Two fake billboards for Bud Light reading 'lol Crybabies' going viral on TikTok and Twitter.
Have you seen those videos and photos of Bud Light billboards that read, “lol CRYBABIES”? They’ve been going viral on TikTok and Twitter over the past few days. But they’re completely fake.
The original video was posted to TikTok by Jamison Lightfoot, a comedian who specializes in green screen videos and other digitally manipulated content.
But the fake billboard has made its way to other social media platforms like Twitter, in the form of both videos and still images.
Lightfoot did not respond to an email asking about the videos on April 21, but the billboard company that owns the billboards, Branded Cities, confirmed to me on Monday that the videos are fake.
Branded Cities even sent me a photo showing what’s actually being advertised at one of the billboard locations, which is currently Disney+, as you can see below.
A photo sent by billboard company Branded Cities showing the billboard actually displays a Disney+ ... [+]
“The advertisement for Bud Light that has been circulating on social media is not a genuine advertisement. We would like to formally clarify that the billboard images have been manipulated and altered from their original form,” a spokesperson for Branded Cities told me in an email on Monday.
Why would someone make a fake billboard saying “lol CRYBABIES”? It’s a joke about the fact that many prominent conservatives have called for a boycott of Bud Light after the beer brand sent some special cans to trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The cans were produced and sent only to her and were never distributed to the general public. But conservatives were still outraged by the move, apparently because they’re upset that trans people exist.
Conservative activist Matt Walsh has called for a boycott and Kid Rock even shot up cases of Bud Light in a truly unhinged protest.
“Let me say something to all of you and be as clear and concise as possible,” Kid Rock said in a Twitter video with over 52 million views. “Fuck Bud Light. And fuck Anheuser-Busch.”
The fake billboards about these crybabies elicited a mix of reactions online, with many people loving the fake ad campaign. There were, of course, some detractors who said they would never drink Bud Light again.
Some of the pro-boycott photos and videos have also been fake, believe it or not. For instance, there was a video that went viral on social media earlier this month claiming that patriotic Americans were steamrolling thousands of bottles of Bud Light. As it turns out, the video was actually from February—well before the current calls for a boycott—and depicted a local government in Mexico destroying beer that had been confiscated at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexico stopped beer production during the worst of the covid-19 pandemic, leading many people to try and smuggle American beer into the country. That beer was confiscated and eventually destroyed.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the single weirdest members of Congress, also shared a fake photo of Sen. Lindsey Graham holding a Bud Light can with Mulvaney’s face. In the actual photo, which was taken in 2015, Graham is holding a beer with an incredibly frothy head.
Two executives at Anheuser-Busch, the company that makes Bud Light, were reportedly let go recently over the trans influencer controversy. Vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid and marketing executive Daniel Blake were taking a “leave of absence,” according to reports from the Wall Street Journal.
Anheuser-Busch did not respond to a request for comment this past Friday afternoon. I’ll update this article if I ever hear back.
