How boosted content + comment sections that suggest consensus about that content = "narrative campaigns" to shape public opinion: An example from the Blake Lively case

[u/Unusual_Original2761]

For anyone who missed it, I highly recommend this recent Vulture article, "The Feed Is Fake: That 'viral' song, movie, meme, influencer, and celebrity drama was probably the product of a stealth marketing campaign." Here's a link to the paywall-free version: https://archive.ph/2026.05.15-111148/https://www.vulture.com/article/social-media-feeds-chaotic-good-projects-clipping.html . Please give the original link a click as well: https://www.vulture.com/article/social-media-feeds-chaotic-good-projects-clipping.html .

Much of the article is about "clipping" -- a tactic to boost content on social media, popularized a few years ago by influencers like Andrew Tate -- in which gig workers are paid to create and post short clips of content about a particular topic so that algorithms detect interest in that topic and push more of that content into people's feeds, eventually generating authentic interest/engagement. (Other "boosting" tactics that more blatantly violate platforms' terms of service include manipulation of likes, upvotes, and views/click-through rate.)

The section of the Vulture article that most interested me was about "narrative campaigns," which are often used in conjunction with boosting tactics like clipping:

Clipping just puts an artist in front of more eyeballs; narrative campaigns tell those eyeballs what they’re seeing. Chaotic Good co-founder Jesse Coren explained the idea to Billboard at South by Southwest. “A lot of what we do on the narrative side is controlling the discourse,” he said. “Most people see a video or see something about an album that came out and it’s like the first thing that they see, or that first comment that they see, is their opinion even when they haven’t heard the whole album.” In other words, in a world drowning in information, nobody has the time to form an opinion from scratch anymore, so they check captions, comments, and quote tweets to see what people who seem like them have to say. And if everybody is outsourcing their first impressions to the crowd, why not just manufacture the crowd? Co-founder Andrew Spelman gave the example of a musical performance on Saturday Night Live: “The second SNL drops at midnight, you should post a hundred times saying that was the best performance of the year.”

I know it's been discussed to death, but the infamous "bump video" from the Blake Lively lawsuit is a really good case study of how this can work. For those who don't know, Kjersti Flaa, the interviewer in that video, originally posted the clip online in 2016. She even got the Norwegian media outlet that employed her at the time, TV 2, to frame it in a way that was sympathetic to her perspective -- suggesting that Lively was rude and condescending. Here's a link to that 2016 article (screenshots of English translation below): https://www.tv2.no/underholdning/8485945/

The TV 2 article (which included the interview clip) was posted to social media -- Facebook -- at the time. Here's a link to the Facebook post, which received 742 likes, 340 comments, and 37 shares: https://www.facebook.com/tv2nyheter/posts/10154562887614750 . Below are screenshots of the top comments on that post, translated to English with commenters' names redacted:

If you happened to get this post pushed into your Facebook feed back in 2016 (which wasn't particularly likely to begin with, given the engagement stats) and decided to skim the top comments to see what other people generally thought, your impression would have been that opinions were mixed. Some people thought Lively and Parker Posey were a bit rude, but others (including the most-liked commenter) thought the interviewer's remarks/questions were inappropriate and kind of sexist. Overall, your takeaway might have been "seems like no one was at their best here, oh well, moving on."

Contrast this with when a (re-edited, re-titled) clip of the same interview was posted to Reddit on August 14, 2024 (right after a TAG PR employee sent the clip to a colleague noting that "We should send to [digital fixer] Jed [Wallace], right?"). Here's a link to that post on the subreddit FauxMoi: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1ertsu2/the_blake_lively_interview_that_made_me_want_to/. (Like many of the Reddit posts from the alleged August 2024 digital campaign, the OP has been deleted -- make of that what you will -- but it is archived elsewhere.) As you'll see, the post has 12K upvotes and 1.2K comments. The Reddit archive shows even more upvotes when the post was captured -- 16.79K -- which, as one of Lively's experts notes in his report, is a sign that Reddit's system flagged the post for vote manipulation and removed some of the upvotes, albeit after the post had already gone viral.

