Jered Threatin: A conversation with a false rock god

It's an interesting saga. One of the parts that I hadn't heard before was that not only did the band leader fake all the parts necessary to book the tour, he also claims to have faked much of the outrage exposing himself as a fake:

But that’s because he had something he was eager to show me - a series of emails that he said he sent out under yet another alias, a Gmail account belonging to “E. Evieknowsit”.

“URGENT: News tip,” the subject line read.

“The musician going by the name Threatin is a total fake. He faked a record label, booking agent, facebook likes, and an online fanbase to book a European tour. ZERO people are coming to the shows and it is clear that his entire operation is fake,” he wrote, including links to all his phoney websites.

“Please don’t let this man fake his way to fame... Please Expose him.”

The first such message he showed me was dated 2 November, a day into the Breaking the World Tour, and a week before the first news reports were published. He says he sent the messages out to a database of reporters’ emails he keeps in a massive Excel spreadsheet on his laptop - to outlets like the Huffington Post, Spin, Consequence of Sound, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Pitchfork, New York Times, MetalSucks and, yes, the BBC. Although it was unclear if the tips directly resulted in coverage, some of the emails appear to have predated articles.

If true, this is a rather extraordinary level of fake self-promotion. And if it's not true, it's even more remarkable to that he was able to get the BBC to write an article making the claim on his behalf.

I don't find the original deception, or his claims that he did it intentionally, very interesting at all.

In an artistic sense, it's trite. In a PR sense, I don't see it being very effective because, actually, he's not very good. So ultimately all that's happened is that he's financially and emotionally hurt some people in an already tough business and congratulated himself for it.

For the BBC, that’s a surprisingly softball article. He defrauded venues out of money, bandmasters out of a good chunk of their time (and considering fucking with their pay at the last second, money too.) it seems there should be a lot more depth to the “how do you feel about screwing all these people?” line of questioning.

It also seemed unduly credulous. For someone who illustrated they were an excellent manipulator online, but also apparently an excellent conman at the direct interpersonal level (see: sustained lying with the band mates), the article let the claim about his self-outing go without any real skepticism. A quote from his brother is fine, but how about actually following up with the reporters that were supposedly emailed? One of them was at the BBC - would it be that hard to confirm whether his disclosure was real?

Manipulating the "music industry", which has its share of problems, is one thing. When spun/phrased this way it can make it seem like a positive... "this guy is sticking it to the man!"

But in reality, he screwed venues, his band members, and others, and seems not to care that humans and small businesses were hurt in the process because "LOL music industry"

He got his 15 minutes of fame, his following will probably dwindle, and all for the small cost of his dignity/trustworthiness. It's pretty gross, honestly.

WOW! what a ride. sounds like he is atleast having fun manipulating the weird creature known as the modern music industry. Aside, That BBC webpage is so well designed - Soft on the eyes, pictures tastefully spaced out. Nice background colour on the font. well done designers.

I listened to some of his music. It's not awful but man, he needs a bassist. There is just no low end

A guy who's taken "any press is good press" to heart.

Note: the title is "The wannabe rock star who conned his way to fame" on the BBC homepage, but "Jered Threatin" on the article. The one from the homepage seems to make more sense in a HN context.