Latest / Mini Scroll / The Evolution of Influencer Scams & Social Media Fraud w/ Meredith Lynch

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The Evolution of Influencer Scams & Social Media Fraud w/ Meredith Lynch · Mini Scroll

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  Click the link in the show notes to get all the event details and
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  secure your free spot. On January 24th, 2023, TikTok
• 0:59
  star Mikaela Naguera posted a review for L'oreal's telescopic
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  Lift washable mascara. Like the beauty gurus before
• 1:06
  her, Mikaela built her career off makeup tutorials and product
• 1:09
  reviews, growing her audience to over 15,000,000 followers and
• 1:13
  counting. In the video, Mikaela appeared
• 1:15
  on screen with one eye made-up, showing the application of a
• 1:17
  single coat of mascara to her other bare eye.
• 1:20
  She then said she would apply a second coat of mascara off
• 1:23
  screen. When Michaela returned in the
• 1:25
  following clip, it was clear she added something extra to her
• 1:28
  makeup, some wispy fake lashes that she had tried to pass off
• 1:32
  as the Loreal mascara. I am speechless and I'm not sure
• 1:37
  anyone's going to ever be able to compete with this.
• 1:39
  Michaela's video sparked a wave of backlash.
• 1:42
  Not only was it obvious that she was lying about wearing fake
• 1:45
  eyelashes, but it seemed like she was also lying about the
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  review being sponsored by L'Oreal, only adding the paid
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  partnership tag to the video days later.
• 1:54
  The scandal, dubbed Lashgate, made international headlines and
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  confirmed the bias that so many social media users have against
• 2:01
  influencers that their reviews are untrustworthy and they'll do
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  anything like wearing fake eyelashes in a mascara review
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  for a payday from Centennial World.
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  I'm Lauren Meisner and this is Infinite Scroll, a podcast about
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  Internet culture, the creator economy, and how social media is
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  shaping. Jen Zed.
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  Welcome back to Infinite Scroll everyone.
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  I'm so excited to bring you guys this episode and I have a very
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  exciting Co host with me today. I am currently Co hosting with
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  Meredith Lynch. She is a TikTok star and Private
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  equities #1 arch nemesis. Welcome, Meredith.
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  Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
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  Lauren, this is one of my favorite podcasts and I love
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  what you're doing. And so I reached out to you and
• 2:46
  said, can I please come on your podcast?
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  And you were so lovely and said, yes, you can.
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  And then yeah, it's just it's I've been loving following this
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  journey for you. Oh.
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  My God thank you so much that honestly means so much.
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  I have been following you on TikTok I think since 2020.
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  I think I followed you through Centennial's account, but I'm
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  just like obsessed with your content and I feel like we've
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  just had this synergy. So for anyone that doesn't know
• 3:10
  kind of what you do and who you are, do you want to give them a
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  quick breakdown? Yes, so.
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  I am a writer, I'm a comedian, I am a regular nine to five person
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  as well. Trying to juggle it all and not
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  usually getting it right. But I really fell into TikTok
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  during the pandemic. I had moved from Boston to Los
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  Angeles and I really didn't know anyone here other than my
• 3:34
  husband. And it was peak pandemic
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  pandemic. And so I started making content
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  a little bit like I started doing some of the makeup videos
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  and, and it kind of like took off and I got a little bit of a
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  following. And I would say after about a
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  year, I started moving more into the pop culture space and doing
• 3:50
  more around that, which also felt much more natural to me.
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  I've always been like a pop culture person.
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  At the same time, I started working on my MFA and creative
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  writing. And so, you know, it's kind of
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  evolved from me being someone who made videos about mascara,
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  which is fine and great, to someone who talks about private
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  equity. And my content is constantly
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  evolving. And I think that if you want to
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  be on the Internet and have a presence in the long term, you
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  have to be open to evolving as well.
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  Absolutely. And you just launched a podcast,
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  oddly specific. Do you want to tell us about
• 4:27
  that a little bit? I did.
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  I launched a podcast last month. It's called Oddly Specific.
