People think Taylor Swift wrote a movie. It's SO BAD.

Guys, did Taylor Swift secretly write a book? No,  of course she didn't. Okay, thanks for watching. No, but for real though, there is a book. They  turned it into a movie, even though the book is not very good, and people are freaking out  because they think Taylor Swift wrote it. But it turns out the real answer is even weirder. Hi, I am D'Angelo, and at this point, introducing myself would be like introducing  the sun. We already know I'm hot and everything revolves around me. Anyway, I'm glad

you're here  because today we have ourselves a murder mystery. Actually, no one was murdered, but something  equally tragic happened. I had to read an entire book for this video, a book. It was like text with  no character limit. Forget murder. I almost died of boredom because this book sucks. So how then  did it get turned into a $200 million movie before the book was even released? And despite having all  kinds of big names attached, from Dua Lipa, the Henry Cavill, why was the marketing and

rollout of  said movie An absolute mess? The movie's not out yet, but early reviews are. And let's just say the  critics didn't seem to enjoy the film version of Argylle any more than I enjoyed the book. And speaking of reviews, you might even get a little bonus at the end of this video  because right after I finish recording this, Argylle officially releases in theaters. It  should be out by the time you're watching this. So I may be able to pop in from the  future and give my own mini review.

And who knows, maybe the critics were wrong. Hi, it's me popping in from the future. Please save me. The critics were not wrong. The book is a bust. The film is a flop. It's like a cinematic universe of sadness. But at the center  of said universe, there really is a mystery, who actually wrote Argylle, and why do people  think it's Taylor Swift? Or why do Swifties think it's Taylor Swift? I have strong opinions  about Swifties, but we'll get to those later. Anyway, as you can see, there's a lot

going on  and I'm going to go over all of it. But first, let's take a quick look at today's sponsor.  Today's video is sponsored by air up. Now, stop me if this is too much of a hot take, but I  think water is really good for you. Problematic, I know. Apology video incoming. But jokes aside, I  always feel way better when I'm properly hydrated, but it can get a little monotonous drinking so  much of the same thing every day, but that is where scent flavored water with air up comes in. First, I f

ill my air up bottle with drinking water, just water. There are no additives  required. Next, I attach the straw and insert the special lid. Then I pop on an air up flavor  pod, and this is where it all comes together. When you drink through the straw, an air up water  bottle transports water and air into your mouth. This air is scented via the flavor pod and  your brain actually perceives it as flavor, which is a phenomenon known as scent-based  taste. So lastly, I just pop up the flavor pod to

activate it and let the flavor begin. You  can also deactivate it, depending on how you feel. It's time to choose both health and flavor  with air up. So click the link in the description to check out their flavors and get started today. All right, let's get into the video. The marketing and rollout of Argylle can only be described  as a constant cycle of confusion. And this went on for two and a half years. So at this  point, the only way to cut through the chaos is to look at it one day at a

time. July 7th,  2021, observer.com publishes an unconfirmed report that director Matthew Vaughn has a new  unnamed film coming out about a "world-class spy suffering from amnesia" from the rumors that  he's enlisting actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Bryce Dallas Howard to his previous track record  with films like Kingsman and X-Men: First Class. The report seems likely enough, but it remains  unconfirmed and no mainstream outlets pick up on it until July 8th, 2021. One day later,  it looks li

ke the rumors were all true. The movie Argylle is officially announced with not  only Jackson and Howard, but also Henry Cavill, John Cena, Bryan Cranston. This cast is absolutely  stacked. Not just that, but it's going to be a whole franchise with not just one but three movies  plans, minimum. And it's all going to be based off a book called Argylle by first time author, Ellie  Conway, a book which at this point has not yet been released and is slated for release in 2022. When I read this early

draft manuscript, I felt it was the most incredible and original spy  franchise since Ian Fleming's books of the '50s, aka James Bond. The director, Matthew Vaughn, is  comparing this unreleased book to literally the most iconic spy series of all time. "This is  going to reinvent the spy genre," he says. No pressure. Notably, the only difference between  the official announcement and the previous day's rumors is that references to amnesia are  conspicuously absent. Instead, the producers say th

e film simply follows the globetrotting  adventures of a super spy named Argylle. Anyway, now that the news is out, people are  excited, and this is getting reported all over the place. I mean, you've got the big name  director, this apparently revolutionary book, and of course, the crazy cast. Even Dua Lipa  will be in this movie as her first foray into acting or what people thought would be  her first foray into acting. The cast for Barbie has not yet been announced. August 4th, 2021, one mont

