The situation is relatable to anyone who has been in a parent WhatsApp chat: one person says something ridiculous, and everyone else has to react with varying degrees of politeness or directness. Side chats ensue, tensions start to boil.
Oreogate is a series of viral Instagram posts from user @ashleighjamz about a fight over kindergarteners bringing Oreos for lunch in a classroom group chat, and it hits that exact nerve.
Over 13 videos (so far), the saga unfolds. The mother of “Ava” asks the other parents in the group not to send Oreos in their lunches because Ava isn’t allowed to have Oreos. Ava came home upset and asking for Oreos after seeing another girl with one. The other moms refuse to accommodate this unreasonable request and continue sending Oreos. The other children share their cookies with Ava, and the angry mother says she has complained to the teacher. (To get the full experience, you need to watch the videos.)
The series has gone viral, with coverage in the New York Post, AdAge, and other news outlets. The first video in the series has over 10 million views. Other creators and brands have been making posts about it. Pediatricians are weighing. Dozens of moms have posted videos of themselves shopping for Oreos or packing them in lunches in honor of Ava.
But something about Oreogate seems fishy to me.
The premise works because of how outrageous and entitled the one mom is, but what really makes it is the music. Each video has the words from the WhatsApp screenshots set to music as lyrics. The songs are generated by Suno, an AI music app, according to her caption.
All the videos are a paid partnership with Suno
And if you keep reading the caption, you’ll notice all the Oreogate videos also end with #sunopartner.
So, was this all an ad for a generative AI music app?
Yes. Suno confirmed to Business Insider that @ashleighjamz is one of their paid partners who creates content about Suno for social media.
Suno, however, also said it doesn’t control what their partners post in their ads.
“Our creator partners have the freedom to use Suno however they want,” said a Suno spokesperson. Basically, Suno didn’t come up with the idea to make a song about Oreos or parenting — they just had an existing paid arrangement with someone who had the idea on their own.
(For what it’s worth, I also asked Oreo if they had any involvement, and they said no.)
But there’s a bigger question that’s still unanswered: Was Oreogate even real?
Did Oreogate actually happen?
I reached out to @ashleighjamz over Instagram DM to ask. “I’ve deliberately not been getting into the specifics of the people/messages behind OreoGate while everything is still happening, just because there are so many people following it and discussing it at the moment,” she responded.
After I asked several follow-up questions, she went silent.
Here’s why I’m skeptical (and I’m not the only one) that any of the Oreogate saga ever transpired in real life.
The @ashleighjamz account, which first posted only three weeks ago, has only Suno-related posts, with no other photos or videos typical of a personal account. Her other videos are similar to Oreogate: screenshots of text messages about infuriating social situations, set to Suno-generated music with the #sunopartner hashtag.
She has videos about “Text from the worst bachelorette trip of my life” (an 8-part series), “Messages from my ex-boss I probably should have reported” (3 parts), “Turning my delusional friend’s text into a song,” and “My husband lost our dog and this is how he told me.”
Another, more practical element that makes me question the videos is that it seems unlikely that someone would share authentic screenshots of this situation, names and all (including the kids’ names!).
Unfortunately, without hearing more from @ashleighjamz directly, I can’t say for sure whether Oreogate is something she experienced firsthand, or if it was inspired by real events, or if it even happened at all.
Faked “storytimes” are a new trend in ads
There’s a new trend in user-generated content marketing where people invent fake “storytime” type posts about enraging social situations involving horrible bosses, toxic mothers-in-law, or cheating husbands. Kate Lindsay wrote about the trend for Link In Bio, a newsletter about digital marketing, and how it’s proliferating on TikTok and Instagram.
We’re in a moment now where it’s getting hard to tell what’s authentic in our feeds anymore, and the definition of advertising is being stretched in new ways. After several years of seeing influencers tagging or coyly thanking brands in the comments of a photo— actions that are not always clear disclosures, according to the FTC — I think many of us had sort of felt we had a comfortable understanding of what’s an ad or not. But with the rise of clipping, which exists in a strange nexus of advertising and content, and new incentives for creators, platforms, and brands… I’m feeling lost. I think I need an Oreo.
