The Emily Hart Saga, Part 2: The AI Thirst Trap Grift

Sam, a 22-year-old medical student from India, created Emily Hart, an AI-generated right-wing influencer, which became his most lucrative side hustle before he was outed as a 'scammer' and faced backlash from fans. In a follow-up episode of the podcast Close All Tabs, Sam and Wired senior culture writer Ej Dickson discuss the downfall of the MAGA dream girl and the rise of AI 'thirst' grifts, with Sam arguing he should not be labeled a scammer.

The Emily Hart Saga, Part 2: The AI Thirst Trap Grift View the full episode transcript. Emily Hart, the bikini-wearing right-wing AI influencer, had captured the hearts, minds and more of MAGA men online. But her creator, Sam, had grown sick of the creepy messages and unsolicited explicit photos he’d received from Emily’s adoring fans. And he was about to be outed as a “scammer.” In this follow-up to last week’s episode, we dig into the downfall of the MAGA dream girl, the explosion of AI “thirst” grifts and why Sam says he shouldn’t be labeled as a “scammer” at all. Guests: Ej Dickson https://www.wired.com/author/ej-dickson/ , senior culture writer at Wired “Sam,” creator of AI MAGA Influencer Emily Hart Further Reading/Listening: This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men https://www.wired.com/story/ai-generated-maga-girls/ — Ej Dickson, Wired Goose, a New Gay Dating App, Appears to Be a Psyop https://www.wired.com/story/goose-a-new-gay-dating-app-appears-to-be-a-psyop/ — Ej Dickson, Wired How India’s Cyber Scam Industry Causes Global Havoc https://inkstickmedia.com/how-indias-cyber-scam-industry-causes-global-havoc/ — Hanan Zaffar, Inkstick Inside the Booming ‘AI Pimping’ Industry https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pimping-industry-deepfakes-instagram/ — Jason Koebler and Emanuel Maiberg, Wired Delays in Visa Program Threaten Placement of Hundreds of Doctors in Underserved Areas https://kffhealthnews.org/health-industry/hhs-exchange-visitor-program-visa-waiver-j1-h1b-delays-foreign-doctors-deadline/ — Arielle Zionts, KFF Health News White House Wants More Doctors But Its Immigration Policies Block Them https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/11/white-house-wants-more-doctors-but-its-immigration-policies-block-them/ — Stuart Anderson, Forbes Foreign medical residents fill critical positions at U.S. hospitals, but many now face visa issues https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/foreign-medical-residents-fill-critical-positions-at-u-s-hospitals-but-many-now-face-visa-issues — Adithi Ramakrishnan and Devi Shastri, PBS News Indians lead UK exit wave as Britain’s migration crackdown begins to bite | Immigration News https://www.business-standard.com/immigration/indians-lead-uk-exit-wave-as-britain-s-migration-crackdown-begins-to-bite-126052200275 1.html — Sunainaa Chadha, Business Standard Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at email protected /cdn-cgi/l/email-protection e2a18e8d9187a38e8eb6838091a2a9b3a7a6cc8d9085 Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/ and https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs Episode Transcript This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors. Morgan Sung: Hello, do you like these deep dives? Do they help you learn about all the chronically online things you’re too scared to Google at work? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And tell your friends, post about it. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. So this is actually the second part of our series on the saga of Emily Hart, an AI MAGA influencer, and Sam, the guy who created her. If you haven’t heard part one yet, check out last week’s episode. And just a heads up, this episode contains mentions of explicit sexual content. So listen with care. We first met Sam in last week episode. He’s a 22 year old medical student from India, and he had been chasing side hustles in order to make extra cash while in school. Sam: I needed some extra pocket money. I started first with YouTube shorts. I started making AI horror shorts, then Roblox, but like it didn’t work that way. Morgan Sung: Emily Hart was by far his most lucrative venture. Clip of Emily Hart Hey, handsome, in this private ward, there are no supervisors and no rules. Just me, you, and whatever happens when these scrubs finally come off. Morgan Sung: She was the MAGA dream girl. And she was completely AI-generated. She rapidly gained a following thanks to her Trump-supporting thirst traps. Every time Sam posted images of her ice fishing, shooting rifles, drinking beer, complete with an American flag bikini and bright red MAGA hat, her fans went wild. In just a few weeks, Emily had 15,000 