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  It is the only podcast that covers everything from Private
• 4:35
  Equity Davidson. It is basically half the episode
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  is about private equity, which I do a lot of content about on my
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  page. And then it is something oddly
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  specific where one of my guests and I talk about something that
• 4:49
  I remember or they remember maybe an episode of Dawson's
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  Creek or today we were talking about the Babysitters Club
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  books. So it's always just something
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  kind of like nostalgic and fun. I think it pairs really well
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  with like talking about this way that corporate entities are like
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  making the wealth gap bigger than it already should be, and
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  then like throwing in a little bit of pop culture at the end as
• 5:11
  a palette cleanser. Love that.
• 5:13
  No, it's so good. You are literally killing it.
• 5:15
  I know you're self funding the podcast as well, which as a
• 5:18
  fellow self funded podcast Girly, it is very difficult.
• 5:21
  It's a lot of work, so kudos to you for sure.
• 5:24
  All right, so before we get into the episode, guys, Please
• 5:27
  remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 5:29
  It means so much. It helps me grow.
• 5:31
  It helps me keep going. Speaking of self funded podcast
• 5:34
  girlies, please also sign up to our newsletter, which is called
• 5:37
  Infinite Scroll. On Wednesdays, we send out a
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  commentary article about a trend, creator drama or news.
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  And on Fridays we round up the five biggest thing pieces on the
• 5:45
  Internet from that week. And also join our Geneva group,
• 5:48
  which is also called Infinite Scroll, where you can chat with
• 5:50
  other people who are obsessed with Internet culture and
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  creator drama and tea, and you can chat with me.
• 5:59
  So as you can probably tell from the title of this episode, we
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  are going to be discussing influencer marketing and like
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  social media scams. So we have discussed influencer
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  marketing at length on this podcast, but we've never really
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  done a deep dive into the different kind of fraud that
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  pops up across this type of content.
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  So aside from our favorite beauty guru shilling products or
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  Tik Tokers failing to disclose partnerships, there are some
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  pretty wild examples that we're going to go through today.
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  So I wanted to share quickly the reason behind this episode.
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  So this episode God was inspired by a creator named Lily Jean
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  Meredith, Have you heard of Lily Jean before?
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  I. Did not know about Lily Jean
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  until today. And can I just tell you I'm
• 6:37
  obsessed with Lily Jean. I was really enjoying reading
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  about her from this and then I was like, OK, now I got to go
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  see Lily Jean and it was Wilder than I actually imagined it to
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  be. We can break it down and then we
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  will get into the very specific questions that I have regarding
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  Lily Jean, OK. Perfect.
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  So for anyone that doesn't know, Lily is not your regular
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  influence. She is actually barely an
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  influencer at all. She went viral back in 2020 when
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  commentary creators started pointing out that she was
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  essentially faking her influencer career.
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  So she was recently brought up again among the commentary
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  community and I'll explain why in a second.
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  But this resurgence of interest in Lily got me looking into
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  different social media scams and fraudulent influencers, which is
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  obviously what inspired this episode.
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  So for context, Lily Jean is a 23 year old content creator.
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  She is based in New York, and if you scroll through any of her
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  social media media posts or profiles, you'll find clips
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  promoting her acting and various projects that she's involved in.
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  However, Lily didn't always use social media for her acting
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  career. She initially gained attention
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  as a beauty guru. So as of recording, Lily has 1.1
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  million followers on Instagram and just under 30,000 on
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  YouTube. But if you haven't heard of Lily
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  before, you're not alone. Most people haven't.
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  In fact, this lack of recognition is exactly why her
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  social media following raised eyebrows back in 2020.
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  So this all started with a Reddit post by a user named
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  Throwaway Victory who pointed out some suspicious details
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  across Lily's profiles and her social media presence at large.
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  The post essentially questioned how Lily Jean has managed to
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  work with so many brands while having extremely low engagement
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  rates across her social media profiles.
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  Quote Her recent post engagement has taken a huge nosedive
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  despite her follower count increasing, and she averages
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  anywhere from 100 to 1000 likes compared to her consistent
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  15,000 to 20,000 likes in the past.
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  Even with an algorithm change, drop offs aren't usually this
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  dramatic, wrote Throwaway Victory.
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  So this user theorized that Lily has spent money buying followers
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  and engagement, and they also speculated whether Lily created
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  fake fan accounts to help foster the appearance of having clout
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  or fans. And after scrolling through
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  Lily's posts, Throwaway Victory concluded that there seem to be
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  several consistent commenters, many of which were fan pages for
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  Lily. They came to the conclusion that
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  these were self owned for three reasons.
