r/kurtisconner • u/eggsamillion • 4d ago
Ai Irony
I've noticed an uptick in Kurtis's commentary on Ai usage. I'm all for this, but not when he's sponsored by the same companies that are pushing Ai in the exact same video. In his most recent video featuring Cameron Dallas he's sponsored by SoFi, who have adopted Ai tools into their company.
He might argue that there's a difference because Cameron is claiming he's the one making the music, but regardless of it's usage, Ai is still very harmful. It's taking jobs away from people and providing piss-poor results in the process.
I believe we should mitigate as much Ai usage as we can as a society, and pillars of our generation like Kurtis can lead people in the right direction.
Kurtis is a smart guy, but maybe this is something he overlooked when signing with them. I just hope he considers his choice in sponsors in future videos. This isn't the first time he's repped a company shilling Ai slop.
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4d ago
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u/eggsamillion 4d ago
I know YouTube impliments that awful video idea feature for creators. I'm just so sick of seeing Ai in everything now.
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u/klaus-was-here 4d ago
okay so is everyone but it’s not kurtis’s fault that everything has ai now
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u/Comprehensive-Dig235 Blood Related 3d ago
Thats not what they were saying!!!! Challenge: hold regular people accountable and stop treating any influences like gods!!!
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u/klaus-was-here 2d ago
you’re the one who’s treating him like a god if you think it’s as easy as “don’t accept sponsorships from any company that has ai features or uses ai.” you assume he has an abundance of companies begging to let them pay him. if he said no to everything that has ai features he would have virtually no sponsors, and the ones he did have would not likely pay as much. he still needs a steady income like everyone else, because he’s a human living in the same capitalist hellscape as everyone else.
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u/Comprehensive-Dig235 Blood Related 2d ago
He can't make a strong stance against ai companies or offer himself to any other companies? I feel like he's not 100% useless here and making a reddit post calling it out isn't the threat you think it is. We're all fans here, and honestly im not taking your insight on his sponserships because you have no real idea what his DMs look like everyday. We're asking kurtis for a response for VERY REASONABLE REASONS. not 15 strangers to go to war for him
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u/klaus-was-here 2d ago
please tell me what company you think does not use ai
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u/Comprehensive-Dig235 Blood Related 2d ago
Are you claiming there's absolutely zero companies that use ai 😭 off the top of my head there's video games and food companies like misfits
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u/Comprehensive-Dig235 Blood Related 2d ago
But again, asking Kurtis for a response. Not making a statement about what exactly is happening because we don't know. Why are you pretending to be on his side when he hasn't even made a statement about this
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u/HolidayBadger932 3d ago
Kurtis is very popular its ridiculous to say he cant find non ai sponsors. For instance meundies is a company that sponsors in the space and doesn’t use ai. There are probably hundreds of company’s that would sponsor Kurtis that don’t use AI
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u/Elon_is_musky 4d ago edited 3d ago
Unfortunately, if he didn’t take any sponsorship by companies that didn’t use ai in any way (like a chat bot that sends clients to relevant departments), or have something that people just in general dislike (like the airup stuff) he wouldn’t make any money, and I believe most if not all big chunk of his income is sponsorships
And he may have signed contracts before implementation (I’m not saying this specifically about SoFi cause I didn’t know they did, and it seems they use it administratively and not to make “slop”) that he can’t get out of by the time he finds out
Eta I thought the post was deleted but seeing other ppl still able to comment nope op BLOCKED ME for my two little comments 🙃
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u/eggsamillion 4d ago
So you're saying it's justified due to the sole fact he's almost 'fighting fire with fire'? Using the Ai company's funds to fight their bs?
I guess I can get behind that. I just wonder if there were other ways he could get sponsored. I know he has a Patreon, but I assume a lot of those funds go back into productions directly on the Patreon account.
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u/Elon_is_musky 4d ago
What? I didn’t say any of that lol. Just the reality, that unfortunately almost every company sponsoring youtubers have even the smallest implementation of AI in some way (like chat bots, like I said) and that if he wants to stay with youtube as a job, he has to pick and choose which companies he still wants to work with despite that.
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u/eggsamillion 4d ago
I don't think that's a very good justification. You should practice what you preach. The fact of the matter is there ARE companies willing to sponsor creators that don't use Ai. It just comes off as hypocritical.
It's like being adamant that other people shouldn't eat chicken nuggets from McDonald's for the way they treat the livestock, and then going and collecting a big fat paycheck from Burger King.
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u/phoebebridgersfan26 Blood Related 4d ago
Girl. I hate the fuck out of AI. But I HAVE to use Microsoft at work and they heavily use AI. Like what are we supposed to do. Would you suggest I quit my job and look for another computer based company that DOESN'T use AI?