followers on Instagram, over 20 million views on Reels and a small army of subscribers on FanView. That’s a site kind of like OnlyFans. And these guys literally paid to DM her. Well, really, paid to DM Sam. They didn’t know it was him, but they also didn’t seem to care that Emily wasn’t real. Sam was making a couple thousand dollars a month, so he wasn’t quite rolling in it, but that’s really good money for a student in India. Sam: Initially, I enjoyed it. Morgan Sung: What made it at less enjoyable for you? Sam: Actually it was a bit strange. It was a bit creepy like other male is talking to me in like, that way. It felt weird. Morgan Sung: Sam was getting sick of it. It started with the unsolicited dick pics. Sam: Like, directly, blatantly, like, no context, no “hi,” and then the image. Morgan Sung: And then the unsolicited cum tributes. Sam: And I’m like, what the hell is this guy doing? He sent me the video. And I was like, people do all these weird things. Like, it was super creepy. Morgan Sung: Emily, who was really Sam, was dealing with some real creeps. Like, there is this one guy who wouldn’t stop harassing her account. Sam: He used to call me. He used to call me on Instagram, he used to like, call me 10 times, like, ‘why aren’t you picking up? You shouldn’t disrespect someone like that,’ like, I muted him. Morgan Sung: When Sam ignored him, the guy sent a nude. Sam: After like 10 missed calls, he just sent that pic. I was like, Why are you sending it? Like, are you thinking that seeing this, I will call you or something? As a male, I can say like, many males are like, super creepy and I hate such men. Morgan Sung: And that was just the start of it. Emily Hart was a success, but Sam was starting to get uncomfortable. Sam: Like on Instagram, I didn’t use to reply because like my DMs are filled every day, I get 100, 200, 300 messages. Morgan Sung: And then… Instagram flagged Emily’s account, and that was the beginning of the end. Today, we’re diving into the rest of Sam’s story, from the Instagram bans to the scammer accusations to what happened with his lifelong dream of moving to America. And we’ll take a look at some other AI grifts as we try to answer the big question. Is it fair to call Sam a scammer? Buckle up. This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. Before we get into the other questions, let’s talk about the rest of Emily’s story. Unfortunately, her ending is not a happy one. That’s our first half: the death of Emily Hart. At the peak of her popularity, Emily Hart was gaining about 2,000 followers a day. Sam was on top of the world. But then Instagram started picking up on some suspicious behavior in Emily’s DMs. Sam: So like initially, like Instagram, I used to message people. I didn’t do that. Instagram reads all the DMs. Morgan Sung: Not only does Instagram monitor DMs, but it also does not allow adult content. And it doesn’t allow users to advertise adult content Even mentioning OnlyFans can get you banned. Sex workers usually bury links to their paywalled explicit content within a sea of other links, three or four clicks deep. Sam: I didn’t know that, I sent a link to my Fanvue personally in DM, and like Instagram flagged my account instantly, like within 5-10 minutes, my account got flagged, it got banned, like I cannot use it. Morgan Sung: Panicked, Sam got in touch with Meta and appealed the ban. Sam: They asked for my personal ID and my mobile number, my email, all my personal information. And like my account got recovered the next day. And then it was flagged again, like two, five days after. Morgan Sung: He wasn’t sure what triggered the second ban, but it could have been for a number of reasons. He didn’t disclose that the account was AI, which goes against Instagram’s policies. He avoided even mentioning Emily’s Fanvue, but Meta could have flagged her account anyway using data about Sam’s internet usage. That happens to human sex workers all the time. Sam appealed again and, again, managed to recover Emily’s account. But then, about a month later, on the night of Valentine’s Day… Sam: it was like, boom, it’s over, they deleted my account, they don’t even give me the reason. It was just written that you don’t follow our community guidelines, that’s why we are suspending your account. Morgan Sung: But then Sam remembered one certain post. And if he hadn’t already racked up a history of bans, Meta may have let this one slide. Ej Dickson: It was the death by a thousand cuts. Morgan Sung: That’s Ej Dickson, who first reported the story for Wired. Well, the Instagram guidelines require that creators disclose whether or not their profiles are AI-generated, and he wasn’t kicked off for violating that. He was kicked off for basically