Modern WisdomThe World's Biggest Scammers - Gabrielle Bluestone | Modern Wisdom Podcast 312
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 22,434 words- 0:00 – 0:40
Why online scams work: hype, identity, and social media performance
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
He had hired a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with a, a whole litany of mental issues, but specifically stated that he was not an antisocial personality disorder, wasn't like a sociopath or a psychopath, and the judge challenged that contention in her sentencing. She was like, "I don't know if I believe that." She had this phrase that was like, "His fraud, like a circle, has no end." (wind blows)
- CWChris Williamson
What have you been researching for the last few years?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, I have been researching why people scam online and why we fall for it.
- CWChris Williamson
Lots of examples of that to go through-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I feel like.
- 0:40 – 3:34
Fyre Festival explained: luxury promises vs FEMA-tent reality
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yes. Well, this all came about, uh, because I was the reporter who broke the Fyre Festival story, um, and for your listeners who don't know what that is, that was, um, this luxurious music festival that was advertised as the party of the century. It had some of the world's most beloved models and influencers backing it, um, a lot of money put into it, and when the ticket holders arrived, it was supposed to be on this beautiful private island, flown there by private jets with, you know, luxurious catered food from celebrity chefs, and when the attendees arrived, uh, they found a gravel pit next to a Sandals resort, um, that ended up being more luxurious than the festival itself, with instead of these beautiful hotel rooms, it was FEMA tents and IKEA furniture. Um, and so I set about trying to find out how the organizers, um, led by Billy McFarland who was Fyre Festival's CEO, um, how they got away with it and why it worked so well. And I started to realize that it wasn't just them. Um, these scams were going on in pretty much every walk of life whether it's in the tech industry, in the media, on social media, um, even the way that we, you know, a, a regular social media user is presenting themselves to our friends. Like, we are all scamming each other and accepting what it is as reality even though we know better. It's a really fascinating psychological profile as well as a business story.
- CWChris Williamson
It's kind of just come about as well. Like, most people didn't aspire to essentially be con artists. You know, you'd have the traveling con artist snakes, snake oil salesman, right, going from town-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... to town and grifting and then they'd get found out and then they'd go onto the next town, but you are right. There's an element of this sort of two lives that we lead, the one, the front-facing one that we show on public social media and then the, the real one that's going on behind the scenes.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I, I don't think that's happened really ever before, certainly not at this scale.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
And I think even the most honest people are guilty of it to an extent, right? Like, m- most people are not gonna show the lows of their lives on social media. They're gonna put their best face forward. Um, and even I'm guilty of that. You know, if I'm having a boring day, I'm not putting that on my feed. I'm putting the highlights, um, and then presenting that to the public as if that's every day for me. Um, so I think it starts on that most basic level of grift all the way up to the people who are photoshopping their faces and bodies, who are getting plastic surgery and pretending that it's natural, who are, you know, purchasing, uh, luxury goods shopping bags on Etsy and then staging photographs as if they have been doing these incredible shopping trips. There's so much just not even to scam u- The only thing they're scamming is our perception of them, right? There's so much of it going on and then all the way up to fake tickets to a music festival that never existed.
- 3:34 – 5:46
Breaking the story: early red flags, FOMO marketing, and ‘Cassandra’ vibes
- CWChris Williamson
Talk me through what it was like breaking that story. You'd done your research and then you pushed a button and then all hell descended on Earth.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah, so it actually, it started a bit earlier than that because I was, you know, I'm a Millennial. I was part of that target audience that they were trying to capture, and, you know, going to meet Bella Hadid wasn't really something that I was looking to buy, but then I saw a high school classmate of mine talking about his artist pass on Instagram and all the benefits that were gonna come with it and, you know, the special food and the, the special treats that, that come, like the artist party. There was supposed to be this huge party with Kendall Jenner that people were doing. So I took a look at it. All of a sudden I was like, "Oh my God, am I missing this big event that everyone's gonna go to?" I started to feel the FOMO that had been baked into this marketing campaign, but when I went to look at the website, like, it looked like something someone might've made in, like, a high school coding class. It was so low-rent and so anachronistic compared to what they were advertising, you know? If there was really all this money behind it, you would think that their, their product would match the marketing. Um, and so that kind of, like, tingled that spidey sense where I was like, "Something is not right here." And it was all very... uh, it, you know, you think of the story of Cassandra. It seemed so obvious to me that there was something terribly wrong here. Um, and there were people who knew what was going on trying to warn people on social media. I think people were scared to publicly speak out about it because they were afraid of getting sued and getting blamed for the festival's failure. Um, but it was all out there in the open. Any one of these ticket holders could've come across it the same way as me, right? It didn't require this incredible investigative ability. Um, and then it all came crashing down on social media as people landed on the island and started to see what was going on. So, um, at that point my editors, uh, allowed me to move forward with the story because even they were like, "You know, it's a music festival. Okay, it doesn't live up to all of its claims. That's life." Uh, and I was like, "No. It's like, way more." Uh, so finally when, you know, the cheese sandwich tweet came out, they were like, "All right. Go. Publish."
- 5:46 – 7:04
Billy McFarland’s “fraud has no end”: post-arrest scams and repeat victims
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, and that was kind of, like, off to the races from there because Billy McFarland did not stop scamming. Even after he got arrested, uh, he was out on bail and he launched a second set of felonies-... also targeting people who wanted to live that life that they were seeing on Instagram. So, he was selling fake tickets to the Met Gala and to the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. And he was targeting the same people, it was the same email list, and they continued to fall for it. It is mind-blowing.
- CWChris Williamson
But if your selection effect to find your market was, do you want to go to this product that has these particular brand values, you've already selected for a very particular group of people-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... who have a fair bit of money and spend a lot of time on Instagram and probably are interested in the Met Gala and the Victoria's Secrets Fashion Show. And, like, was it backstage with Miley Cyrus when she'd stopped doing back-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Taylor Swift.