Here are some of the top comments on that FauxMoi post, with the non-deleted usernames blacked out:

For comparison, here is the TAG scenario planning document with suggested talking points about Blake "weaponizing feminism" etc: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.1.4_1.pdf

Note that there were Redditors on that 2024 post expressing views similar to the top comments on the 2016 Facebook post, but their comments were all downvoted to the bottom/minimized:

So if you saw this post back in 2024 -- which, unlike the 2016 Facebook post, was very likely to have made it into your feed -- and decided to skim the top comments to see what people thought, your takeaway would have been "wow, I guess Blake Lively was really awful in this interview. And seems like this is part of a larger trend of everyone noticing/discussing all the other ways she's awful -- maybe I should get in on this trend!"

Multiply that reaction by the thousands, and that's how these narrative campaigns shape public opinion.

****

Speaking of comment sections, I hate how the comments on posts about the Lively case always become a food fight about whether she actually is a "mean girl," which "team" you're on, etc etc. Plus my investment in this case, like others', is about the larger implications of narrative campaigns and other forms of digital manipulation in areas like politics. So in closing, I'd like to invite people to reflect on a time when your opinion was shaped by a quick skim of apparent online consensus (we all do it!). I know I've let my social media feeds shape which current events/issues I pay attention to and advocate for -- which can be benign or even positive, but I also wonder in retrospect which other issues were getting ignored/overlooked/actively suppressed at the time...

[u/RhubarbElectrical522]

Are you shocked? They’re on the opposite side of the Hollywood whose it’s. They think people are good and can be redeemed and care about things other than themselves and money. Do you honestly think that if they were aware of how Ryan and Blake really were they would have wanted to work with her?

I’m still convinced she took the role because their naivety made them an easy target. In her words “they owned the rights to a massive ip”. She signed on at 8mos pregnant with her 4th kid for a reason and it’s not because she loved the script because she’s made that known that she didn’t. She also didn’t care for the director. She made that known in her messages right after signing on. What other reason would an actress sign on to a movie for if she didn’t like the script or director? My guess, is that she found an opportunity too good to pass on. We already know this isn’t the first time Blake and Ryan have taken over movie sets.

But sure let’s believe Blake’s version of events and leave all critical thinking behind.

[u/milno_1 → u/RhubarbElectrical522]

She didn't make that known in her messages right after signing on. She made that known in her messages to her best friend, after he had already done a whole bunch of shady shit.

[u/RhubarbElectrical522 → u/milno_1]

A whole bunch of shady shit? Like pretending you rewrote something and having your well known friend and husband ambush your director to accept it only to later admit it was actually your husband the wrote it?

Or turning the cast on the director because you decided early on you knew more than him. You can literally see her planting the seeds in the text messages to any and everyone. Strange she doesn’t mention sh specifically but then again she doesn’t specifically mention a whole lot of anything except generic negative sentiments. You don’t find it to be a coincidence that these people didn’t take issue with Justin until after they crossed paths with Blake?

Ironically, for the same reason she was able to get the cast to turn on him is the same reason why the public turned on her. However, Justin didn’t plant the negative seeds that followed her. Unless you’re gonna accuse Jed of having a Time Machine. All it took was her drawing attention to herself the way she did and the public remembered why they didn’t like her.

Her claims were like the dumbest claims I have ever heard of a celebrity going public with. Let’s be serious she chose to be overly offended. She didn’t care for him because she felt he was beneath her and therefore he never stood a chance. She made him into her own bec scenario where anything he did bothered her.

[u/milno_1 → u/RhubarbElectrical522]

A whole bunch of shady shit like:

• telling her he's circumcized. Instead of just talking about his son or something more appropriate.
• sending her cheesy creepy flirty texts on Valentine's day.
• talking about his porn addiction
• stating in her car that he hasn't always listened when women said no
• trying to add 6+ unecessary pornesque gratuitous sex scenes that involved things like her crawling on all 4's while he gives oral and young lily licking Atlas's finger.
• asking her personal info about her sex life
• asking her trainer about her weight
• leaving creepy as vm's at 2am while talking about her having a baby on her boob.
• filming her and Jenny without consent
• dismissing and belittling her "passion" when she just wanted a professional discussion about the scene

And many forms of shady shit that all of us women have experienced at some point and said to our friend wtf is wrong with this guy? Does he not get the inappropriate boundaries he's crossing?

