Restore Britain, Merlin the duck, and FIFA's content farm

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:39Okay, so this time, Mariana, on top comment, because we always do too much depressing, bad vibe stuff. We're actually going to have a story about some nice things on social media. And we're going to talk about... I think that's broadly because it's not the nicest place on Earth. But at the moment, it kind of feels like it is. Well, Earth isn't the nicest place either. Yeah, that's very true. So maybe social media can be an escape. That's always their argument, isn't it? Yeah. They're like, it's actually just because society's bag, we just reflect it back. Do your algorithms, though? Exactly. But in this case, we want to talk about sports.

1:08And particularly, there's been a lot of uplifting sports content around the World Cup, around the Knicks win, the Arsenal win. Although, it's slightly disappointing that, did you see the T-Pain response to DoorDash about the World Cup? Yeah, I did see this. because I feel like one of the things that's been so uplifting about the World Cup content in particular is this feeling that it's organic and not orchestrated in any way. And then this was this thing, right, where DoorDash kept tagging T-Pain rather than this guy with the same similar name who plays for New Zealand. Yeah. And T-Pain was like, I literally don't play soccer.

1:41Who do you think you're tagging? Responding. And everyone was like, oh, what a funny, sort of organic, beautiful moment of the World Cup. It turns out that it is all a paid for sponsored content campaign. Yeah, because they told The Verge, didn't they? DoorDash essentially that they thought it was like a fun social media campaign that they came up with with T-Pain. Yeah, exactly. So that moment was fake, but a lot of the moments are real and very heartwarming. So we're going to talk about those and our favorite ones. And we're also going to be talking about Restore Britain, which is this party, a new party in the UK and the social media strategy around it.

2:17particularly because there's just been this by-election and it's kind of interesting to get into. I've had loads of messages asking about social media first political movements.

2:33OK, so Restore Britain took part in this recent by-election and I'd had quite a few people getting in touch with me, messaging, talking to me about the influence of Restore's online strategy versus then what was actually happening on the ground during that by-election. and how it felt like social media strategy was so much the emphasis. It was a bit of a difference, I guess, compared to some of the other parties. If we kind of get into how they came to exist, so Rupert Lowe, who's in charge of the party, left Reform, which is the party that Nigel Farage is in charge of. There were allegations around bullying, which he strongly denied.

3:07Anyway, he left and set up this new party, Restore Britain. I know this idea that you can kind of just go and set up a party is one thing, But the idea that you can go and set up a party and then actually have a quite significant, in this case, online social media presence is what we're going to be getting into. And it's worth saying from the get go, there's no suggestion here that Restore Britain is some huge party. If you look at the stats, they only won 7 % of the vote in this by-election that happened in Makerfield, which Andy Burnham, the Labour candidate won. And fewer votes in the British National Party won when they contested the same seat.

3:40But back in 2010 in the election then. Yeah, exactly. So we're not suggesting in any way that this is an incredibly popular party. But I think what's interesting is the approach that they've taken to social media strategy and particularly the way that they've built an entire brand and party. I mean, essentially, largely around Rupert Lowe's account on X. But then that has also spread out to all sorts of different places, particularly Facebook. So essentially, Restore is a party that has built its brand entirely on social media. Yeah. And they're very conscious of this. So Rupert Lowe has said that they wanted to be a movement, not a political party.

4:15They wanted to, in his words, unite, not divide. They then later became a political party, but they see themselves as social media first. And they even have almost a policy against traditional media. So their candidate in Makerfield, they didn't let her do any traditional media interviews. They only want to do social media. And when it comes to restoring their policies, I mean, the main policies that they focus on are immigration. So they want mass deportations, remigration. Yeah, they also focus quite a lot on how they perceive that white people, white men in particular, are being let down and left behind and they want to stick up for them.

4:49Exactly. And, you know, they often talk about their huge youth following. And I think they kind of maybe exaggerate that. But it is true that they skew more to the youth among their own supporters than, say, reform. And there is a sense in which they are appealing to a certain group of young men that's kind of almost manosphere adjacent, arguably. But one of the things that Rupert Lowe often says is, if you've been called a racist, a bigot, a sexist, you just need to say, I don't care. And some young, young male right wing social media influencers have really appreciated that. He also says things and supports things that seem like they would be quite energizing to a young audience.

