Was Wikipedia manipulated as part of the Blake Lively smear campaign?

I think it was. Here's what I've learned.

A major story broke shortly before Christmas. The kind of story that—because of parasocial relationships and social media addiction and the idea that having the right opinion on celebrity gossip has become a moral imperative—had people talking.

I’d be surprised if you don’t already know the story I’m talking about: the New York Times reported that Blake Lively was the victim of an alleged smear campaign perpetrated by some guy you’re barely aware of (Justin Baldoni) and his manipulative PR team (Melissa Nathan, Jennifer Abel, Jed Wallace).

Or, if you’re on the man’s side: Blake Lively launched a PR campaign in December against a guy who she unfairly accused of launching a PR campaign against Blake Lively.

Now, I’m not interested in re-treading all the conversations that are already happening. I’ve read the articles, dug through Reddit, gotten sucked into the Reddit threads, looked at the TikToks, looked at more Reddit threads, read more articles and so on. I don’t want to talk about the Reddit or TikTok or Instagram pieces of it, at least not now, and I don’t want to say the things that other people are saying.

(And if your response to this article is to comment something about “Blake Lively is also bad”, just don’t bother because that’s not the point and I don’t care.)

But I do want to look at one battlefront in the war for truth in this entire situation that I haven’t seen mentioned in any of the news yet: Wikipedia. Specifically, my suspicion that the Baldoni team used Wikipedia to influence the anti-Lively narrative—using some of the same tricks they likely used against Amber Heard during the Depp v. Heard Trial of Public Opinion.

And while you could compare me to Charlie Kelly talking about Pepe Sylvia, I would prefer the Rust Cohle comparison.

When I first noticed something seemed strange on Wikipedia

Let’s begin with this: I was initially resistant to the idea that Blake Lively was the victim of a smear campaign and not the problem. I initially argued with my significant other about it.

“I saw an interview of her being mean to someone online,” I said.

“You mean when that interviewer asked her about her pregnant body?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But she’s known for being mean to people, right?”

She told me to read the New York Times article on the subject, which I did. The article named ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.

The two parts in it that jumped out at me the most were:

In the following weeks, Ms. Nathan, whose clients have included Johnny Depp and the rappers Drake and Travis Scott, went hard at the press, pushing to prevent stories about Mr. Baldoni’s behavior and reinforce negative ones about Ms. Lively, the text messages show. Jed Wallace, a self-described “hired gun,” led a digital strategy that included boosting social media posts that could help their cause.

And

On Aug. 10, Kjersti Flaa, a Norwegian entertainment reporter, uploaded to YouTube a 2016 interview in which Ms. Lively snapped back when Ms. Flaa commented on her baby “bump” and remained testy for the rest of the conversation. Ms. Flaa titled it “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job,” and told The Daily Mail that “it’s time that people behaving badly in Hollywood, or anywhere else for that matter, gets called out for it.”

After publication of this article, Ms. Flaa on Sunday contacted The Times and said she had not participated in any orchestrated effort to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation. In an email, she said that she had resurfaced the 2016 interview independently this past August. “It was neither coordinated nor influenced by anyone associated with the alleged campaign,” she wrote.

It wasn’t the first time she had posted a video aligned with a client of Ms. Nathan. In 2022, in the midst of Mr. Depp’s legal battle with Ms. Heard, Ms. Flaa posted clips of her interviews with the actor, tagged #JusticeForJohnnyDepp.

I then started searching online to see what I could learn about this and specifically these people: Melissa Nathan, Jed Wallace, Kjersti Flaa.

I was taking it personally. I felt manipulated. And I was curious what I could uncover related to Wallace’s online manipulations.

I was not surprised to see very little about Melissa Nathan or Jed Wallace on Wikipedia. There is still very little about either of them. For example: the Wikipedia article for Sara Nathan, the sister of Melissa Nathan, still doesn’t mention that the two are related. I have personally chosen not to edit this (yet).

But I did discover a Wikipedia article for Kjersti Flaa, the journalist/YouTuber who had done the interview with Lively in 2016. Flaa herself had resurfaced this interview in August, 2024. Someone then created a Wikipedia article about her, also in August, 2024.

