A 22-year-old medical student in India built a fictional MAGA influencer using AI, raked in thousands of dollars a month from unsuspecting conservative men online, and used the money to fund his path to becoming a doctor in America. In an interview, he callled his fans 'super dumb' for falling for it.
Sam was broke, behind on his licensing exam fees, and desperate for cash when he stumbled onto this idea. Recalling the entire story to WIRED, he turned to Google's Gemini AI chatbot for business advice, and the bot delivered a surprisingly specific recommendation - target the 'MAGA/conservative niche,' calling it a 'cheat code.' The reason, Gemini told him, was that 'the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal.'
Indian medical student created Emily Hart, an Instagram influencer
Armed with that insight, Sam created Emily Hart, a fictitious 22-year-old registered nurse who looked like Jennifer Lawrence, loved guns, hated immigrants, and wasn't shy about posing in a bikini. He had never set foot in the IS, but that didn't stop him.
According to WIRED, Sam crafted Emily's persona down to the last detail. He posted AI-generated photos of her ice fishing, drinking Coors Light, shooting rifles, and waving American flags. Her captions dripped with conservative lines like "If you want a reason to unfollow: Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported." Every single day, Sam wrote pro-Christian, pro-Second Amendment, anti-immigration content.
The account exploded. Within a month, Emily Hart had over 10,000 Instagram followers. WIRED reports that Sam claims individual reels were pulling in 3 million, 5 million, even 10 million views. The algorithm, it turned out, absolutely loved rage bait.
Indian medical student monetised through the AI Influencer
Once the followers piled in, Sam monetised hard. He set up a Fanvue account, a rival to OnlyFans that explicitly allows AI-generated content, and used Grok AI to generate explicit photos of Emily for paying subscribers. He also sold MAGA-themed T-shirts, with slogans like "PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats."
WIRED reports Sam was making several thousand dollars a month while spending just 30 to 50 minutes a day on the whole operation. "In India, even in professional jobs, you can't make this amount of money," he said. "I haven't seen any easier way to make money online." The Fanvue account alone reportedly flooded him with cash in just days, with fans paying for exclusive content and personalised messages, some of which Sam described as deeply unsettling.
Curious whether the formula would work across the aisle, Sam told WIRED he created a liberal version of Emily on Instagram. It went nowhere. His blunt explanation. "Democrats know that it's AI slop, so they don't engage as much." His assessment of why the MAGA version worked was even blunter, "The MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people - like, super dumb people. And they fall for it." The very fans who made him thousands of dollars were, in his own words, the easiest to fool on the internet.
Despite Instagram's official requirement that creators disclose AI-generated content, Emily Hart's account ran freely for months before the platform pulled the plug. According to WIRED, Instagram finally banned the account in February for 'fraudulent' activity.
Despite engineering a months-long deception that exploited loneliness, political paranoia, and the desperation of older men online, Sam told WIRED he feels no remorse. "I don't feel like I was scamming people," he said. In his view, people got the content they wanted and he got paid — a fair exchange.