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  One, quote these accounts mostly repost her content and often
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  have a post with highly detailed back story on how they met her
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  or found her on social media. Two, each of the accounts listed
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  tag 100% of their posts with the hashtag hashtag Lily Jean,
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  regardless of its relevance. And three, most if not all of
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  the accounts follow each other. And then to make matters even
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  more confusing and problematic, each of these commenters had a
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  distinct persona, most of them drawing on different stereotypes
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  and discriminatory beliefs. Users note that one of the
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  profiles was an African American woman named Shaniqua, who would
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  type in a Ave. and often use the N word.
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  If these accounts were created by Lily as speculated, there is
• 9:39
  no denying that this is obviously extremely problematic
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  given that she is not a black woman herself.
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  So soon, commentary creators like Angelica Oles and Priming
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  and Curtis Price picked up the story, pointing out additional
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  odd details about Lily's profile.
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  Priming's video has become one of the most widespread in the
• 9:55
  space, amassing 10 million views since 2020.
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  There are many examples, but there seem to be 3 specific
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  instances that were just kind of weird.
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  One where Lily photoshopped a picture of Katy Perry at the Met
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  Gala to make it appear as if she also was attending the Met Gala.
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  Another was when she pretended to be partnering with Bite
• 10:14
  Beauty on a new lipstick. So for anyone that is aware of
• 10:17
  Bite, they have these labs and you can create your own
• 10:19
  lipsticks like at their labs. And she basically did that,
• 10:23
  created a lipstick. And then she was essentially
• 10:25
  passing this off as like an exclusive collaboration that she
• 10:28
  did with the brand, like creating her own custom shade
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  with the brand that you could purchase when really she just
• 10:32
  went to like this Bite lab that you can, anyone can go to and
• 10:35
  make their own lipstick shade. And lastly, Lily claimed that
• 10:38
  she collaborated with CoverGirl to be featured on a billboard in
• 10:41
  Times Square. Though she did in fact feature
• 10:43
  on a screen. It's because she had won a
• 10:45
  competition that anyone could enter.
• 10:48
  So while this has been going on for years, there have been
• 10:50
  recent developments in the story that have brought Lily Jean back
• 10:53
  to the forefront of viral news. In the last few weeks, creators
• 10:56
  Prime Inc and Curtis Price have made videos updating their
• 10:59
  followers on what has happened since they made an initial video
• 11:02
  on Lily Jean. Both have noted that Lily and
• 11:04
  her mother, Laura Truman, who is also her manager, have attempted
• 11:08
  to copyright strike any content that she was featured in,
• 11:11
  claiming that it was slanderous and defamatory.
• 11:13
  I'm actually a little bit scared about what they're going to do
• 11:15
  about this podcast. Primink explained that after
• 11:18
  multiple attempts to take down his video, they claimed that
• 11:20
  they trademarked the image of Lily that he used in the
• 11:23
  thumbnail the next. Thing they did is that they took
• 11:25
  the photo that I used in my thumbnail and they went and got
• 11:28
  it registered for like an official show copyright with the
• 11:30
  US government. They got like a fancy paper and
• 11:33
  like documents. And then they took those
• 11:35
  documents to YouTube and they're like, hey, YouTube, we have this
• 11:38
  photo registered with the government.
• 11:40
  You need to take it down. And then YouTube was like, no,
• 11:42
  sorry, it's still fair use. Among other claims, Lily and
• 11:46
  Laura alleged to have his content removed.
• 11:48
  Primink mentioned that the mother daughter duo claimed they
• 11:51
  had provided his details to the district attorney's office.
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  They even accused the creator of having, quote, a penchant for
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  playing with children under 16 years old.
• 11:59
  Curtis Price's video. He made similar claims about
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  Lily and Laura. He also claims that the pair
• 12:04
  filed a police report against him, doxed him and his family,
• 12:07
  and claims that he was part of a neo Nazi organization.
• 12:11
  So while Priming and Curtis are just two examples, other
• 12:14
  creators and users have come forth to criticize Lily and
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  Laura for abusing YouTube's copyright policy, especially
• 12:19
  when so many small creators struggle to navigate these
• 12:22
  systems. So in short, obviously Lily is a
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  very big example of like a fraudulent influencer or
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  fraudulent behavior online. What do you have to say about
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  that, Mayor? I have I'm of many minds about
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  it and I really don't agree with it, but I want to back up just
• 12:37
  for a second and say it's really hard to make it as a content
• 12:40
  creator, as a full time content creator in particular, I think
• 12:44
  now in the beauty space because it's just so over saturated.
