“Fuck if I know, I just thought it was interesting.” She shrugs, then clicks to a new slide.
And I want to die.
“Why?” I groan, staring at the screen.
It’s Marcus. In his fur coat. Sprawled on a couch in what looks like a government building—the state capitol based on the marble columns visible in the background—wearing nothing but boxers and that fucking coat.
The photo has 847K likes.
I can’t look away. It’s like a car crash. “How did this happen? How did we miss this?”
“If I had an answer for you, it would be on the slide.” Alex sounds as disturbed as I feel.
“But how?—”
“Dylan, I don’t know. It’s from eight months ago. The caption says,Late-night session at the capitol, who needs pants anyway?” She makes a gagging sound. “It has twelve thousand comments.”
“I don’t want to know what the comments say.”
“Good, because I’m not reading them.” She clicks to the next slide. “But here’s what I found.”
PATTERNS & RED FLAGS.
“He posts every single day. Multiple times a day on TikTok and Instagram. It’s all very—” she searches for the word, “—curated. Like he’s building a brand.”
“The brand being ‘America’s boyfriend’?”
“Exactly.” She clicks through examples.
Screenshots of Marcus at charity events. Marcus at the gym. Marcus making coffee in the morning with the caption “Good morning beautiful people, what’s making you smile today?”
I feel ill.
“He uses a lot of engagement bait. Polls. Questions.Should I wear the navy suit or the gray suit today? What should I make for dinner? Which restaurant should I try this weekend?” Alex’s voice drips with disdain. “Two million people think they’re dating him.”
Like my Instagram. Coffee and sunsets and carefully chosen smiles. Curating. Performing. Hiding who we really are.
“Meanwhile, he’s murdering women.”
“Meanwhile, he’s murdering women,” she echoes. “And here’s the thing—the comments are all positive. Aggressively positive. I scrolled for twenty minutes and couldn’t find a single negative comment.”
“That’s impossible with two million followers.”
“Exactly.” She leans forward. “Either he’s deleting negative comments, or someone is scrubbing them, or—and this is my theory—the engagement is fake. Bought. He is manufacturing the interactions, even though the followers seem real.”
I sit back. “So he’s paying for the appearance of being beloved.”
“Which tracks with the lack of fan accounts or parody accounts. Real cultural phenomena generate that stufforganically. But Marcus? Nothing. Just his official accounts posting into a void of purchased engagement.”
“That’s—” I pause. “Actually really fucking smart detective work.”
“Thank you.” She grins, pleased with herself. “I’ve been working on this presentation since last Monday.”
“Again, which David covered your work?”
“PowerPoint David.”
“You’ve assigned them descriptors now?”
