What the Diarrhea Parasite Teaches Us About Winning Online

Zero to 43K followers in 2 weeks

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Hi everyone! I’m Gabriella Zutrau, Principal and Founder of Weird LLC, and part-time dog. You may know me as a Digital Strategy Advisor to campaigns and organizations, or maybe you read my FWIW newsletter last year about building Zohran Mamdani’s social media chatbot infrastructure. My agency, Weird LLC, helps leftists and progressives do what works online right now. It’s also totally possible you know me from my work pretending to be a dog on the internet all day on my Edna the Runt dogfluencer accounts, which I use as a lab to experiment with new tools and tactics before trying them with my clients. But I’m not just a propagandist who moonlights as a dog.

I’m also The Diarrhea Parasite.

I’m gonna break down how and why I organically grew my brand new political diarrhea RFK Jr. troll account from zero to 43,000 followers–and 2 million views–in two weeks flat.

More on that below, but first…

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Digital ad spending, by the numbers:

FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent around $14.36 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Last week was a busy (and tbh kinda rough) one for the DNC—between rolling out a new early-state primary calendar and grappling with new reporting that the party is, well, “broke.” A widely-circulated New York Times story detailed the DNC’s significant financial troubles, noting that while the RNC has roughly $130 million on hand (not including Trump’s super PAC), the DNC is $2 million in debt. This is particularly alarming in light of the recent SCOTUS ruling removing limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. And yet, the Dems remain a reliable top spender on Meta platforms week after week. So here’s to getting ready for yet another “most important election of our lifetime.”

The bottom of the chart isn’t exactly a source of optimism either. Missouri Promise is helping Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe make good on his campaign promise to eliminate the state’s income tax, a matter that will be left to voters to decide in next week’s primary.

Meanwhile, political advertisers spent around $13.5 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:

United Democracy Project cracks the top 5 again this week with just over $500,000 in spend—worth nothing because folks, we are (thankfully) less than a week out from Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. The AIPAC-affiliated PAC has already poured nearly $15 million into the race, with over $9 million supporting Haley Stevens and over $5 million opposing Abdul El-Sayed.

…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent about $3.23 million on ads in 2026. Here are the top spenders year to date:

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Reach the right voters. Measure what moves them. Optimize in real-time.

Turn live campaign insights into smarter targeting, optimize your media investment in-flight, and clearly measure campaign influence in a single platform. Learn more >

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Zero to 43K followers in 2 weeks: What the Diarrhea Parasite Teaches Us About Winning Online

I started my new RFK Jr. trolling account, @thediarrheaparasite, on July 14th, 2026. Today is July 31st, 2026, and the account has over 43,000 followers. Let’s add some context to these numbers.

According to one social listening company, the cyclospora outbreak, beyond this single account, generated over 46 million impressions across social platforms between July 22nd and July 28th alone. With around 11,000 confirmed cases of the parasite across the US since May, the pathogen became a meme because it has a particularly strong story, and a very visual, visceral vibe. Also, politics aside, who doesn’t like a good poop joke?

I used lots of social media tips, tricks, hacks, and best practices to produce this explosive growth, and I’ll get into all of that in a bit. But first, we need to address the shitty messaging elephant in the room.

Establishment political figures avoided the cyclospora topic at first, just because it was gross. Broadly speaking Dems and Dem-aligned groups still have not systematized something that the right has mastered: moving at the speed of the internet. While a culture of risk aversion continues to plague Democratic communications, contributing to electoral and cultural losses, the right has built its entire online strategy on exactly the opposite instinct: claim the joke, name the villain, and move before the moment passes.

When everyone started talking about the cyclospora outbreak a few weeks ago, it was obvious that it wasn’t just a meme. It was a public health crisis. As a political communicator, I was hopeful (but not optimistic) we’d see some great content about it from Democratic lawmakers and candidates–after all, the messaging opportunity was practically gift-wrapped: Trump and RFK Jr. cut parasite prevention funding, leading to the spread of the diarrhea parasite sweeping the nation. Clear villains. Clear victims. Clear heroes. This was an obvious opening–a real public health failure with an unmistakable culprit and a genuinely gross, shareable hook. And yet, key voices were largely quiet on it until it became impossible to ignore.