- CWChris Williamson
Taylor Swift. Uh, she-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... she'd stopped doing backstages, like, five years ago. One, one of the things that you go through that I thought was so interesting in the book is what Billy's got up to since he went to jail. Can you-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... detail the laundry list of shit that he's been doing since then?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. It i- I mean, this guy just does not stop. It is-
- CWChris Williamson
Unrelenting.
- 7:04 – 12:33
Inside prison, still grifting: contraband, memoir plans, and a prison podcast
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. (laughs) Uh, so after he got busted for the second set of felonies, um, he got... I think he got off pretty lightly. He was sentenced to six years. And he almost-
- CWChris Williamson
Wait a minute, you said it could have been 75.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yes. So, um, I mean, often in like, the US judicial system, they will stack all these charges, so it was very unlikely that he was ever gonna face anything like that. And a lot of the charges end up running concurrently, but six years was still pretty good. I mean, during his sentencing (laughs) , he had hired, um, a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with a, a whole litany of mental issues, uh, but specifically stated that he was not, um, an antisocial personality disorder. It wasn't like a sociopath or a psychopath. And the judge challenged that contention in her sentencing. She was like, "I don't know if I believe that." You know? She had this phrase that was like, "His fraud, like a circle, has no end." Uh, but then granted him a relatively (laughs) lenient sentence. And so I think for a normal human being, you would feel very lucky and maybe reform a bit. Uh, what Billy McFarland did was smuggle a recording device into prison, which he was then caught with. He had been initially sentenced to serve out his time at a prison in Upstate New York, which was great for his family and his girlfriend because it was not too much of a trip to visit him, um, and there were celebrities there. You know, Donald Trump's former fixer and attorney, Michael Cohen, was sentenced there. Uh, Billy McFarland was apparently Scrabble buddies and played basketball with Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, who was-
- CWChris Williamson
What's he in jail for?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
He is out now, but he was serving time for tax evasion.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
And (laughs) ... So, you know, it was, it was like the, uh, Instagram VIP list in prison-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
... until he got busted with a fake pen that had a USB in it, um, and he told the authorities that he was s- so eager to get started on paying his $26 million restitution that he was going to start, uh, writing, um, a memoir in prison, and the proceeds of which he would give to his victims. Uh, and he was unironically going to title it Prometheus: God of Fire. Um, the authorities were not impressed by that explanation and so he was sent to solitary confinement, which is no joke. And you know, we can have our own conversation about whether that's ever justified. But, uh, after that he was sent to a new facility in Ohio, which was, you know, a definite step down from where he was, and also happened to be the nexus of a COVID outbreak that was so bad that the National Guard had to be called in. Um, and so he tried to get compassionate release, which was unlikely in the first place, but he was knocked out of contention because he had this serious infraction on his record. Um, and then he decided to launch a podcast. And the thing that was interesting about the podcast was that for once, he was no longer the marketer. He was the product. Um, and he, you know, he said that he was giving... he had co-owned it and was giving (laughs) his share towards restitution. According to court documents, he has not paid any restitution at all. Um, but he was put in solitary confinement for participating in this podcast, and his partner on the podcast, um, I'm blanking on their name now, I think it's like Notorious LLC, something like that. They run, um, a series of hype houses in LA. Like, they are the Billy McFarlands, not in the scammer way, but in the business sense of influencers, um, in their market. And so when Billy was put into solitary, you know, they weren't campaigning for him to get out. They were bragging about their engagement and how well the New York Times story about it was doing, and how the podcast had shot up above Joe Rogan and, you know, was more popular than Kanye. So, it was an interesting role reversal because for the first time, Billy was the influencer. He wasn't the guy working the influencer. Um, and so I think he recently got out of solitary again. He had caught COVID in prison.
- CWChris Williamson
How, how did he do the podcast? Was that what he needed the pen for?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Uh, no. So he was going to dictate his memoirs. I believe the podcast was just recorded over, uh, a prison phone.
- CWChris Williamson
So, he was on Jordan Harbinger's show.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Billy was on the Jordan Harbinger show calling in from... And sure enough, at the start of it, it's like, "This is a call from the United States Correction... da, da, da, da... Press three to reverse charges."
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so I knew he'd been guesting, but I didn't know that he'd managed to... I mean, fair play, fair play to, for, for doing that. So, him-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I think it might have been in coordination with him, like, Jordan was the host of this podcast.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, okay.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
And then they actually repurposed that footage for the ABC special, um, with Whoopi Goldberg. I forgot the name of it. But so now he's, you know, he's the product finally for the first time.
- CWChris Williamson
So, that wasn't allowed. Doing a podcast from prison's also not allowed. So he got in solitary again for that?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah, the, the specifics of that are a little hazy. I know other, other inmates have done prison podcasts with no problem. I'm not sure what exactly the justification for it was, just that that's the fact. I mean, solitary confinement is no joke and especially in the time of COVID, a lot of this stuff stopped being funny. Um, but it is remarkable that he has continued to get in trouble, um, and is just somehow unable to kinda stop. I firmly believe that once he's out of prison, he will launch something new, and I think people will go along with it.
