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Last week, a young boy called Kevin went viral on Facebook. According to his distraught mother, he’d been sent home by his school for his “inappropriate” attire.
In this case, that meant wearing a pleated skirt alongside his school uniform polo and high knee socks.
The internet freaked out. The post garnered 8.2 million views, along with a chain reaction of videos and comments, all hotly debating whether kids should be able to wear the clothes they want to school, regardless of gender norms.
There was just one problem: The boy in the skirt was fake.
“Kevin” had been AI-generated by Kvontay Devon Pringle, a 26-year-old Mississippi digital creator and semi-professional “rage bait” fiend who does, indeed, share a last name with the beloved potato chip.
Pringle admitted that the viral vignette took just 10 minutes to make and post on his (ironically faceless) Facebook profile, which he keeps under the alias Zaya Velour.
“It’s honestly wild to me that a story about a boy who doesn’t even exist became this massive conversation online,” Pringle told The Post exclusively. “I think it shows how advanced AI has gotten, and how hard it can be for the average person to tell the difference.”
His fake post is making real money from Facebook’s parent company, Meta: An estimated $2,800 and counting, according to reports from Pringle himself. (The Post could not independently verify this number.)
Pringle represents a new class of online “rage bait” creators who invent false scenarios for attention, and often, for major cash.
He runs five separate Facebook accounts, each with its own distinct flavor of content, which can make up to $17,000 per month, according to screenshots of invoices and accounts sent by Pringle to The Post.
Though Pringle claims to make all the written components himself, he often uses AI to generate photos for an additional (and often, very convincing) visual element.
Pringle calls himself a professional “comedian and storyteller” rather than a rage bait creator, but he did admit to The Post that he has always garnered a sense of satisfaction from evoking strong emotions on the internet.
A shy child, he began dabbling in content creation around age 14, acting out skits with his siblings on camera while his mom was at work. The activity made Pringle realize that he had a natural aptitude for creating dramatic incidents online.
His work went viral for the first time at age 15, when he wore a wig and clutched a fake bloody knife, then used the “pano” feature on his iPhone to create creepy selfies, scoring the teen his first Daily Mail headline.
Today, Pringle makes his living posting fake scenarios — things like a woman claiming the cops arrived at her grandfather’s home to arrest him, only to be handed an urn full of his ashes. Another viral scenario shows a woman missing a clump of hair, claiming her “baby daddy” cut it off while she slept. Pringle is so successful that he has completely sidelined his former business, a carpet cleaning service company, in favor of what he deems “digital storytelling.”
“I am a public person but I keep my personal life private,” he told the Post. “I feel like storytelling on Facebook allows me the leverage to post things or situations that I’ve been through or know about, that I wouldn’t post on my actual main pages with my face attached to them.”
That includes the now-infamous skirt story, which he insisted was inspired in part from being bullied in school. (He recalled being called “gay” as a slur.)
Pringle combined those memories with stories he’d heard from his friends with transgender children, some of whom reported discrimination in their Southern school districts.
Regardless of the ethics of a fake post — especially one without an initial AI label on the content — he succeeded in his aim of igniting a raging (and lucrative) online debate.
Some news websites picked up the story as fact, and even ex-con rapper Boosie Badazz appeared to weigh in on the incident, posting, “If you send your five-year-old son to school wearing a dress your child should be taken from [you] and sent to foster care” in all caps on X.
What do Pringle’s friends and family think of all this?
“I don’t talk to most of my family,” he said. “I have a handful of friends [who] praise my work. They’re always bragging on me and have even started tapping into their own bag with AI content.
“As far as dating, I’m single. But when I do occasionally run across people, I don’t really discuss what I do… it’s hard to explain.”
Unsurprisingly, given the dubious ethics. And what about the legions of followers who may feel duped by his expert-level baiting skills?
Pringle admitted he enjoys using the internet to “emotionally pull on people,” but emphasized that his content creation, which typically utilizes a mix of AI graphics and wholly original text, is not made “with the intention of deceiving or harming people.”
He recently added an AI tag — one might argue a week too late — to his skirt post to clue people into the story’s invented origins.
Pringle is also sparking the next generation of content creators with his rage-ing success. He currently hosts almost 100 students on the digital education platform Skool, helping teach other aspiring creators his web-wizard ways.
While he emphasized that he understands and respects those who may come across one of his stories, have an emotional reaction to it, then feel duped when they discover it wasn’t real, Pringle ultimately — and unapologetically — sees AI as just another implement in his creative toolbox.
“I look at AI as another tool for creating content and telling stories,” said Pringle. “Movies aren’t real; reality TV isn’t always as real as it looks and people tell fictional stories online every day. For me, AI just gives creators another way to bring those ideas to life visually.”
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