The Wild Geese Chase

Last week, Wired published a pretty terrible piece from John Semley, which was given the headline “The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop”. It is purportedly an investigation into the way a particular marketing company manages to make its musician clients popular, but what it actually becomes is a puff piece for that marketing company, albeit accidentally. Ryan Broderick: The blowback against WIRED’s report has been pretty immense. McLamb had to put out a statement on X, writing “It’s important to me to say that I do not consider Geese to be a ‘psy-op’ and [told WIRED] as much.” Music critic Anthony Fantano wrote on X, “One of the most stupid, irresponsible, and vapid headlines/pieces I’ve read from wired. Shame.” And journalist Max Read wrote on Bluesky, “Guys whose job it is to sell astroturfed viral marketing campaigns really love to tell people that their astroturfed viral marketing campaigns are extremely effective.” Which is exactly the problem here. The…