- 12:33 – 14:51
If it had “worked,” he’d be a genius: society rewarding outcomes over ethics
- CWChris Williamson
The thing ... I've had this conversation so many times with people and I've finally got the, the exact person that I want to have it with, and that's you, who produced the Emmy-nominated Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix, which everybody that is listening to will have watched 'cause it was phenomenal. Um, what I realized upon watching that documentary is that we as a society celebrate success so much that we don't actually mind how people get to success.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
If two different versions of this universe had existed, the first one where Billy McFarland was a prick and did all of this nasty stuff and conned people and was forcing models to get into the water when they didn't want to and kind of playing this playboy lifestyle and doing loads of sort of just grimy stuff, and the Fyre Festival didn't work, and in another version of the universe, all the same stuff happened before, but the Fyre Festival hadn't been a total shit show-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... it had been... Let's say it was, it was acceptable, and blink-182 didn't pull out, and maybe there was tons of problems but there wasn't so many that it was a big deal. In that second version of the universe, Billy McFarland would've been hailed as a marketing genius.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
He would've been the golden child, this guy that managed to wrangle millennials. He understood how things worked. He was able to manipulate them and move them in the way, "Okay, yeah, maybe the, the festival could've been a bit better but that's operations, we need people that can market and sell, right? That's what we're after." And what that told me was that the means justify the ends in a way.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
That it's like, it doesn't really matter how you get there as long as it works. So, yeah, that's something I've thought about so much since then, that the only thing that Billy did wrong was run an event that didn't work in the eyes of the public.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm. And, you know, the other side of that is I, I firmly believe that had they had the bands go on, that the people who bought tickets would've played along. They would've been posting like they were having the time of their life because who wants to admit that you spent all this money and aren't enjoying yourself, right? They would've found the right picture, they would've edited the water a little bluer, um, and I think that speaks to how we all use social media. One thing that really stuck out to me in that documentary was, um, Mark Weinstein, who had been hired as a producer to kinda try and help
- 14:51 – 20:38
Corporate and startup grifts: Uber’s playbook, Juicero’s absurdity, WeWork’s mysticism
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
save it in the end, was having the worst time of his life, but he would post these beautiful pictures of the Bahamas on his Instagram and all his friends were very jealous, and it was so unreflective of reality. Um, but then also I think you raise a really interesting point, and I, I think this has long been true but it's more obvious and evident than ever in social media. You know, Nike sells itself as this, like, it, you know, they sell themselves as, as lifestyle brands, and so we kind of ignore the fact that, you know, their stuff was made in sweatshops or that, you know, these companies that are, you know, supporting these different social justice movements, their executive boards don't reflect the values that they are preaching on social media. Um, Uber for example created a playbook. They deliberately broke laws, they would come into cities and, like, uh, just completely ignore any ordinances or any kind of things that they were supposed to observe, um, because what was gonna happen? Like, they would just raise some money until they got kicked out. And they had a, a playbook where they (laughs) would, you know, mobilize their users to then campaign against the laws that were limiting them. So they're, they're, they're celebrated for that, um, even though they've never turned a profit. So a lot of it comes down to the way that these things are marketed and not what they actually are.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think Uber's a grift?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I mean, it's a real company, but I think that our view of it as this, you know, unicorn company that is bringing value is absolutely a grift. I mean, they have destroyed taxi industries, they resolutely refuse to pay their workers what they're worth or to provide them with any kind of benefits. Like, people are really suffering and it, they're celebrated as, you know, this game-changing company, uh, but I think they're game changing in a, a negative way, not a positive way.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see that just in London now, they lost a lawsuit that says they now need to treat their drivers as employees? So they can't just have them as self-employed agents, which was the workaround they had for tax and PAYE and National Insurance-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and all of that other stuff.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I was not aware of that, but I think that's a very positive change.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. That was, I think that's one of the reasons why they're able to be so competitive, right? That the other companies have got all of these burdens, like having to actually properly pay their staff and having-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... wages and, and, and, uh, like, holiday pay and things like that. Um, yeah. What's Juicero? I'd never heard of this-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... until I saw your book.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, so this was a startup that, uh, really capitalized on this new kind of healthy lifestyle trend I think that you see very much online, um, in Juice Press and these companies, uh, that was supposed to be a way for you to easily get fresh-pressed juice every day in your home. Um, and they raised hundreds of millions of dollars for this and it was hyped as the next big thing, and then it shut down almost overnight because a Bloomberg, uh, reporter discovered that it was actually easier, they...So part of the business was a machine, and then the other part was a subscription service with the juice in these bags that you would put into the machine like an espresso pod. And it turned out, it was (laughs) actually easier to open the juice bags yourself with your hands than the machine actually was. It was such a waste and such a useless product, um, that this video just simply revealing this ended the whole company.
- CWChris Williamson
No way.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
And there's a lot of that. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And this, had it gone ... It wouldn't have gone public by this stage but was probably in startup, s- t- had had some funding, was selling a lot of products?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah, I don't recall the specifics about how far they got towards an IPO but, I mean, you saw the same thing with WeWork, right? And what brought (laughs) WeWork down was the fact that they had to put down on paper the actual value of the company and th- uh, you know, that company was shrouded in this new age mysticism. I mean, it was an office, uh, space r- leasing company. There was nothing mystical or even technological about it, but because Adam Neumann was so charismatic and because he got an investor who was willing to give any kind of money, uh, with, um, Mayson and, um ... I forgot the name of the fund now, I'm blanking on it, but it, you know, funded by the Saudis. There was a lot of money floating around. They were able to sell it as this global revolution, um, that was worth, you know, billions of dollars. And then when it came down to it, (laughs) it really was not worth very much at all.
- CWChris Williamson
What's your favorite Adam Neumann story?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, you know, I think it speaks to why people invest money with these kinds of people. There's a very famous anecdote, um, after he had, uh, obtained office space in the Woolworth Building, which is an iconic building in Downtown New York. Um, he brought a couple of his employees up for, like, an after hours visit to see the space and, um, he th- (laughs) I guess there were these, like, half empty bottles of beer on the floor and he told his employees to drink it, and they did. And then he told his em- ... You know, it was an unsecured, uh, construction space and he told his employees, who were drunk at this point, to go close to the edge and they did. They would've literally followed him off the ledge of this building if he had asked. Um, for what? You know, it, it's really kind of incredible.