• 12:47
  And one of the reasons that I chose to move away from doing
• 12:51
  beauty content creation is because I realized like I'm not
• 12:54
  an expert in makeup or beauty. Not that I think you have to be,
• 12:57
  but like there are content creators on there who I really
• 13:00
  enjoy following who are licensed estheticians, who are makeup
• 13:04
  artists, who, you know, went to NYU and then, you know, took
• 13:09
  their artistic skills and became full time makeup artists.
• 13:11
  So I think that to some extent you can kind of understand how
• 13:16
  someone would be scrappy and be like, you know what, I'm just
• 13:19
  going to fake it until I make it and hopefully eventually I make
• 13:22
  it. Now here's the difference.
• 13:24
  It's one thing to try to make it seem like perhaps you have a
• 13:28
  partnership or you know, you're unboxing something and you're
• 13:31
  acting like it was sent to you as PR or something.
• 13:34
  It's quite another to make fan pages of yourself.
• 13:37
  And I would argue had she just done the slow rollout of like,
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  oh, wow. Like did she have a partnership
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  with them or did she just go there versus creating fake
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  accounts or pretending to be at the Met Gala?
• 13:52
  She probably could have made it because if you're this
• 13:56
  determined to be a content creator, you probably can be.
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  And if you have the backing of a parent, that can probably help
• 14:02
  you a lot more. So that's like my one part of
• 14:05
  it. But then on the other hand, I
• 14:08
  think it's really interesting because she clearly wants to be
• 14:11
  a public figure. I'm looking at her page, she is
• 14:14
  putting up acting reels, she is talking about hosting ATV show.
• 14:20
  She's all these different things.
• 14:21
  And honestly, who knows the validity of what I was looking
• 14:24
  at, But one of the things that you have to make a trade off
• 14:27
  with is if you want to be a public figure, you have to
• 14:29
  accept that you're going to be talked about.
• 14:31
  There's going to be commentary on you.
• 14:33
  So this idea of taking these content creators who are
• 14:37
  reporting on you and then doxing them or, you know, hitting them
• 14:42
  with these things, which to be honest with you, I look at this
• 14:45
  and I say, well, saying that stuff about a content creator in
• 14:49
  regards to 16 year olds, that is the only thing that I could see
• 14:53
  as defamation potentially. So that's some of my my first
• 14:57
  thoughts. And I also, I'm like, I'll tell
• 14:58
  you who the scare everyone here is.
• 15:00
  It's lore. It's not Lily Jean.
• 15:02
  Yeah, I completely agree. I think there's so much out
• 15:06
  there as well of like when you are starting a business for
• 15:09
  example, where they literally the vices fake it till you make
• 15:12
  it. And there's so much smoke and
• 15:13
  mirrors when it comes to anything where you're I don't
• 15:16
  know like I mean social media in general, but the creator
• 15:18
  economy, even entrepreneurship, like so much of it is like what
• 15:22
  it looks like from the outside. So I agree if she had just not
• 15:25
  taken it that step farther of like photoshopping herself to
• 15:29
  make it look she was at the Met Gala or starting these fan
• 15:31
  pages. But then again, when you think
• 15:32
  about the early Tumblr days, this is kind of a niche example.
• 15:35
  But like Alexis Ren allegedly, like obviously she had a bit of
• 15:39
  a fan base on Tumblr, but then she was allegedly making a bunch
• 15:43
  of fan pages for herself on Instagram when Instagram first
• 15:46
  launched so that she could build a following and get verified.
• 15:49
  And that was like a strategy that people, you know, we're
• 15:52
  using that was social media gurus, quote UN quote, we're
• 15:55
  telling people to use back in the day as well.
• 15:57
  So I agree that Laura Hermand father is the biggest culprit
• 16:00
  here because Lily's being only 23 and all of this kind of
• 16:03
  started when she was still a teenager.
