‘Big Brother’: Cody Nickson Pushes Coronavirus Conspiracy With ‘Scamdemic’ Post

Former Big Brother contestant Cody Nickson downplayed the coronavirus pandemic’s seriousness on his Instagram Story late last month. He shared a discount offer for his new Couple’s Coffee Company, where fans had to type in “scamdemic” as the coupon code to receive 5% off their order. Nickson was called out by Big Brother fans on social media, especially as the number of coronavirus patients and deaths continue to rise in the U.S.

During the last weekend of November, Nickson offered a Black Friday deal to his 257,000 followers. If they typed the “scamdemic” code on his company’s site, they got a small discount on his products. When a fan pointed out to Nickson that his discount code was causing an uproar, he shrugged it off. “Oh good… when Twitter is against you, you are typically on the correct side of things. They absolutely despise anybody who believes in God,” Nickson wrote on Nov. 28, reports ScreenRant. “We talk about God a lot here, so I imagine we live rent-free in a lot of their heads.”

Nickson appeared on Big Brother Season 19 and has been a lightning rod for controversy. When he was on the show, he was accused of being transphobic and often used disparaging comments. As BuzzFeed News noted at the time, Nickson used one derogatory comment during a discussion with now-wife Jessica Graf, who tried to muffle his language. “I don’t give a s—,” he told her. “They can tuck away their d— all they want. Do you really think they’re f— gonna to come at a Marine Corps infantryman for f— saying the word t—y.” A few weeks later, Nickson and another houseguest called Big Brother Season 17 contestant Audrey Middleton, who is transgender, “it.”

“People are going to love me or hate me and it doesn’t matter; I can’t do anything about it,” Nickson told BuzzFeed News in response to the criticism at the time. “I have a very close-knit group of people in my life that I love and I need to get close to after this. Beyond that, I’m not out to appease anybody or say anything to give anybody hugs out there. If anybody wants some hugs, they can find it somewhere else.”

Nickson also made a controversial remark about the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, at the time. He claimed he went to the riots “just to see if [he] could survive,” notes Heavy. “I actually went to Ferguson, Missouri, for the riots,” Nickson said in comments that did not air on CBS at the time. “The night they announced the decision, I flew into Ferguson just to see if I could survive. I dressed up like a bum. I swear. Yeah. We were getting gassed.”

Despite all the controversy, Nickson later appeared on The Amazing Race Season 30 with Graf, and the two won the competition. The couple married in 2018 and are parents to two children. Their second child, daughter Carter, was born on Oct. 5.