- CWChris Williamson
The downfall of WeWork, there are some amazing YouTube documentaries that have been done, anyone that wants to go and check out more about that. I also did a podcast with ... I'm blanking on the, the guy's name, but an awesome author that wrote an entire book about that. Um, one of my favorite stories from the last few years, the biggest grift or one of the biggest grifts, was Theranos-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- 20:38 – 24:17
Theranos and founder-worship: investing in personas instead of products
- CWChris Williamson
... and Elizabeth Holmes. Can you take us through some of your favorite parts of that story?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. I mean, this is another example where investors were in- ... I m- uh, in VCs especially, and especially I think because they aren't necessarily investing their own money, they're investing other people's money. And even if they lose money on these investments, they're still making a percentage on how much money they're handling, right? So they win no matter what. Um, and so they tend not to invest in the product or the company, they are investing in the founder. And so Elizabeth Holmes crafted this persona, you know, like Mark Zuckerberg, she was an Ivy League dropout. She, um, deliberately lowered her voice and kind of faked it to have a more per- mysterious persona. She almost exclusively wore black turtlenecks because she wanted to be more like Steve Jobs. And so these, like, really professionally wealthy people fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Right? You had, like, the Walton family that owns Walmart giving her hundreds of millions. You had Henry Kissinger serving on her board of directors. Um, and even the media fell for it. There was, like, a fairly fawning New Yorker profile of her before John Carreyrou at, uh, uh ... oh my god, uh, The Wall Street Journal was able to kind of expose that these blood tests that she had been touting never existed. Nobody had ever seen them. Um, and I think it speaks to just how she ... once she had one of the right names on board, right, once there was a Kissinger or a Walton associated, I don't think anyone else did any due diligence. They saw that, "Oh, this person's doing it, so I'm gonna do it," and just jumped on the bandwagon. It was almost like, um, like a billionaire's FOMO.
- CWChris Williamson
You, uh, draw an analogy between I think COVID, the Tesla stock price, and some of the, um, personalities that we're talking about here. And it kinda goes back to what we were saying before but turned up to 11 in Silicon Valley, uh, and especially in the VC world. These unicorns are chasing after these billion dollar valuations. It's so sought after that people are prepared to forgive all manner of sins in the desperate attempt to chase these wins.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's because the ability to generate cash has now been completely decoupled from what the business can actually deliver to the market and is purely based on market sentiment.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yes. And, and, and, you know, how much of the market they can hold themselves. A lot of the valuations of these companies are not r- ... Most of them are not reflections of, you know, what their actual income is or what they're actually doing, it's how much money other people have put into it. Um, so it's all ... I mean, uh, pardon my language but it's all bullshit. Uh, and it's, you know, I ... this, this even dates back to Billy McFarland. Um, he was ... By the time he got to Fyre Festival and I think one of the reasons he was able to get people to give him north of $26 million for this thing was because he had a record that looked on its face to match what you would expect of someone in that world. He had started, um, a tech startup while he was in college called Spling that was intended to be kind of a Google Circles, uh, Reddit hybrid that went absolutely nowhere. Um, if you read the book you can, you'll hear a kind of my exploration of how he conned all his college classmates and, you know, camp friends into pretending to be users on the site just to juice up the numbers for investors. But he walked away with a couple hundred thousand just for that. And when it shut down, rather than being seen as a failure, he was suddenly viewed as a successful startup founder because he had gotten the money. What happens after you get the money people don't seem to really care about.
- 24:17 – 27:49
Common traits of major scammers: charisma, marketing skill, and selling hype as reality
- CWChris Williamson
What is the single thread, or what are the commonalities that you have found since researching all of these different people, the Adam Neumanns, the Elizabeth Holmes, the Ja Rules, um, what is it that you found is the common character traits between them all?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, most of them tend to be incredibly charismatic, and I think it comes down to marketing ability. And I think that includes the Elon Musks and the Donald Trumps, uh, as well. Um, how good are they at marketing? And as consumers, I think that we have started to collectively accept hype in lieu of the real thing. Right? We're, we're taking that marketing and running with it without ever questioning, um, how real any of it really is.
- CWChris Williamson
What I find really interesting, I come from a nightlife background, so I've run a lot of club nights, uh, over the last-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 14 years. And, um, all that we're playing with in my industry is hype. That's it. Because you can be a different promoter to me and you can start a club night in the same venue that I run, but two days later with similar DJs or maybe even the same DJs, with similar drinks prices, with similar looking decor, with a similar looking brand. So, all that we are competing on are the intangibles because the tangibles from the actual product to the experience, the venue's the same, the entrance is the same, the staff are the same, the drinks are the same, even the glasses you're drinking them out of are the same.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So it's all about the intangibles. And, um, that really sort of gave me a, a black pill on, um, high- (laughs)
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... on hype. It was like an early black pill on it because I saw how vacuous most of the marketing that was being done around this stuff is, that you can, you can build people up. And there are so many natural cognitive biases that we all have, that we all fall for. And that's obviously what all of these different people are tapping into. They're just doing it on such a huge scale with so many millions and millions of dollars on the line.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm. And I think an interesting element of nightlife too, and granted it's been a year or so since I've been to a club, but (laughs) -
- CWChris Williamson
Me too.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
... um, is that it really revolves around influencer marketing too, right? It comes down to the promoters and, you know, what models they can pull in or what people with social media followings they can get to advertise it. And so it becomes associated with those faces as well. Um, and then another thing that's interesting too is, uh, you know, I grew up in New York City, which is very nightlife heavy, club heavy, and a lot of places will advertise, you know, a celebrity who's stopping by. Um, and you know, realistically speaking, you're not gonna meet them. They're gonna be in a VIP area separate from the club goers. You know, it's not... You're not going to the club with them, but it allows you to pretend on social media that you were. Um, there's like a lot of, of mythical people going on there.