• 16:05
  She would have been so young. I see a lot of what she's doing
• 16:08
  is like following the advice of what either social media gurus
• 16:11
  are telling her to do on like those courses that they're
• 16:14
  selling and things like that, or just general like
• 16:17
  entrepreneurship advice. Yeah, and I mean, just looking
• 16:21
  at the stats on her profile, right, 1.1 million followers is
• 16:26
  a lot of followers on Instagram. And I know some people might not
• 16:30
  realize it, but the metrics of each platform are quite
• 16:33
  different. Like for example, you know, I
• 16:36
  have, I don't know, coming up on 300,000 on TikTok, a little
• 16:40
  under that, right, But I have 17,000 on Instagram.
• 16:44
  That's a huge difference. It is much harder to get
• 16:48
  Instagram followers and retain Instagram followers.
• 16:51
  So you're going to have to be doing something that's very
• 16:54
  different and very niche in standing out to get 1.1 million.
• 16:58
  And I say this with a love of the arts and a love for people
• 17:02
  who show up and show out. But like, she's got a video
• 17:05
  where she's just doing a monologue from, I believe it's
• 17:08
  office Christmas party. And like, it has 760 comments.
• 17:14
  And you're like, what? OK, first of all, I had to like
• 17:17
  clock in my head. Like I was like, was that a
• 17:19
  movie? Yes, it was a movie.
• 17:21
  OK. And I mean, I have a lot of
• 17:23
  friends here in LA who are in the acting world.
• 17:26
  I've never seen any of them put up a monologue from like really
• 17:31
  from anything, but especially from like a movie that someone
• 17:33
  would go, was that a movie? Was that a movie?
• 17:36
  Or is that was that like just an SNL skit?
• 17:38
  And so she puts it up and has 760 comments.
• 17:42
  I'm like, that's wild. So I'm reading through the
• 17:44
  comments. They're all just like 7 hearts.
• 17:47
  It's just emoji comments. And I was like, OK, I got so
• 17:50
  excited because I was like, oh, these comments are going to be
• 17:52
  great. Like this is at least the
• 17:53
  comments are going to deliver. But I'm just like, no, they're
• 17:55
  just, I think they're bot accounts hyping up her video.
• 17:58
  That's my opinion, opinion Lore, listen lore, I have a lawyer, I
• 18:03
  know the rules now you don't want to try me, You know I think
• 18:07
  it's bot accounts and then at the same time the comments are
• 18:12
  turned off so I couldn't even comment.
• 18:15
  Oh my God, it said. Comments have been limited so I
• 18:17
  think she either has it only for followers or they're turned off.
• 18:21
  Oh. My God that is TI.
• 18:23
  Didn't even notice that. I wonder if it's because they've
• 18:25
  started making like these commentary channels have started
• 18:27
  making more videos about her again.
• 18:30
  That's so interesting. Yes, I don't know, I feel like
• 18:34
  Lily felt like a character from a TV show.
• 18:36
  She had this one video that was like an ad that she had made for
• 18:39
  blush and it was like this is blush in several colors and it's
• 18:44
  Joya blush, but like it doesn't have it tagged or anything.
• 18:48
  And she's like, I made this ad and I wrote it and I was like,
• 18:51
  wait, this is a sketch, right? Like because she's trying to be
• 18:53
  an actress. I was like, this is a joke,
• 18:55
  right? And then I realized like it's
• 18:56
  not it's not a joke. So the only problem I think with
• 19:00
  Lily is that she's not in on the bit.
• 19:03
  I love that take. Yeah.
• 19:05
  If she just leaned in, it would actually like pop off.
• 19:08
  People would love that. OK, So obviously fake followers
• 19:11
  and fake engagement are far from the only types of, you know,
• 19:14
  quote UN quote scams on social media.
• 19:15
  So we're going to explore some other ways that social media
• 19:18
  enables fraudulent behavior, including some different ways
• 19:22
  that influencers or even just everyday users can scam their
• 19:25
  followers. So from my perspective, online
• 19:28
  review culture was probably the start of our kind of growing
• 19:32
  distrust in influencer marketing.
• 19:35
  As influencer marketing took over the digital space, social
• 19:37
  media and our lives within it became totally commodified.
• 19:41
  Nowadays, spawn con floods our feeds and almost every
• 19:45
  influencer has some sort of product placement on their
• 19:47
  Instagram grid. Initially, the average Internet
• 19:49
  user wasn't entirely aware of the inner workings of the
• 19:52
  creator economy. But as we came to understand the
• 19:55
  landscape, especially influencer brand partnerships and affiliate
• 19:58
  links, things started to get a bit murky.