leaning into MAGA hatred too much, which I kind of thought was funny in a really dark way. Like he posted something really racist. Morgan Sung: We’re not going to repeat what the post said, but here’s how Sam explained why he did it. Sam: Like, I don’t hate African American people like, but it’s generally like, MAGA people don’t like them as much. MAGA people were like, super racist. Okay? So like I thought that like if I make an racially inappropriate joke for like, I thought that people would appreciate. Ej Dickson: He girlbossed too close to the sun, basically. And that’s what got him kicked off, not the fact that it was AI generated. Morgan Sung: Emily’s audience loved Sam’s posts about deporting immigrants and demonizing abortion. But this went too far for even them. Sam: Like Instagram is basically racism app. It’s like, filled with racism. And like, people appreciate it in comment section. Like people make jokes of it. But one thing that was super surprising for me is that like when I posted it, like even the MAGA people like, no one supported me, not like, even a single guy supported me. And people were like this is straight out racism. And people mass reported that reel and it got my Threads account banned. So it was surprising for me that people didn’t entertain that racism. It felt good. Like, at least people are not like, that racist. Morgan Sung: Sam tried to appeal it, like he did with previous bans, but Emily Hart’s Instagram account was gone forever. It was particularly devastating because he had been chasing side hustles for months, and this was the one that finally paid off. Sam: I was super upset, like I tried many things, like 10 things, 15 things and finally there was a hope, like there is this thing that worked out for me. There is thing like, that I figured out. Morgan Sung: He didn’t have much time to dwell on it, though. The big entrance exam for Indian medical specialty programs was just a few months away, so he had to lock in and study. And then, he had to navigate a different kind of internet fame. Ej’s wired story about Emily Hart was published shortly after the final Instagram ban. And it became even more viral than Emily herself. Ej expected some backlash from the MAGA crowd. After all, the headline of her story was literally “This scammer used an AI-generated MAGA girl to grift super dumb men.” Ej Dickson: But a really interesting thing happened after the story came out where even MAGA accounts were reposting it being like, ‘Good for this guy ’ Like, applauding his efforts to scam, basically. There were some people who were saying like, incredibly racist things about brown people, but in the same breath were like, but honestly, good for this guy. If this is what these guys are capable of, like,more of them should come over here. That was a sentiment I saw more than once. And it’s a disgusting sentiment, right? It’s a despicable sentiment, but I was very surprised to see that even the people who were being duped by this guy were applauding the level of grift that it took to dupe them. I mean, that’s what they were doing. There were a couple of people who were mad, but for the most part, they were like, this guy? Good for him, you know, game-recognize-game. Morgan Sung: Sam also loved Ej’s story. He said he sent it to all of his friends. And even though his name and identity were kept anonymous, for a brief moment, he was kind of a celebrity online. This story was everywhere. Audio from an episode of The View Joy Behar: So-called MAGA men, they were drooling over a social media personality named Emily Hart, a cute little blonde who would post pro-Trump content and even send bikini photos if people paid for it. Audio from Fox and Friends Kurt ‘CyberGuy’ Knutsson: I mean, this is catfishing on steroids, period. And you can see why the guys fell for her. Audio from HOT 97 TV News Lana Harris: She is not real. Ronndell Smith: Wait, what? Lana Harris: That is AI. Million: What? Ronndell Smith:Oh, wow. Lana Harris: That is A.I. Turns out this is a viral MAGA influencer and she was ran by a med student from India. Million: What? Ronndell Smith: Oh, he’s so smart. So smart. Sam: Like, I read thousands of comments, and people were appreciating. Like, give this guy a green card. You know, give the guy a citizen. It’s an example of good Indian, we need them in the USA. And people were super appreciating like, that he’s just smart, MAGA are dumb. Like, it’s not his fault if people are dumb. It’s a super genius idea. I should have thought of that. It was a very positive reaction. Morgan Sung: But, he did have an issue with one part of the article. Sam: In the article headline, they called me a scammer. Morgan Sung: To this day Sam insists that he never scammed