5:29For example, Rupert Lowe often talks about how the younger generation is being screwed over by the older generation of baby boomers who have accumulated their wealth unfairly and are protecting it. Now, that's something you could hear Zach Polanski saying, right? And so he is appealing to young people in that way. So that's one of the reasons it seems to do well in social media. but also it's this disruptive nature of their politics. He talks about Westminster and the civil service, similar to how Trump did in his first election campaign, as though it's this kind of deep state swamp that needs to be drained.

6:04Which Nigel Farage has to some extent for reform as well, but there's something about Rupert Lowe's version of this that feels particularly sharp in terms of he really focuses on just a few things, whereas I guess reform and Farage have now expanded out to, essentially they'd like to be in charge, They'd like to run the government and therefore they've had to focus on a whole range of different topics. Exactly. And this quote that he said, he said, the civil service, it's full of human rights lawyers everywhere blocking everything they do. It's a bunch of incompetents who have never done anything.

6:33They're focused on cheap short term deliverables, which they can announce to a hungry partisan media. He called it a corrupt circus and he said very much of it, as in the civil service, is in the hands of organized crime. So that is verging on what some might say is conspiratorial. But the idea is the government is corrupt and we're disrupting it and we're not going to rely on the partisan traditional media because we can't really trust them. And so that's why we're doing a movement through social media. And one of the reasons we're talking about this on this episode is I had quite a few messages from people who were saying, I'd never really heard of Restore before, but I saw Elon Musk, who owns X, frequently resharing content from Rupert Lowe.

7:11And is that the reason why the party seems to have become much more visible and prominent? And then I was chatting to some of the BBC reporters, teams, producers who were on the ground in Makerfield who were quite struck by the number of people that were mentioning Restore to them. But also that they felt as though the approach that Restore were taking was very different to all of the other parties who had huge physical presence there in Makerfield who were going around doing all the kind of traditional stuff. That's not to say Restore weren't doing that. Like they also did have people come from all over the place.

7:41But it felt like so much of what was being referenced was what people have been seeing on their social media feeds, not really like the conversations they've been having in real life. And I think that's really interesting because it shows the ability to reach actually like a hyper local community with your social media content. What was particularly interesting messaging quite a lot of the people on Instagram and TikTok was exactly the point you were making right at the beginning, which is several of the people who got back to me were younger men. One of, for example, was a bloke who's 22, lives in the UK, who was like, this stuff has been popping up on my feed.

8:13And it appeals a lot more to me than the reform content, actually, which I haven't I haven't been as fussed about just because it feels clearer in its messaging. And it feels like it's talking to me deliberately. And it's interesting that that demographic are connected, as well as lots of older people who I was messaging on. Yes, true. Yeah. And I mean, like for a tiny party, he has 800 ,000 followers, Rupert Lowe on X, 1.3 million followers on Facebook, which is huge. so he is really running it it seems many ways like a social media movement first rather than a political party what i would say as well is x is obviously a much smaller platform than than facebook say but because elon musk frequently reshares rupert lowe's stuff and elon musk has a blue tick and rupert lowe has a blue tick it does mean not only does that content have more prominence but then also it means that you can make money from that right which again is kind of interesting is like a new revenue stream i mean we know that nigel farage because he's declared them as well and Rupert Lowe has.

9:05They've declared earnings from social media. Rupert Lowe's are pretty significant on X. And yeah, it's also worth mentioning that lots of political parties are doing well on social media. Zach Polanski is doing well on social media. Nigel Farage is doing well on social media, but they don't issue the traditional media. Part of Restore's politics is they've politicized social media itself and they are against traditional media. They do not go on traditional media at all. And it kind of makes sense when you look at their message, because their message is often that the government essentially do short term deliverables that they can talk about in this feedback loop with the press who are hungry for like, you know, a headline.

