Online Reporter
NEW YORK. — The criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs is now in its sixth week of testimony and interest among influencers and YouTubers is still soaring, as online personalities flock to the Manhattan federal courthouse to livestream their musings.
Every day, it’s the same routine: content creators on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube rub shoulders with legacy media organisations as they set up cell phone tripods and stage their shows, enthusiastically relaying their hot takes. The trial of Combs, once a titan of the music industry who faces life in prison if convicted on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, can’t be broadcast. The federal courthouse doesn’t allow cameras, laptops, phones or even wireless headphones inside.
So, alongside the many journalists covering the trial, influencers hustle in and out of the courthouse throughout the day to recount the proceedings beat by beat, dropping off and picking up their electronics at security each time.
One woman who goes by the TikTok name “KealoHalika” said in the first two days of testimony she earned an estimated 10,500 followers; her account now has 40,500 followers.
“It was like craziness,” she told AFP outside the courthouse. “It’s been a lot of moving pieces. It’s definitely changed my life.”
Combs is incarcerated and doesn’t enter or exit the courthouse publicly.
But some of the high-profile attendees and witnesses do, including members of the music mogul’s family and figures like Kid Cudi, the rapper who testified that Combs’s entourage torched his car.
These paparazzi-esque arrivals and exits are catnip for content creators to in turn feed their followers.
The brief cameo of Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, who stopped by to lend his “support” to Combs amid the proceedings, was a particular field day for the chronically online.
Donat Ricketts, a 32-year-old artist from Los Angeles, was a regular at the high-profile Tory Lanez and A$AP Rocky trials in California.
He told AFP he makes between US$8,000 and US$10,000 a month, including through YouTube’s ad revenue programme and fan donations.
“This is my first time travelling to another state to cover a case,” said the creator with about 50,000 YouTube subscribers. “It feels like vacation, plus I’m being able to work and make money from YouTube.”
Ricketts didn’t study journalism but he thinks his “big personality” and ability to relate to online viewers sets him apart. “This case is the turning point where mainstream media knows that the ‘independent journalists’ are a force to be reckoned with,” he said.
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, one in five Americans get news from influencers online; for people under 30, the share jumps to 37 percent. Reece Peck, a professor of political communication and journalism at the City University of New York, called the competition among content creators “Darwinian.”
“They’re so scared of losing their clientele or their audience. And so with that logic, that you have to constantly create content, the news cycle is such an attractive source of material,” Peck told AFP.
And the Combs trial is a fount, he said: “It’s sex, it’s violence, and it’s celebrity.” — AFP