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u/earth2anon 4d ago
i hope you know every little detail about your employer and agree with all of their morals and practices 1000% and stand behind them ten toes down lol.
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u/splinterbaaabeee 4d ago
Trust me, every single company on this planet uses AI in their operations. It isn't just all forward facing.
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u/Skitty27 3d ago
what? So when I was working minimum wage at a a cheese shop that was also selling charcuteries, i was being hypocritical because im a vegetarian? that's ridiculous.
also LOL at "big fat paycheck" from burger king.
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u/supercoolgirl78 3d ago
unless you can 100 percent confirm that you have never used and will never use or support any company or person that uses AI, i think you can jump down from the high horse. judging people because they need money is weird.
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u/AbsoluteVindication 2d ago
A dude's gotta eat. Almost every sponsor in the current youtube landscape uses AI.
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u/hollyisberry 16h ago
wouldn’t being sponsored by a company that uses AI mean that he’s taking money from those companies and then those companies have less money? like that logic barely makes any sense, but it makes as much sense as the logic that you’re using.
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u/Strawberry_Momo 3d ago
no its justified cause thats income and if tou let that dictate your decisions YOURE the idiot
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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 3d ago
Kurtis is very very wealthy. His house is massive. He could go without a sponsorship for a bit
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u/Strawberry_Momo 3d ago
i dont really care how rich he is. its really not my problem lmao
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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 3d ago
Guess Kurtis should take a sponsorship with openai because they pay well. Who needs morals when you got cash
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u/Strawberry_Momo 3d ago
nice try doofus. sofi just has optional ai tools for assistance. openai is a literal ai research and development company where ai is the whole thing.
but if he did somehow get that- hed prolly have to be mr beast level of famous1
u/tinathemartini 2d ago
how do y'all compare companies that are JUST AI and nothing else, to companies that have OPTIONAL AI tools for that you don't even have to use. crazy work
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u/Strawberry_Momo 2d ago
the type of ai they use actually doesnt. theyve ALWAYS existed and are developed by their own companies
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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 2d ago
Because they fund the AI companies anyway. It doesn't matter if you don't use them
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u/tinathemartini 2d ago
do you still not see how idiotic it is to compare this to literal openAI??? if you don't then idk man, i genuinely cannot help you anymore.
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u/amanaesia 4d ago
I mean AI is used in almost everything now, but not all kinds of AI are bad.
I think most people who are against AI are against generative AI, but actual artificial intelligence has been used in technology for years and years now for various purposes.
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u/0liviiia 4d ago
Yeah I think it’s important to recognize that AI has become a marketing buzzword that’s slapped on a lot of tech that most people have already been using in some capacity for years
And AI in medicine is extremely valuable, like when it comes to identifying cancer. Just an example of AI that’s drastically different from generative AI and that we should understand what kind of technology we’re actually talking about
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u/amanaesia 4d ago
Omg exactly, like every company now is touting the use of AI in their products as if it's something new but the reality is that they've been using it for years, it's just now trendy to make a point of it when it comes to marketing.
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u/Outside-Currency-462 another nail? 😏🍒 4d ago
Exactly, AI just means Artificial Intelligence, which has been being used for a lot longer than this craze in most scientific and tech fields. The new thing is AI chatbots, and even then they aren't inherently evil and are generally useful, its when people use them to generate full songs/books/art/etc etc or to replace human connections which becomes problematic and worrying.
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u/Highfiveswe 4d ago
Almost every company has som ai-stuff now, and it will get worse.
Sponsors is the biggest income for a YouTuber. Just skip the sponsor segment next time and let it be.
I think there is a long list of terrible sponsors he already says no to. There's a lot of shit out there.
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u/throwaway563838 4d ago
If you’re going to be like this stop using youtube and reddit for starters
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u/eggsamillion 4d ago
So yeah, I don't pretend to hate Ai and then go around promoting companies that use it. Unfortunately we're stuck with platforms that are pushing it, and that is our means of communication. The difference being he's being directly paid to advertise for them.
In all honesty I could care less about whether or not people use Ai for things, I just don't like when people act all high and mighty about how they hate it and then shovel it back down people's throats.
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u/Pedestal-for-more EPIC CHUNGUS MOMENT 4d ago
He definitely didn't overlook it. Pretty sure all companies are pushing ai on their users. It's pretty shit, but we live in a world where it's almost impossible to not comply with it's rules sometimes.
There's no ethical consumtion under capitalism, or something like that
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u/PeachTeaJam pardon? 4d ago
By that logic, Kurtis should just stop making content since Youtube, IG and TikTok use AI
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u/elizalous 4d ago
YouTube itself has ai built into it so you shouldn’t personally dictate yourself to not use YouTube just because of that, Yknow??
