The other day I encountered an instagram reel reposted on tumblr that bewildered me.
It was the video below, but keep in mind that it was posted without a link back to an original source so I could not see the account posting it.
Absolutely bewildering. There are so many layers going on here. Who is this anthropomorphic dollar. Why is it speaking a mix of English and Chinese. What is this video we are watching. Why is the dollar saying what it is saying? A lot of people who watch this video immediately start mentioning things like "dead internet theory" and assume an AI made this video. I was obsessed with figuring out what the deal was with this. This was not the only video like this and they weren't all using the dollar, weren't all quite the same, and weren't all from the same accounts. But what an incredibly specific things going on! An anthropomorphic dollar saying "小红书"??? Why would multiple accounts be making videos with that? Clearly, surely, this was AI, right???
But to add to the mystery, every account posting these videos on instagram got permanently banned. Well, okay, because bots posting AI slop, right??? No. The accounts were banned for copyright infringement. Because someone tried to sue Instagram over these videos. What.
To add to the confusion, several different people made YouTube videos explaining the "situation" which all had conflicting information from each other. The mystery deepened... but I'm a librarian. I can do research. I got to the bottom of things. I got through all the layers.
The Iceberg At a Glance
Since AI is involved, I decided to use a bad generative AI image of an iceberg I found on duckduckgo image search instead of the classic iceberg meme.
We are actually going to start at the bottom of this iceberg and build up the layers from there. The more compelling way to tell the story, which also makes it harder to understand and follow, begins at the top of the iceberg and then "reveals" the "true" next layer beneath over and over again. Entertaining, but it paints a poor picture. We will begin at the first layer.
Layer 1: The Chinese Cultural Revolution and Orthodox Jewish Kiruv
Little Red Book
In China, during the Cultural Revolution, people got really into these little red books (小 (xiao, little) 红(hong, red) 书(shu, book) with quotations from Mao Zedong. They became very iconic.
Kiruv
Kiruv means "bringing close" and is the closest thing Judaism has to proselytizing. The secular English name used for this practice is "Orthodox Jewish Outreach." The organization and movement Chabad (followers of the deceased rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, now infamous for building tunnels under Brookyln) is most strongly associated with this practice, but the Breslovites (who follow the deceased rabbi Nachman of Breslov) also practice Kiruv.
Kiruv is basically about reaching out to non-observant and non-orthdox Jews and trying to coax them into becoming just a little more observant, a little bit closer to becoming Chabadniks or Breslovites. Any amount closer to becoming orthodox is a victory, but of course the eventual goal is bringing them in all the way.
Kiruv is controversial, particularly because of how it most often manifests as men going around asking random people if they're Jewish based on appearances, but it's mostly benign most of the time.
Layer 2: Chinese Instagram and Fiveish the Hasidic Five Dollar Bill
Chinese Instagram
In China, the app most similar to Instagram is call Xiaohongshu. A lot of content on Xiaohongshu is just reposted content from Douyin, TikTok, and Instagram Reels—sometimes with Chinese dubbing and subtitles placed on top of something originally in another language. There is also plenty of original content. Often there are Chinese subtitles on videos to make different dialects of Chinese more mutually intelligible. Cantonese and Mandarin, when spoken, are arguably not the same language. But they are written more or less the same within Mainland China.
Why a company thought to name a social media website after the little red book, I have no idea, but they sure did. I can't wait for the new American social media website, Essay on Manners.
Fiveish, the Hasidic Five Dollar Bill
Oorah Kiruv Rechokim (Awaken and bring in those who are far), Oorah for short, is a Kiruv organization in New Jersey. They do all sorts of stuff, including producing a children's TV program called Fiveish and Friends about an anthropomorphic five dollar bill who teaches little hasidic boys good Jewish behaviors.
"Fiveish" is a pun on the name Faivish, the Yiddish version of Phoebus (related to the Greek god Apollo but imported into Yiddish in reference to Samson which has a similar meaning to the Greek Phoebus). You are probably more familiar with the name Feivel, which is a diminutive of Faivish, and the name of a mouse in An American Tail.
So, Faivish, Five-ish, five dollar bill, get it? I guess? The show has a lot of self-aware poking fun at Jewish stereotypes and halacha. To a Jew, you'd get these jokes, to an outsider...
Layer 3: Irony-Poisoned Dirtbag Left Podcasts
Cumtown on Fiveish
Cumtown is a 3edgy5u ostensibly left-wing podcast where extremely online dudebros crack offensive 'jokes' and use the R word a lot. The hosts are Nick Mullen and Stavros Halkias . One of the original hosts, now departed, was Adam Friedland.
At one point, they did a segment on Fiveish and Friends, laughing at how these hasidic Jews "accidentally" made the most antisemitic parody of a children's show for hasidic children. To an outsider, Jewish children with peyos dancing around with a Five Dollar Bill just seems comically antisemitic. Oorah is also a pro-zionist organization (like most Jewish organizations) and had a controversy in 2007 where ICE busted them for hiring underpaid undocumented immigrants at their summer camp, so the Cumtown hosts saw Oorah as a fair target.
