radcliffe star in The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.
Scott Gries/NBC
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Gries/NBC
Tracy Morgan, as a presence, as a persona, bends the rules of comedy spacetime around him.
Consider: He’s constitutionally incapable of tossing off a joke or an aside, because he never simply delivers a line when he can declaim it instead. He can’t help but occupy the center of any given scene he’s in — his abiding, essential weirdness inevitably pulls focus. Perhaps most mystifying to comedy nerds is the way he can take a breath in the middle of a punchline and still, somehow, land it.
That? Should be impossible. Comedy depends on, is entirely a function of, timing; jokes are delicate constructs of rhythms that take time and practice to beat into shape for maximum efficiency. But never mind that. Give this guy a non-sequitur, the nonner the better, and he’ll shout that sucker at the top of his fool lungs, and absolutely kill, every time.
Well. Not every time, and not everywhere. Because Tracy Morgan is a puzzle piece so oddly shaped he won’t fit into just any world. In fact, the only way he works is if you take the time and effort to assiduously build the entire puzzle around him.
Thankfully, the makers of his new series, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, understand that very specific assignment. They’ve built the show around Morgan’s signature profile and paired him with an hugely unlikely comedy partner (Daniel Radcliffe).
The co-creators/co-showrunners are Robert Carlock, who was one of the showrunners on 30 Rock and co-created The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Sam Means, who also worked on Girls5eva with Carlock and has written for 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt.
These guys know exactly what Morgan can do, even if 30 Rock relegated him to function as a kind of comedy bomb-thrower. He’d enter a scene, lob a few loud, puzzling, hilarious references that would blow up the situation onscreen, and promptly peace out through the smoke and ash left in his wake.
That can’t happen on Reggie Dinkins, as Tracy is the center of both the show, and the show-within-the-show. He plays a former NFL star disgraced by a gambling scandal who’s determined to redeem himself in the public eye. He brings in an Oscar-winning documentarian Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) to make a movie about him and his current life.
Tobin, however, is determined to create an authentic portrait of a fallen hero, and keeps goading Dinkins to express remorse — or anything at all besides canned, feel-good platitudes. He embeds himself in Dinkins’ palatial New Jersey mansion, alongside Dinkins’ fiancée Brina (Precious Way), teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall) and his former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who lives in the basement.
If you’re thinking this means Reggie Dinkins is a show satirizing the recent rise of toothless, self-flattering documentaries about athletes and performers produced in collaboration with their subjects, you’re half-right. The show feints at that tension with some clever bits over the course of the season, but it’s never allowed to develop into a central, overarching conflict, because the show’s more interested in the affinity between Dinkins and Tobin.
Tobin, it turns out, is dealing with his own public disgrace — his emotional breakdown on the set of a blockbuster movie he was directing has gone viral — and the show becomes about exploring what these two damaged men can learn from each other.
On paper, sure: It’s an oil-and-water mixture: Dinkins (loud, rich, American, Black) and Tobin (uptight, pretentious, British, practically translucent). Morgan’s in his element, and if you’re not already aware of what a funny performer Radcliffe can be, check him out on the late lamented Miracle Workers.
Whenever these two characters are firing fusillades of jokes at each other, the series sings. But, especially in the early going, the showrunners seem determined to put Morgan and Radcliffe together in quieter, more heartfelt scenes that don’t quite work. It’s too reductive to presume this is because Morgan is a comedian and Radcliffe is an actor, but it’s hard to deny that they’re coming at those moments from radically different places, and seem to be directing their energies past each other in ways that never quite manage to connect.
Precious Way as Brina.
Scott Gries/NBC
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Gries/NBC
It’s one reason the show flounders out of the gate, as typical pilot problems pile up — every secondary character gets introduced in a hurry and assigned a defining characteristic: Brina (the influencer), Rusty (the loser), Carmelo (the TV teen). It takes a bit too long for even the great Erika Alexander, who plays Dinkins’ ex-wife and current manager Monica, to get something to play besides the uber-competent, work-addicted businesswoman.
But then, there are the jokes. My god, these jokes.