- CWChris Williamson
I was at the party with... I was at the party with-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... 50 Cent, with Ja Rule, with whoever it might be. Um-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
And that actually happened to me once when I was, uh, very young. Ja Rule did a, a night at this club called Stereo and (laughs) -
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
... you know, he's DJing for like, uh, more high school kids than that club would probably want to admit. Um, but yeah, you know, I wasn't surprised to see him pop back up with fire.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it is interesting, that sort of, that low-key flex that people want. They want their status to be legitimized by being around other people who are also successful, and this is what we're chasing, and so on and so forth.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- 27:49 – 31:32
Why scam stories fascinate us: victim-blaming, cult-documentary energy, and social proof loops
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you think it is that we're so compelled by these individuals? I... There's something so fascinating about an Adam Newman, an Elizabeth Holmes, and a Billy McFarland. And when I watch the documentaries, like yours, about them, I have the same emotion. I can't describe it. I, I... It's one of those ones, you know, where you need, like, a German word. I need a-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
There'll, there'll be a German word for it.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, it's not schadenfreude. It's not m- me taking pleasure at somebody else's mis- misfortune. It's more disbelief that there are people that can do that. Probably in my less gracious moments, there's a bit of admiration-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... around their capacity to do that. I think, "God, how stupid are these people?" But I'm, I'm one of those stupid people that probably would have at least been bought in. I remember seeing the orange squares on Instagram and thinking, "Oh, that looks interesting. I wonder what's going on there." What do you think it is? Why are we so compelled to-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Well-
- CWChris Williamson
... watch these people?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Part of it, um, and I think you tapped on that a little bit, is that, uh, there's this weird element where people don't tend to feel a lot of sympathy for victims of fraud. I think it's, like, a human psychology that you look at someone who fell for something and you kind of think, "Well, I would never fall for that." Um, and there is, like, you have a begrudging admiration for the people that can pull that off. I think it's the same reason that, uh, we love watching cult documentaries or, you know, reading about things like that. Um, you know, it's, it... These people are incredibly charismatic. They are, you know, very interesting and fun and engaging to watch. And I think if you're watching it with that mentality, like, "I wouldn't fall for that," like, "I would probably see through that," um, it becomes more of like a, a fun, a fun en- experience than, um, you know, watching someone commit a crime, which is really (laughs) what it is. Uh, but also you mentioned with the orange squares, you know, you can see the way people react to that. One of the most fascinating things about that campaign to me was not the people that participated in it, but the influencers who saw it happening and started posting orange squares themselves because they didn't want to be perceived as not being part of it. Um, and so they actually had a lot of-
- CWChris Williamson
So they got-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah, they-
- CWChris Williamson
... free extra influencer clout from the-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... FOMO of influencers that Fuckgeri hadn't put on the campaign?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. And you know, I've read, this is actually a real issue for some companies. I think Evian was one of them, um, where influencers who want to look like they are working or being engaged by these blue chip brands will post fake advertisements because they want their followers to perceive them as being in a certain echelon of influencers. I mean, it really is a (laughs) wild west out there.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so crazy because it ... Is there anything that the companies can do? Can they say ... Can they sue-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Not really.
- CWChris Williamson
... an influencer for doing free advertising for them?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I haven't seen that. I have seen some companies go after influencers for not properly advertising for them.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I know, uh, Snapchat and Spectacle did that with one influencer. There's a little bit of that. But, um, you know, there's not much, there's not much recourse, right? And, uh, even for influencers who aren't labeling things as ads, in the US, like the government should ostensibly have some kind of way to stop it or enforce the fact that these are supposed to be clearly labeled as ads, you know? Uh, but they can't. The most they can do is send a strongly worded letter that an influencer can promptly ignore. Uh, so yeah, there's, there's really not much anyone can do.
- 31:32 – 34:36
Kardashian/Jenner image control: staged paparazzi, billionaire narratives, and the Streisand effect
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't you say that Kylie Jenner tweeted at some point that she, she was using Snapchat less and they then-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... wiped one billion off Snapchat's valuation the next morning on the stock market?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I mean, the, the Kardashians are their own insane case study in, in watching the markets they can move and the perceptions that they can create. Um, you know, the book also looks at Kylie Jenner's, uh, billionaire status, which, um, according to Forbes, which bestowed that status on her, they say that she had actually submitted fake tax forms to pretend that she was earning more money than she was. You know, we're talking about the difference of a couple hundred million, but that perception in the public was so important to them, um, and obviously generates so much money for them that they were (laughs) willing to allegedly, you know, scam a, a magazine.