Oorah's writers are, as far as I can tell, "in on the joke" around the Fiveish mascot, but to outsiders they don't seem to be. Fans of Cumtown proceeded to make all sorts of memes about Fiveish and Friends, particularly trying to frame the show as "Hamas Antisemitic Propaganda" in an attempt to spread humorous misinformation and hopefully trick someone into genuinely believing the show to be made by antisemites and not be hasidim. For funsies.
Red Scare Podcast
Red Scare is another "dirtbag left" podcast, hosted by Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan. Dasha was formerly engaged to former Cumtown host Adam Friedland. Despite being ostensibly leftists and once a Bernie supporter, Dasha is mired in a lot of controversy, including having possibly getting into Infowars shit and converting to "post-ironic sedevacantist Traditionalist Catholicism?" She's just kinda so irony poisoned nobody can even tell what her actual views are anymore or why she says anything she says. She is both "dirtbag left" and "New Right." Anna, on the other hand, is a COVID vaccine denier and self-identified COVID truther. Yeah. Some say the podcast is a gateway that turns people from the far left to the far right.
So yeah anyway they exist... What layer are we on again? I swear this all comes together coherently.
Layer 4: Prognoz Pogodi using AI Deepfakes of Dasha and Anna to Narrate Xiaohongshu Reuploads of Douyin Videos
So a "surrealist artist" who goes by Prognoz Pogodi (presumably not his real name) uh, exists, and is a fan(???) of both Cumtown and Red Scare. He is so deeply deeply mired in irony poisoning I earnestly cannot tell if he's like obsessed with Dasha because he loves her or because he hates her or what.
But what I do know, is that he used AI to make a deepfake simulation of Dasha, Anna, their whole circle of podcaster friends, and several other famous and microfamous people, and started making weird dissociative instagram reels using them.
The general format for these reels is he takes a clip where someone says something, anything really, and then replaces the audio with AI Dasha Deepfake (or someone else) reciting the same words, which always sounds really funny because the tone will be completely off. A Kamala Harris speech meant to motivate a crowd is now a dry, vocally fried monotone recited slowly by a post-ironic podcaster. A song about China's five-year plan is now a monotone vocal fried recitation.
Prognoz eventually hits on a format that works really well. He takes videos from Xiaohongshu, often reuploads of life hacks from instagram reels with Chinese captions added, then runs those captions through poor machine translation (which I suspect he mangles intentionally) and then has his deepfakes read the translation on top of the video with little avatars overlaid and English subtitles on top of the Chinese captions so that you get multiple layers of captions. Sometimes the AI just reads random mandarin in the middle of English sentences. Here is an example
Iconically, he leaves "Xiaohongshu" at the end of the video transcript to be read out loud by the AI which is always a jarring nonsequiter to end on. Sometimes it gets "translated" and read as "little red book" or "little sweet potato." （小红薯 instead of 小红书）
This leads to this format being referred to as "Xiaohongshu" by his fans, and in Summer 2024 he begins "Xiaohongshu Summer" posting lots and lots of these videos.
And since he's a fan of Cumtown, he makes a Deepfake AI CGI Simulation of Fiveish, the anthropomorphic Five Dollar Bill. And Fiveish joins the gang reading Xiaohongshu videos.
Here is a compliation of every one of his instagram videos using Fiveish
Layer 5: YapDollar AKA MFPharaoh
In what is one of the most bizarre twists of fate, Prognoz Pogodi ends up with a copycat!!
Someone named MFPharaoh, an established meme poster on instagram, starts making "parodies" of Prognoz Pogodi's Xiaohongshu videos. He posts these videos to an account called YapDollar which in only 5 days gets 300,000 followers (far more than the 60k Prognoz has).
YapDollar videos imitate the format very closely, even including the random mandarin and "Xiaohongshu" sign-off. However, YapDollar videos only use the Fiveish deepfake and the narration is clearly not straight machine translation of the captions on screen. Often there are obvious jokes written into the script on purpose, including the occasional N word (MFPharaoh I think might be Black?) and what is being said just usually is not what's happening in the video. Sometimes multiple clips are smashed together to make things extra unintelligible. If the originals are dissociative and surreal humor, YapDollar is frenetic and high energy. They are entertaining but for different reasons.
Layer 6: Prognoz Gets Jealous
Prognoz Pogodi, posting as @Ganstasportivik on instagram, gets green with envy. His bit has been stolen and he is mad. It was already an ironic joke but now someone is copying him and getting more attention for it.
Prognoz starts getting more creative to differentiate himself. Fiveish no longer does Xiaohongshu Summer now he reads the news or strange rambling that was either written by Prognoz or must have been found on Reddit somewhere. (You can start seeing these as the compilation linked above gets near the end). The videos get even more surreal and strange with ramblings about conspiracy theories and being haunted by evil entities.
