Learning Day: The Taco Bell Industry Plant🌭

I have a Taco Bell conspiracy theory. I was settling in to watch the Taco Bell Presents: Live Mas event, which Taco Bell now holds every year to announce new menu items. It’s sort of like Apple’s keynote speech but for tacos that are an abomination to God. The CEO of Taco Bell opened his speech by thanking several celebrities and influencers in the audience, including football player Davante Adams, surfer Kai Lenny, and someone named Yoquierotacoballads. It was a silly name, so I looked it up, assuming that someone who got an onstage shout-out from the CEO of Taco Bell at the Oscars of Taco Bell would be pretty popular, but it turns out he has 1,767 followers on Instagram, his most popular platform. SUSPICIOUS.

To explain my conspiracy theory, I have to tell you about another one. Back in 2021, there was a band called Tramp Stamps that got a bunch of heat on TikTok for marketing themselves as an indie band when it turned out they all had deep industry ties and seemed to be a label-created concept for an elder millennial punk-pop girl band. The guitarist and lead singer both had solo publishing deals with controversial producer Dr. Luke. They both seemed to have been pursuing pop music careers before dying their hair and joining the counterculture. The consensus on TikTok was that Tramp Stamps were industry plants. They vehemently denied these allegations, then disbanded and immediately returned to solo pop careers.

So, when I put on my dope ass little detective hat and started exploring the works of Yoqueirotacoballads, I had to ask myself, is this man a fast food industry plant? Is it possible that Taco Bell is paying people to be Taco Bell influencers so they have the appearance of this rabid grassroots fanbase that they also have complete control of the narrative from? Can we trust anyone these days? Or are they all just robots being puppeted by Yum! Brands?

Let’s take a look at some of the work Yoquierotacoballas has produced. I know it’s not uncommon to put a brand in a rap song, but it’s usually in a way that the brand would never want to acknowledge. Like if Cardi B says her man is gonna Baja Blast that pussy, Taco Bell probably won’t repost that. Yoquierotacoballads produces exclusively corporate friendly Taco Bell songs. His song “Baja Blast” doesn’t contain any pussy references at all! It’s just about a man enjoying a Baja Blast from Taco Bell, which is so incredibly lame. It provides no commentary, no metaphor, no life at all, which demotes it from a song to a jingle.

The most controversial take in Yoguierotacoballads’ music is the idea that Taco Tuesday can be any day of the week. It absolutely cannot. This is a lie Taco Bell wants you to believe, but you can’t have Taco Tuesday on a Saturday; that would be absurd. Yoquierotacoballads has released five singles on Spotify, all but one of which are about Taco Bell. The fourth is about National Taco Day. He keeps separate social media accounts under his Christian name, William Bradford, where he experiments with things like conscripting his family into a Christmas album. None of the songs on his album are about Taco Bell, so it’s nice to know he can do other things. One of the songs is called “Juicy Christmas,” though.

It makes me angry that even though the account is called Yoquierotacoballads, he hasn’t produced a single ballad. He began by reading people’s Taco Bell receipts and putting them to music. The posts would always say “swipe left for receipt confirmation,” as if someone might accuse him of lying about buying two bean-and-cheese burritos and a Dr. Pepper.

This would be way more fun if he were digging through Taco Bell trash cans and doing gotcha journalism on tired millennials who claim they ordered only a single crunch wrap supreme when in fact they got two and downed one on the way home, and here’s a little song about it, that might be fun but I don’t think Taco Bell would like it. They don’t want secret crunch wrap supreme time to be exposed.

Taco Bell is always in this man’s comments. He’s basically Taco Bell’s best friend. They responded, “Amazing!” To his jingle for the Build Your Own Cravings Box. Three months later, he posted a video yelling at people to get a burrito from Taco Bell for National Burrito Day, which Taco Bell called Iconic. The video had 180 likes. They usually just respond with fire emojis or a single peppy word, but they’re omnipresent in the comments section. Almost like they’re trying to lend legitimacy to this normal Taco-loving man.

Now I do acknowledge that this could simply be the case of a man who loves Taco Bell so much that he shaved their logo into his hair. That’s exactly what Taco Bell wants you to think. I’m not pretending people like that don’t exist. I just think those people are typically less controlled maniacs. They will usually, at some point, slip and reveal it is sexual and they are fucking the chalupas. That’s not going to happen with Yoquierotacoballads. Taco Bell somehow knows that they are safe in his squeaky-clean, probably Mormon hands.

How does Taco Bell know their precious brand is safe with this man, though? Oh, maybe that’s because he works in marketing, and specifically, he has worked in marketing for Taco Bell before. Yoquierotacoballads is a freelance marketing executive named William Bradford with a chunk of his personal website dedicated to the work he’s done for Taco Bell.

SUSPICIOUS. The commissioned songs were from 2021. So if he is on Taco Bell’s payroll, he has been for nearly six years. I promise I have scoured the internet trying to find the corner where this man got popular enough to attract the attention of Taco Bell. Each social media platform I found was worse than the last. YouTube 336 subscribers, Twitter 70 followers, Facebook 56 followers, Spotify 20 monthly listeners. These are Aunt Barb Who Smokes Too Much and Mostly Posts Minions Memes numbers. Why has Taco Bell elevated this man to the front row at the Taco Bell conference status? It makes no earthly sense.

Also, he’s obviously a bad singer. It’s not like he’s Susan Boyle out here singing Taco Bell receipts with the voice of an angel. It’s more like rapping, I guess, but slowly and exclusively about tacos, and the lyrics aren’t much either. He’s not some sort of virtuoso that Taco Bell is patronizing for his great contribution to art, is what I’m saying. Although the lyrics to “Baja Blast” are a little bit horny, I’ll count that as some contribution to art.

Yoqueirotacoballads pulled up to the 2026 LiveMasLive event in a white limousine, wearing a velvet purple jumpsuit. In his post from the event, he tagged several other Taco Bell influencers, including @tacobellsommelier, @alwayslivingmas, @bajabesties, along with the head of social and PR for Taco Bell. So there is either an ecosystem of people who are Taco Bell’s preferred influencer squad or brand simps, coming when the chulupa signal lights up the sky, or they’re a false-flag marketing team curated by a corporate giant and I’m honestly not sure which is weirder.

Sure, this could simply be the case of a Mormon man who had his first bite of spicy food ever and made it his whole personality. For his loyalty, he’s been rewarded with a bit part in the Taco Pizza musical and tickets to every Taco Bell premier in perpetuity. It’s getting a lot harder to tell who’s being honest about advertising on the internet. At least I know I can trust my favorite influencer, Gordita Supremely. She’s been posting about Taco Bell non-stop for eight years for only the most genuine reasons, I just know it.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Ogi-Wan Supreme, who is just like regular Ogi-Wan, but comes with sour cream and diced tomatoes.