anyone. He says it’s a racist assumption that all Indian people online are scammers. We’ll hear his case in a new tab. That’s for after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Okay, after the break, what makes a scammer? Don’t go anywhere. Okay, we’re back. Time to open a new tab: is Sam a scammer? After Ej’s story came out, people praised Sam as innovative and creative and a master of his craft. Even Trump supporters applauded his dedication to the hustle. Sam ate it up, but he was genuinely offended by the way everyone called him a scammer. Sam: I didn’t scam anyone. I disclosed people that they shouldn’t tip. I disclose people that they shouldn’t spend so much money on me. Like, didn’t have any bad intention. Morgan Sung: A scammer, according to Merriam-Webster, is someone who participates in a fraudulent scheme. Cambridge Dictionary- someone who makes money using illegal methods by tricking people. Wikipedia- someone defrauds a person or group after gaining their trust. Sam: I just want to make some money. You can say it’s not ethical, but it’s not a scam, like I didn’t do anything, you can say, illegal. Morgan Sung: Sam technically didn’t defraud anyone. While Emily Hart’s Instagram account wasn’t labeled as AI generated, Sam did disclose it to subscribers on Fanvue, where he was actually making money. He said he had plenty of opportunities to scam Emily Hart subscribers. Multiple fans had offered to pay her thousands of dollars to meet in person, but Sam said he never took the money. Sam: People were like, we will pay for your plane ticket and please just come to California. We will have a dinner. Let’s have a dinner together and all that. Like, I could have easily taken their money. Like, I would have easily sent them, you can say, Bitcoin or like some, you can say, crypto link, but like, I was like, super clear with that. Like, I will not do anything wrong. And I knew that like, I can’t meet them in real life. They will just waive their money and I didn’t want that. Morgan Sung: Sam felt that the money he earned selling Fanvue subscriptions and pay-per-view content was earned, even if it was through AI-generated softcore porn. He disclosed that the content was AI, and he was providing something in return for their money. But he wasn’t comfortable accepting direct tips from Emily’s subscribers. He even sent some tips back. Sam: From New Jersey and like he was tipping me a lot and I wondered like why he’s tipping so much. I asked him like ‘why are you tipping me so much?’ He was tipping so much in hopes that I will meet him because my model was based in New York City and it was close to New Jersey so he was like, if I tip her so much, maybe she will come to meet me. Morgan Sung: Sam told the subscriber that Emily was AI generated. Sam: And I returned all the tip money. Then I was like, if you want to cancel the subscription, it’s completely fine with me. He was like no, like he didn’t even take all of the tip back. Like he tipped me $10 and he was like that, it’s okay. And like I returned the rest of it. Morgan Sung: Sam was offended that he was being labeled a scammer,because in his eyes, if he had actually scammed people, he’d have a lot more money. He also said it feeds into some of the racist assumptions that many people online make about India. Sam: There is a stereotype for Indian people, like, all the Indian people are scammers. Like, I didn’t want to do that. Morgan Sung: India dominates the IT industry. The English-speaking world’s major tech support hubs are based in India. But as this booming market grew, the cyber scam economy exploded too. Callers often pose as tech support agents from Amazon or fraud investigators from major banks and persuade gullible victims to hand over remote access to their devices and accounts. Sam: And like, people in India, they scam them out of thousands of dollars and I really feel bad. Morgan Sung: India’s economic strain and rising unemployment rates are pushing more young people to work at cyber scam centers because no one else is hiring. And that has really affected Sam, especially when he tries to make friends online. Sam: That hurt the Indian image so much that even like, I meet people online, I can’t even tell them that I am Indian. They straight out hate me. Like, you are a scammer, you know all that racial comments, and I am like, you haven’t even talked with me, you don’t even know what kind of a person I am. Morgan Sung: He specifically tried to adhere to his own moral code with Emily Hart, in part because he’s aware of the scammer reputation. Sam: And I absolutely hate that, like it ruins the image of my country and I don’t like it at all. So I am like that, I am doing this and I will do this as ethically