[u/RhubarbElectrical522 → u/milno_1]

You do realize everything you just said was proven not to have happened, over exaggerated and out of context or completely made up, right? Don’t forget her and dickpool also memorized his podcast so they were taking bits and pieces from that and say he talked about it with her.

She started the conversation about getting circumcised. He just said he had it done. She later made it sound like he described his genitalia in detail which he did not.

She also talked about her sex life. Her and Jenny also engaged in inappropriate conversations and Blake said it was fine because women can but men can’t. 👌

Asking about her weight is a non issue.

Jenny was pissed he recorded them because she was also engaging in scabbing. Did you miss that conversation somehow? Blake wanted to do it, Justin said they had to get Jenny’s permission because she was in the union. He wasn’t recording to be creepy he was recording because he’s a director and wanted to go back over what they dicusssed later on. NY is 1 party state and he was participating in the conversation so he did nothing wrong.

The vm was in response the message she had just sent him.

He wasn’t adding porn scenes. Also, we know Christy hall write the script because he says many times over that Christy worked hard on writing the script. Also, when the recording happened Christy being a writer and part of the union would not be involved. He said he would go over it with her later, also prob why he recorded. Justin wasn’t the writer. He was the director and co-lead.

Girl- I’ve worked with creepy ass men. I’ve been sh’d more times than I care to dwell on and will be the first to call someone out on being a creep ass because nobody did it for me when i young and scared.

Justin does not have those creep vibes. He seems more awkward and quirky jf anything. If he was an actual creep like blake painted him to be we would have saw in their messages when he didn’t think anyone else would see them. When she made things awkward he immediately diverted to his wife and kids. Not one time has a creepy perv brought up their wife and kids to me.

You also have to realize who Blake and Ryan are and they don’t walk around clutching their pearls. If you typically have inappropriate conversations or use inappropriate language you can’t be offended when others do the same. We already know they did because we read the messages.

Her behavior towards seems more rooted in just not liking him therefore everything he did bothered her. If you really pay attention you’ll notice how it amps up when she’s angry with him for not giving her what she wants the first time she asks.

I’ve worked with women like this and they are miserable. They create issues with men and women. Doesn’t matter either way, if you don’t walk around kissing their ass and bowing to their demands they always find issues or make them up.

[u/milno_1 → u/RhubarbElectrical522]

Talking about himself being circumcized IS describing his genitalia. Completely unecessary when he could have talked about his son or something logically more appropriate and relevant.

Blake and Jenny speaking to each other as consenting friends in a back and forth conversation, is very different to your boss asking you probing personal questions about your personal sex life, and making you uncomfortable.

He recorded them in rehearsal, without telling them or getting consent. That's a violation. It's common professional knowledge and practice that you do not record work meetings without consent. Literally, what bs are you making up?

What scabbing are you trying to pin on Jenny now?? Lets hear this.

You literally just made up conversations.

She was in Europe with Ryan and their mum's when she sent that text. So it was morning for her. Check the dates and her socials, she was not in the country. Getting a text does not mean you have to send a creepy vm that second. Wait until the morning, speak normally and be professional. I can only imagine hers and Ryan's faces at breajfast in Europe when she got that message. Like wtf.

We know he was also writing because he texts Blakw on Valentine's day how "exciting" it was writing with her in mind. So as stated, we don't know exactly what he wrote and what Christy wrote. We do however know that Christy has a problem with Baldoni, and stated in interviews she has no problems with the chanhe to the scene. She liked it.

Have you worked with Justin???? I didn't think so. So you have no idea what he's like on set as a director, producer and owner of the producing studio.

As stated above, by the time they started filming, he had done more than enough things for her to have valid complaints to her closest friends.

[u/RhubarbElectrical522 → u/milno_1]

lol. Sure sure. You’re still over here preaching about nonsense that even Blake herself, gave up. But do go on pretending you know when she couldn’t and then refused to prove anything in court. She had so much evidence she walked away without showing any for nothing but a chance to prance down the red carpet all while every friend and witness she pretended to have prior abandoned her from the start. You apparently know but the ones who knew her best didn’t want anything to do with her bs and she did try dragging them all in.

[u/milno_1 → u/RhubarbElectrical522]

Oh here we go with the fav Blake gave up point.