9:46So for them, social media is actually a way to fight back against what they see as a kind of incestuous relationship with traditional media. Which also is not, which is also, which appeals to a lot of people. Yeah. And which is, which is also not untrue in so much as that, you know, what is often called the Westminster bubble can feel like wildly out of touch with what people are actually experiencing in their day-to-day lives. And even I find it quite alien sometimes. Like the way that that system works, you can see how as a party, from a strategic point of view, you might think, actually, we don't want to play that game in the same way.

10:17We want to do it differently. And this is how we want to reach people. And we've seen that happen to some extent with like the Greens as well have been sort of focusing on social media strategy. But what's just particularly interesting is the kind of level of impact online that Restore has had. So do we know anything about what their strategy actually is? So I decided to get in touch with a guy called Charlie Downs. He's the campaigns director at Restore Britain. So ultimately the person who is in charge of campaigning, including online campaigning, social media campaigning. And I asked him some questions.

10:46He didn't want to do an interview, which is in keeping with the approach that Restore has taken to the media. But he was very happy to answer my questions. And the stuff he says is worth us sort of unpicking and getting into and discussing. So, for example, I asked him about how important social media is for them. He said social media is woven into every aspect of our campaigning strategy. So every member of the team is involved in it to some extent. We have the great advantage of having a young team of digital natives, all of whom have grown up on social media. So it's very easy for us to take a maximum advantage over these technologies.

11:16And actually to the point about basically why aren't you doing interviews with traditional media, which is seen as a avenue for accountability and everything else. He said, We certainly favour social media over traditional media as it's far more effective for speaking directly to the people of Britain. This is quoting him. The establishment media has not been particularly friendly to us, unsurprising given that we are seeking to tear down the establishment they exist to defend, not to mention the fact that our reach on social media is orders of magnitude larger than theirs, which is the point you were just making, which is basically they're like, why would we participate in this system, which we're basically making the point that it doesn't work and that we don't like it.

11:50he said to me that they reach tens of millions of unique UK users every day across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube and that other parties are adopting their styles and methods. I mean the numbers are broadly in that range when you look at the content across Facebook, X, TikTok. I mean some of it's not coming from the party itself but other people making their own content or from unofficial accounts. One of the things I was interested in when I was messaging users was just to see how many of them were actually in the UK because you often find that actually it's Americans or people in other bits of the world who are replying and actually they can't vote.

12:20So is social media sort of over inflating the sense of reach? But actually, when I was going through the comments and messaging people, a lot of them were based in the UK. That is interesting. I mean, do you think this strategy of avoiding traditional media will work for them? Because, I mean, if you look at reform, to Nigel Farage's credit, he does go on traditional media, even if he knows he's going to get heavily questioned about, for example, the five million pound gift he received. Whereas on social media, the benefit for someone like Rupert Lowe is he can kind of say what he wants unchallenged.

12:50It's sort of the Joe Roganification of political campaigning where he can go on his own like friendly YouTube channel and he can say things like the civil service is controlled by organized crime. You know, something wild claim like that could just go unchallenged. Because there was a point when Nigel Farage didn't always do interviews. I don't know if you remember when there was that channel for debate about climate change and then they put like a block of ice instead of him because he's been on the program and he's changed his approach to that and I think it probably aligns with the fact that you know he could be prime minister he kind of has to play the political game right if he ultimately wants to end up with his party in government and actually Charlie said in his in one of his answers I want Rupert Lowe to be prime minister but ultimately at the moment the political game if we're going to call it that that they're playing is growth and disruption yeah yeah we want it we want to exist we want to have huge reach and we do not want to be in any way perceived as being part of that system and actually it's what differentiates them from reform there is a significant contingent of people I think who respect the fact that they're like actually we don't want to be involved with the media because we think the media are bullshit and like it's interesting if you look at Donald Trump as well and you look at Farage Trump spends a lot of his time talking about the fake news media but ultimately he kind of like courts them all the time and so you can see why the stage that Restore at this might be a strategy they perceive as effective and I actually think it tells us a bit about the state of the world in terms of mass distrust in politicians, political systems, the media.