• 20:01
  So OG creators like Zoella, Nick Tutorials, and Jaclyn Hill soon
• 20:05
  face repeated criticism for failing to disclose affiliate
• 20:08
  links and being unclear about sponsored content.
• 20:11
  This, in turn, eroded many viewers trust in their favorite
• 20:13
  influencers, leaving them uncertain about whether a review
• 20:16
  was genuine or part of a promotional deal.
• 20:19
  As the gap widened between creators and their audiences,
• 20:22
  things took a turn for the worse.
• 20:24
  Many viewers started resenting influencers as they flaunted
• 20:26
  their privileged lifestyles and the opportunities afforded.
• 20:29
  To them, As a result, users not only distrusted creators, but
• 20:33
  were less inclined to listen to a creator's opinion, even on
• 20:36
  something as uncontroversial as a mascara or a foundation, for
• 20:39
  example. As audiences move away from
• 20:41
  influencer reviews, many Internet users are turning to
• 20:44
  Crowdsource information for the rundown on different products.
• 20:47
  This, of course, has fueled the explosion of information sharing
• 20:50
  and review style content on platforms like TikTok.
• 20:53
  However, the problem of fake reviews seemingly did carry over
• 20:56
  to TikTok, and Makayla Naguera, as I mentioned in the intro, is
• 20:59
  case in point. So after rising to TikTok fame
• 21:02
  in 2020, Michaela gained recognition for her beauty
• 21:04
  reviews, tutorials, and her Boston accent.
• 21:07
  Though it is still up for debate if her accent is exaggerated or
• 21:10
  not. Since then, she's emerged as a
• 21:12
  key player on TikTok, successfully establishing a
• 21:15
  niche for short form beauty reviews.
• 21:17
  However, after a string of dishonest brand deals like
• 21:20
  Lashgate and various quote UN quote cash grab collaborations,
• 21:24
  Michaela seriously lost the trust of her followers.
• 21:27
  Once considered the TikTok new print praised for her unfiltered
• 21:31
  reviews, Michaela's credibility soon waned.
• 21:34
  Today, her comment section is filled with criticism,
• 21:36
  questioning the authenticity of much of her content.
• 21:39
  Many of the creators who are accused of posting fake reviews
• 21:42
  are from the beauty space. And I would love to hear your
• 21:45
  take on this, why you think that is?
• 21:48
  Is it possibly, like, in my opinion, I think it's possibly a
• 21:51
  little bit of misogyny because the beauty space is, you know,
• 21:54
  very female dominated. But I also wonder if it's
• 21:57
  because makeup and skin care and beauty in general is so
• 22:00
  subjective and therefore it's easy to kind of fake a review.
• 22:04
  If you are a creator and you're getting a brand deal, you don't
• 22:06
  want to say no to that money. It's easy for you to say like,
• 22:08
  Oh my God, this one on my skin. So well, like, look at this
• 22:10
  pigment on me. And if someone's like this
• 22:12
  didn't look like this on me, it's easy to be like, well, you
• 22:14
  just have a different skin type than me.
• 22:16
  You know, I think that's a really great question.
• 22:19
  I want to back up for one second because I think there's also
• 22:21
  something about people not always wanting women to have
• 22:25
  money and I don't even, and that's misogyny.
• 22:28
  And I don't even know if people always realize it yet, but I
• 22:31
  think that part of this is the parasocial relationship that
• 22:35
  gets formed between a content consumer and someone who they're
• 22:39
  watching. They build trust with them, and
• 22:41
  they want to feel like this is a relationship that's happening
• 22:45
  because you want to talk to me just as much as I want to hear
• 22:49
  from you. And what I think people don't
• 22:52
  realize sometimes is that for a lot of these people, this is
• 22:55
  their livelihood. This is their career.
• 22:57
  And in the early days, just going back for a moment, I think
• 23:01
  part of the problem was the FTC was really murky around the ways
• 23:06
  in which content creators had to disclose.
• 23:08
  So 15 years ago when these people were first coming on the
• 23:12
  scene with these makeup review videos and there were like these
• 23:16
  really now you go on the FTC and there are guidelines and
• 23:20
  Michaela knows about them and Jaclyn Hill knows about them.