- CWChris Williamson
What other Jenner, Kardashian stories did you look at?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, so this isn't in the book, but one that I've been fascinated by recently is, uh, what happened with Khloe Kardashian, um, maybe a week or two ago, in which a very normal, unedited photograph of her was posted on the internet. And, um, apparent- ... It's not clear who posted it. They're saying that it was maybe her grandmother. Um, but however it was, this picture got out and, you know, they keep a very ... And this actually is in the book. They are so protective of their image that they actually work with paparazzi agencies to do staged and edited photos of them. So, a lot of the pictures that you'll see of them are actually prepared on their behalf. They're meant to look candid, but they're very much part of a photo shoot to embellish their images. Um, and so when this real photo of Khloe got sent around, um, her attorney started, uh, issuing cease and desists to Instagram accounts, to Reddit, uh, threads and boards, um, which had the opposite effect. You know, we call it the Streisand effect of all of a sudden that's all anyone could talk about. Um, but it was so important to her that people not know what her real body looked like that, you know, her lawyers would spend Easter weekend doing this. I mean, it is kind of incredible.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, especially given that that's the accurate representation. I, I would love to see the way that this is translated into litigation speak. "You represented our client's body accurately and that is, is against her brand values." Like what? And also, if it's her grandmother, that's such a grandmother thing to do.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, no, so they, they did it as a copyright issue, as, you know, they, they unintentionally verified it as real and by saying that it was their real photo, um, you know, they would issue copyright take-downs on all the social media platforms. And one funny way that I've seen some people get around it is by tracing the photo, because a drawn ... Like a drawing, um, is transformative enough that they can't come after it with a copyright claim. (laughs)
- 34:36 – 38:38
Manufacturing taste: Aperol Spritz, White Claw virality, and Juul’s implosion
- CWChris Williamson
Shit the bed. Uh, what did you learn about White Claw and Juul?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, yeah, a lot of things that we think that we like are really just the result of effective marketing campaigns. Um, so I started tracing this with the rise of Aperol Spritz, which, you know, is a beautiful, easily photographed drink, um, that I think ... You know, if you're being honest with yourself when it comes down to it, like, it kind of tastes like a flat Capri Sun. Like, it's not that, not, not that good, but it became the drink of summer and everyone was ordering it and restaurants were pushing it, and all of a sudden, you know, I fell prey to it and reading (laughs) about the marketing campaign was kind of a wake-up call for me where I was like, "I actually don't like this at all," but I, you know, I joined up with the crowd. I felt the FOMO. Um, there's a really interesting 1950s experiment by Solomon Asch where he put a bunch of people in a room and showed them a bunch of straight lines and they were asked to pick the line that looked closest to the ones on the screen. What the people in the study didn't know was that there were plants in the audience who had been instructed to pick the most obviously wrong answer and he wanted to see how many people would go along with it. And 75% of the audience picked the obviously wrong answer because, because of peer pressure, um, because everyone else was doing it. So, yeah, that's how I ended up drinking Aperol Spritzes and then White Claw. You know, they had ... That, that was a traditional ... Aperol was a traditional campaign. Um, you know, they did bus wraps and magazine advertisements as well as social media. White Claw was a purely social media push, right? And it blew up. You can actually track the sales to a viral YouTube video-... that featured, you know, a young light frat guy talking about how there ain't no laws when you're drinking Claws. And the virality of that video pushed this drink into the public consciousness. I think the sales of spiked seltzer, like, went up, like, 400% or something crazy like that. I don't recall the exact figure, but you saw a, like, demonstrable result from that, and now everyone's just drinking it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
It really is incredible what a, what a marketing campaign can do.
- CWChris Williamson
I've got... So I haven't had a drink for about a thousand days 'cause I, I was taking a break. I've got a case of White Claw delivered by their UK marketing office. I've got one in the kitchen.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I shit you not. "Hey, Chris, you look like the sort of guy that would enjoy a White Claw." I'm like, "Y- we're English. We don't know... Y- uh, whatever you're referring to-"
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"... whatever brand values you think you're responding to my brand values with, I don't know what you're talking about. I just see it in country music meme pages that I follow." But, um-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Well, it's the same as... Is it Michlob? M-I-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Oh, Michelob?
- CWChris Williamson
Michelob. Yeah, sorry.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, I actually don't know much about that one.
- CWChris Williamson
It just looks the same, you know? It's kind of-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... w- the whiskey row, country music, Nashville, kind of that whole-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... world. And what about Juul? Is Juul the same as White Claw? 'Cause I thought that was-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
I thought Juul was, like, the leader in interchangeable nicotine vaping stuff.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
For a while, they were. They kind of disappeared almost overnight in the US at least, um, I believe, like, between 2019 and 2020. Um, and that company just imploded. Uh, it turned out they had, they had been accused by former employees of knowingly selling tainted pods. You know, the, the nicotine industry is its own problem. Um, but, you know, you see these things go viral. Like, someone shows it on social media and then, you know, 10 more people go into it. Um, and, I don't know (laughs) , it's, it's a little disconcerting (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Have you... Is there a, um... Are there some companies or some agencies that are all pulling the strings? Are there some, are there a few big players behind the scenes in terms of ad agencies, or are these in-house marketing departments in smart companies that are just looking out with a good meme or marketing campaign?
- 38:38 – 49:11
PR spin behind the curtain: Fyre’s comms strategy and Bloomberg’s paid-influence campaign
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I think it's a combination of both. Um, I was lucky to really get to delve into everything that happened with the Fyre Festival, so... And that goes down to, like, the internal communications that they were having with their PR firm 42West, who, you know, have repped people like Rihanna and really massive stars, um, so they really know how the publicity game is played. And to see the way that they were spinning those things in real time and to read those communiques was definitely very eye-opening.
- CWChris Williamson
What was it like?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
You know, like... Uh, nobody is... I- it, it's never like, "How can we tell the truth?" It's like, "How can we take a nugget of truth and transform it into something completely different that will allow us to maintain plausible deniability?" Um, and, you know, there's a lot of emails in the book that I won't try to recount here now, but in terms of, you know, how they were going to make the public believe that the models had some input or some involvement beyond this commercial that they had been paid to film, or how to trick the public, uh, into thinking that certain artists were involved. Um, there was a whole line of inquiry into roping Kanye West into it. Um, you know, they had people working on Christmas Day trying to craft these press releases. So that machine really never stops.
- CWChris Williamson
What did you learn from Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Uh, well, (laughs) I think the short answer is you can only buy so much. Uh, you know, that he put hundreds of millions, I think a billion dollars into a very short-lived campaign that won him one territory, not even a full state. Um, but it also shows you how much credibility you can buy, and what I... I guess also the, the extent of influencer marketing, um, because you have to have people, I guess, that are... either believe in the brand or are willing to pretend they believe in the brand. A lot of people took money from the Bloomberg campaign to act as an influencer, but then were so lackluster in their presentation that Twitter actually started flagging a lot of them as bots, uh, because people were just so uninterested (laughs) in, you know, putting personality into their social media promotion. But he had, you know, thousands of people on the payroll whose only job was to tweet about him or to, you know, upload things on Instagram. And then they actually hired, uh, the company behind FuckJerry, who did the Fyre Festival marketing, to, uh, unroll a meme campaign about Bloomberg. So for a while, you would see these, you know... Uh, I think the format at the time was like, "Hey, it's Mike Bloomberg calling," and they'd be like, respond, you know, with something funny and it would be, like, a screenshot of their conversation. Um, a- and yeah, I mean, (laughs) it was... For a... It, it definitely brought him to the forefront of it, and then I think his performance in the debates kind of tanked any momentum that might have been built. Uh, but even Bloomberg himself was kinda scamming people. He had promised all his employees that no matter what happened... He got a lot of legitimate political operatives to come on and work with him as well because he had promised that whatever happened with his campaign, they would remain employed through the November elections, whether it was with another candidate or with the Democratic National Committee, um, and then just didn't do it, right? He, like, fired all of them and told them that they'd have a special pipeline to apply, but nothing ever came of it, and there's actually a class loss, class action lawsuit against him now from his qu- former campaign employees.