Here’s a timeline:

• 2016: Flaa interviews Blake Lively and Parker Posey. It doesn’t go well for anyone involved.

• August 2, 2024: Baldoni begins communicating with a crisis PR team (according to text messages that emerged later)

• August 9, 2024: It Ends With Us premiers

• August 10, 2024: Flaa posts her 2016 video to YouTube with the title “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.”

• August 13, 2024: The Hollywood Reporter reports that Justin Baldoni has hired a crisis PR team

• August 16, 2024: Flaa does an exclusive interview with The Daily Mail about her experience

• August 18, 2024: A user named PaulPachad creates a draft of a Wikipedia article about Kjersti Flaa.

• August 20, 2024: PaulPachad publishes the draft as a live article.

• December 21, 2024: The New York Times published their article about the alleged smear campaign.

Obviously, this is a reductive timeline. A lot of other things happened during this time.

But this is specifically a timeline related to what I was trying to puzzle through: why did a Wikipedia article suddenly get created for Flaa and who created it?

I cannot answer the Why. But we know the When (August 20, 2024) and we can investigate the Who.

But before I get into the Who, let’s look at the three possible explanations for why Flaa posted the video, eight years after it was filmed:

1. Collusion with the alleged smear campaign

2. Opportunism to get views and raise her profile by taking advantage of the Lively hate

3. Coincidence entirely.

Flaa has claimed her posting of the video was pure coincidence:

“I didn’t like the movie, I had a bad experience with Blake Lively, and at that time I had kind of had enough of Hollywood. So I wasn’t afraid of being canceled anymore, so I decided to post the video.”

Yes, she is saying that she was not aware of the Lively controversy (something she has doubled down on continually) and that it was, well, timely because of the movie?

For clarity, the NYT never said Flaa was part of the alleged smear campaign. As pointed out by The Cut: “[The New York Times] used her as an example of someone who appeared to have twice fallen for an orchestrated attempt to take down a woman.”

Now, what would motivate someone to create a Wikipedia article about Kjersti Flaa? The explanations are similar to what would motivate Flaa to post the video:

1. Collusion with the alleged smear campaign

2. Collusion with Flaa, but not the alleged smear campaign

3. Opportunism to raise one’s clout as a Wikipedia editor by making an article on a current event

4. Coincidence, paired a passion for the truth, entirely unrelated to the Lively hate

I will not speculate on Flaa’s motives. I will only point out that she seems to have pivoted her YouTube channel to being entirely about the Lively-Baldoni Conflict and is currently selling pro-Baldoni merch.

The above is a screenshot from her YouTube. I’m not going to watch any of those videos, but if not part of the alleged smear campaign, it sure looks like opportunism.

But who created Flaa’s Wikipedia article? And why?

As mentioned above, the Wikipedia editor uses the handle PaulPachad. But who is this person? And is there a connection to Jed Wallace, Melissa Nathan, Jennifer Abel or Justin Baldoni?

The earliest edits to the Flaa article

I am not going to go into every detail that I’ve learned about the Wikipedia editor who created this article. While I am fairly certain I’ve determined the real name of this person, I don’t want to doxx a fellow Wikipedia editor—even if they are involved in a smear campaign— when doxxing Wikipedia editors is currently a trick being used by the Heritage Foundation.

And while the username PaulPachad implies a male editor, I am going to use “they” pronouns when referring to this user, because a) I don’t know PaulPachad’s gender and b) it’s possible that PaulPachad is an account shared by more than one person.

The first things I did after seeing the Kjesti Flaa Wikipedia article and its history were:

• Make an edit to Flaa’s article, clarifying timelines around the resurfaced video and her fame.

• Go through PaulPachad’s edit history to see if there were other examples of edits made related to clients for Wallace, Nathan or Abel.

• Keep digging through PaulPachad’s edit history as I became increasingly convinced that I had found a connection.

But let’s get into what I found that made me suspicious—while not certain—that the main Wikipedia editor behind the Kjersti Flaa Wikipedia article had some kind of connection to the alleged Baldoni-orchestrated smear campaign.