h after the announcement, Apple TV has officially secured the  rights to Argylle for a whopping $200 million. You know what? Suddenly, I love books. I love  writing. I'm going to write a book. March 8th, 2022, the new year rolls around and Apple  TV shares the very first look at the movie Argylle. And why does Henry Cavill's hair  look like that? Maybe it's just the angle. Anyway, now that it's 2022, we finally get to see  what all of the fuss is about because the book Argylle by Ellie Conway is

officially released.  Oh wait, no it's not. They said it was coming out in 2022 and it just doesn't. The new release  date is apparently March 30th, 2023. But the book is not the only thing that nobody can find. September 15th, 2022, the Hollywood Reporter attempts to contact Ellie Conway, but  this does not work. Conway's publisher, ghosted. Conway's agent, no reply. THR  couldn't even get an advance copy of the book, which was supposedly coming out very soon. It was  already mysterious enough

that a first time author somehow got the attention of one of the largest  streaming services and one of the most prominent action movie directors and some of the biggest  stars on the big screen. And the fact that she managed to do so without releasing the book to  the public at all, it takes this from mysterious to bizarre. But now you're telling me that Ellie  Conway also has no online presence or even a way for the media to reach her? Something ain't  right. And at this point, some people st

art to think it all seems a bit like a marketing stunt. January 10th, 2023, Apple confirms in a press release that Argylle is officially slated  for release later in the year. But first, March 30th, 2023, the day has arrived. After  nearly two years of waiting, the world finally gets to read Argylle by... Oh, nope, it doesn't  because the book literally does not come out, again. At this point, people have even pre-ordered  the book, but Amazon says it's not coming until mid-July. Wait, sorry, ea

rly November. June 15th, 2023, oh, and also, the movie is not coming out this year after all because  it's been pushed back to 2024. At this point, I think it's safe to say things are going  awry behind the scenes. Will this movie ever come out? Does the book even exist? Is Henry  Cavill's weird hair cannon? Because it looks exactly like it does on the book cover. Wait. But finally, we get something concrete when on September 28th, 2023, the official trailer  for Argylle is finally released, and

hold on, Ellie Conway is in the movie, not as an  actor, but as a character? So it turns out Bryce Dallas Howard is playing a character  named Ellie Conway, who in the movie wrote a hugely successful book called Argylle. Author of Argylle series Elly Conway! And Ellie finds herself targeted by spies because  the things she's writing in her fictional spy books are a little too close to the actual  top secret things that said spies are doing. What you wrote in your new book  actually happened, an

d you kicked a hornet’s nest you didn’t even know existed. And you know what? That is an interesting premise, and I'm sure the twist in that movie will be very  unpredictable and not something that was already revealed literal years ago in the Observer  article from before the movie was released, where they already told us that Ellie is  a spy, but she just has amnesia. Anyway, the only thing anyone can talk about from the  trailer is Henry Cavill's hair once again, because oh my God, it's even

worse from the front. October 26th, 2023, Taylor Swift fans think she secretly wrote Henry Cavill's new spy movie. I  promise I can explain this one, and it's actually just one word, TikTok. A series of TikToks go  viral in which users believe that not only is Taylor Swift behind the Argylle franchise, but  this whole time she's also been leaving a bunch of clues that all but confirm her involvement in the  series. And what are these clues? Well, buckle in. Ellie is a redhead author, and Taylor

once played  a redhead author in a short film. Ellie and Taylor both have the cat backpack. Ellie's cat is the  same breed as Taylor's cats. Ellie Conway's first Instagram post was on Taylor Swift's birthday.  Swift once wore a Conway Studio sweatshirt. Taylor Swift has worn clothing with an Argylle print. I mean, if that's proof, then at this point, I may as well be Ellie Conway. Look at me in this  video. I look so good. Actually, wait, don't look at that video. I was having a mental breakdown