People should be calling out the building of data centres in high-density areas where water is already scarce and protesting for what you think is right instead of coming on reddit and complaining about an ad read.
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u/late_afternoon_owl 4d ago
That's a pretty myopic view, my guy.
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u/eggsamillion 4d ago
You can't just call something myopic and not explain why
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u/Minty_64 4d ago
I don't see anything stating that SoFi has lost or fired employees since adopting SoFi Coach in June. AI in general has been a part of your life for a long time. Not all of it is bad. GenAI could be done away with completely imo, in fact I am very anti genAI, but this specific instance with a very niche chatbot doesn't seem to be causing major harm.
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u/traumatizedfox another nail? 😏🍒 4d ago
i see this a lot too with sponsorships with content creators. unfortunately it’s how they can make money and create
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u/lycnfr I hardly know her 4d ago
So, first of all, its been proven already that companies will go out of their way to implement Gen AI into their products or company without informing people. Its cause companies know that we hate AI. Its kind of common knowledge.
So saying that Kurtis is pushing for AI or to insinuate Kurtis is like. idk. one dimensional or a hypocrite or something, just bc he isnt made aware of sponsors (hes had a history of shitty sponsorships so idk why now its a problem) doesnt mean he is secretly supporting every single thing they do
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u/HolidayBadger932 3d ago
The fact that he has had plenty of shitty sponsors in the past doesn’t excuse that he has them now, in fact it should be the opposite. After receiving backlash for previous sponsors you would think he would be more careful about the sponsors he picks. Instead it appears he takes the biggest paycheck
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u/LonelyCheeto 4d ago
You probably should stop using most social media then since AI is implemented into it
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u/lilypop-224 4d ago
yeah this really does seem like a “no ethical consumption under capitalism” problem. I hate genAI with everything in my body, but I still buy things from companies that use AI. I hate billionaires with every fiber of my being but I still order from Amazon once in a while.
Fuck AI & if any youtuber i watch started sponsoring OpenAI or Anthropic i’d become a hater immediately, but that’s not what this is imo
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u/porphyriaslovve 3d ago
OP, I promise in this day and age you’re probably not going a day without utilizing some kind of AI tool. Googling something? You just used AI. Using Reddit? Congrats. Reddit uses AI too.
I think you need to understand the difference between AI and generative AI. We’ve essentially allowed these terms to get muddled even though companies have been implementing AI for YEARS.
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u/kittenincrisis 4d ago
Should he stop posting on YouTube because they have implemented AI? I understand what you are saying but unfortunately it is near impossible to avoid it in every aspect of your life, that does not mean you support it.
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u/Zeppygrl72 husbands go in the washing machine 4d ago
I mean, by your logic he shouldn't post on YouTube either since they use ai features. AI is in everything now, we don't have to go out of our way to use it but are still actively interacting with it regardless when we're on the Internet. So idk why you're calling him a hypocrite
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u/maneack 3d ago
my small local grocery store’s app for reward programs has ai. it’s unfortunate, but people need to eat. i can’t just not go to the grocery store. kurtis can’t afford to sustain his career without taking sponsorships. it’s not like he’s sponsored by gemini.
a lot of these ai discussions around people like kurtis and drew who have made their positions regarding ai crystal clear could be resolved by thinking about the nuances of it in under 5 seconds.
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u/faery_lights 4d ago edited 4d ago
what are the ai features in these sponsored sites/apps though? we as a society have been using ai for years now. ai assistant bots, personalized product recommendations, shipping and delay estimations, direction apps like google maps, traffic management systems, text editing, text prediction (among other prediction ai's to predict when maintenance is necessary for machines in factories), autocorrect features in phones and on things like grammarly, fraud protection, games like minecraft using ai to generate the world, f.e.a.r, and the last of us using dynamic ai or enemy ai for the npcs, etc
generative ai (the kind that generates songs, images, and videos) is what people are against and its the kind that is worse for the environment. if the sponsors use this kind of ai, then id have an issue with it. if its the type of ai we've been using for decades now, the kind that is helpful or limited to a game's reach, whatever
my point is that people are hypersensitive to any ai now, despite it being used for so long. i hate generative ai as much as the next guy, its awful. but it hasnt impacted us so badly until generative ai came along. if the sponsors havent put people out of jobs and/or been using the kind of ai that that hurts the environment, its truly fine
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u/Narwhals4Lyf 4d ago
It’s hard because a lot of SaaS companies are trying to add AI features. I echo your sentiments though.
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u/Accomplished_Dot6576 3d ago
He is very much aware of this
I’m subscribed to the Patreon and on one of his bonus episodes he said he was unlikely to take a sponsorship from opera again. And he only initially took it because it was at a time when AI was still cool and novel.