The connections between one particular Wikipedia editor and the alleged smear campaign

The first thing I wanted to keep an eye out for was any edits that this person might have made related to the Depp-Heard trial. I was surprised by how quickly I found it.

Here are some of the things about this account that jumped out at me:

• Created their account in April, 2022.

• Created an article about Penney S. Azcarate, “best known for presiding over the defamation case brought by actor Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard” in May 2022

• Created a (now deleted) article for Eve Balow, Amber Heard’s best friend, also in May 2022.

• Created an article for Wade Wilson (criminal) in August 2024. Wilson is known as “the Deadpool killer” because of his name.

• Added links from the Deadpool page to “Wade Wilson (criminal)”. The links were reverted by other editors.

• Added links from various other pages to the new Kjersti Flaa article, as the Flaa article was initially labeled as an “orphan” page.

• Made edits to the Blake Lively page

• Made edits to the Amber Heard page

While none of this was a smoking gun, it was odd at least. These edits reminded me of Flaa. Was it collusion, opportunism, or pure coincidence?

But then I looked a little closer at the PaulPachad account. Without going into all the details, I discovered:

• PaulPachad’s third edit and first major activity on Wikipedia was to get actively involved in an Article for Deletion discussion for Authority (Magazine)

• Authority is a pay-to-play online publisher, used mostly for PR puff pieces

• PaulPachad insisted to have no connection to Authority, but was quickly accused of being a “sockpuppet” account of the user “Fairlysimple”

• “Fairlysimple” and “PaulPachad” may or may not be the same person—the sockpuppet investigation was inconclusive—but both seem to be connected to Authority (Magazine).

• PaulPachad’s edits and articles have a history of being flagged as being promotional, including one editor asking “Was this written by AI? It is written in a weirdly promotional way.”

I’ll note again that I am not including all my evidence here, in order to avoid doxxing the person or people behind the PaulPachad account.

But in short: I am confident that PaulPachad works in PR and is part of the Authority (Magazine) team.

But can we connect “hired gun” and “fixer” Jed Wallace to the PaulPachad editor account?

But all of this still wasn’t quite enough for me. The one thing I wanted to find was any kind of evidence that PaulPachad and Jed Wallace might know each other. I was sure the link must come through Authority (Magazine), the puff piece PR blog.

First I made a list of every Jed Wallace client. Then I googled each of them, looking for a link. This took a long time but I don’t know how to make it sound exciting.

Eventually I found it. One of Jed Wallace’s clients is a guy named Bob Forrest, also known as Rehab Bob. Unlike many of Wallace’s other clients, Rehab Bob has not removed Jed Wallace from any of his social profiles. Meaning either Wallace still represents him or that Rehab Bob doesn’t know how to update that stuff without Wallace.

I found Rehab Bob by scouring the internet for Wallace’s clients, a list which also includes (or used to include) Heather Hayes of Intervention, celebrity criminal lawyer Darren Kavinoky, and California politician Travis Allen.

Here’s what I found that linked Wallace to PaulPachad: Rehab Bob was interviewed by Authority magazine in September, 2024. Which is an interview that, based on Jed Wallace’s representation of Rehab Bob, we have to assume Wallace placed.

So let’s recap the updated timeline so far:

• 2016: Flaa interviews Blake Lively and Parker Posey. It doesn’t go well for anyone involved.

• April, 2022: A user named PaulPachad joins Wikipedia.

• May, 2022: PaulPachad attempts to save the “Authority (Magazine)” article from being deleted and is promptly accused of being a sockpuppet account; sockpuppet investigation is labeled inconclusive.

• May, 2022: PaulPachad creates Wikipedia articles for Eve Barlow and Penney S. Azcarate, two people involved in the Depp-Heard trial.

• July 20, 2022: PaulPachad stops editing Wikipedia for two years, after a few months of edits.

• August 2, 2024: Baldoni begins communicating with a crisis PR team (according to text messages that emerged later), including Jed Wallace, Melissa Nathan, and Jennifer Abel.

