Fake news capitol of the world: Waterboro, Maine

This fun investigation goes back to 2020. It looks like some of his websites are no longer active.

Christopher Blair in his home office. Screenshot from the BBC.

Christopher Blair is proud of his work as the “godfather of fake news.”

The Maine man is so pleased, in fact, that he has emerged from the shadows of his modest home outside of Portland and exposed himself as the mastermind behind a network of websites and Facebook pages churning out headlines such as Clinton Foundation ship seized at port carrying drugs, guns and sex slaves, or a variety of tales about Nancy Pelosi (she has been banned for life at AA), or that Attorney General Barr is convening a grand jury in the “Clinton Probe.”

In what was once considered a uniquely foreign flair for spreading such fallacious headlines made up to look like news, Blair has indeed proven that America’s got talent in such endeavors as well. So much so that this self-described left-leaning Democrat was able to quit his day job in construction back in 2014 and is now living off the advertising revenue his sites generate.

Blair’s claimed distinction, so to speak, in the fake-news sphere is that he truly understands his viewers and is taunting and laughing at them. As he puts it, fighting fake news with fake news — while, of course, generating as many shares as possible.

To be clear, Blair’s sites all state that his material is “satire,” or as he calls it, “conservative fan fiction.” He even goes so far as to employ several hundred of his own trolls whose job is to “patrol the pages,” making mock of those who comment on his posts as if they were legitimate.

But despite Blair’s mastery of fakery, and contempt for his audience (he calls them “Taters,” described as “fragile, frightened, mostly older Caucasian Americans” who will believe nearly anything), he must know by now that it’s very likely his viewers don’t read below the spicy headlines that dominate Facebook. That is how I stumbled upon one of Blair’s sites, Obamawatcher.com (Note: that site is no long active and the domain is up for sale) from a shared post by one of my “tater” Facebook friends. The headline was quite catchy: Unsealed documents put Obama on Epstein’s plane headed to ‘The Islands’ (shared over 15k times).

For some reason I clicked on it, but instead of scanning the story my eye was drawn to several large ads that dominated the page — Dasani, a Coke brand, held a prominent spot on the right side, while a boxed Vitamin Shoppe campaign flashed to the left.

Fascinated that such big brands would run ads on a site claiming Michelle Obama slips up and admits she’s a man, I started refreshing the page to see what else might appear, even clicking on other stories to look for additional advertising.

My brief visit to Obamawatcher turned up ads from Avocado organic mattress, Sprouts Market, Dasani water, the Reno/Tahoe Convention and Visitors Authority, Vitamin Shoppe, Lamps Plus, Legal Zoom, Turbo Tax and Kohl’s. I was, in a way, now trolling the master troll.

What, I wondered, would these companies do should I inform them about where their ads were appearing, would they care? Would they even respond?

I tracked down a media contact for each one, telling them what I had found in an email. An astonishingly fast reply followed from the Legal Zoom VP of brand strategy, who thanked me for flagging it, saying that their ads shouldn’t be showing up on “blocked categories” of sites such as this and promising to alert her “digital team.”

Vitamin Shoppe was equally swift and apologetic. Lamps Plus appeared to be horrified, calling it a “major issue” and thanking me multiple times. Avocado took several emails, finally responding and thanking me for my “diligence,” saying the company would make sure this never happens again. The Reno/Tahoe director of communications made it clear they do not intend to “advertise on any politically-driven and/or disinformation websites,” explaining that a “digital ad buy gets incorporated into a larger, third-party placement algorithm, and then things like this happen.”

Despite several attempts, I never heard back from Kohl’s, Sprouts or Turbo Tax.

Coke, however, was another story. How could I contact the right person in such a giant company? So, I went right to the top, penning an email to the head Coke honcho, James Quincey.

The very next day I heard from Coca-Cola’s Katie Miller, who according to LinkedIn, is VP of “Connections Planning.”

Miller’s reply was professional and gracious. She agreed there “is no place for racism in the world,” saying that the company must do its part to “protect our brands and our consumers” from any kind of discrimination. She told me that the issue was taken “very seriously” with Coke acting swiftly to make sure it will not happen again, thanking me for my “kindness and stewardship” in bringing this to their attention.

Perhaps of even more interest was the fact that the full-size Dasani ad on Obamawatcher (despite Coke’s large cadre of “brand safety tools”) was apparently placed without the company’s “authorization or knowledge” and to further the mystery, was not even “current or existing creative.”

Hmm. Might Blair be posting fake ads along with his fake news?

When asked during an interview that appeared in msn news, Blair hedged on saying how much he generates with advertising revenue, only stating that a hit story would earn enough to “buy a new couch.”

And as far as feeling any remorse authoring pre-election headlines such as 1952 law says Kamala Harris can NEVER be POTUS (that would fall to Pelosi, the subhead claims), which was shared thousands of times, Blair puts a notice on each of his websites saying “Keep your poutrage (sic) to yourself. I sleep just fine.”

But I wonder if he still sleeps quite as soundly now that he has been outed? Or as a character in the classic movie satire “Dr. Strangelove” famously put it, “You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company.”