. Anyway, all this to say, literally none of this proofs that Taylor Swift wrote Argylle, but did  that stop Swifties from running with this? No, of course it didn't. And honestly, even I can  agree some of the similarities here are a bit too weird to just be coincidences. So here's what I  think happened. Conjecture alert. Basically, some of Taylor Swift's fans need to touch grass. Now,  I shouldn't even have to clarify, but obviously, there's nothing wrong with liking T-Swizzle or  listening t

o her music, even though I've been known to wear a cardigan or two myself. What  I'm talking about is when the Taylor Swift obsession drives one to cause problems for other  people, to bring her up in scenarios that have nothing to do with her, and to generally just be  unhinged, hearing that Taylor Swift is at a New Jersey restaurant trying to chill at her friend's  wedding rehearsal, and swarming said restaurant, shutting down the street, and resulting in  the police showing up. Those are the

Swifties for which I believe additional hobbies would be  beneficial. And obviously a few hundred people in the street don't represent all of Taylor's untold  millions of fans, but my point is the fact that there are people this ride-or-die in her fan base  is something that is now being capitalized on by non-Taylor entities, or NTEs, which is a phrase  I just made up. But the phenomenon is real, okay? When Taylor Swift started attending her  footballer boyfriend Travis Kelce's NFL Games, the NF

L ramped up their fixation on her, even  putting her in their bio and TikTok header. And it got to the point where even Travis said  they're overdoing their focus on her during crowd shots. When Taylor Swift was spotted near a pile  of ranch dressing at one of said football games, Heinz, Hidden Valley, and Buffalo Wild Wings  used the moment to promote their products and even released special additions of said products. Examples like this are common, but they raise an interesting question: What

if you just bypass  Taylor Swift's involvement altogether? The director already said he was influenced  by Taylor Swift, hence the cat backpack, so why not go the extra mile? People aren't really  obsessed with Argylle, mostly because literally nobody asked for this franchise, but they are  obsessed with Taylor Swift. So if you can kind of, sort of make it seem like Argylle is Taylor  Swift, then maybe people will actually care, which is exactly what happened. In a way, I'm almost surprised that

this is the first movie to try something  like this, but yeah, in my opinion there are only two possibilities. This was either really  good yet fairly underhanded marketing or this was all somehow just a convenient accident  that just so happened to get the millions of dollars in free advertising all over TikTok  and the media outlets without ever having to pay Taylor Swift a dime. And trust me, when it  comes to advertising, there are no accidents. But also literally none of this brings us any

  closer to the truth of who actually wrote the book and, instead of answers, we're just in for even  more questions. October 19th, 2023, the director Matthew Vaughn goes on the Happy Sad Confused  Podcast to reveal that Argylle the movie is actually based on book four of Argylle the  book series, which is apparently a series now. Book four, which is what the movie's based  around, was the one that would work for it. So, book one is being published, but book one  is… you know you have to, you kn

ow… listen, Mr. Lucas was clever enough to start  Star Wars with Episode 4, so why not us? So it turns out that the book and the movie that  we've been waiting for this entire time are two different stories. Okay, cool. You'll read book 1, which I hope to actually shoot next. So you’ll jump back to book 1? Book 1, yes. There is a  scene of book 1 in the movie. Thanks, Matthew. Not confusing at all. December 30th, 2023, The Telegraph publishes a review of Argylle and, oh my god, the book  is actu

ally real. "How has she written such a good spy thriller?" The review asks of,  definitely not a real person at this point, Elly Conway. And it says that the book is full  of descriptive prose, splended set pieces, and that it's a, quote, "Excellent example of  an action thriller," even if it doesn't quite reinvent any genres, a la Matthew Vaughn's claims. So at this point the director is hyping the book up, this review is hyping the book up, the book  actually seems to exist. And all that remai

ns is January 9th, 2024. Okay, it's out. I read it.  Now that we've relived the nightmare this book had to go through to wind up in my hands,  let's dive into the even worse nightmare that was me attempting to read it. Synopsis: quirky CIA agents stop a rich politician from using a long-lost  Treasure to create Super-Russia. Okay, look, I can summarize the plot of this book in less  than 30 seconds or you can get your money back, even though this is a free video. Okay, so  Aubrey Argylle... yes,

his name is Aubrey, gets recruited by the CIA a after rescuing some US  government operatives in Southeast Asia, despite his background as the child of weed smugglers. His new job introduces him to fellow teammates Wyatt, whose last name is Woody for some reason,  and Erin, whose last name I don't remember, but Argylle thinks she's a total baddie. Under  the leadership of Spymaster Frances Coffey, their goal is to stop the psychopathic, yet  hard-to-take-seriously bad guy from building a quote,