as possible. Morgan Sung: So yes, Sam did dupe conservative men into following Emily Hart’s Instagram account. And he did build a following using racist, xenophobic, and downright offensive content. But when it comes to the question of whether he’s a scammer, sure, he profited off of the MAGA fantasy of a woman that doesn’t exist, but there were lines he refused to cross. And if subscribers tried to tip him more than the $5 subscription fee, he’d remind them that Emily Hart wasn’t real. The thing is, scamming is not a term in our legal system, unlike fraud and theft, which can be prosecuted. And Sam didn’t do either of those. So whether he’s a scammer is really a moral question. And we can’t really weigh in on that until we understand the other ways people are using AI to deceive and profit off of others. Which, of course, means opening a new tab: the AI Thirst Trap Griff. AI models took off for the general public in the early 2020s. And since then, the grifts have been booming. Ej Dickson: I think there’s a spectrum of this, of the AI influencer grift, right? Morgan Sung: Ej has been reporting on this a lot for Wired, tracking all the new developments in the AI-influencer world. The industry is thriving. It seems like there’s a new synthetic personality going viral every day. They dominate streaming charts with their AI-generated music. They represent brands as AI-generated models. They crank out YouTube videos and TikToks and Reels faster than any human influencer can. And, like Emily Hart, they even sell AI-generated nudes. Ej Dickson: I think we’re at a point where low effort is being rewarded and there’s a premium put on it versus hard work. And like, there are a lot of especially younger people who think that the mark of success is basically making as much money with as little work as possible. Morgan Sung: And there’s one trend in the AI influencer space that really freaks Ej out. So Emily Hart is not necessarily based on a real human being. Sam generated her from scratch by prompting Gemini. You could argue that Gemini was trained using real people’s photos, and that there’s a chance that someone out there does look like her. But that’s a conversation for another deep dive. What actually concerns Ej is this growing trend of using AI to modify real women’s photos and videos. And selling them on adult content sites, entirely without their consent. Ej Dickson: I did a story about these 19-year-old boys who had developed this side hustle of taking random girls’ photos from Instagram, like private citizens, people with 1,000, 2,000 followers, not models or anything like that, and using nudify apps and posting sexual content of them on sites like Fanvue. And they were literally making YouTube tutorials and teaching men how to do this and how to make these photos, like what types of girls’ photos they should feed into the model to train it. It was really, really dark. And I think that we are headed for a future where that’s gonna become more normalized than not. Morgan Sung: YouTube is teeming with tutorials to get rich quick by using generative AI to make explicit content. Almost all of the tutorials are taught by men who are profiting off of AI content based on real women. Some people refer to this as digital pimping. Ej thinks that phrasing is actually too mild. Ej Dickson: I think it’s digital exploitation. I think it is digital trafficking, essentially. These guys are really invested in creating a reality where women who do not consent to being sexualized at all can have anything they want done with their images. No matter how old they are, no matter where they work, what they do. These guys just use the internet as free reign to humiliate them, because that’s really what it’s about. It’s not about getting off. It’s about humiliation. It’s about the lack of consent is the point. Morgan Sung: Then there’s this practice of using AI influencers as bait. Ej recently broke this big story about the gay dating app Goose. Goose was marketed as a wholesome social platform. Ej Dickson: Basically positioning it as a competitor to Grindr, except it would be less casual sex and hookup focused and more focused on socializing and making friends and forming real human connections. Morgan Sung: Goose deployed a small army of hot gay influencers to recruit other gay men. These influencers would follow gay guys and add them to their Close Friends story or slide into their DMs with a “hey, you seem cool.” And eventually, they’d send an invite code to Goose. All of these influencers were AI-generated. Ej Dickson: That was a big part of their marketing strategy, is making these very believable looking hot guy accounts with like 300, 400, 500 followers who like, worked in very realistic