You've probably never heard of the Halsa brothers. Neither had I. Neither had YouTuber Danny Gonzales when he came across the TikTok page Hollywood Paparazzi, which seemed to be single-mindedly devoted to chronicling the paparazzi's obsession with the apparently very famous Sammy and David Halsa.
Gonzalez recently posted a video titled "Faking Paparazzi Videos For Clout," in which he speculated that the Halsa brothers themselves were behind the TikTok account.
The page, which claims to be the "#1 TikTok paparazzi" has around 43,000 followers, and a seemingly endless number of videos of the Halsa bros being harassed by paps with egregiously loud camera shutters. Hollywood Paparazzi posts multiple videos of the Halsas a day, many of which don't show them in the greatest light. Take the most recent clip, in which Ryan Halsa is telling off a TMZ pap:
A simple search of TMZ, though, shows that the gossip site has never posted about Ryan Halsa.
So who are the Halsas? According to an article in New York Weekly, a publication that people can pay to be featured in, Ryan "has reached an audience of over 3.6 million followers and turned into one of the world's most media/paparazzi-covered influencers. Not too different is Sammy Halsa, an American social media star with a strong fanbase on Instagram. Sammy has also been one of Hollywood's top media-covered celebrities."
It also says the pair grew up in Newport Beach, California, and have been attempting social media fame for the past several years.
They're also not shy about flattering themselves. Take this "news" clip they made, in which "pap" clips of Ryan Halsa are matched with the chyron "Ryan Halsa new cocky pretty boy in social media."
If you're bewildered, you're not alone. Most of the comments on these TikToks are some variation of "who?"
Bizarrely, Hollywood Paparazzi isn't the only account the Halsas are accused of running to help build clout. A separate TikTok channel devoted specifically to creating fake news reports about their paparazzi antics and how those antics are connected to Justin Bieber has also drawn suspicion.
There are also SammyHalsa.fanclub and RyanHalsa.fanclub accounts that repost these videos across TikTok, though both have few followers.
For the record, both Halsas have more than 4 million Instagram followers at this point, though there's also something fishy there. In July 2022, Ryan Halsa gained 1.4 million followers, and then in September of that same year, lost more than 708,000 followers, according to social-analytics tracker Social Blade, which could indicate that Halsa is buying followers.
Ironically, in one actually-real paparazzi video they did with The Hollywood Fix last May, Ryan said he was emphatically not into being on TikTok and that he was sticking to other platforms. As if to throw snoops off the scent, Ryan said: "I respect what they're doing, I just want to go bigger than that."
So why would someone cultivate several paparazzi accounts devoted entirely to themselves? The Halsas may think this is their shortcut to fame. Rather than work toward being famous by demonstrating a skill, creating connections, or otherwise providing any kind of utility, it seems as if they took "fake it til you make it" to its logical endpoint. You kind of have to hand it to them.
Ryan Halsa and Hollywood Paparazzi did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Reps for Justin Bieber also did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Check out Danny Gonzalez' entire video here: