Before this year, singer/rapper Shaboozey from Virginia was known primarily for a song on the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack. This year, however, Shaboozey’s combination of country and rap has become a huge hit. His J-Kwon-interpolated anthem for down-to-earth drinkers, “Tipsy (A Bar Song)” is the No. 1 single in America, and has held that spot for six weeks. It’s been hard work getting Shaboozey to this point, and part of the work apparently involves a nasty little marketing company that gets paid to create fake TikTok fan pages that post “fan fiction” stories about artists.

Yesterday, Billboard conducted an interview with Ethan Curtis, founder of digital marketing agency PushPlay. Curtis also runs WtrCoolr, a PushPlay offshoot that creates “fan fiction” for artists. The people behind stars like Shaboozey and Young Nudy hire WtrCoolr to edit TikTok videos about things that aren’t true, like the idea that Shaquille O’Neal is a Young Nudy superfan or that Dolly Parton is Shaboozey’s godmother. The latter story, which is a lie, comes from ShaboozeysVault, a campaign created by WtrCoolr. ShaboozeysVault’s TikTok and Instagram pages have since been removed—Shaboozey probably doesn’t need them anymore—but they used video editing and AI to sell that lie. (The Young Nudy page, meanwhile, is still up.)

@frasier7989 #Duet with @Shaboozeys Vault #shaboozey ♬ Original sound – Shaboozeys Vault

Ethan Curtis tells Billboard“We’re huge fans of pop culture, fan fiction and satire. We see this as our own version of a Marvel universe, but with pop stars.” Aside from being just plain annoying, there’s the problem that many people believe these stories to be true. When asked if they’re essentially spreading misinformation, Curtis says:

I don’t know if anything is really bad. We’re not claiming it’s true, and we’re just having fun, spinning stories, and basically saying, “Wouldn’t it be funny if?” or “Wouldn’t it be heartwarming if?” I don’t think we ever really touch on important things that could lead to negative energy or backlash. We just try to make funny stuff that fans enjoy. Just funny little moments. It’s no different than taking a video out of context and slapping meme captions on it…

I could imagine a label coming to us and asking us to test how a new collaboration between Drake and Kendrick would be received after the falling out. They could say, “Can you do a post about this so we can see if people attack Kendrick for backing out or if fans go crazy when they get together?” We could see if it’s a disaster or potentially the biggest release of their careers… I mean, if it was so successful on social media, why wouldn’t it be as successful in real life?

The profiles of these WtrCoolr pages contain disclaimers like this: “Young Nudy’s #1 fan site and fan fiction.” The videos themselves contain no such disclaimers, although Curtis says, “With a lot of the videos, we just do Easter eggs at the end that kind of make it clear that it’s a joke.” This is so obviously disgusting and shitty, and they should stop doing it and feel deep existential shame for the rest of their lives.