- CWChris Williamson
I would be such a shit grifter like that.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
A- I'm so bad because I can't... I'm not a good enough liar, I feel far too guilty about doing those sorts of things, and this is...Maybe that is, is part of the attraction, that we look at these people and we think, "Oh my God. Maybe, maybe they are t- maybe there's a kernel of truth in there, and if we can just wipe away all of the muck off Billy McFarland, he, he must be a genius deep down. It can't all be grift, it can't all be just lies and front." Because I wouldn't be able to do that. The vast majority of people wouldn't be able to do that. Um, so maybe that's... Maybe that contributes to it. The other thing is, you highlight something really interesting with the Mike Bloomberg affair. When influence is obviously influence, it ceases to be influential.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think when you, when you can see the wizard at work behind the curtain, uh, that takes away from the allure of it, for sure. Um, but another thing is, like, I actually had a, an opposite experience to what you were saying, you know, there must be some truth under there. Uh, the book details kind of my introduction to this influencer named Danielle Bernstein, who goes by the handle WeWoreWhat and she is immensely popular. And I went into that experience thinking that I knew who she was because I had followed her on Instagram, I knew her brand, I felt like I understood her, um, and what I found was so opposite from the values that she was peddling on Instagram-
- CWChris Williamson
Talk about that.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
How was it?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, well, you know, she had, we had gotten in contact because she had known the Fyre Festival people and had declined to participate in it, and I was intrigued, you know, what she saw that made her decide not to do it. Um, and so she was going to do an interview with me, uh, we had set it up, and then she also asked me to appear on her podcast and I thought, you know, "Why not? It's great research." Um, so I went and did it, and afterwards we made arrangements to do this interview, and then when it came time for the interview she was like, "Actually, I'm so sorry, I'm gonna do my own book. I can't help you." Um, and then, you know, these scandals with her started to come out one after another where she was accused of taking samples from small indie brands and then reproducing them for her very popular clothing line. Um, and it was just this pattern of taking things and then presenting them as hers on the internet, um, that I think I fell into and I think a lot of these brands did. Uh, and it really made me realize, like, "Wow, I was totally duped by that persona."
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. So, it wasn't that you thought there was a kernel of truth, it's you thought it was all truth and it turned out to be mostly lies?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yes. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Fuck.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
What does, uh, on the internet no one knows you're a fraud mean to you?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Um, I think that it is easier than ever to present a version of yourself that has no reflection in reality, whether that is by changing your image, by posting about thing, you know, you saw, you've seen a trend I think in the US of people posting about social justice or posting beautiful graphics, uh, but then not living that out in their actual lives offline. Um, you can create whatever persona you want, uh, and, you know, the, the phrase the old New Yorker cartoon was on the internet, it was a dog typing, and it was on the internet no one knows you're a dog. I really believe that, uh, for the most part on the internet, no one knows what you're lying about or whether it's real. One of my favorite stories in the book actually is an influencer who wanted to convince her followers that she had gone on a vacation to Bali, and so she went to an IKEA (laughs) and took all these, like, beautiful photographs on i- like, in the IKEA setups. You know, they have those rooms that they make up? And none of her followers realized she deliberately left some of the furniture tags showing in the pictures, and nobody noticed.
- CWChris Williamson
The internet. I despair at the internet sometimes. That's another thing, touching on the social justice issue, um, it seems to me that a lot of people on the internet would rather have malicious or, um, non-believing compliance than truthful opposition.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So they would rather have somebody make the mouth noises or the phone signals that say that they're a part of whichever movement it may be, even if they don't believe in it, sooner than b- be neutral and be truthful with it.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. And I think part of that goes along with, like, the FOMO, getting caught up in the trend too, and I think a perfect parallel to Fyre, um, and, you know, the influencers who weren't involved posting the orange square was when you saw, uh, all the influencers start posting black squares. Um, and, you know, brands were getting in on it, and there was, I forget her name now, I think Danielle something on Instagram who did, like, a three-week check-in or a month later check-in with all the brands that had posted a black square to see if any of their marketing materials featured models of color or if, you know, there c- they had anyone on the executive board of color. And the vast majority had zero change, zero reflection of these values that they were professing, except for this one performative square. And I think that's a big part of it, is how performative we are online.
- CWChris Williamson
That's the word f- over the last year or so that I've heard more than any, performative communication. And it's dangerous coming from someone... I told you before we started, I was on Love Island season one, I was the first person through the doors. And, um, if you're not careful, if you play a role, you can bury the person that you are under so many personas that you don't know who you are anymore, and that's a really dangerous position to get yourself into because you don't actually have any opinions anymore, you don't really know what you think, you don't...... y- all that you're doing is trying to do the thing that you think the person that you're talking to wants you to do. That's how you live your entire life, as this kind of second order removed version of you, sort of this marionette, and you're pulling the strings from above, trying to get things to work. It's super, super dangerous. And this is why deception online is so much easier, because you can type something in, the words said and the way, there's no non-verbal communication, there's simp-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... there's no tone, there's no cadence, there's no nothing. And you have minutes or hours sometimes to prepare the response or the statement or the press release or whatever it might be, to come across in precisely the way that you want it to. I think a lot of people are quite bad liars, based on my experience.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- 49:11 – 59:39
New-age grifters and political playbooks: Brian Rose pivots, Trump fundraising tactics, and where this heads
- CWChris Williamson
I've had some of th- some people on this show. Here's one for you. How have I not thought that we can talk about this? Have you heard of a guy called Brian Rose?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
No. Who's that?