14:11Yeah, although one might also understand why it's confusing that it often seems that a lot of these anti-establishment, social media-driven movements happen to be supported by the most powerful establishment figures in the world. Elon Musk, for example. Elon Musk, for example. So it is this weird combination. This is this kind of amazing thing that Musk, and it was the same when Donald Trump was running to be president last time around, has succeeded in painting himself as entirely anti-establishment and entirely for the people when he's like the richest man in the world. Did you ask Charlie Downs about Musk?

14:44Yeah, I did actually. Not least because if you look at the numbers, Rupert Lowe's reach and following and everything else on X has increased since Elon Musk started resharing Restore. And I asked whether he's been in touch with Elon Musk because I was kind of interested as to whether Elon Musk is actually communicating with the party. He said, Elon Musk is welcome to his own opinions on British politics and if he wants to support us, that's up to him. And then he went on to say, we reach far more people on Facebook than X, which to some extent isn't surprising because it just has a way bigger user base and have had no communication with Zuckerberg.

15:13So it's hard to say whether Musk's support has had much of an effect on the growth of the party sort of in and of itself. I would say that if we imagine a parallel universe, and this is just from digging into the reach of Restore and where its social media footprint has been the heaviest, if that's the right word. I think if Elon Musk had not promoted Restore in the way he has, they wouldn't be in quite the same situation in terms of reach. Although I would say that a lot of the content on Facebook has nothing to do with Elon Musk. And really interestingly, speaking to people on the ground, the producer I spoke to said no one referenced Musk directly.

15:46And in fact, if anything, it seems more like it was Facebook content that people were referencing. And another way of looking at this is to see Restore as one small-ish part of a wider movement on social media that encompasses Musk himself, Tommy Robinson, and a whole ecosystem of influencers, which is all around anti-immigration, criticism of Islam, and spreading awareness about the rape gangs. And of course, you know, Rupert Lowe's party released their own rape gang inquiry. Which is hugely popular content. That is going to get prominent. And actually, it doesn't cost you any money because algorithms will push your content.

16:23And I did ask about that as well. Basically, how much money are you spending on this social media campaigning? And he said, not a huge amount. It's not expensive to run social media campaigns effectively. If you mean time, though, quite a lot. Our content requires a lot of work. Obviously, Restore isn't the first political party to have been born from social media, right? Yeah, well, for ages now, I mean, as long as social media has existed, we've seen movements and parties and political groups that have sprung up and have used social media to their advantage. You know, if we go all the way back to 2006, there's this pirate party, Pirat Partiet, that's my bad Swedish, in Sweden.

16:55That's one of the first. Yeah, and they were found in 2006 and they relied on internet forums. The Five Star Movement in Italy was born from this blog that a comedian did and was all again about like online forums and open source debate platforms and all that kind of thing. We saw in Taiwan, this new power party in English was born from this Sunflower student movement. And basically loads of it was about like rapid mobilization on social media live streams. We've also seen some kind of anti-Brexit movements in Europe mobilizing this way online. And I guess if you think of even stuff like the Me Too movement or the Arab Spring, like they were huge political movements that were born from social media.

17:31I think what feels different about this, and in some ways it's hard to compare because these are all very different types of movements and the way that they work. But I think what they tell us a bit about is actually how social media and the design and the way the algorithms work have changed, because what tends to succeed now is like highly emotive content. And in some ways, lots of this stuff I was just talking about was highly emotive. But actually, I think Restore seemed to me to be a product of the social media era we are in now, which is very much about the rage machine on social media and the kind of content that rallies people.

18:02Yeah. It also makes me think of the cockroach Janta Party in India, which is a huge kind of satirical political movement that was born out of the chief justice of India calling some kind of unemployed young people and activists cockroaches. So it's a huge movement now. And by the way, the head of the party is like an AI cockroach. But it makes you wonder, you know, as we move away from the two party system in UK politics, as our society becomes more polarised, as social media continues to define our politics, will we move into a world in which there are these algorithmic vibes based political party movements that kind of emerge and then disappear?