• 23:22
  It's very well known. But I get how like 15 years ago,
• 23:26
  you could kind of get away with it and it was a little work
• 23:29
  year. And I'm not making an excuse for
• 23:32
  it, but I do think that it was a little less understood what this
• 23:36
  was, right. Like when we watch an ad for
• 23:38
  Aveeno with, you know, Jennifer Aniston in it, she doesn't come
• 23:43
  on and say, hi, I'm being paid by Aveeno, right?
• 23:47
  She doesn't. She's like, I just love Aveeno.
• 23:50
  And I don't think people look at it and say, Oh my God, she got
• 23:54
  money for that. I don't think that's the first
• 23:56
  thing they think. I think they think there's
• 23:58
  Jennifer Aniston from Friends with Aveeno.
• 24:01
  So there's that. So I do think that some of it's
• 24:03
  misogyny. I do wonder like if it was men,
• 24:06
  you know, talking about skin care, talking about, you know,
• 24:10
  whatever. I think men in the creator world
• 24:12
  have it a lot easier. In particular, I would say it's
• 24:15
  white men to have it like, you know, they definitely get away
• 24:19
  with a lot more. So I, I think that there is more
• 24:22
  scrutiny on women. And at the same same time,
• 24:25
  though, as someone who has been duped by some of these products
• 24:29
  and reviews, it does really make you realize like these people,
• 24:33
  you know, I understand, but they will sometimes plug products
• 24:36
  that you're like, there's no way that you liked this that much.
• 24:39
  And that can be disheartening. So I think it's a very much of
• 24:43
  both and. Yeah, I see that for sure.
• 24:46
  And I think there's probably an element to it as well, like you
• 24:49
  said, with the FTC and guidelines around the world, 15,
• 24:52
  even 10 years ago, the general consumer didn't quite
• 24:56
  understand. But I also think the influencers
• 24:57
  didn't understand, you know, like, I mean, again, like I'm
• 25:00
  not making excuses for them either.
• 25:02
  I understand everybody gets it now and everybody knows what
• 25:05
  they're supposed to be following at this point.
• 25:07
  But back then, you know, there was a lot of scrutiny on Jaclyn
• 25:09
  Hill, for example, which I'll talk about in a minute, where
• 25:12
  she wouldn't disclose affiliate links that she was getting a
• 25:14
  kickback. But Jaclyn Hill was one of the
• 25:16
  first influencers ever to use affiliate links and for brands
• 25:20
  to like try that out with her. And I would argue that in those
• 25:23
  early days, she probably had, I had no idea that she was
• 25:26
  supposed to be disclosing this. And the brands probably didn't
• 25:29
  really know either because there were actually no guidelines
• 25:31
  around it. So I think it's very murky.
• 25:34
  I agree. And then to the point of men
• 25:37
  getting it much easier in the creator space, I actually wanted
• 25:40
  to speak about an example that I have of one of the big tech
• 25:43
  reviewers, Marquez Brownlee. So he recently went viral.
• 25:47
  Well, he's a huge creator, but a situation around him went viral
• 25:50
  a couple weeks ago because he actually did a tech review.
• 25:53
  So he's a tech reviewer, obviously very different beauty
• 25:55
  and much more objective, I would argue.
• 25:58
  And he got backlash for being too honest about a product,
• 26:01
  which I think shows you the complete disparity between like,
• 26:04
  men and women in this space. So in April of this year, Mark
• 26:07
  has posted a product review for the Humane AI pin.
• 26:10
  The Humane AI Pin is a wearable computer.
• 26:13
  It's like a brooch that you clip onto your shirt and it can
• 26:16
  answer questions, It can take photos and videos, It can send
• 26:18
  messages, allegedly. And it cost $700.00.
• 26:21
  The pin is new and many tech creators and journalists were
• 26:25
  trying buying it at the time, and the vast majority were
• 26:27
  giving it a negative review. So most people said that the pin
• 26:31
  just doesn't do what it claims that it can do, yet it's nowhere
• 26:34
  near perfected enough to be out on the market.
• 26:36
  One example was from The Verge where they showed that the pin
• 26:39
  can't play Beyoncé songs because it can't compete with the accent
• 26:43
  in her name. Like it was just too early for
• 26:45
  this pin to be sent out for reviews.
• 26:47
  And to be Beyoncé, right? Like literally, this thing can't
• 26:51
  play Beyoncé. It's not ready.
• 26:53
  It's not ready for market. Exactly.