unquote, "United ultra-right  Russian super-state." Thus ensues a globe-spanning treasure hunt to burgle  the bad guy's bling bracelet before he can use it to achieve his nefarious goals. Also, there's apparently a traitorous ma on the team, and you'll never guess who it is.  The end. Oof, looks like that was slightly more than 30 seconds. Ope, guess I've got  to give you $0, or something worth $0. Oh, here. You can have my copy of the book. Story: too many moving parts without much happening a

t all, ending in a highly predictable  plot twist. I feel like most spy story villains want to do things like, I don't know, release a  deadly bio-weapon or unleash a EMP that takes out everyone's technology, or something with immediate  stakes. But the bad guy in this book is literally just trying to become the president of Russia. It  doesn't feel very urgent. And yes, he's going to build Super-Russia or whatever, but the book  doesn't go into much detail about what that actually means or what

would happen because of it. And Russia is already known for having an awful president in real life, so I'm not really  sure what this character gives that I couldn't get just by reading world news. And if we the  readers can't feel the urgency from the bad guy, you would hope that the protagonists do at  least, but the characters don't really come up with a main objective until like 40% of the  way through the book. And even after it's stated, it doesn't do much to stop the whole thing from  fe

eling like a collection of random scenes and random places that are only tangentially related  to their vague goal of stopping the bad guy. Like, what does stealing a bracelet really have  to do with preventing a presidency? What if you stop him from finding the treasure and then he  gets elected anyway? How does literally any of this matter? One way this book does try to  spice things up is with a B plot culminating in a plot twist at the end, but even that  was extremely lackluster. Remember i

n the synopsis when I said that you would never  guess who the mole is? I lied. Maybe you'd never guess if you read it with your eyes closed,  but literally all you have to do is stop and ask, whose betrayal would hurt the main character  the most? And then, surprise, it's that person. Halfway through the book I was like, "Oh, it's  100% that person." But then I reached the end and I was like, "Oh yeah. It was 100% that person."  And in addition to the plot twist, if that even really counts as a

plot twist, the book also tries  to surprise you with this half-hearted open-ended type thing where basically the good guys think  they won, but right at the end they didn't. And a book should not need a Marvel movie-style  after-credit scene to get you to read the second one. And either way, it didn't work because you  could not pay me to read another one of these at this point. Actually, you could. Let's be honest.  I'm a YouTuber. You could pay me to do anything, but I wouldn't be happy abou

t it. Overall,  the story was just not very good at conveying any sort of thrill, which is kind of a complete  failure, considering the book is a thriller novel. Characters: walking stereotypes that aren't  deep enough to relate to, care about, or even remember. This book suffers from what  I call Tintin Syndrome, which is that the story has so many characters from so many  different locations that they're all just reduced to stereotypes for the sake of keeping  the story moving. "Oh, you're Ame

rican. Okay, great. You're from a Military family and your  personality is 'Murica." "Oh, you're Mexican? Okay, awesome. You're an immigrant who came here  to escape gang violence." "Oh, you're Russian? Okay, fantastic. You were formerly in the KGB." Literally every Russian character in the story is a bad guy to the point where Conway just starts  using bad guy and Russian interchangeably by the end of the book. "The Russian hasn't time to react  before the full force of a suspended wooden seat

hits him in the face, knocking him to the ground.  But now there is another Russian coming." Just an endless stream of Russians, like they're some  sort of mob of duplicate NPCs in a video game. And speaking of the Mexican character, his sole  purpose is just to inspire the main character to achieve his goals. Argylle turns down the CIA  job at first, but then he sees this random Mexican teenager in the street who proceeds to give him  his whole life story about how he crossed the border with th

e last $500 his mom gave him.  And Argylle is like, "Wow, you are so real for that. If this brave immigrant boy can risk  it all to escape systemic violence, then I too can accept a government job offer from people  who flew me in internationally and literally handed me money on the plane for no reason."  And then the kid is never mentioned again. I am not kidding. I love it when side characters  have trauma that exists solely to be used as an accessory to our privileged protagonist. Oh, and bec

ause the characters don't have personalities or really any kind of internal  uniqueness at all, the author desperately overcompensates for that by obsessively describing  her character's physical traits over and over and over to the point where it just becomes grading.  Like when one character is introduced, it says he, quote, "Towers above most people in the bar."  And it's like, "Okay, tall dude. Got it." Then it says, "He's built like a tank." And it's like,  "Yep, still got it." "He's a big