18:39year yeah i think what has also been really interesting where i've been trawling through the comments on restore content is how many people like genuinely think that rupert lowe will be prime minister and were incredibly surprised they didn't win the makerfield election which again i guess is because you're in your algorithmic silo where you're like well everyone's voting for this party yeah and then you're surprised when yeah like that's not the case i did ask this question to charlie downs would you consider restore a social media movement and he said it's certainly the case social media plays a major role in our campaigning but for reasons i cannot understand our opponents across the political spectrum have framed this as a bad thing.

19:11All this says to me is that they do not know how to properly make maximum use of it. It seems they do not understand that the people online are actually people in the real world with families, friends and the ability to vote. So in my view, the notion of us being just, quote, a social media movement is not a particularly relevant criticism. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet.

19:47But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

20:10Matt, I have been literally obsessed with the World Cup content on my social media feed. I cannot actually describe how much of it I've consumed because the vibes are good, which feels unusual for my feeds. Yeah, well, there's been a real sense this summer, I think, of sports content making everything seem like the world's a happy place all of a sudden. Yeah, I keep seeing these places where people are like, maybe this is all we need for world peace. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's like so at odds with the geopolitical situation. And I think a lot of the content that comes from politicians themselves that is like very rage baity.

20:42And then suddenly it's like, oh, everyone's like best friends. And you've got like Japanese fans in sombreros. Yeah. So there's been lots of horror content. So for example, there's been the story about Boston being overrun with Scotland fans. I work in Boston and I just took the train to get to work and a group of Scottish men got on and what are they doing? They're drinking Dunkin' Donuts. If that's not embracing in the New England culture, then I don't know what is. I think this World Cup is really bringing us all together. I love these people. I'm saying right now, a year from today, I'm going to Scotland and I'm going to do videos over there and I'm going to have a hell of a time.

21:19I'm going to go for 10 fucking days over there. Another genre of just like fans, kind of similar to the Scots in Boston stuff, is really funny TikToks of Americans who are like, we told the Europeans they couldn't walk and they are still walking. And it's just like fans walking along like highways. We're obviously just so used to being able to walk to places and also lots of the transportation is really expensive. Yeah, exactly. And so you can just see people in their shirts like walking along the edge of a motorway. And you're like, what? Yeah, exactly. And there's also been, of course, the town of Lawrence in Kansas.

21:51That's where the Algerian team is based. And so a bunch of random people from Kansas who have probably never been to Algeria are all of a sudden Algeria fans. I want to say thank you to Team Algeria for choosing our hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, to come here. What do you know about Algeria and what does it make you to come to support Algeria? We just know Algeria is on the Mediterranean Sea and we know that you gained independence from France kind of around the time I was born. So we don't know too much, but we want to welcome you here. They've had like Algerian music in some of the bars and like a real emphasis on like welcoming them.

22:30And like really, I've seen influencers who are quite emotional watching this content because they've been really concerned about issues like Islamophobia in the US or anti-immigrant sentiment. And they're like, oh, this is so beautiful because everyone is so welcoming and loving it. Have you seen Merlin the Duck? I've seen Merlin the Duck. So Merlin the Duck is this duck wearing a Mexico shirt who's actually even met the president. Donning his perfectly fit jersey. this duck from Mexico City became an unofficial World Cup star and long before social media discovered him he was already a familiar face here in Mexico City's historic centre and there was also a Messi duck in Argentina but hasn't quite taken off in the same way there's always an animal in the World Cup isn't there there's always like there's like the octopus I know this is actually like I can't really describe like my happy place it's like viral football plus animal football animal content I've loved also all the content like there was one which was someone being like my mum has basically been adopted by like the Dutch fans and they're like teaching her or there was a clip of um the Norwegian celebration where they rowed the boat and a fan was like teaching the Senegalese fans how to do the like rowing I actually feel like I I have almost too many examples because it's just taken over social media um another really like lovely thing has been um Vozina the um 40 year old goalkeeper for Cape Verde Cape Verde obviously actually having like an amazing time as in they've drawn two of their games and this is like like monumental for them and he has over 15 million followers after he kept a clean sheet against Spain.