Reggie Dinkins, like 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt before it, is a joke machine, firing off bit after bit after bit. But where those shows were only too happy to exist as high-key joke-engines first, and character comedies second, Dinkins is operating in a slightly lower register. It’s deliberately pitched to feel a bit more grounded, a bit less frenetic. (To be fair: Every show in the history of the medium can be categorized as more grounded and less frenetic than 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt — but Reggie Dinkins expressly shares those series’ comedic approach, if not their specific joke density.)
While the hit rate of Reggie Dinkins‘ jokes never achieves 30 Rock status, rest assured that in episodes coming later in the season it comfortably hovers at Kimmy Schmidt level. Which is to say: Two or three times an episode, you will encounter a joke that is so perfect, so pure, so diamond-hard that you will wonder how it has taken human civilization until 2026 Common Era to discover it.
And that’s the key — they feel discovered. The jokes I’m talking about don’t seem painstakingly wrought, though of course they were. No, they feel like they have always been there, beneath the earth, biding their time, just waiting to be found. (Here, you no doubt will be expecting me to provide some examples. Well, I’m not gonna. It’s not a critic’s job to spoil jokes this good by busting them out in some lousy review. Just watch the damn show to experience them as you’re meant to; you’ll know which ones I’m talking about.)
Now, let’s you and I talk about Bobby Moynihan.
As Rusty, Dinkins’ devoted ex-teammate who lives in the basement, Moynihan could have easily contented himself to play Pathetic Guy™ and leave it at that. Instead, he invests Rusty with such depths of earnest, deeply felt, improbably sunny emotions that he solidifies his position as show MVP with every word, every gesture, every expression. The guy can shuffle into the far background of a shot eating cereal and get a laugh, which is to say: He can be literally out-of-focus and still steal focus.
Which is why it doesn’t matter, in the end, that the locus of Reggie Dinkins‘ comedic energy isn’t found precisely where the show’s premise (Tracy Morgan! Daniel Radcliffe! Imagine the chemistry!) would have you believe it to be. This is a very, very funny — frequently hilarious — series that prizes well-written, well-timed, well-delivered jokes, and that knows how to use its actors to serve them up in the best way possible. And once it shakes off a few early stumbles and gets out of its own way, it does that better than any show on television.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Andy Richter has found his place.
The Chicago area native previously lived in New York — where he first found fame as Conan O’Brien’s sidekick on “Late Night” — before moving to Los Angeles in 2001. Three years ago, he moved to Pasadena. “Now that I live here, I would not live anywhere else,” he says.
There are some practical benefits to the city. “I am such a crabby old man now, but it’s like, there’s parking, you can park when we have to go out,” Richter says. “The notion of going to dinner in Santa Monica just feels like having nails shoved into my feet.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
But he mostly appreciates that Pasadena is “a very diverse town and just a beautiful town,” he says.
For Richter, most Sundays revolve around his family. In 2023, the comedian and actor married creative executive Jennifer Herrera and adopted her young daughter, Cornelia. (He also has two children in their 20s, William and Mercy, from his previous marriage.)
Additionally, he’s been giving his body time to recover. Richter spent last fall training and competing on the 34th season of “Dancing With the Stars.” And though he had no prior dancing experience, he won over the show’s fan base with his kindness and dedication, making it to the competition’s ninth week.
He hosts the weekly show “The Three Questions” on O’Brien’s Team Coco podcast network and still appears in films and TV shows. “I’m just taking meetings and auditioning like every other late 50s white comedy guy in L.A., sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7:30 a.m.: Early rising
It’s hard for me at this advanced age to sleep much past 7:30. I have a 5 1/2-year-old, and hopefully she’ll sleep in a little bit longer so my wife and I can talk and snuggle and look at our phones at opposite ends of the bed, like everybody.
Then the dogs need to be walked. I have two dogs: a 120-pound Great Pyrenees-Border Collie-German Shepherd mix, and then at the other end of the spectrum, a seven-pound poodle mix. We were a blended dog family. When my wife and I met, I had the big dog and she had a little dog. Her first dog actually has passed, but we like that dynamic. You get kind of the best of both worlds.