man," it says, which, yeah, I think that's been established.  "He dwarfs the slight figure in front of him," which is pretty much the same thing that was said  two pages ago. "He's built like a truck." Yes, he's built like a truck and also built like  a tank, which was also said two pages ago. At this point I'm starting to think this character  might be large. And I'm not exaggerating either. All of these descriptions happened within the  first three pages of introducing this guy. And on the off

chance that you didn't get it the  first, second, third, fourth, or fifth times, don't worry because she mentions this guy's  size literally every time he's present, which is almost the entire book. And as more characters  are introduced, each with their own physical descriptions like slender, expressionless, or  has a boob job, as one character is repeatedly described for some reason. It's like Conway is  allergic to bringing up these characters without mentioning something about their appeara

nce. But  that something is the same thing she mentioned every other time, even in situations where  it makes absolutely no sense to bring it up. "The chunky Canadian wades through the six inch  deep water." Like, my man is literally just walking but you got to bring up his weight for the  third time. And for what? Pacing. Nonstop action, AKA random chaos broken up by chapters full  of overlong expository dialogue. This book has plenty of action sequences in the form of the CIA  missions that th

e characters go on, but they can all be described as formulaic nonsense. So they'll  have a goal, like, "Oh, we have to go to this rich people party and steal this bracelet that's on  display," and then they get there, and surprise, the bracelet isn't on display, it's being worn  by the bad guy's wife. So then it's like, "Okay, new goal. We have to incapacitate the wife  somehow. Let's make all the lights go crazy and purposely give her a seizure." I wish I was  making that one up, by the way, b

ut they literally tried to trigger her epilepsy and then roofie her,  and they justify it because she's mean, basically. But then, surprise, it turns out the guy who runs  the light show for the party got stuck in traffic. So now, it's like, "Let's do a high-speed  motorcycle chase to go find him." Seriously, the action sequences in this book are  absolutely nonsensical, and they all follow the same format of taking a clear goal, making  up a series of bizarrely coincidental setbacks, and then h

aving the characters overcome all of  them effortlessly with their super spy intellect or whatever. And it doesn't help that the things  they're doing are low stakes in the first place, like stealing a bracelet, or stealing a  different bracelet, or looking for treasure, or looking for a different treasure. Honestly,  things are happening, but at the same time, nothing is happening. And the only  reason you know the world is in danger is because they keep repeating this every five pages. And spe

aking of telling instead of showing, the sections between the action sequences  are just painful. It almost feels like all of the action scenes were drafted first and  then everything else in the book was just an afterthought to connect everything together with  a bunch of overlong explanations and history facts straight from Wikipedia. I'm not even  really opposed to calmer sequences in books. My problem is just because the characters  aren't breaking into billionaire parties in France or steal

ing treasure from a monastery  in Greece doesn't mean things should be boring. And part of this is a genre thing. Historical  trivia just isn't really one of my special interests, especially when it comes to World  War II and Nazis, et cetera. So the fact that multiple sections of this book are just no-frills  explanations of everything from Napoleon's wife to Hitler's art collecting habits, it felt like  a slog to read. And while I can appreciate that it took a good deal of research to write so

mething  like this, I don't want to read your research. I literally feel like I learned more about history  than I did about other somewhat important things, like the characters, their motivations, and why I  should care about any of this in the first place. Writing serviceable prose marred by  distracting usage of Britishisms coming from American characters. Okay, here's where it  gets weird. So despite generally good writing, there are definitely a few head scratchers in  there, with one chara

cter described as a dumb man mountain of macho bigotry, and another as  making Pablo Escobar look like Mary Poppins, but the cringe-inducing one-liners are few and  far between, making them easy enough to ignore, but what is not, however, easy to ignore is  the inescapable fact that the writer is 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt, British, "Where's  my tea?" God save the queen levels of British. And usually, that wouldn't be a problem at all.  I've read plenty of British books and some of my best

friends are British, but the reason it  sticks out like a sore thumb in this book is that, according to her own bio, the author, Elly  Conway, was quote, "Born and raised in upstate New York." And unless there's an upstate New  York across the pond that I've never heard of, something ain't adding up. And it's definitely not  Taylor Swift writing this. I know she went on her Heiress tour or whatever, but she wasn't in Europe  for that long. But yeah, this whole thing just comes across as lazy to

