On a scale from insane to incredibly insane, nineteen-year-old Justin Jin and his Giggles app are somewhere north of the latter. After creating a fake trading app that went viral on TikTok, he’s now raising serious cash for a platform where users bet on memes becoming popular.

The name is a nod to Google Giggles meme jokes, but if you can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t anymore, Jin’s got you covered. His app lets you invest ‘aura points’ in brainrot videos. If the video goes viral, you win. Or so he says.

As I reported on this with increasing paranoia, I couldn't help but wonder if I was being manipulated by a teenager who once sold fidget spinners. Mediababy, Jin's previous venture, left me questioning everything. Fake testimonials and suspicious marketing practices raised red flags before they disappeared just as quickly.

But then 1k(x) confirmed the deal is real. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’re living in a world where anything can be fake news. The rise of AI-generated content and bots threatens to swamp social media with unreliable information, making it harder for us to find meaning online.

“We have to build apps knowing they will be swarmed by bots,” Jin says. “The promise is to connect people, yet the chaos is here.”