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The verdict in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking trial attracted what you’d expect at the end of a high-profile celebrity court case in New York: dozens of news camera crews, hundreds of curious bystanders and a mass showing of law enforcement.
Overshadowing them all was a sea of influencers, content creators and provocateurs, who came out en masse for the trial’s verdict Wednesday.
Combs was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking but found guilty of lesser charges.
The streets surrounding the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan attracted stunts that included hostile — and livestreamed — debates, Diddy-inspired costumes and celebrants spraying one another with baby oil (which Combs’ use of in various sex acts was a frequent topic of testimony).
The spectacle was the latest example of how high-profile celebrity trials with real-world consequences have become the perfect breeding ground for online content creators to go viral.
“It’s been great. I’ve been able to monetize incredibly,” Armon Wiggins said. “I’ve gone viral exponentially, all over TikTok, YouTube. I’ve landed, you know, talk show placements on TMZ.”
Wiggins posts videos with commentary on pop culture on YouTube, amassing more than 285,000 subscribers.
He temporarily moved to New York from Los Angeles in May to cover the trial, posting breakdowns of the daily proceedings on his YouTube and TikTok channels. Wiggins said he’s gained more than 60,000 YouTube subscribers since he started covering the trial.
Similarly, Michelle Bracey of Manhattan found her niche covering Combs’ trial.
As with Wiggins, Bracey attended the trial daily and posted her independent analyses on her TikTok account, miss_knockout, cultivating a following for her humorous takes.
When the trial began, she said she had 9,000 followers. She now has more than 40,000.
“This is a life-changing moment for me personally,” she said. “This opened up the doors to a lot of things, like my music, people offering me shows, people offering me stuff for my music.”
Bracey said she tries to keep her work “professional” and avoids the pitfalls of other content creators whom she described as “clout chasers,” pointing to several antics throughout the day.
Roughly an hour after the verdict was announced, a group of people who appeared to support Combs’ partial acquittal danced and sprayed one another with baby oil.
NBC News video of the celebration shows a woman removing a wig while a man drizzled oil on her from a nearby ledge.
The participants were largely framed online as fans of Diddy. Most appeared to be influencers and new media figures there to create content.
The woman in the video appears to be an influencer who goes by the alias Crackhead Barney and has more than 114,000 followers on Instagram.
Crackhead Barney, who did not share her legal name, told NBC News that she is not a fan of Diddy’s but that she is a performance artist who was at the courthouse to shoot “shock value” content, with a goal of going viral.
Her videos have garnered backlash, she said, which she wasn’t expecting, but said she isn’t worried about.
She also said she took issue with a number of influencers at the courthouse Wednesday who were trying to “police everybody,” including her.
“This is a space for everyone. You can say what you want. You can make as much noise as you want,” she said.
In one video outside the courthouse, the woman asks Sneako, a streamer who has nearly 1 million followers on X and has been tied to the rapper Ye, to pour baby oil on her, and Sneako offered small bottles of baby oil to fans.
Wiggins also took part in the baby oil spectacle.
Throughout the day, two men with opposing views on the Combs conviction also drew particular attention.
One man in a denim jacket and sunglasses questioned a man in a red shirt and bucket hat on whether Combs is going to prison. The man in denim yelled that “he beat her,” referring to Combs’ longtime girlfriend Cassie Ventura who testified at the trial.
“It doesn’t matter,” the man in red said.
“He beat her, he kicked her,” the man in denim shouted.
“And she liked it, how about that?” the man in red screamed back.
Ventura testified that Combs beat her on multiple occasions and text messages showed she confronted him several times over it. After he attacked her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, Ventura wrote to Combs that she was not a rag doll, she’s “somebody’s child,” according to messages entered into evidence.
Other celebrity legal battles, including the defamation suit between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion by fellow rapper Tory Lanez, have similarly provided an opening for online creators.
Some of the influencers who spoke with NBC News on Wednesday said that, now that the Combs trial had concluded, they plan to cover other high-profile cases, including the ongoing legal battle between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni and the case against Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“This is just the very beginning, and it will evolve,” Wiggins said. “And I think at some point, the courts will have to adjust to that too, you know, and they will have to section off spaces for influencers.”
