Trend Simulation
Manufacture organic-looking virality with networks of fake pages and fabricated discourse
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 74%
Trend simulation is a manufactured-virality playbook run by digital marketing firms. The firm operates networks of thousands of social media pages, primarily on TikTok, and uses them to drive an artist's music into the recommendation algorithm. Songs are dropped into the backgrounds of videos, live clips are shared, and burner accounts post comments so that whole ecosystems of interaction can be fabricated from nothing, stoking and sometimes completely manufacturing discourse around an artist. These ginned-up interactions push the songs and the conversation around them higher up the platform rankings, where real fans then discover them. Because social feeds are increasingly where people find new music, the manufactured perception becomes a self-fulfilling reality. The hosts note the corrosive effect: once this works, it stops being an exploit and becomes the baseline cost of entry, triggering a race to the bottom.
Origin
Extracted from a Wired article read aloud on the episode about the Brooklyn band Geese, describing methods that marketing firm Chaotic Good Projects, whose co-founder Spellman dubbed the process 'trend simulation', detailed on Billboard's podcast.
Core principles
- 01Recommendation algorithms reward engagement volume, not authenticity.
- 02Discovery increasingly happens on social feeds, so that is where perception is engineered.
- 03Discourse itself can be fabricated to make an artist feel ubiquitous.
- 04Enough manufactured signals become indistinguishable from a real cultural moment.
- 05The tactic gamifies the field so it becomes the minimum table stakes, not an edge.
How to run it
- 1
Build the page network
Create and maintain a large network of social media accounts, potentially thousands of pages, across the target platform.
Watch out Fabricated networks are exactly what 'industry plant' investigators look for.
- 2
Seed the sound
Drop the artist's song into the backgrounds of many videos so the audio starts circulating widely.
Pro tip Background placement feels incidental, which reads as organic.
- 3
Distribute clips
Share live performance clips and interview snippets across the network to build a sense of ubiquity.
- 4
Fabricate discourse
Use burner accounts to post comments and manufacture debate, creating whole ecosystems of interaction out of nothing.
Pro tip Manufactured controversy drives more engagement than praise.
Watch out This is astroturfing; if exposed it becomes the story.
- 5
Ride the algorithm
Let the inflated engagement push the songs and discussion up the platform's ranking so they surface to real users.
- 6
Convert real discovery
Genuine fans discover the now-elevated content and, if the song is actually good, convert into lasting listeners.
Watch out A weak song still dies after the initial manufactured spike.
In the wild
Brooklyn indie rockers Geese shot to prominence in late 2025, dominating top-ten lists seemingly out of nowhere, which triggered 'industry plant' backlash. A marketing firm later confirmed it had run engineered campaigns for the band, distributing clips of them performing and doing interviews on TikTok across networks of pages to drive the music into the recommendation algorithm. The hosts debate whether this differs meaningfully from an old-school flyer or fake-dollar-bill guerrilla campaign, concluding the discomfort is that people feel someone got something they did not earn.
→ A sudden, contested rise to mainstream visibility.
Common mistakes
Treating it as a shortcut around quality
Manufactured attention only buys the initial spike; without a genuinely good, replayable song the audience evaporates and nothing is added to playlists.
Ignoring the backlash cost
Once exposed, the 'industry plant' narrative can eclipse the music itself and permanently taint the artist's authenticity.
Is it for you?
Best for
Labels and marketing firms trying to break an act into mainstream visibility fast.
Not ideal for
Artists who want durable, replayable fandom rather than a spike, or anyone unwilling to fabricate engagement.
From the transcript
“the firm creates networks of social media pages on TikTok and uses them to drive the band's music into the recommendation algorithm.”
“We can drive impressions on anything at this point... We know how to go viral. We have thousands of pages.”
“Spellman has dubbed the process trend simulation.”
From the episode
How TikTok Hijacked The Future Of Music - Nik Nocturnal - #1095
Nik Nocturnal