Irish YouTube Star Cheats His Way To Millions Of Hits For His Terrible Song

A bit of snooping around from the guys at The Daily Dot has uncovered the dodgy antics of an Irish wannabe YouTube star, who has cheated his way to millions of views for his woeful song.

Yasha Swag has scored an extra eight million views in the last week for his song Pickles – which, quite frankly, makes Rebecca Black’s Friday sound like a critically-acclaimed smash. Here’s The Daily Dot‘s description of the track, which you can watch at the bottom of this page:

Throughout the entire 3:20 video, all you get is a repetitious “Pickles, Pickles, I got pickles” rapped softly over an EDM beat while Swag moseys down country roads and dances in front of low-grade green screens.

However, apart from the song being atrocious, the high view count for the video raises quite a few eyebrows – which The Daily Dot dissected in detail.



Pickles
received 1.1 million views on its first referral. However, Yasha Swag’s Facebook fan page only has 757 likes, and only 34 people liked the video when Swag posted it on Facebook. He made the Facebook post three full days after he was recorded to have received the 1.1 million views.

Back in October, Yasha Swag posted a Soundcloud link to Pickles, uploaded by someone named Jacob Povolotski. The Daily Dot then googled Jacob Povolotski to discover a LinkedIn profile under his name, which, along with identifying him as an Ireland native (like Swag), lists his occupation as a “meme troller” for “a company that ‘works with people in your organization, network or market to transform your strategy into a living, breathing, and sustainable success’.”

A bit more hunting, and Google also came up with a link to a Concrete 5 page that listed Jacob Povolotski’s username as JacobPOV.

JacobPOV is the author of a series of posts listed on forums such as FunkyJunk, Fiverr and Black Hat World, the latter of which, according to The Daily Eye, is “a forum where users trade tips about Black Hat SEO, a term used to describe unethical search engine optimization tactics”. The FunkyJunk profile also links to two videos created by Yasha Swag.

And to round things off, it turns out that Povolotski has been purchasing YouTube advertiser packs, and is a frequent user of apps that allow users to earn credits for viewing videos and then to apply those credits to their own video.

Fair bit to get your head around, ay? Head on over to The Daily Dot’s story for a full breakdown of their investigations.

http://youtu.be/g1al7KsnhiM

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