Photo: AFP
Have you ever looked at the crowds behind a reporter at coverage of a live news event and thought, “There’s no way that many people could really be there for this thing!”? Well, you might be halfway right- because, as it turns out, there is a company that rents out “crowds” to people who need bodies at their event. Adam Schwart is the owner of Crowdsforhire.com; it’s a company he founded while he was in college that churns out paid protestors to make an issue seem more en vogue than it may really be. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to talk about why he created a company that makes any gathering look like the in-place to be.
“Basically, the premise of the business is that context is everything.” Schwart told host Ken Rosato, sitting in for Larry Mendte. “The same speech delivered to a thousand people would not have the same effect if it was delivered to ten people… I saw there was a huge demand for gathering demonstrators, gathering protestors. A lot of the guys who ran those campaigns weren’t used to being able to get huge groups together on short notice, and that was just sort of harder and harder in this digital age.”
Schwart says there should be no conflict-of-interest issues with his actors, because human nature dictates that people have several motives for the things they do: “We all have different incentives for being somewhere, right?... I think you should analyze a protest for the issue that’s advocated, because everybody, especially at protests, is being compensated in one way or another… so the reality is, there’s nothing wrong with being compensated for advocating your point of view.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images