I started @thediarrheaparasite because I wanted to help inextricably link Trump and RFK to this outbreak. Supporters flooded in to help make sure everyone knew this wasn’t just any diarrhea parasite, it was Trump’s Diarrhea Parasite. RFK Jr.’s appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services allowed for the mainstream platforming and spread of his “Make America Healthy Again” tagline. And, being that his career has been defined by anti-scientific rhetoric and medical conspiracy theories, MAHA is a brand that is just screaming to get brand-jammed. It’s incredibly low-hanging fruit.

So when I saw that the @thediarrheaparasite handle was available on Instagram, I couldn’t resist the opportunity, and I hard launched the account with a single video that brought in over 20,000 followers in one day–a strong sign that people want us to Make Public Health Fun Again. The video described our only goal and challenge: help us get more followers than RFK Jr. so we can troll him every day of his life.

The observant reader will recognize this as the same follow-challenge strategy Amanda McGonigle used with her JD Vance troll account, @catsonacouch. What started as an account dedicated to trolling JD Vance and getting more followers than him has grown into an account with millions of followers across platforms–and eventually helped spark a First Amendment lawsuit. Amanda, with the support of the ACLU, is now suing the federal government after being barred by theSecret Service from attending an official vice presidential event.

The best political accounts online have real-world impacts–but that doesn’t always come in the shape of a lawsuit.

During my time consulting on the Mamdani campaign, I saw what’s possible when we bring a genuine culture of experimentation to political communications. We all saw what happened when the campaign left poll-tested messaging and traditional wisdom behind for a culture of “that’s a great idea–how do we make it happen?”

Whether it’s Mayor Mamdani cheering for the Knicks, Taco Bell’s $1 lettuce-free Mexican Pizza promo, or brand-jamming RFK Jr., the common thread isn’t just “being good at social media.” It’s having fun. As social media consultant Rachel Karten recently referenced: you can’t compete with a brand that’s having fun.

To be fair, a diarrhea meme page will of course always be a more risk-tolerant undertaking than most political digital ventures should be. That said, it’s clear how much online and cultural territory we’ve ceded to the right over the last fifteen years because of our inability to move fast and meet the moment. It’s so clear that over 170 social media professionals, content creators, and new media figures recently signed a letter to the Democratic establishment, urging them to shift 15% of paid media budgets towards investing in organic social and creator engagement. Consider this account exhibit A: two million views, zero dollars spent, all in the time it takes some teams to get a single video through legal review.

So what would it look like if our campaigns and organizations took bigger swings online and leaned into the zeitgeist, instead of jumping on trends after a week of weighing the pros and cons? Taking risks online will always feel scary–it’s important to remain discerning and appropriately cautious. But there are two things I hope our side will weigh as we look towards better digital, and the second is more important than the first.

1. The internet is forever.

2. The internet is right now.

For @thediarrheaparasite, here are a few things that made the biggest difference in our explosive growth:

• We had an incredibly simple call to action: “follow us so we can troll RFK Jr. together.” Follow-challenges are becoming fairly commonplace, though they produce varying results.

• Because I absolutely do not have the time to run yet another social media account, after a couple days, I passed much of the coordination and content creation off to my favorite person to make poop jokes with–my sister. She now texts me diarrhea memes all day in the most chopped approvals process on Earth. For another example of how successful and burnout-proof a multi-contributor social account can be, look no further than @prettyinfformedgirls, who recently grew to over 210K followers in under a year.

• We made constant requests (in comments, in DMs, in content, in bio) for other accounts to collab with us. This meant we didn’t have to come up with all of the content by ourselves, but could maintain a consistent posting cadence.

• We used a mix of content formats and optimized for the three most algorithmically important signals on Instagram: skip rate, watch time, and share rate.

• We moved fast. We weren’t precious about content quality. This is a diarrhea account for god’s sake.

If you want to keep up with my work, you can sign up for my email list, get real time reflections on my LinkedIn, or find plenty of free digital strategy advice, plus the occasional political shitpost, on my Instagram, @extremelyonlinefriend. But, of course, if you’d rather watch me politically post about shit, please follow our RFK Jr. trolling journey at @thediarrheaparasite.

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Reach the right voters. Measure what moves them. Optimize in real-time.

Turn live campaign insights into smarter targeting, optimize your media investment in-flight, and clearly measure campaign influence in a single platform. Learn more >

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