Hate favors hate. Grifter culture — profiting off of performative outrage — feeds off hate. As recent events have shown, Cornell has become a flash point for grift.
Austin Franco ’28 responded to a job offer from the startup VrfyID with “Not interested in working for a jew. Thanks.” Gabe Einhorn and Aiden Einhorn, the company’s founders, are both Jewish. Gabe subsequently posted a screenshot of Franco’s response on X, censoring his last name and commenting: “This kid applied to our job on handshake, we accepted him, and then he responded this. He probably knows nothing about Jews accept for what they tell him in college and on social media. Sad world.” The post has since received 2.8 million views.
It is beyond anyone’s ability to speculate as to why Franco wrote the initial comment to Aiden. It is, however, worth considering the way Franco has acted since.
Much like the media’s goals to drive profit through manufactured outrage, individuals can operate similarly. In politics and social media, this often takes the form of political rage to drive sales off of someone’s personal brand, also known as grifting. Two major fundraisers for Franco have emerged on GiveSendGo since the original incident. His own campaign, opened after he was evicted on Aug. 1, has raised over $11,000. A campaign created by far-right British YouTuber Miles Routledge has raised over $27,000 to “Fund Austin Franco after jewish doxxing.” Franco has not apologized; he has instead been rewarded.
When thinking about how this controversy began, we have to ask why Gabe first went to X. Perhaps 10 years ago, a business owner like Gabe would have reported Franco to his university without fanfare. But, Gabe instead went straight to social media and put Franco’s actions squarely in the court of public opinion. This beeline to a social media platform demonstrates the increased reliance on social media for accountability rather than the bureaucratic systems of accountability and punishment in higher education. In this case, social media offered an immediate outlet to the issue, spurring outrage and chaos instead of going through the long-winded procedure that Cornell would have conducted. Gabe’s audience was not one to hold Franco accountable, but rather one to get immediate reprisal.
More telling is the aftermath of the backlash — and support from a vocal minority — Franco received. Following the post’s virality, Franco chose to double down on his flippantly antisemitic rhetoric.
He got his opportunity to do so on Piers Morgan Uncensored, a British political talkshow. But, why was he given the opportunity to be in the news cycle to begin with? Why have national news outlets like Fox News, as well as international outlets like the Times of Israel, covered this story with such intrigue? The answer lies in the modern engagement economy. While the pursuit of truth is integral to journalism, so too is profit. In an era when massive amounts of information are available in a click, outrage generates the most engagement and drives profit. Instead of condemning this language by not providing Franco a platform, the current media climate needs to tackle this story because it is guaranteed to generate engagement.
In Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another, journalist Matt Taibi explains that there are 10 rules of hate. Out of those 10 rules, three stand out today: Hate people, not institutions; Everything is someone else’s fault; Root, don’t think. These rules of hate help us understand the feedback loop of grifter culture: the media covers what their audience will engage with and what we find entertaining, which is hate. News outlets don’t see this hate as harmful, in fact, it’s the exact opposite: profitable.
In Franco’s case, antisemitic actions, once fed through the mass media machine and given the Ivy League amplifier, perversely became an opportunity for his own monetary gain. It would be difficult to discern and speculate as to what caused the original message, but the events that followed its virality are crystal clear: Franco saw an opportunity to make easy money and he took it. It is regrettable for the thought of financial windfall to even be part of the calculus before, during or subsequent to such hateful rhetoric.
Grifter culture is a snowball effect that rewards greater grift. Hate feeds off hate. We hold temporary titles in life, like our stage in college or at a company. However, there are also permanent ideas: You are a consumer. But you can also be a life-long learner.
You may be studying at Cornell now and not plan on pursuing education beyond your bachelor’s, or you might be considering graduate school. Regardless, choose to be a student before a consumer. Hate and grift favor entertainment and rage. Antisemitic and prejudiced views like Franco’s are not entertainment for you to consume. The Sun itself is complicit in providing him a platform regardless of the story’s relevance to the Cornell community. This is a societal issue that can only be addressed through conscious efforts toward not treating hate as entertaining.
Hold your institutions accountable so that the media isn’t the only outlet that can do something about it. Media outrage does not equate to accountability.
The Cornell Daily Sun’s Editorial Board is a collaborative team composed of Editor-in-Chief Sophia Dasser ’28, Associate Editor Sophia Romanov Imber ’28 and Opinion Editors Zara Cheek ’28 and Rayen Zhou '29.
The Cornell Daily Sun’s Editorial Board is a collaborative team composed of Editor-in-Chief Sophia Dasser ’28, Associate Editor Sophia Romanov Imber ’28 and Opinion Editors Zara Cheek ’28 and Rayen Zhou '29. The Editorial Board’s opinions are informed by expertise, research and debate to represent The Sun’s long-standing values. The Sun’s editorials are independent of its news coverage, other columnists and advertisers.