• August 8, 2024: PaulPachad begins editing Wikipedia again after a two year hiatus.

• August 9, 2024: It Ends With Us premiers.

• August 10, 2024: Flaa posts her 2016 video to YouTube with the title “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.”

• August 13, 2024: The Hollywood Reporter reports that Justin Baldoni has hired a crisis PR team.

• August 16, 2024: Flaa does an exclusive interview with The Daily Mail about her experience.

• August 18, 2024: PaulPachad creates a draft of a Wikipedia article about Kjersti Flaa and cites her interview with The Daily Mail.

• August 20, 2024: PaulPachad publishes the draft as a live article.

• September 18, 2024: Authority Magazine interviews a Jed Wallace client

• December 21, 2024: The New York Times published their article about the alleged smear campaign.

• December 23, 2024: I make my first edit to the Kjersti Flaa article, before realizing I’ve just gotten involved in something.

• February, 2024: I publish the Substack article you’re reading right now.

In case anyone is reading through this thinking so what?, I’d like to draw attention to the one-sided nature, non-encyclopedic tone and editorializing of the original Blakely Lively section in the first version of the Kjersti Flaa article, as created by the above-mentioned account:

Flaa became widely known following a 2016 interview with actress Blake Lively and her co-star Parker Posey during the press tour for the film Café Society. [1] The interview resurfaced in 2024 when Flaa uploaded a clip to her YouTube channel, describing the encounter as "the most uncomfortable interview situation I have ever experienced." [1] [2] During the interview, Flaa congratulated Lively on her pregnancy and "little bump", to which Lively responded with a sarcastic remark, saying "congrats on your little bump." [9] Flaa later revealed that the comment was particularly painful due to her struggles with infertility at the time. [10]

The interview also included a tense moment when Flaa asked the actresses about the film’s costumes, leading Lively to question whether male actors would be asked similar questions. [10] The incident sparked significant public discussion, with some criticizing Lively's behavior as dismissive. [11] Flaa mentioned that she would welcome an apology from Lively but expressed doubt that it would happen. [12]

To quickly break down the issues here:

1. Flaa did not become widely known after the 2016 interview. She became widely known when she published it to YouTube in August, 2024. [Correcting this was the first edit I made to the Flaa article.]

2. “Sarcastic” and “tense” are judgmental terms that generally do not match the encyclopedic tone of Wikipedia, unless being attributed to a first-party source.

3. “The interview resurfaced in 2024” is dishonest, as it was Flaa who resurfaced it.

4. “The incident sparked significant public discussion, with some criticizing Lively's behavior as dismissive” only cites Mail Online as a reference. Mail Online is a deprecated source for Wikipedia, meaning it should not have been used.

5. In general, it’s an extremely one-sided narrative.

So, now what?

Does any of this matter? I don’t know.

I want to be clear about one thing: I don’t think Kjersti Flaa had anything to do with the creation of her Wikipedia article. I believe that she was not part of the alleged smear campaign, and that she is simply an opportunist who helped the alleged smear campaign without knowing what she was doing. I think she has now found a niche and has continued down this path because it has become her brand and gets a lot of views.

But I do think that she, like many of the people passionately defending Baldoni, has been manipulated by the PR professionals.

I think her Wikipedia article could have been created by an opportunist in the PR world trying to buddy up with Wallace and Nathan. It could have been something Wallace made happen. Or it could have been just a person making a Wikipedia page who, like Flaa, was bought in on the narrative and unwittingly working to perpetuate it. Regardless, there appears to be some sort of connection between clients of Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace and a series of Wikipedia edits made by the same editor (or a group of people sharing an editor handle.)

What happens next?

Do I seem like this? I hope I don’t seem like this.

Should Wikipedia reopen the sockpuppet investigation? Should Reddit detectives take it from here? Should I team up with my real journalist friend to crack the case and see how deep this goes? Should the NYT publish a followup about the Wikipedia angle? Am I chasing phantoms? Is Pepe Sylvia behind this? Did Bozo do the dub?

Updated the article to include this photo.

Tell me in the comments if you think I’m onto something or if this is total nonsense. And thanks for reading!