Geese have responded to accusations that have been floating around for the past few months that they are ‘industry plants’ or part of a major label ‘psyop’.
Yes, daft as it may seem, this moderately successful New York indie band have been accused of being part of a dastardly psychological operation to use social media to create fake fans and thus a buzz around the band.
The allegations stemmed from Geese’s relationship with PR firm Chaotic Good. In a Billboard interview in the spring, a couple of members of the marketing company talked about how they performed ‘trend simulation’ via farmed social media accounts. “We know how to go viral, we have thousands of pages,” one of them boasted, somewhat unwisely.
Geese aren’t the only artists that Chaotic Good have worked with – other clients have included Coldplay and Travis Scott – but they seemed to get tarred by association. Then The Wire magazine published a news piece in April with the headline: ‘The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop.’
Now in a Rolling Stone interview, the band have suggested that they had their own doubts about the veracity of their sudden success. “I thought the same thing, I really did,” frontman Cameron Winter says. “That seemed like a reasonable explanation.”
It seems the accusations about astroturfing (or should that be indie-turfing?) caused consternation inside the band too. “We were just like, ‘Oh, my God. The whole fucking thing is fake.’ We were having a meltdown. Then we marched up to our label over email, the relevant team members, like, ‘How long have all our fuckin’ fans been fake, you sons of bitches?’”
Winter says that he and the band had a meeting with Chaotic Good and were assured that their marketing extended to nothing more than sharing and reposting live clips of their music. “It wasn’t comments or fake fans or bots or anything,” the singer said. “It was low-effort TikTok posts that were used to boost the algorithm. They showed us samples, and it made me feel better because they were so shitty.”
Anyway, whatever the truth behind the marketing, Geese seem genuinely popular now. Their fourth album Getting Killed has gone silver in the UK, and their autumn US tour of theatres and arenas is already nearly sold out.
And the group themselves seem to have few regrets about the controversy. “I’m glad that people have thoughts about our stuff at the end of the day,” Bassist Dominic DiGesu told Rolling Stone. “At least we’re not boring and mid.”