jobs. Like, one of the guys said he worked for Strava, like, another one of guys said he worked for like, David Zwirner Gallery. And that’s really convincing. And I think it really messed with a lot of people’s perceptions of reality and their ability to discern what is AI and what isn’t. Morgan Sung: Ej said she could understand why people fell for it. Ej Dickson: In order to get on Goose, because it’s invite only at this point, and you obviously have to be a gay man to join it, I made my own AI-generated hot guy influencer account. I was trying to make it really convincing. So I was like, give him beards, give him tattoos, like, make him live in Crown Heights, make him be like, a record producer/engineer. And the more that I was like, generating these photos and generating this guy’s biography, I was like, oh my God, I’ve made the hottest man in the world. Like, I would absolutely have sex with this. Honestly, and this is a huge compliment to my husband. Like, he looked a lot like my husband, so even I, like, for a split second, was kind of deceived by the too-good-to-be-true element of AI, at least momentarily. Morgan Sung: Compared to other examples Ej just talked about, was what Sam did really that bad? There’s a spectrum of AI thirst trap grifts. Ultimately, Sam did profit off of Emily Hart, but was he causing harm to anyone? That’s less clear. Ej Dickson: And then on the other hand, you have those evil motherf ckers who are posting YouTube tutorials to young men teaching them how to take some high school girls’ photo off of Instagram and run her through a nudify app and make money off that. And the technology is getting better every day. It’s just getting easier and easier and easier and easier to do. It took me five minutes to make my hot gay man thirst trap guy. For Goose, it took the guys who were posting those YouTube tutorials, they were saying it took them 10 minutes. I think six months ago, the question would have been is the juice worth the squeeze? And now, like, there is no squeeze, you know? Morgan Sung: Well, the squeeze is no longer worth it for Sam. After Emily Hart’s account was banned for good, Sam tried to make another. But he found that, somehow, Meta banded him too. Sam: Even now my phone is blacklisted. If I use another number it will be blacklisted. So I cannot even create an Instagram account. Even if it’s not for all this like, Like, I created another Instagram account for personal use stuff and it deletes it. Morgan Sung: As lucrative as Emily Hart was, Sam’s kind of over the whole thing anyway. He doesn’t want to deal with the creeps, and he’s tired of pretending to be racist for engagement. And he’s got other stuff going on in his life. He’s about to graduate from medical school. His whole university career, he dreamed of moving to the U.S. It was going to be his ticket out of India’s economic crisis and caste system. But, this whole ordeal with Emily Hart combined with other factors, has him second-guessing his life plan. That’s a new tab: should I move to America? Sam had mapped out his entire career strategy when he started university, making sure to check all the boxes required to land a residency match in the U.S., which is already competitive, but even more so for international students. But he was determined. The United States Medical Licensing Exam is an incredibly rigorous process. It’s split into three parts over multiple years. Step one, which students take during their first years of medical school, is eight hours long. Sam: I cleared it in my first attempt, like, you only get one chance and I cleared it. Morgan Sung: According to his plan, he should be taking step two soon. But since clearing the first exam, he’s watched immigration to the U.S. Become more and more difficult under the Trump administration. And now he’s rethinking his plan. Sam: Like, Donald Trump has made it so difficult to, even if you’re talented, they don’t want you. Even if you do everything right, there is no guarantee. He did like hundreds of policy changes, like, every day he wakes up, he do a policy change. It’s like, you know you can’t predict him. Morgan Sung: The Trump administration’s immigration policies have wreaked havoc on the medical training system, from implementing strict time limits on visas for trainees, to stalling visa renewals for doctors who are already practicing here. There’s also the $100,000 entry fee for H-1B visa holders, which a lot of rural hospitals just can’t afford. And amid the constant flux in the White House’s policies, ICE officers have targeted, detained, and deported immigrants, even if their visas are still valid. Sam has watched it all unfold while finishing school. Sam: And one day, I was like, it’s enough, I give