Users Inside the Shady Gig Work Creating Almost Every Viral Clip on the Internet It’s cheap and exploitative marketing for brands and creators. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Nitish Pahwa ? May 06, 2026 4:42 PM Photo illustration by Slate. Image vis ismagilov/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Screenshots via X. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. There’s a pernicious form of viral video that’s reshaping our collective reality, and it’s not even related to artificial intelligence. These videos are very real—albeit subtly engineered to generate entire trends.…