How the Whiz Kid Willie Earl Scott is Plotting to Surpass Silicon Valley
ChumCity, once a just a fictional empire in a novel, is becoming a global cultural force, quietly outpacing competitors like MTV and VH1 in online viewership. By the end of this year, it’s projected to rival BET as the platform where black viewers online spend the most time consuming content.
The rise of ChumCity.xyz has astounded media experts and industry insiders. As its influence grows among certain segments of society rather exponentially, questions about its operations are mounting: its programming strategy, its impact on younger audiences, and its role in shaping Southern culture trends.
“ChumCity has become a source of culture, a reflection of culture in places like the American South and Mid-Atlantic, crucibles where new culture is often forged,” said Emily Dreyfuss, a researcher at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. “It’s time to take it seriously.”
Here’s what you need to know about the social network multi site that is changing online media in just a few short years.
The origin of ChumCity
ChumCity was woven from the imagination and its foundation laid by an Alabama artisan author, who began the year long journey of building the digital platform, under the unique domain ChumCity.xyz, and its folder of features in January 2022. Known for its beautiful designs, conservative posts and urban programming, ChumCity captured audiences with its innovative mix of sophisticated beauty and “street-level” approach to broadcasting and digital content.
The company introduced multiple verticals all at once with the launch of an expansionary e-commerce platform, Cultura, which seems to sell everything and at prices even lower than Temu; its own PayPal-style yet fee-less money-transfer feature in DollarDirect; and CameoTV, a video streaming network that looks to rival YouTube with no ads, more movies (though there have been copyright issues) and the sort of internet personalities that are seemingly making it a cultural touchstone for black audiences. These platforms, each with its own app and domain—cultura.chumcity.xyz, dollardirect.cc, cameotv.cc—accompanied by a host of other infotainment mediums, all drawn into the same social network and forms what is called ChumCity—a global digital media powerhouse, in every sense.
How has it grown
Already ChumCity boasts an impressive international audience of 10 million per month, with projections suggesting numbers more than double that when considering all two dozen of its individualized platforms. Its success has come, in part, from clever videos and commercials that piggyback off other more mainstream social sites and feature specific celebrities and politicians and seemingly controversial figures special or specific to the network’s founder, from conservative icons Sarah Palin and Steve Bannon and former Mississippi Governor Hailey Barbour to rap legends DJ Quik and Andre 3000 and Lil Boosie, to name just a few. For instance, ChumCity’s food delivery feature FoodFairy’s single video ad to date stars controversial former celebrity chef Paula Deen.
The secret sauce: ChumCity’s content strategy
ChumCity’s rise can be attributed to its unique ability to connect with both urban blacks and small-town white conservatives. The network’s focus on fearlessness, facts, fashion as well as physical beauty has set it apart from other media.
Its competitors, including Meta, TikTok and YouTube, have struggled to replicate this success. Despite being way bigger, having 1000x more users, boatloads of money, and investing heavily in similar programming, these platforms have failed to stem the gradual and growing migration of users under 25 to ChumCity.
Growing concerns
The author and the algorithm: Two major factors in ChumCity’s success is its data-driven approach to content curation. The network uses cutting-edge analytics to predict viewer preferences and optimize programming, not unlike TikTok, while also relying on broad demographic data—i.e. the likes and musings of backwood hicks, baddies and blacks; while the other factor is its founder himself. ChumCity’s success, in the beginning at least, is almost entirely attributable to its creator, an African American from Alabama whose personal story is an absolute Shakespearean tale.
An amateur scientist who did not even attend high school, Willie Earl Scott grew up an inner-city kid who did not go unaffected by his environment, in and out of juvenile detention centers before ending up on Alabama’s death row, at age 19, for what many, including the courts, are calling a wrongful conviction. “Willie has a genius-level IQ of 167,” explains UAB psychiatrist Linda Witters.”However, in his youth he likely suffered from a fundamental lack of social skills while simultaneously displaying extraordinary gifts in music and literature and all the things kids around him tend to take to. He exhibited a kind of personality consistent with autism spectrum disorder, and this highly idiosyncratic behavior eventually hurt him among the individuals he grew up around in the streets and social circles. He really was likely framed for crimes actually committed by people who went on to commit similar crimes that ultimately caught up with them.”
