The Untold Truth Of Poppy

Art is subjective, and for a surprisingly large number of people, this means that a strange, blonde lady who's released quietly ominous YouTube videos and loudly ominous music is the artist of the hour. Poppy has been causing confusion among the unwary viewers since she set up her YouTube channel, steadily gaining popularity with performance art videos centering on her eerie, borderline David Lynch-ian character, as well as a wildly varying musical output that gleefully ignores any and all genre lines. 

As you're about to find out, there seems to be no telling where Poppy might pop up, what she might do, and who she might be working with — and considering her rising success, her fans seem to love her all the more for this unpredictability. But who is she, really? How did she come up with her peculiar character, and what's her endgame with all of this oddness? Let's take a look at the untold truth of Poppy. 

Much of Poppy's appeal comes from her high-concept character that, according to The Guardian, can be described as "an alien, an object, a computer, your pet." It should be noted that those are her own creepy words, not some thirsty reporter's. There are hundreds of odd, cute, pastel tone videos on her YouTube channel, which feature her doing ... nothing much, really. She might hang around with a plant or a mannequin, or she might silently eat candy floss. She might repeat the words "I'm Poppy" for ten straight minutes or reassure us that she's not in a cult. 

Here's the catch, though. There's something oddly hypnotic about the character and the pacing of the videos, and it's extremely easy to fall down an online rabbit hole watching video after video of her doing whatever. In fact, Poppy's output and hushed tones have been compared to the popular ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos that some people find incredibly pleasing. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that her videos have a strange, quietly ominous, disturbing quality to them, which fascinates many internet denizens to no end. As a result, she's a subject of various conspiracy theories and much bemusement. It's all very strange and more than enough to put her on the map.  

With the exception of some of her I Disagree-era music videos, Poppy's output is not particularly visceral. However, there are often slightly unnerving elements woven into the Poppy fabric, and with the internet being what it is, this has led to some pretty wild conspiracy theories about her. In 2017, Business Insider and Mysterious Universe told us that Poppy was already a subject of an impressive array of wild tinfoil hat speculation, ranging from her being a robot or an otherwise inhuman figure to her being an Illuminati-controlled puppet or an unwilling test subject form the infamous Project MKUltra. 

Poppy, on the other hand, has been happy to add fuel to the fire by incorporating copious Illuminati symbols in her videos and selling a suspiciously specific T-shirt with the text, "I am not in a cult led by Poppy." In one concert, she even invoked the 1978 Jonestown incident (where Jim Jones manipulated over 900 cultists to drink poison) by passing out cups of Kool-Aid and announcing she wasn't responsible for any fatalities. Of course, the imagery Poppy drops here and there is likely just a part of her concept ... or is it? Dun dun DUNN.  

In April 2018, dark clouds appeared on the pastel-hued skies of Planet Poppy. As The Verge tells us, a fellow YouTuber called Mars Argo (pictured) was suing both Poppy and her creative partner (and the Poppy character's alleged creator), Corey "Titanic Sinclair" Mixter. Argo, whose real name is Brittany Sheets, alleged that she was the original version of the Poppy character, and Moriah Pereira (Poppy's real name) was merely a "Mars Argo knockoff." Oh, and she also sought a restraining order against Mixter for domestic violence and noted that she'd endured "severe emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation" from him during their time together. That's some pretty heavy stuff.

Poppy was involved in the lawsuit for allegedly being a "knowing accomplice" to Mixter's assortment of atrocities, and also because the lawsuit made some pretty awful allegations about the nature of her character by pointing out an uncomfortable amount of similarities between "Mars Argo" and "Poppy." While Loudwire notes that the case was ultimately settled, it did create an apparently permanent rift between Poppy and Mixter, and Poppy has pointed out herself that her "creative partner" has indeed inflicted similar wrongdoings on her as he allegedly did on his Sheets. Meanwhile, the accusations of her character being a knockoff have obviously been settled as far as the law is concerned ... though some might think it's not entirely a coincidence that Poppy's character has been transitioning away from her origins recently. 

A professional wrestling ring is pretty much the last place you'd imagine to see a willowy, otherwordly performer like Poppy in, but as Wrestling Inc. tells us, she hasn't only worked with the WWE — she's basically a regular on their NXT brand. Don't worry, she doesn't actually wrestle anyone (though, considering her unpredictability, we're not sure we'd bet against her if she did). Instead, she's performed several of her newer, harder tunes as theme songs of various NXT events and to promote a wrestler named Io Shirai. 

Don't think that Poppy has tuned down the oddness for these events, though. If anything, she's turned it up to 11. Revolver describes her November 2019 performance at an event as "insane," and it's hard to disagree when you notice that her creepy show puts even the worst heel wrestlers to shame ... and that her backing band consists entirely of people in form-fitting PVC clothes, creepy doll masks, and platinum blonde wigs that are reminiscent of Poppy's older hairstyles. 

It's easy to assume that an artist as permanently strange as Poppy would have some equally strange side projects. Well, it's true, and one of her more offbeat projects is Poppy's very own comic book universe. As The Hollywood Reporter tells us, the artist followed her 2017 book, The Gospel of Poppy, by diving headfirst in the world of comics. In 2019, she continued her oddly biblically-named literary career with a comic book called Genesis I, which told a version of her origin story. According to Loudwire, the title was a successful one, to the point of being one of Z2 Comics' best publications of the year. 

With that in mind, it's probably no surprise that Poppy is planning to continue her comic book domination in July 2020. Keeping with her new, harder image, the new title will be called Damnation: Poppy's Inferno, and it looks like we'll quite literally see the character trudging through Hell, thanks to malicious characters seeking to "control and change her for their own purposes." Surely, all of this has absolutely nothing to do with her recent break from her creative partner, Titanic Sinclair. After all, as Loudwire reminds us, Poppy and Sinclair's former partner Mars Argo have both alleged that he had a bad habit of doing suspiciously similar things to people.   

With 2020's I Disagree, the formerly much poppier Poppy was suddenly basically metal. That sort of radical tone shift might be a death sentence for some artists, but Poppy not only persevered — she soared. The album entered Billboard's emerging artists chart at No. 2, hard rock chart at No. 5, and top rock albums chart at No. 15. As Metacritic and Allmusic readily show, I Disagree also received some very, very nice reviews. Poppy's new direction drew comparison to artists from Slipknot and Rammstein to the Beach Boys, and even traditionally heavy metal-focused outlets such as Kerrang! couldn't help but admire the end product. 

And just like that, it looks like one of the hottest metal acts on the planet is a sweet-looking girl whose largest claim to fame used to be a bunch of strange YouTube videos where she acted like an artificial intelligence. Hey, maybe we all live in a computer simulation after all.