8 a.m.: Breakfast at a classic diner
Then it would probably be breakfast at Shakers, which is in South Pasadena. It’s one of our favorite places. We’re kind of regulars there, and my daughter loves it. It’s easy with a 5-year-old, you’ve got to do what they want. They’re terrorists that way, especially when it comes to cuisine.
I’ve lived in Pasadena for about three years now, but I have been going to Shakers for a long time because I have a database of all the best diners in the Los Angeles metropolitan area committed to memory. There’s just something about the continuity of them that makes me feel like the world isn’t on fire. And because of L.A.’s moderate climate, the ones here stay the way they are; whereas if you get 18 feet of winter snow, you tend to wear down the diner floor, seats, everything.
So there’s a lot of really great old places that stay the same. And then there are tragic losses. There’s been some noise that Shakers is going to turn into some kind of condo development. I think that people would probably riot. They would be elderly people rioting, but they would still riot.
11 a.m.: Sandy paws
My in-laws live down in Long Beach, so after breakfast we might take the dogs down to Long Beach. There’s this dog beach there, Rosie’s Beach. I have never seen a fight there between dogs. They’re all just so happy to be out and off-leash, with an ocean and sand right there. You get a contact high from the canine joy.
1 p.m.: Lunch in Belmont Shore
That would take us to lunchtime and we’ll go somewhere down there. There’s this place, L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, in Belmont Shore. It’s fantastic for some pizza with grandma and grandpa. It’s originally from Naples. There’s also one in Hollywood where Cafe Des Artistes used to be on that weird little side street.
4 p.m.: Sunset at the gardens
We’d take grandma and grandpa home, drop the dogs off. We’d go to the Huntington and stay a couple of hours until sunset. The Japanese garden is pretty mind-blowing. You feel like you’re on the set of “Shogun.”
The main thing that I love about it is the changing of ecospheres as you walk through it. Living in the area, I drive by it a thousand times and then I remember, “Oh yeah, there’s a rainforest in here. There’s thick stands of bamboo forest that look like Vietnam.” It’s beautiful. With all three of my kids, I have spent a lot of time there.
6:30 p.m.: Mall of America
After sundown, we will go to what seems to be the only thriving mall in America — [the Shops at] Santa Anita. We are suckers for Din Tai Fung. My 24-year-old son, who’s kind of a food snob, is like, “There’s a hundred places that are better and cheaper within five minutes of there in the San Gabriel Valley.” And we’re like, “Yeah, but this is at the mall.” It’s really easy. Also, my wife is a vegetarian, and a lot of the more authentic places, there’s pork in the air. It’s really hard to find vegetarian stuff.
We have a whole system with Din Tai Fung now, which is logging in on the wait list while we’re still on the highway, or ordering takeout. There’s plenty of places in the mall with tables, you can just sit down and have your own little feast there.
There’s also a Dave & Buster’s. If you want sensory overload, you can go in there and get a big, big booze drink while you’re playing Skee-Ball with your kid.
9 p.m.: Head to bed ASAP
I am very lucky in that I’m a very good sleeper and the few times in my life when I do experience insomnia, it’s infuriating to me because I am spoiled, basically. When you’ve got a 5 1/2-year-old, there’s no real wind down. It’s just negotiations to get her into bed and to sleep as quickly as possible, so we can all pass out.
new video loaded: Prada Peels Back the Layers at Milan Fashion Week
By Chevaz Clarke and Daniel Fetherston
February 27, 2026
Lawmakers target ‘free money’ home equity finance model
How much exercise is enough? A local doctor says you only need 15 minutes a day – WTOP News
Movie review: Ballet-themed erotic drama ‘Dreams’ dissipates in finale
Takeaways from AP’s report on the ICE detention center holding children and parents
2 Survivors Describe the Terror and Tragedy of the Tahoe Avalanche
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
2 Survivors Describe the Terror and Tragedy of the Tahoe Avalanche
Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
Israel strikes two schools in Iran, killing more than 50 people
Anthropic CEO says he’s sticking to AI “red lines” despite clash with Pentagon
ICE blasts Washington mayor over directive restricting immigration enforcement
-
World3 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts3 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Louisiana5 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Denver, CO3 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT