Did "Becoming Brigham" Hire Bots to Artificially Boost its View Count?

[Doctor Scratch]

Greetings, Friends and Colleagues.

Halloween is just around the corner, isn't it? Time for ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and lots of candy. I hear that Dean Robbers will be hauling out his antique cauldron for an apple-bobbing contest later this week. The leaves on the Cassius Campus are turning glorious shades of autumnal red and gold.

Meanwhile, how about Becoming Brigham? The production keeps rolling forward, offering oodles of travel opportunities for its Executive Producer (along with some free meals and hotel stays), and hey--what do you know? It recently reached a milestone by posting its *fortieth* (that's 40th) episode! Quite prolific! But it's not just the long run of the podcast that has certain Mopologists beaming with pride. Perhaps you recently caught the comment on "SeN" about how pleased the Executive Producer is with the viewership and subscriber numbers. Indeed, if you take a look over at the show's YouTube channel, you will notice that views have increased noticeably. Whereas for most of the show's run, views have topped out at around 8,000 views, the most recent ten or so episodes have somehow magically shot up to double the amount. Now, how on earth did that happen? Did the producers manage to dig up some audience of Latter-day Saints who hadn't heard of Becoming Brigham? The increase is striking and seems to come out of nowhere.

But perhaps there is another explanation. Did you know that it's possible to pay money so that bots will go onto a YouTube channel and artificially inflate its Views and Subscriber numbers? To be clear: I have no idea if that is indeed what is happening with the statistics for Becoming Brigham. But, you know: Occam's Razor and all of that. Plus, take a look at this analytics site. Again, I am no expert on this sort of thing, but the subscriber numbers look awfully suspect. How is it that these subscriber numbers are magically hitting these even, round numbers day after day? (Exactly 900 on 10/15; exactly 700 on 10/16; exactly 600 on 10/17). Is it just pure luck? Or is the site's data inaccurate in some way? (The view numbers, meanwhile, look far more organic.) And there is something else that seems odd about the numbers. How is it that (for example) Episode 39 has a whopping 20K+ views, but only 151 "Likes"? Episode 36 has almost 40K views and only 223 "Likes." Are we really supposed to believe that there are huge numbers of new Latter-day Saint subscribers who aren't bothering to "like" these videos? Think of how many "Likes" the dumb comments on "SeN" get.

As I noted, these observations are speculative: I have no idea if Interpreter would stoop to something like hiring bots to boost its numbers (though you have to admit it's a possibility), and I admittedly lack the technical expertise to fully assess the statistical data. But something about the big spike in numbers starting in late August / early September seems....fishy.

In any case, I welcome other analyses of the situation.

[I Have Questions]

The dramatic and sudden uptick in views strongly suggests something other than organic growth in viewers is going on. Organic growth, and a general growing number of viewers would result in smaller, steadier increments over time.

[Doctor Scratch]

If the Mopologists resorted to bots as a means to drive up their engagement numbers, it would represent the most pathetic example of desperation and dishonesty since the 2nd Watson Letter. Moreover, it would also constitute a violation of YouTube’s Fake Engagement Policy, and they could potentially have their channel deleted—they would have to find an entirely new distribution platform.

It will be interesting to see how this develops, but this could wind up being one of the most consequential events in recent Mopologetic history.

[Gadianton]

2026-10-17 600 22.9K 8,616 488,539 -- 91 $2 - $34

34$ is more than enough to buy a great lunch for a single person. Just saying.