The fuss over the geese was actually just a psychological process

Brooklyn indie rock The Geese reached the pinnacle of rock and roll fame at the end of 2025. It is their fourth album Being killedwas released in late September and dominated the top ten charts for the year. Their fall tour do Almost everywhere. The collective hype has earned them opportunities Saturday Night Live And in Coachella And it has made the band (and singer Cameron Winter, who has a solo career) something close to a household name — at least in households where polyrhythmic art rock is a topic of conversation. The GuardianReviewing the new record Geese called it “the new saviors of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Their explosion at the scene, which seemed to come out of nowhere, led to an inevitable backlash. Haters called them “psyop“. some He doubted Their sudden rise to stardom, describing them as an “industry factory”. Others recognize their talents attributed Their reputation for marketing savvy. Sure, when a band blows up so quickly, it can seem a little inorganic and weird. When a band moves from the fringes of the conversation to the center of the conversation, it can raise suspicions that their cult status is due to some kind of backroom machinations rather than a rare combination of talent, hard work and a little good luck.

Now, those seemingly paranoid suspicions have been proven true, sort of.

In late March, the founders of the digital marketing company got involved Good projects are messy– Who offers? To each his own Instagram“Digital Experimentation and Musical Mayhem” – featured on Billboard’s On the record Podcast. in Episode (Recorded live at South by Southwest) Chaotic Good’s Andrew Spielman and Jesse Koren explain how viral marketing tactics work.

Essentially, the company creates networks of social media pages (usually on TikTok) and uses them to funnel a band’s music to a recommendation algorithm. Songs are dropped into the backgrounds of videos. Live clips are shared. Sometimes accounts, comments, and entire ecosystems of interactions can be fabricated from digital cloth, fueling — and in some cases, manufacturing entirely — the discourse around the artist. These created interactions push songs and discussion around them to the top of the platform’s algorithmic rankings. and Social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube It is, increasingly, where (real) fans discover new music.

“We can do impressions of anything at this point,” Spellman told Billboard. “We know how to go viral. We have thousands of pages.” Spielman called this process “trend simulation.” The campaigns themselves are referred to by Chaotic Good as “narrative” or… User generated content (For “User Generated Content” campaigns).

Now Chaotic Good co-founder Adam Tarsia confirms to WIRED that his company designed campaigns for both Geese and Cameron Winter. “We helped distribute clips of them performing and doing some interviews on TikTok,” Tarsia says via email, speaking on behalf of Chaotic Good. “I realize the ‘industry factory’ rhetoric is inevitable, but it has been a pleasure to be a fan of Geese since their 2021 project.” Projector“, which indicates that it was released a full four years before his agency launched.

Long-standing doubts about the band’s rise escalated during the first week of April. Share Substack Viral by singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb, traced the relationship between Geese and Chaotic Good and considered the murky ethics of such marketing. As McLamb summed up the model: “If 100 people think your song is bad, Chaotic Good will create 200 people who think your song is great.”

“I wasn’t expecting this track to be shared as widely as it was, and I was happy to see a conversation start around the whole thing,” McLamb, who is currently on tour in support of her 2025 album Good story, she says of her post titled “Fake Fans.”