It isn't enough to capture the attention of YapDollar. I think Prognoz wrongly things that YapDollar is more popular because people like the "shallow" content more. I think it's really just because MFPharaoh was already more popular than him.
He makes a "YapDollar Revealed" video revealing how he was copied, presented as a fake BBC segment, but it's still not enough.
So he snitches to Oorah. He sends them an email showing them that their IP is being used by YapDollar. He posts on Reddit /r/offmychest confessing to doing this. Oorah threatens legal action against instagram. Instagram permanently bans YapDollar and MFPharaoh...
And then bans Prognoz Pogodi from instagram too. All Fiveish content gets you banned now. Super duper banned.
Layer 7: Context Void and Misunderstandings
This creates an information vacuum and a collapse of sources. What has been archived and reuploaded now lacks context as following watermarks bring you to banned accounts. It begins to appear as if @YapDollar and @GangstaSportivik (Prognoz's instagram handle) are just nonsense usernames for dummy accounts made by Chinese AI Slop Outlets. People mistake the videos as coming from the same source and can't distinguish the YapDollar memes from the Prognoz narrations. With no account history, people can't see what Prognoz used to post that makes it clear he's a memester too.
Videos appear on YouTube trying to explain the situation but in all of them they misunderstand PrognozPogodi. People believe him to not be self aware or in on the joke. He is framed as a genuine conspiracy theorist with probable schizophrenia making these videos for inscrutable reasons, as opposed to YapDollar who is parodying the "genuine yapping." They think he is writing the scripts himself, and not just copying something he found online. It's incorrect, and I am here to use the power of Cohost's inscrutable high search engine ranking to correct the record on YapDollar, Fiveish, Prognoz Pogodi, and Xiaohongshu.
This collapse of context puts the videos in a new light. They feel like a "dead internet" and not like parodies and art pieces commentating on the use of AI slop to create a sense of unreality online. They flunk Poe's Law and are mistaken for that which they parodied. They are mistaken for Chinese when they are not Chinese in origin. The misinformation on the order of events creates a new layer of unreality. It is the perfect culmination of that which was the focus of the project of Xiaohongshu Summer.
Fans are reuploading every video of AI fiveish they can all over the internet and are often putting YapDollar and Prognoz Pogodi videos on the same account furthering the confusion. "YapDollar_Official" on Youtube has this video which was actually a prognoz pogodi video!!
So where are they now? I haven't found anything I can be confident is MFPharaoh's new account making new "Yap content." There's a "YapDollar Official" on YouTube but I don't think it's him due to having a mix of yapdollar and prognoz content. He seems to have tried to rejoin instagram a few times and just keeps getting banned.
Prognoz Pogodi has stopped using Fiveish and more rarely signs off videos with "Xiaohongshu" but is still posting on Twitter and YouTube making AI Dasha narrate Chinese instagram reels about making homemade boba tea or whatever and they're still pretty dang good. He's also gone back to diversifying what kinds of things he uses as sources, like Donald Trump ads and videos on achieving enlightenment. It's more obvious that he's self-aware and trying to be funny, if you find this account. But since he's not using fiveish anymore, most people will not find this account or connect it to the original fiveish xiaohongshu videos. (Update from the future: His instagram got unbanned!)
And everyone who encounters AI Fiveish now is only seeing this final layer. The tip of the iceberg. And is bewildered and entertained thinking they've found surreal AI slop and not an intentional meme. The voice emulation and avatars are made with "AI" (which is not a coherent singular technology) but it's all handcrafted by humans trying to be funny and surreal.
That's all, folks
I spent a few hours obsessively deciphering all this and sending videos and new discoveries to Tom and Tom and they were like "you should make this a cohost post" so here it is you can now all reap the benefits of this knowledge and understand all the layers of those AI five dollar bill lifehack videos.
Which do you like more? The Progonoz Classique that does not write original words or the YapDollar Nouveau that writes more intentional jokes into the script?
Do you think Prognoz Pogodi is in love with Dasha or is he making fun of her? Will MFPharaoh ever make a return to social media without getting banned for copyright infringement? How does the utilization of Chinese play into orientalist sinophobic tropes associating China with cheap mass-produced AI content? How does MFPharaoh and his fans framing Prognoz Pogodi as mentally ill play into ableist tropes? How does Prognoz Pogodi criticizing MFPharaoh or using the N word for "cheap laughs" play into a history of white people framing Black people as low-class or crude, in contrast to "high-class white art?" (Especially when his original instagram username had "Gansta" in it? Is this cultural appropriation? Or perhaps outright racist by using AAVE as a gag?) Do you think Prognoz Pogodi is a Traditionalist Catholic? Is he Far Right or Far Left? How does Dasha feel about this? What do you think Oorah thought was going on when they first saw these videos? Was Prognoz Pogodi in the right or the wrong to snitch?
There are still many questions left unanswered, but this is all that we can glean from the information available. You must deeply contemplate the meaning of this multi-layered and complex series of events, this Summer of 2024.
小红书