me. So the author bio is  most likely fabricated to tie in with the movie, big whoop, but writing that fictional book  with prose that sounds like it's straight from the BBC is shattering the illusion a bit. And if you're wondering how I know there's no way this was written by someone who lives in New York  or any of the other 49 states in this country, here's what I mean. First of all, the entire book  is written with single quotes for dialogue instead of double quotes. Besides that, anytime a

word  is used that can be spelled two different ways, that word is spelled the British way, 10 times  out of 10. We've got everything from colors with a U to maneuver with an O. Besides that, it's  just front to back Britishisms, like saying a spot of something instead of a little bit  of something or calling the trash collectors waste hauliers instead of waste haulers. After  a certain point, I got so bored with the book that I wasn't sure if I was actually reading for  the plot or just readin

g so I could play spot the difference between British and American English. And just to be clear, I'm not just talking about the writer herself being British. The fact that  the third-person narration measures things in kilometers instead of miles doesn't really  dampen my enjoyment, but where it becomes a problem for me is that even the characters within  the book, these supposedly American characters, sound like they're from Bridgerton. One of  her characters is described, multiple times, of c

ourse, as being a guy from Texas, but at  one point, he uses the phrase dicking around to refer to the action of playing around. And  as an actual guy from Texas, I just need you to know that that would literally never happen. Another character, specifically the Murica character with his, quote, "All American military  background," uses the phrase queer the pitch to refer to messing up a plan. And at that point,  I was like, "Did they write this entire book and then just change their mind and se

t it  in America after the fact?" And the moment that comes so close to self-awareness, an  actual British character in the book says, "One is never quite sure which terms crossed  the Atlantic, as it were." You think? Genre, retreading all the hallmarks of the spy thriller  genre without adding anything fresh or insightful. So to wrap it up, does this at least function  as a spy novel? Yeah, sure, technically, but it almost feels like a straight-to-DVD Disney  movie. It's like Hunchback of Notr

e Dame 2, not not a Disney movie, per se, but also not good  and not necessary in any sense of the word. With Argylle, so many iconic adventure stories came  before it with basically the same plot points, and this book just feels like it's trying to  capture their original magic, but with none of the original cast and only a $10 animation budget. In fact, I think the biggest question I have for this book is, why? Why any of this? And I don't  mean it in a pretentious art must exist for a reason

kind of way, I just genuinely want to know  why it was written because I can't even say it was a fun read. It was cliche, tedious, predictable,  uninspired, and the only thing it made me feel was constant annoyance at how many pages I had left.  I joked earlier about the book being worth $0, but unfortunately, it was more like $30  by the time it was all said and done. And I literally think I could've taken that money,  paid someone on Fiverr, and wound up with a more compelling James Bond fan f

iction than this. But yeah, that's Argylle by Elly Conway. So we've looked at the marketing, we've looked  at the book, but all that's done is raise more questions than the answers when it comes to  who actually wrote this thing, and Taylor Swift was just the most popular theory. At this point,  I've seen people online suspect everyone from JK Rowling because she's British to Kellyanne Conway  because Elly, Kellyanne Conway. And honestly, if it did turn out to be either of those  two people and

I read their entire book, I think I would just stare directly at the sun.  That way, I never have to read a word again. But no, it's not either of them, and yes, it's  finally time to solve the mystery that's been plaguing this entire video once and for all.  Who the heck is Elly Conway? As far as I know, the only social media account officially belonging  to Elly is @EllyConway on Instagram. Lately, it's just turned into a full-blown Argylle promotional  account, but if you scroll before all of

that, you can see there are some other posts here  that give us a bit more information. No selfies, no backstory, just a bunch of environmental  things. So we've got pizza, brownstones, pigeons. This account is really trying to sell the, "I  live in New York," image. This is so 1989 coded. And as you can see, the comment section is almost  exclusively Taylor Truthers. How do you fluster an introvert, publish her first novel, have Matthew  Vaughn buy the movie rights, then tell her she has to st

art using social media for visibility? Actually, Elly, that's not quite the order in which the [inaudible 00:25:45], now is it?  But you know what? I'm just going to go a step further and say that this account is probably not  even run by the same person who wrote the book. Almost every single post is promoting the book or  movie in some way. There's no information about her writing process, her inspirations, none of  that. She doesn't even talk about the characters in the book. Forget writing A