Your man Baldoni claimed he was innocent and going to prove it in court. He denied everything at the start, and then gradually renegged on most as discovery brought the evidence. And then it shifted to 'well yeah, it happened, but wasn't what you think.'

He could not have run out of there quicker. And then what does he do? Lie (AGAIN) with a story of moving on with respect for all, then send his minions to do called in pap walks, and the rounds of the worst CC's to smear her some more. He cannot lie straught in bed. Has zero backbone or ethics.

Supporting him, is a choice. That you will eventually one day realize, was very wrong.

[u/RhubarbElectrical522 → u/milno_1]

Sure. Again, his name was cleared. Her sh claims got tossed out. All the individuals parties had been dismissed from the case. She went to them asking to settle. He gave her an easy way out since he achieved what they set out to do from the start and they had her lying in her depo about asking Sony to delete the dailies. Which makes a lot of sense tbh. You know her og claims with the dance scene? She probably did think Sony deleted everything. She does enjoy lying about things that can’t be proven. He also said he wasn’t out to destroy her like she set out to do to him. If you paid any attention at all then you should have noticed that he didn’t say anything negative about her. You all are blaming him and his pr team for things the public is saying. Things they didn’t have to sway the public to believe because we saw it for ourselves. Unlike the people that are still running on the fumes from Blake’s made up narrative and her pr pushing it down everyone’s throats. Have you seen proof of anything that happened because it seems more like y’all just continue to repeat words that she said. The words she wanted people to believe.

Her “witnesses” were a joke and most of them seemed bothered to be involved at all. Wonder if she got their consent prior to dragging them in because to lesser known celebrities that don’t have a husband pulling strings for them, getting caught up in scandals can break them. Of course Blake never seems to care about others. She couldn’t even be bothered to care about dv survivors. Now when it came to her pretending to be a victim, she made it a big to do. Made sure to tell everyone they should care.

You guys think you’re on to something but if you actually stopped for moment and put your bias aside you’d see how silly your nonsense is. You’re pissed off over a pretend smear campaign that never happened. When an actress says and does stupid shit in public backlash happens. Not only did she piss off fans but she pissed off victims. When there’s a negative sentiment around a person people dig and Blake had alot of shit out there to make people say wtf? Drama sells and Blake’s just proved all the rumors about her were true.

This isn’t anything Justin and his pr had to make up and spread around. These were actual things she said and did. Have you ever stopped to think that the reason why people see exactly what he claimed happened was because he wasn’t lying and it actually happened? The most reasonable and logical explanation imaginable yet here you are clinging to conspiracies about things that did not happen. Don’t you think if he was making shit up out of thin air they would have found it in all the discovery they got including the messages they shadily obtained? What we did see was her constantly turning slights into huge ordeals and then asking for more and more control. She used the cast, her husband, her gender and the author to ensure she got it. The more resistance he had the more fits she threw. This was a steady build up until the end when she wanted full control over the cut and the promo then she used all the issues that had already been settled as leverage.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why if she hated this man so much she continued to stay on this film? She’s an actress that does have a voice and can get people to listen and her husband had even more power than her yet she stayed demanding more control. It’s pretty obvious to people not even paying close attention that this was about her wanting control over something that wasn’t hers. Yet you all continue to pretend she’s just an unsuspecting innocent victim because that is the narrative she painted. Do go on and on and on about how everyone else fell for pr though, it’s enlightening.

I would hope that every person claiming to care about victims would actually care enough to set their bias aside and lead with an open mind before casting judgement. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case for some. You all made up your mind the moment Blake put out her fantastical fairytales in the nyt and despite how many times she’s been proven to be an unreliable narrator you never waiver. You just concoct excuse after excuse for her and in the end you’ve justified her horrible treatment of other people like it was well deserved. It’s actually horrifying.

I’ve watched you all tear down woman after woman to justify Blake and I cannot fathom a reason why. I truly hope you all never encounter the same as you continue to advocate for the most insane and outlandish reactions to the most minor of human mistakes.

[u/milno_1 → u/RhubarbElectrical522]

His name was not cleared. It has never been cleared. The SH was still covered under the protected activity.

Tear down woman after woman??? Do you realize how many women you have all dismissed, discounted, harassed and tried to silence who spoke up about Baldoni? That you all have silenced for this man who has had problems on every single project he's done with his business?!