- CWChris Williamson
S- he's the founder of London Real, which is a podcast, big podcast, been around for quite a while now. Um, Brian's initial business partner, a guy called Nick Gabriel, has just done a podcast episode. Now, Brian did a bunch of live streams on YouTube with David Icke, the conspiracy theory guy.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
He did those at the start of the COVID pandemic, and did some phenomenal numbers, like broke, broke some records with it. But very quickly got the live streams taken down by YouTube. They said that he was pushing, they were talking about 5G and, uh, like-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, you, you c- you don't need to know anymore as soon as you hear that. Um ...
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, w- no matter w- how much truth was or was not in the live stream, at that time, there was a lot of misinformation going around about COVID, and YouTube had decided to take a pretty hard line approach to remove any content that it thought, uh, contravened, uh, or was giving misinformation around COVID. So then Brian decided to start the Freedom Fund, Freedom Platform Fund, which was, you're gonna love this, Gabrielle, this is so you.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
He starts this Freedom, this Freedom Platform Fund, which is him saying, "Big tech's censoring us because we're telling the truth. They don't want us to be able to..." So he attaches himself as this kind of like the vanguard of free speech activists, right? Uh, talking about, "I, I, I thought we had a little thing called freedom of speech." Uh, uh, some people decided to remind him, "Dude, you're in London now. We don't have that. We don't have the, the Second Amendment."
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"The, there's, there's, there's the, you know, the First Amendment, sorry. There's non- there's none of that here." Um, so he releases this Freedom Fund, he generates 100,000, 200,000, all the way up to a million. He gets a million in backer funding just from his fans. And every time he says, "We're only gonna do 250,000," and then they hit the target, and he says, uh, "Well, now that, that one's done, and now we need, now we actually need to be able to use live stream capability." Long story short, it turned out he'd purchased a white paper out of the box, like, Dailymotion live back end. So he'd said he was getting custom-built servers distributed across the blockchain to be, to not be able to be taken down by anybody, and it was just someone, someone's white, white label, use it as you wish video streaming platform, that he'd put a front end on. So that turned out to be bollocks, and he got called out a lot on YouTube for that. Now he's running for the mayor of London.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
And has been for quite a while. And he's going around in this tour bus and he's doing all of these vlogs, and today, I got sent a video of him doing Sadiq Khan, who's the current mayor of London, and Brian's calling him out and saying like, "You, you, you, you're nothing. I, I'm, I'm everything." And it's always very, he falls over himself when he's talking as well. He's quite slick when he does interviews, but he obviously is struggling a little bit with the politics side. So he uploaded a six-minute-long live stream of him hitting a punching bag-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... a couple of days ago, like quite badly as well. It didn't look like ... It wasn't Floyd Mayweather.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And then this morning, (laughs) this morning, I got sent a video of him doing lengths of butterfly stroke, and said, "Sadiq, I know that you won't debate me in person because you're scared, so why don't we have a swimming race?"
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And then he does a, and then he does a length of butterfly and turns round to the camera and says like, "Let's go," at the end. It is, it's such a grift. It is so bad. And what we've seen, and this is something that seems to be a common thread between all of the people we've spoken about today, their ability to pivot and change direction incredibly quickly like a pinball. So Brian was all about getting the information about o- out, about COVID, then he was all about freedom and free speech, and then he was all about being the mayor of London, and then he was all about psychedelics for a while and plant medicine, and then he was doing a tria- tri- triathlon, and then he's doing this, and then he's doing that. And, um, yeah, this ADHD inability to focus on one track at one time, I guess that's the digital equivalent of the snake oil salesman going from town to town-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... because as they move on from the last grifty project onto the new one, you actually think, "Oh, well, maybe, maybe, maybe he's changed now, or maybe this is new and this is different, and this is a different grift."
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but you, you should have a look at some of the videos about Brian. You will adore them.
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
I will, but I, you know, I have to say, uh, this, I, I hate to bring it back to Donald Trump, but this is literally the Donald Trump playbook, right? He made h- he was never a good businessman, but he convinced the world that he was because he was on The Apprentice, and then he drew people ... Uh, they know how to capitalize on outrage, and they know how to say what people want to hear, and, you know, stoke this, um, excitement, right? So whether it was the birther movement, uh, you know, accusing Barack Obama of having been born in Kenya.... that's kind of how he made his name in politics. Uh, you know, and it- it- the most recent grift of his, right as he left office, he was pushing this idea that the election had been stolen, which it clearly was not. You know, there's n- no, no rational way to say that that happened. Um, he started scamming his own followers. He was fundraising off of this lie saying, you know, "We gotta save the US, you know, we have to save the government, um, donate money. We'll, we'll do the right thing." And that's why all these people stormed the Capitol on January 6th because they truly believed that Donald Trump was gonna be alongside them, um, you know, ushering in this revolution. But what they didn't know was, um, as part of this fundraising effort, there was, like, a very small box that you had to deliberately uncheck because it made your donation a recurring donation. So, all of these, like, diehard Trump supporters realized that they were getting billed weekly or m- and monthly and it just did not stop. He bankrupted, like, a number of his followers. And there's really no... I mean, some people are getting refunds, but there's not a lot of recourse for that because they didn't opt out. Um, so I, I see a lot of parallels, uh, in those stories. And, and a lot of US politicians, sadly, are following suit. You know, there was one woman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently posted a video of herself doing chin-ups as, like, a challenge to the liberal politicians. (laughs) Uh, it's getting really absurd.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I'd s- heard about that, although I haven't seen it. It's in-
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
It's horrifying.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it?
- GBGabrielle Bluestone
Her... Well, just her form. I don't think that's how you're supposed to do pull-ups. (laughs)
Episode duration: 59:44
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Transcript of episode 5fTyROvf5kQ