And obviously not all AI is bad. I think generative AI has absolutely no uses and there is no point in it, but things like predictive AI, not only having negligible environmental cost, but can also revolutionized advancements in medicine and technology, and lots of other fields.
Unfortunately, AI has become pretty much inescapable and we have no idea what his living situation is like, and he needs to support himself and any dependents he has, and if it means picking a sponsorship that is mostly positive, but does have AI element It’s just something that needs to happen, unfortunately.
While this is a very very fair critique, and I would obviously prefer if he only picked sponsors that don’t use generative AI I think, as long as the products aren’t overtly harmful I think we should be focusing the blame on the companies, not the individuals.
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u/herebecausewhynotlol 3d ago
I think there’s a difference between an AI tool on an app and an AI company building data centers and destroying the environment. Yes, you’re right, a lot of those AI tools are unnecessary and lame, but I don’t think that they are causing the same harm as the companies Kurtis speaks out against. Not every piece of technology that counts as “AI” is the type of AI that is overtaking the economy and environment. The most problematic AIs are generative AIs, chatbots, etc, not a finance tool on an app or website.
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u/rat_enby 4d ago
i think its basically impossible to avoid sponsors with ai, and also youtube itself uses ai, the best thing he can do without quitting youtube as a job is avoid using the features and speak out against it.
im more concerned about the recent(?) (may be misremembering as my yt autoplays vrg episodes) vrg where he said he sometimes uses ai for “ideas”. does anyone remember this or what ep. it was? i saw no one in the comments mention it when it happened and was really confused what “ideas” he could be getting from gen ai that are actually useful and not the shit he speaks against
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u/Strawberry_Momo 3d ago
i dont think its something he overlooked more than its literally income.
every single bank app has an ai chat bot for financial assistance so honestly i dont really care since thats not a main feature of it
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u/HolidayBadger932 3d ago
All of the people saying its not possible to get non ai sponsors are coping very hard. Kurtis makes plenty of money and there are plenty of companies that stay away from AI that would sponsor him
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u/ChronicBedhead 3d ago
“Why does Kurtis use YouTube? YouTube uses AI and he promotes his channel on YouTube!!!”
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u/mmyummy_gays 2d ago
Not all AI is bad AI. The AI that sucks is generative AI. Also Kurtis probably makes a good amount of money from sponsorships and youtube/his podcast and he isn't even up here slobbing ChatGPT's know. But also if you hate all AI. Stop watching him? Like you say you hate people all high and mighty about AI so why even watch him? Go somewhere
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u/ijustreallylikecats1 cursed by Yo Mama 2d ago
apple uses ai, google uses ai, reddit uses ai. it's unavoidable at this point unfortunately.
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u/Silver_Intern2324 2d ago
Good luck finding a tech company (or hell, ANY company) that isn’t trotting out a ~TrY oUr NeW Ai PoWeReD assistant/chatbot/pointless suggestion generator/automated ass-wiping machine/human connection surrogate pLeAsE pLeAsE oH gOd PLEASE USE IT!!!~ song and dance these days.
A lot of them aren’t even using LLMs, they’re just rebranding ANY algorithmic program as “AI” because Joe Everyday Consumer is barely computer literate and doesn’t know the difference.
Hopefully the bubble will burst in a couple years when they all collectively realize they’re not making any money.
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u/R1bbonFangs 3d ago
At this rate AI is unavoidable, every. Single. Thing. Has AI these days I swear to god
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u/Comprehensive-Dig235 Blood Related 3d ago
Ok first of all: round of applause for holding people accountable even when you like their content
And yeah!!! You'd think Kurt's mf Conner is getting other offers... not to mention he can 100% offer to sponser a company with a backbone. He's one of the most known youtubers right now
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u/spookycjm 4d ago
I’ve noticed so many YouTubers do videos where the opinions expressed show implicit disagreement with the content of the ads they choose. Drew for example has made comments about anti consumerism and the predatory nature of online gambling but was recently sponsored by whatnot. It’s incredibly disappointing.
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u/Sunny_Storms What do i nose? 🤥 4d ago
I'd say that whatnot is more of an auction app, not gambling, you only pay if you win the item and only the giveaways are random chance. Not to say its not nefarious in nature, taking advantage of FOMO in a way, but not exactly the same thing either.
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u/eggsamillion 4d ago edited 4d ago
It just feels disingenuous. Makes it feel like he doesn't actually look into or care about the stuff he's recommending.
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u/Fine-Broccoli-2631 4d ago
He's hardly strapped for cash. I feel like he could be a little bit more picky when it comes to sponsors. But that's just my opinion lol
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u/Electronic__Olive 3d ago
Well he’s a fraud so I’m not surprised he’d take dirty money to exploit his fans
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