Spencer Pratt uses AI slop and edgy humor in LA mayor’s race : NPR
Spencer Pratt speaks during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” at Fox News headquarters in New York on January 28.
Andy Kropa/Invision/AP
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Andy Kropa/Invision/AP
For Spencer Pratt and his supporters, becoming mayor of Los Angeles means first winning the Internet.
Pratt has amplified extravagant artificial intelligence videos, including one depicting lightsaber duels between him and the city’s current mayor, Karen Bass, and another where he is depicted as Batman descending on a burning Los Angeles to save the day; his campaign used an army of independent “clippers” to edit short clips on social media showing him disparaging city leaders; and he talks about the nonexistent “super meth” plaguing city streets and pushing false narratives about California lawmakers’ response to the Palisades fire.
A screenshot of an artificial intelligence video created by a Spencer Pratt supporter.
Charlie Curran via Twitter
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Charlie Curran via Twitter
It’s perhaps no surprise that the 42-year-old former villain of the reality TV show “The Hills” knows how to exploit the attention economy, but he does so by borrowing the combative, mocking political style popular on fringe online forums and celebrated by President Trump’s allies.
“He’s probably the most Trumpian candidate we’ve ever seen in terms of House style,” said Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top adviser. “Trump’s superpower was bringing people into politics who hate politics, and that’s what he’s doing online right now.”
Pratt’s internet antics are met with great difficulty.
On June 2, Angelenos will head to the polls for the city’s “jungle primary,” a nonpartisan contest where Pratt, a Republican, will face Democratic incumbent Bass and progressive council member Nithya Raman.
If a candidate exceeds 50% of the votes, he becomes mayor. If no one does, the top two vote-getters will face off in a runoff in November. Polls show Pratt and Raman neck and neck, with Bass commanding a comfortable lead.
Yet Pratt is leveraging the Web to make things happen.
He launched into the usually more mundane world of municipal politics with brash and extreme rhetoric, using TikTok, with direct-to-camera videos condemning Bass’ response to the devastating Pacific Palisades wildfires that ravaged his family’s home. He describes Bass as “the mayor who let the city burn.”
Pratt also blamed city leaders for allowing the city’s residents’ quality of life to deteriorate, or, as he puts it on TikTok, “a city hit by fires, homelessness, and crime,” a framing that would seem familiar to anyone watching right-wing influencers and streamers.
Pratt claims, without evidence, that “the socialists in the Los Angeles city government are stealing your money.” He denigrates the city’s homeless as “zombies” addicted to fentanyl. And he promised to clean up the encampments by massively arresting people living on the streets.
He accuses Bass and Raman of “preying on the homeless industrial complex,” a vague and baseless claim aimed at whipping up his fans online, according to Dan Cassino, a government professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies masculinity and politics.
“It’s the kind of thing that works really well in red pill forums where there’s this idea that everyone is in control of their lives and ‘we have to accept the hard truths that they won’t teach you in school,'” he said.
Podcaster Joe Rogan’s endorsement of Pratt, Cassino said, is proof of Pratt’s credibility in the manosphere, the friendly world of male influencers who wage war against polite society.
“Focusing on this audience is a way to target young men,” Cassino said. “Just like Trump did in 2024, and now we see Spencer Pratt doing the same thing.”
Former Los Angeles City Council Member: ‘Winning the Internet’ Doesn’t Equal Election Victory
Former Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin watched Pratt’s campaign go from an unserious longshot to a top-three candidate.
Pratt had a megaphone of millions of followers on social media before running for office. This helped accelerate the spread of AI’s fan-made slop videos. The same goes for Elon Musk’s repeated sharing and responding to Pratt’s content on X, the platform the tech mogul owns, to his 240 million followers.
When Pratt wants his incendiary campaign messages and AI content to spread even further, conservative influencers like Laura Loomer, Ben Shapiro, and Benny Johnson are ready, commenting and reposting to increase Pratt’s reach.
