Cloudy With a Chance of Default

April 24, 2018 3:29 PM

Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real.

After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. "Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education," wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.

Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries.

posted by Atom Eyes (13 comments total)

I guess using him to report on IT stuff would have been too in the nose.
posted by tobascodagama at 3:30 PM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account.

He eloped with Miquela Sousa
posted by roger ackroyd at 3:46 PM on April 24, 2018 [13 favorites]

Good work, Chris Quintana and Dan Bauman (if that's who you really are).
posted by micketymoc at 4:07 PM on April 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

"Alan Smithee is a Well-Known Director. One Problem: He's Not Real."

This is what happens when people trust self-described experts without researching or reviewing their sources.
posted by explosion at 4:15 PM on April 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

"Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information bullshit that they would be too embarrassed to publish under their own names related to the challenges college students face with funding their education,"
posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:48 PM on April 24, 2018 [13 favorites]

I worked for a finance firm a while back and part of my job was to write puff pieces on the company and its projects which I would then pitch to papers to put under the byline of their own reporters.

I didn't last long at that job...
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:55 PM on April 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

This falls into the category of "stuff that doesn't even surprise me anymore."
posted by salvia at 7:21 PM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

drew butt
posted by capricorn at 7:24 PM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

For some reason that website thinks I'm a bot. The unreality continues.
posted by blue shadows at 9:27 PM on April 24, 2018

A few months later, The Student Loan Report issued a report on its own survey asking how far borrowers would go to erase their debt. About 62 percent said they would star in a pornographic film. Forty-three percent said they would hook up with Caitlyn Jenner.

so basically this is a frat boy startup run by frat boys with no ethics who are basically doing yellow journalism for the attention and for the ability to redirect people to their loan refinancing business, advice that this 'Drew Cloud' regularly gave based on evidence by LendEDU and their partners

you know how we laugh at people in the past for believing in snake oil because of all the 'doctors' who recommended them as cure-alls not realizing how desperately unavailable medical care was for the masses, before we understood consumption to be a treatable disease called tuberculosis and only the rich lived past 70 and the rest of us died in our 30s?

this is that bullshit. less terrible because of the import we place on life but the same flavor of predatory, scumbag behavior
posted by runt at 7:43 AM on April 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

Forty-three percent said they would hook up with Caitlyn Jenner.

Hooray, casual transphobia!

(Jenner is loathsome because of her politics and privilege, not because she's trans.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:01 PM on April 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

Wow, that whole thing is just unbearably stupid. As if student debt weren't already an enormously confusing and frustrating issue.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:00 AM on April 26, 2018

The clue should have been that his spokesman is John Barron.
posted by YoungStencil at 11:18 AM on April 26, 2018