Our present digital reality has its ups and downs with using platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. While artists and businesses use it as a fair game, there are others out there who tend to buy likes, followers, and comments from bots. To some extent, we will never know how many humans genuinely “like” anything that exists on the internet. With that said, NME has reported a story about the Los Angeles band, Threatin. You may have never heard of him before and most of his social media accounts have since been deactivated but, he’s been accused by multiple venues in Europe/UK for faking an online presence to book an overseas tour. The apparent sold-out trek kicked off on November 1st and supposedly, no one has been showing up.
Venues have been slamming the artist for lying about advance ticket sales, promising over 150 attendees and seeing no one at each show. Additional allegations have been made that Threatin has purchased their Facebook Likes, YouTube views/comments, and more. The only people that attended the group’s scheduled shows were essentially on the support band’s guestlist. NME mentioned the opener Ghost of Machines stayed for the full show because he initially felt bad for the band thinking it was his promoter who was at fault. Later the group discovered, Threatin was supposedly aware of the lack of ticket sales.
NME spoke to Ghost of Machines singer Billy Bingham asking how he feels about the situation:
Bingham explained:
“At the time, we all felt a little bit stunned with the whole situation as it all unfolded.We didn’t really know what to think as we waited to hear if the venue would close or the show would go ahead. I believed, from what I had heard that evening, that it was the promoter who had duped Threatin and I did feel sorry for him (hence why we watched his set). It wasn’t until the hours and days after that I realised everything about his online presence is a lie and that he probably knew about everything beforehand – even before booking the tour. I feel angry that acts like this exist – who buy likes, comments and YouTube plays and then book reputable venues and lie about ticket sales. It damages the music scene and venues end up out of pocket because of an empty room. It also makes it harder for genuine bands like mine, who work hard, to gain live exposure due to the fact that no tickets were actually sold. We ended up out of pocket due to expenses, van hire etc. as we expected to sell merch at the show. It doesn’t put us off playing live, the owners of the Exchange were amazing throughout – just like many of the venues across the country. You learn from these experiences and we’ll just be more wary in future.”
If you’re curious to hear what Threatin sounds like, his YouTube is still active but, commenting has been turned off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYxLAGVTabQ
This story about what is essentially a fake band, is absolutely fascinating. Conned themselves a tour without any fans, using fake live videos and bought Facebook likes.
I implore you to go down the rabbit hole and check some of their videos! pic.twitter.com/IqiVc2z27R
— Dan (@buzzingbugs) November 8, 2018
