Brigitte Macron | Candace Owens and the money trail

Social media stars know how to exploit the algorithms of Big Tech's advertising platforms. In the battle for reach, audiences need and want to be properly triggered. The beauty of this: Big numbers generate substantial revenues for digital content creators . This applies to beauty products as well as ugly political entertainment. Important social issues are buried under trash. The best options are the revelation of dark secrets and the polarizing culture war. The earth is flat, and no thesis is too bold to avoid insulting the word "theory."

The right-wing extremist US blogger Candace Owens is also riding this wave. For more than a year, she has been spinning a fabricated and convoluted incestuous story, claiming that French First Lady Brigitte Macron was born a man and was in fact her brother Jean-Michel, who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery. As a zombie, which Brigitte, with her alleged transgender identity, is in the eyes of Owens' ultra-conservative fans, she manipulates the much younger president as part of a powerful network. Her shocking alternative facts have garnered the influential Black Trumpist millions of followers and subscribers.

Now Brigitte Macron and Emmanuel Macron are fighting back with a defamation lawsuit filed in the US state of Delaware. Not surprisingly, Owens was previously unwilling to retract her claims. The proceedings will certainly secure even more publicity for the blogger and her conspiracy theories. Whether the cost-benefit analysis for the flourishing fake news business will once again pay off remains to be seen.