“Winning the Internet is not the same as winning the election, but it can help,” said Bonin, who now directs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.
Spencer Pratt often turns to TikTok to promote his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles.
TikTok
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TikTok
He highlights how New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s kinetic digital campaign flooded Instagram Reels and TikTok with videos showing how natural and familiar he was with the format.
Closer to home, Los Angeles Comptroller Kenneth Mejia won his 2022 election by using his two corgis on billboards and in social media videos as a way to attract terminally ill people online.
The difference with Pratt, Bonin says, is that he uses the influence of the well-oiled right-wing media machine.
“Unlike left-wing candidates, right-wing candidates enter an Internet ecosystem that is used to promoting itself through its various networks,” he said.
According to Bonin, the launch of California Posta west coast edition of the curator New York Post owned by Rupert Murdoch, around the same time Pratt launched his campaign. The medium “reinforced the supposed dystopian crisis that Los Angeles is going through, and that’s a big part of Pratt’s narrative,” Bonin said.
Pratt and his campaign did not respond to interview requests. Bass had no comment.
Raman, through a spokesperson, dismissed Pratt’s online tactics, saying the AI videos show how out of touch he is with something that is an existential concern for the city’s entertainment industry.
“Hollywood jobs are being devastated by AI, while Spencer Pratt uses his platform to promote AI-generated content, amplifying the very technology that is replacing the workers he claims to care about,” Raman said in a statement. “Our videos are made by film and television professionals who believe Los Angeles can be better.”
The MAGA tightrope walker
There are two ways to answer this: try to meet Pratt on his level, or not participate at all.
Cassino, a professor of government at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said Raman and Bass are adopting “the Rose Garden strategy” by not trying to match the intensity and absurdity of Pratt’s online campaign, which he said is probably politically wise.
“He’s online more regularly than they are. He has fans who generate this stuff for him in a way they don’t, so any attempt on their part will make them seem inauthentic,” he said.
It’s hard to gauge how much of Pratt’s content and rage-mongering sticks out on L.A. voters’ social media feeds, but, at least on
Her favorite pejorative for Bass is “Karen Basura”, which means trash in Spanish. And he calls the mayor’s supporters “assholes” — cruel and tyrannical language that Cassino says is aimed at young men online.
“If people are voting for Spencer Pratt because they think it’s funny rather than because they seriously want him to be mayor, the vote still counts,” Cassino said.
Whether or not it resonates with voters, Pratt is not slowing down his incendiary language and pugnacious tone.
This is a posture adopted by the MAGA sphere online. He also represents the new model for right-wing political candidates, both nationally and locally, Bannon added.
“Pratt knows it’s not politics, it’s drama,” said Bannon, who was a Hollywood financier before entering politics. “He has a warrior mentality.”
If Bannon found one criticism of Pratt’s campaign, it would be Pratt’s shameless promotion of AI filth.
A staunch critic of Silicon Valley, Bannon said the videos are entertaining, but risk turning off voters who may view them as trivializing the race, not to mention the fact that the Internet is already saturated with AI-related garbage and fakes.
“On the slope of AI, he is an inch away from jumping the shark,” Bannon said. “It can be effective, but it starts to get boring, and it could backfire if you promote it too much.”
Internet notoriety, however, can’t dislodge one fact about Los Angeles: Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, presenting Pratt with a significant challenge if he advances to the November runoff.
Trump announced his support for Pratt on Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, the mayoral candidate did not immediately inform his subscribers on social networks.
Indeed, although Pratt is a registered Republican, he has attempted to separate himself from the MAGA movement and has repeatedly emphasized how nonpartisan the Los Angeles mayoral race is.
It’s a tightrope walk that Bannon, one of the primary architects of the MAGA movement, is acutely aware of when he offers conditional praise of Pratt.
“Tell him I would support him,” Bannon said. “But I don’t want to hurt his chances of winning in Los Angeles.”