rgylle, did the  person behind this account even read Argylle? The only posts that are not, "I definitely live  in New York," and, "Please read and also watch Argylle," are a few pictures of other books  that they added in, I guess, to try to make it less obvious that this is a promotional account,  "Somehow missed reading this when it came out. Stayed up way too late reading it last night." I  actually read The Girl on the Train last month, as well. So again, have you ever seen Elly Conway and 

me in the same room? I'm just saying, I read The Girl on the Train last month, I read The Silent  Patient. Actually, I think I read 12 thrillers in January. Hyperfixation is a hell of a drug, but  unfortunately, one of those thrillers was Argylle. Anyway, @EllyConway on Instagram? Useless. Follow  me on Instagram instead @dangelno. I don't always remember my Instagram password, but when I do,  the fits are fire. Who is doing it like me? Now, at this point, you might be wondering, where do we  g

o from here? If the only public account belonging to Elly Conway doesn't even seem to be run by her  and even the mainstream media can't get in contact with her, then how are we actually going to get to  the bottom of this? I have to be honest, whoever is behind the marketing of this franchise worked  hard to keep Elly's real identity a secret. It is not easy to be anonymous on the internet. Every IG  caption, everything that she or anything else has ever said about her has all been carefully cu

rated  and filtered to make this person absolutely untraceable. Except for one teeny-tiny problem.  They missed a spot, like literally one sentence on the very last page of the book. After the story  is over, at the very end of her acknowledgment section where she thanks everybody for their help  with the story, Elly Conway offers her thanks to one Dr. Robert Massey, Deputy Executive  Director of the Royal Astronomical Society, for his patient explanation of star charts,  and that is how the med

ia found Elly Conway. January 9, 2024, the very same day the book  was published, the Washington Post published an article called Taylor Swift Didn't Write Argylle,  So Who Did? It seemed just like the other slew of articles cleverly capitalizing on Taylor's name  and the hype behind the book, but this one went the extra mile and interviewed Dr. Massey, since  he was mentioned in the acknowledgments. Massey had remembered, searching through his inbox, that  the person asking about star charts in

April 2022, identifying as, quote, "a novelist writing a  contracted spy thriller for Penguin Random House and sending a couple of paragraphs from their  manuscript in progress, they didn't call herself Elly. She introduced herself as Tammy Cohen. So who, might you ask, is Tammy Cohen? Well, I'm glad you asked. Shock of all shocks, Tammy  Cohen is a British thriller writer. She's written multiple books under multiple different names,  and while neither she nor anyone at her publishing house res

ponded to the Washington Post's request  for comment, I think we can fill in the rest here ourselves. As Dr. Massey pointed out, Tammy said  the book was contracted. This means she didn't write a spy novel and then get it published like  the story they're trying to sell. It means her publisher came to her first and paid her to write  a spy novel. So yeah, Matthew Vaughn just needed someone to write a book called Argylle. That way,  he could make his movie called Argylle seem like it was based of

f a book called Argylle. That way,  it would be, like, super meta, since the movie is about someone writing a book called Argylle. And he most likely hired an established thriller writer, who just happened to be British, to  write said book. And then they agreed to keep her identity a secret for marketing purposes,  while the director publicly begged her to come out of the shadows to sell the image. And then  the marketing team left just enough convenient hints to make it sort of maybe almost se

em like  the mystery author could be Taylor Swift of all people, thereby creating a self-propelled  media frenzy fueled by one of the biggest fanbases on Earth. And that's basically it,  actually. That's the mystery. This feels like a stunningly mundane and anticlimactic reveal after  what could have been such an intriguing ending. Then congratulations. You now know exactly how  it feels to read Argylle by Elly Conway. Like, y'all did literally all of this for a book that  at the end of the day

is not good. Like, if you had taken half of the effort you put into clout  chasing after Taylor Swift's name and put it into, oh, I don't know, writing a decent story,  then maybe I would be a bit more forgiving about all of this. And at this point, the only  possible way this can all be somewhat redeemed is if the movie is, against all odds, not  complete garbage. So you know what? Let's just time travel into the future so I can get  the movie out of the way and see for myself. Hi, it's me, pop

