Dark truth behind mysterious influencer Jean Phil who's exploded all over internet
An 'influencer' called Jean Philanthrope has got the internet wondering what on earth is happening with the snappily-dressed man shadowboxing in Paris.
Videos on the social media account have racked up millions of views, with one video alone being viewed 35.9 million times.
The same character features in all of them. It's a man wearing a tweed suit or bow tie, with hair that appears aggressively bleached blonde and styled in a bob cut, and a twirly moustache.
He's standing out in a public place, usually by a road junction, or sometimes sitting at a cafe with oysters or a croissant, before standing up and doing some boxing moves in his suit while looking at the camera.
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There's a slightly ironic clue to the truth behind the account in the name 'Philanthrope', with the Ancient Greek words 'phil-', meaning love, combined with 'anthropos' which refers to humans or humanity, together meaning a lover of humans or humanity, which is incidentally also where we get 'philanthropist'.
It's an ironic clue because the eccentric-looking character who features in the videos on the Instagram account, eating oysters or standing in front of the Eiffel Tower or a random junction and shadow-boxing, is in fact AI-generated.
The character is linked to a meme coin, a form of cryptocurrency, and some are now speculating that the distinctive, highly meme-able character was in fact created as a marketing ploy for the cryptocurrency, Dexerto reports.
What are meme coins?
Meme coins are a cryptocurrency based around an instantly recognisable character, which draws in attention on social media.
As the character and cryptocurrency draws attention, the idea is that the price then rises with this, though this kind of cryptocurrency is often very unstable.
A well-known example of a meme coin is Dogecoin, which was originally created as a joke and has become very widely known.
Infamously, Haliey Welch - the woman behind the Hawk Tuah meme - tried to launch a $HAWK memcoin, which soared to a $490 milion market cap shortly after launch, before losing 95 percent of its value.
Caitlyn Jenner, Jason Derulo, and Iggy Azalea have all launched memecoins, and were all hit with backlash after the value of their cryptocurrency crashed.
According to Coinbase, the JEANPHIL token surged in price on 20 September to reach a high of $0.02845 the following day, before losing more than 99 percent of its value before the day was over.
The Jean Philanthrope character, however, has certainly drawn attention, appearing in hundreds of other videos as other accounts generate videos.
A similar character called Archibald Brown, who appears to be intended as an English rival the first character, has also appeared on Instagram as well, with the videos taking on a similar format of him shadowboxing in public locations.
Many people took to the comment section on social media, comparing the character to Lord Farquaad from Shrek or characters from Wallace and Gromit due the appearance of the character's hair, while many others also pointed out that the videos are AI generated.
"I think this is an Ai guy," one person wrote, while another replied: "Dude, it sucks this guy is literally 100% AI".
Someone else shared their frustration at realising the character is AI-generated, writing: "Unfollow, I just realized that your AI. It makes me so depressed. I can’t believe that I was bamboozled."
"I was so disappointed to find out this was AI," another person replied. "I never get tricked by AI. I was tricked by AI."
Some seemed to think that the videos are real, with one replying: "Please lord PLEASE - let this be a real human."
Topics: World News, Cryptocurrency, Instagram, Artificial Intelligence
Kit Roberts