What we cover
kino.ie is an archive of Irish internet culture and adjacent online drama. The subjects we write about — once a personality dossier exists for them — fall into one of these categories:
- Reality-TV alumni with multi-season presence on Irish broadcast (Late Late, Gogglebox, Dancing with the Stars Ireland, Dragons' Den Ireland, First Dates Ireland, Operation Transformation, Ireland's Fittest Family) or significant Irish involvement in international format (Love Island UK, Married at First Sight UK).
- Established creators in the Irish creator economy with verified accounts, multi-year public records, and substantial follower counts (low six-figures or above on at least one major platform). Creator economy here means TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, podcasts.
- Online-political theatre — Irish political figures whose presence on social media or alt-media is itself the story, beyond their formal political role. National Party, Reform, alt-right and alt-left commentators with public records.
- Controversial journalists and commentators with established public-broadcast or established-publication records. The threshold is "verifiable byline history at a publication that meets standard journalistic norms" — not "anyone with a podcast".
- Influencer-economy operators — talent managers, agency principals, course-launchers, and crypto-influencer figures whose public business model itself is the subject of recurring scrutiny.
The public-figure threshold
Across all of the above, we apply a single test before we write a personality page: is this person a public figure on a multi-year, multi-source basis? The test is met when at least three of these are true:
- A Wikipedia entry under their own name, in English, that's been live for at least 12 months.
- Established broadcast appearances (RTÉ, Virgin Media, BBC, Sky, etc.) over multiple years.
- A verified primary social account with substantial public reach.
- Coverage in at least three independent mainstream outlets across at least two years.
- Public-record political or organisational role (elected office, registered party, registered charity / commercial entity at a level that requires public filings).
If three of those are true, the subject is a public figure for our purposes. If only one or two are true, we apply slow-track editorial judgment — generally meaning the page does not get written until the bar is more clearly cleared.
What we don't cover
Some of these are absolute. Some are editorial choices we'd revisit only with a strong reason.
Absolutes — never on this site
- Minors. No subject under 18, no content involving minors, no claims about a subject's behaviour as a minor.
- Private individuals. If a person doesn't clear the public-figure threshold above, they don't get a page. "They went viral once" is not the same as "they are a public figure".
- Unverified sex / crime / addiction allegations. See the receipts standard. The bar is high specifically because the cost of being wrong is high.
- Mental health as character attack. We do not infer mental-health diagnoses from a subject's behaviour and we do not use any such inference as a weapon. If a subject has spoken publicly about their own mental health, that statement can be cited as their own statement, attributed to them, with care.
- Family members of subjects. Spouses, children, parents who are not themselves public figures on the standard above are not subjects, are not named when avoidable, and never described in detail.
- Doxxing material. Personal addresses, phone numbers, workplace details that don't appear in public-record filings, anything that doesn't already live in the public record. Off limits regardless of receipts.
Editorial choices — not absolute, but deliberate
- Active-litigation matters. We hold off on pages where the subject is in active litigation on a directly relevant matter, until the litigation resolves or until the page can be framed without ingesting the contested claim.
- Recently bereaved. 30-day pause from the date of bereavement, regardless of the receipt's strength.
- Subjects in mental-health crisis. Where a subject is publicly visible to be in crisis, we hold off on adding new material until the crisis resolves. This is a judgment call and inevitably imperfect.
- Niche-of-niche internet subcultures. Coverage skews toward subjects with reach into Irish public consciousness, not toward purely-Discord-server figures with dedicated 200-person hate clubs. The Boards.ie celebrity-thread universe is partial signal, not validation.
Political balance
This is a stated rule, not a polite framing. The receipts standard applies identically regardless of a subject's political coding. A left-coded subject's on-record conduct is receipted to the same evidentiary bar as a right-coded subject's. Political sympathy or antipathy never relaxes or tightens the standard.
We aim for rough parity in the personality dossier set across left-coded and right-coded subjects. Heterodox and non-political figures sit alongside that balance, not in place of it. Where the candidate pool naturally skews — and it sometimes will, because some categories of public theatre over-index in one political direction — we say so on the relevant page rather than fudge the balance with a weak counterweight.
Why personality dossiers aren't live yet
kino.ie launched May 2026 with the editorial frame in place but no personality dossiers populated. That is deliberate. The shortlist of subjects is held in research-archive form and goes through a verification step before any page is written. Live dossier pages will appear over the months following launch as the shortlist firms up and individual receipts pass the standard.
If you want to be considered for inclusion — or know a subject who clearly meets the threshold — see the contact page.