ping in from the future. Please  save me. The critics were not wrong. Let's just start with the obvious, because this movie was a  mess. Dua Lipa does more dancing than speaking in this movie, but considering her acting skills,  that may have actually been for the best. Her delivery was in fact giving us nothing. The  CGI and green screen effects were rough. Y'all had $200 million and you still paid your VFX  artists in Chuck E. Cheese tickets? Actually, Chuck E. Cheese himself has better CGI  t

han some of the scenes in this movie, but that's neither here nor there. Between Henry Cavill's Mandarin collar, the green outfit, and the tall hair, I was  like, "Wait, why he got that Yu Yu Hakusho drip, though?" Like, okay, Yusuke. I'm tired of movies  overusing incongruent funky music from the '70s or whatever. Like, Guardians of the Galaxy was  literally a decade ago. Please get over it. Some of the dialogue in this film was a choice. Like,  one character pulls out a gun. I don't have a gun

, so we're just going to use my air up bottle. Use  my code. And if he's like, "If you don't answer my question, you're going to be the temperature  of my coffee right now, which is cold because of you." I'm being so for real right now. Like,  that's literally a direct quote. "There's a reason I'm the keeper of secrets. It's because  I keep them." Like, I'm speechless. In fact, I actually wish the characters in the movie  were speechless, because it would still be better dialogue than whatever t

hat was. Y'all  should have just shot this in the early 1900s, because it would have gone crazy on mute. Nobody in the theater was laughing. Like, things would happen that were clearly supposed  to be jokes, and everyone was just sitting there like. Argylle had the theater out here looking  like Easter Island. And I've watched Kingsman, okay? I've watched X-Men: First Class. I've  had a lot of fun watching said films, so this is not a problem I have with Matthew Vaughn's  directorial style. This

is a problem I have with mid movies. Some parts of this movie make  absolutely no sense whatsoever, like in one part, this character doesn't want Elly to overhear his  conversation, so he goes in the bathroom, turns on the water, and then proceeds to talk louder  than the water. Like, bro, what did you think was going to happen? She heard everything. You  must have gone to spy school at DeVry University. And while I appreciate the novelty of the story  within the story, when you're literally cu

tting back and forth between the real story  and the meta-story every five seconds, like every five words, 20 times within a  scene, in the middle of characters' sentences, it starts feeling less like a clever plot  device and more like a cheap gimmick. This movie was almost two-and-a-half hours long, and  for what? America, explain. In fact, that was the only thing they kept faithful from the book,  because I remember praying to god that that would end as well. Fool me twice, god. Shame on me.

Y'all had Samuel L. Jackson, and you made him play one of the most boring roles of his career,  and you did it during Black History Month, and you did it at my birthday dinner. Y'all just invented  a new form of racism. I didn't mind Bryce Dallas Howard, so there's that, I guess. Sam Rockwell  just felt like he was doing his best Ryan Reynolds impersonation. Man, I tried to like the cat, but  half the time, he was just bad CGI. Anyway, that's that, I guess. I can't believe I just watched  Tinker

Tailor Soldier Spy Kids. And to be fair, the movie doesn't take itself very seriously,  but that doesn't really save it. It's like, okay, the movie's goofy and bad. Now what? And there you have it, folks, Argylle, a book that tried to be a blockbuster before it even hit  the shelves, a movie that tried to reinvent the wheel but ended up just spinning in circles, and  a mystery that wasn't mysterious at all, and was actually the least interesting answer possible.  But hey, I had fun. Like, I gen

uinely loved making this video, and I hope you had a blast watching  it. It was like a big puzzle, where all the pieces fit together, but the picture it reveals is just  a big trash can emoji. And who knows? Maybe the true Agent Argylle was the friends we made along  the way, and maybe some mysteries are better left unsolved. And while this is a fun case study in  marketing teams blurring the lines between what's acceptable and what's not, whether or not any of  this actually works remains to be

seen. Like, yes, people talked about the movie. Heck, we're talking  about the movie right now. But does this actually translate to ticket sales? Only time will tell.  But with the way movie tickets seem to double in price every few years, I think next time, I'll  save mine for something a little more interesting. Anyway, the video's over. Sorry, I know you wanted  to watch it until the end of time, because this is, like, the most fun you've had in your life or  whatever, but I'll upload anothe

r one soon enough, or never. Guess you gotta subscribe to  figure out which one's which. kthxbye.