up, like, I don’t want to gamble with my future. Morgan Sung: And, immigration policies aside, his interactions with Americans, as Emily Hart, have soured his opinion of the U.S. He did choose to pander to people who have extremely racist and xenophobic stances, and he did stoke these viewpoints with Emily’s content. But at the same time, it wasn’t lost on him that if these followers knew who he really was, he’d probably be the target of their vitriol too. He said that a lot of these interactions reinforced his beliefs about conservative America. Sam: I don’t want to stereotype, but you know, stereotype doesn’t write themselves, okay? Like, stereotype exists for a reason. I learned that. Morgan Sung: So making it in America, the land of opportunity and Grand Theft Auto, is no longer Sam’s goal. He said many of his classmates feel the same way. Sam: Because of this, many of the talented people are going to countries like Japan, Germany, like, good European countries, like,even UAE. People are saying, don’t go to the United States. And even after all this, you have to face racism on that. It’s not worth it. Morgan Sung: Sam considered trying to get into a specialty training program in other English-speaking countries, but he’s not sure of that either. The political climates in those countries aren’t the most welcoming right now. The UK has tightened its visa pathways and increased restrictions for international workers. And Australia recently placed Indian students in the high-risk visa category. Sam: Like, nobody is willing to accept Indians, but the sentiment is very anti-immigration right now. Morgan Sung: Sam said a lot of young people would actually want to stay in India if it weren’t for the caste system and tanking job market. He said that the reservation system, which was designed to uplift the most oppressed castes, leaves the middle class to compete for opportunities with the ultra-wealthy. But despite all his gripes with his home country and his lifelong dream of getting out, he is actually planning to stay for now. He scrapped his U.S. Immigration plans. Instead, he’s been studying for the big national entrance exam for India’s medical post-grad programs. He’s sitting for it at the end of the month. It wasn’t worth it for Sam to maintain Emily Hart’s Fanvue without having an Instagram to direct traffic to it. But he does still need to make money. And since he’s studying six to eight hours a day on top of his clinical work, he doesn’t have time for a nine to five. A few weeks ago, Sam started working on what he calls a more ethical version of Emily Hart, helping brands create AI influencers to promote their products. He doubts it’ll be as financially rewarding as Emily Hart. It’s essentially a marketing gig, which he said was kind of boring. Sam: Like Emily was another level of fun, it was like, you know, you get an adrenaline rush every day, you see like 2000 followers are adding up, there are people tipping on you, there are are people that are going crazy for you, or like people are copying you. It was a whole different level of, you can say, fun. Morgan Sung: But even if he could get around the meta ban, Sam has zero interest in attempting to create another Emily Hart. Sam: I used to think that you can, you know, easily make good amount of money effortlessly. All this AI creator and stuff didn’t take a lot of effort. It was hardly 15 to 30 minutes a day of work. And actually, it made a good amount of money. But what I concluded is that like, you cannot make a good amount money consistently without putting in effort. That’s my takeaway. If it feels too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. Morgan Sung: That’s it for this extra deep, deep dive into the saga of Emily Hart, and, more importantly, the story of the real guy who created her. Special thanks to Sam and Ej for sharing this with us. We have opened so many tabs for this series, but if you feel like you still need to open more, we’ll link to some further reading in the show notes. And as usual, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. Okay. It’s finally time, let’s close all these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and it’s reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Lauren Yoon is our intern and was also the associate producer on this episode. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. This episode also includes clips from The View, Fox & Friends, and Hot 97. It also includes AI-generated clips of Emily Hart, courtesy of Sam. Thanks for listening Sam: Yeah, actually, I’ve tried a lot of things like trading bots, like stock market and stuff. I got good success in that, but then I lost a lot of money, I lost $1,000 in stock market, then I quit it.