Jered Threatin 29, and his band Threatin have been making world headlines for having a huge fake following that was used to book gigs that hardly anyone showed up to.

Even though many have criticised and derided his effort, of which there was plenty, what he done has actually achieved getting his name and music listened to by hundreds of thousands around the world.

So putting aside the the hype what did Jered actually do to build his fake fame?
I try to piece the puzzle together step by step below.

Well the usual band activities like:
Band Website
Youtube Channel
Facebook Page
Twitter Account
Band Merchandise

In August 2016 the Facebook post likes went from one to three up too one hundred or more.
Twitter like and retweets also started rising at the same time.
Currently the FB page has 39k likes and 5k followers on twitter.
And of course the Youtube views also went up at the same time.

I assume that after a while all this social media activity and video plays did not do much to get him any *real* notoriety, gigs or attention from those who mattered in the music industry.
So it was time to pus the envelope further.

He records a video which is basically himself on vocals, guitar and drums with some added scenes in 2017.
Also records a few more songs and releases his album across all his media channels.
This also includes digital distribution on iTunes and Spotify.

Album launch, single launches all done and advertised as you would be expect..

Then he goes “one more” towards the end of 2017.
Creates a one page website of a non existing record company Superlative Music www.superlativemusic.com with a fake history and artist roster.

Creates a fake media press website Top Rock Press www.toprockpress.com with his own press release and a few others.

Creates a one page fake booking touring agent website Stageright Bookings www.stagerightbookings.com with the fake touring artists.

Creates a fake artist management site Alligned Artists.

Creates a fake PR firm site Magnified Media PR.

Creates a music Wikia page.

And a list of fake tour date on his website.

Jered then uses all this hype to book some venues for his “European tour” which is then announced and spread on social media and his fake sites. And of course all the fake likes and retweets.

He books the venues, pays for the room hire in advance and tells the venue reps that he’s expecting a big turnout.

The Facebook events .showed hundreds of people attending, fakes of course.
So when the gig days came up, Threatin played to the support bands and 2 or 3 people.

The band member were all told the same story as well. They were told costs were covered and they would get $300.
Drummer Dane Davis told Classic Rock
“It only really got weird when we played and there was no one there, I thought to myself, ‘This is very odd. This is supposed to be a sold-out show. What’s going on?’
The whole time as the show went on, Jered kept saying, ‘This is sort of strange. I’m used to more people being here.'”
He added
“I do think that he wanted this tour to be successful…he wanted the tour to be successful and to promote his band and his music. I think he genuinely thought it could happen and that there wouldn’t be any backlash if he did orchestrate a lot of this stuff.”

Some footage of one of the gigs

 

After six gigs with no people social media posts started appearing, then articles about the “scam” of fake fame of Threatin.
At this point Jered decided to talk to the rest of the band and said “We’ve seen the articles and everything, we might cancel the tour” and was blaming others for the poor turnout.
The band members were already getting messages and articles and were also ready to quit.

So the tour ended and they eventually made it back home.

While the music industry is rife with fakeness, it’s very hard to pull off without a big budget and big industry players support.
I do remember a few top hits that were followed up with gig dates, which were then eventually canceled with some excuse due to poor ticket sales.

In this case all that money and effort spent may have been better used to try and get a support tour with some known local acts.
Either way time will tell if it ends up being a publicity stunt or just another music industry failure.
My personal thoughts are that Jered was playing what he though his last card to get noticed and make the bigtime, with not much to lose.