• 26:56
  So basically, Marquez gave it, you know, a negative review and
• 26:59
  said, like, this is stupid and it shouldn't be on the market.
• 27:01
  He didn't say it should never be on the market.
• 27:03
  He was just like, it's not ready.
• 27:05
  And he was not the only one, like I said, to give it a
• 27:07
  negative review. But his review copped so much
• 27:10
  backlash, especially on blue check Twitter, which I know is
• 27:13
  not super valid, but it was an interesting kind of case study
• 27:16
  in this case. So Daniel Vassello wrote, I find
• 27:19
  it to stay peaceful. Almost unethical to say this
• 27:22
  when you have 18,000,000 subscribers.
• 27:24
  Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great
• 27:27
  responsibility. Potentially killing someone
• 27:29
  else's nascent project reeks of carelessness.
• 27:32
  First, do no harm. And then Marquez responded and
• 27:35
  said, we disagree on what my job is, which is like, you know,
• 27:38
  perfect. But so many people agreed with
• 27:40
  this initial tweet, and it became this huge topic of
• 27:42
  conversation. So I really want to hear your
• 27:44
  perspective on this. OK, first of all, is that the
• 27:47
  Hippocratic Oath? First, do no harm.
• 27:49
  Yeah. OK, I got to back up because I'm
• 27:52
  telling you this is someone's going to get set on fire from
• 27:54
  this thing. If you're telling me it
• 27:55
  overheats, it's only a matter of time before this pin sets on
• 27:58
  fire. So let's let's start there.
• 28:00
  Daniel, this is wild to me because on the one hand, people
• 28:06
  say that they want reviews, but not if it doesn't align with
• 28:10
  what they think it should be. I guess it reminds me of this
• 28:14
  very specific thing, but I think that you and your listeners will
• 28:18
  appreciate it. The TV show show Only Murders in
• 28:21
  the Building. I watched the first season.
• 28:23
  It's Selena Gomez and and Martin Short and Steve Martin and I
• 28:26
  really like the first season. And then I went to watch the
• 28:28
  second season and I didn't really like it.
• 28:31
  And so I made a video and I said, oh, I watched the first
• 28:33
  season, but watching the second, I don't really like it.
• 28:35
  People were so mad at me for saying that I didn't like the
• 28:38
  second season of Only Murders in the Building.
• 28:41
  Oh my God, they were like, this is because you hate Selena
• 28:43
  Gomez. I was like, no, I've I've never
• 28:45
  even talked about her before. I like, I know, like there's
• 28:49
  nothing. I think it's just I didn't care
• 28:51
  for it. I'm so sorry.
• 28:52
  And so I think that The thing is that we often times decide in
• 28:58
  our heads that people are going to have the same opinion as us
• 29:02
  and we look at that as confirmation to our own
• 29:05
  experiences. So when someone doesn't, it
• 29:07
  really can like create this interesting reaction in people.
• 29:11
  But it's one thing to make fun of like, you know, maybe
• 29:15
  somebody puts their life's work into a play and then you just a
• 29:20
  bit apart, right? But a tech product, especially
• 29:24
  one that uses AI, which is the technology that I think I don't
• 29:28
  think it's going to ruin us, but I think it's something to be
• 29:30
  careful and to be aware of. So I worry about people
• 29:34
  criticizing people for having an opinion when it comes to things
• 29:37
  like that. Well, especially like it
• 29:39
  objectively was not delivering on what it was supposed to.
• 29:43
  I think this is a good example of the fact that the people that
• 29:47
  were angry at Marquez's review is like they were trying to
• 29:51
  protect the founders of this pin or whatever.
• 29:54
  And to me that's just like so indicative of like tech bro
• 29:58
  culture. You know, it's like you're
• 30:00
  trashing someone's dream And it's like we never say that
• 30:03
  about any other product review. You're giving, you know, an
• 30:06
  indie beauty brand a negative review for their eyeshadow.
• 30:09
  No one's like you're trashing the founders dream.
• 30:12
  And I think it's so unique probably to that, like very
• 30:15
  niche tech founder space, like that Silicon Valley vibe where
• 30:19
  they're just trying to like protect each other.
• 30:21
  And they just think that they're like changing the world.
• 30:23
  But everything that they're doing, well, not everything, but
• 30:25
  a lot of what they're doing is actually causing more harm.
• 30:29
  But Speaking of AI, distrust and influencers is really only going
• 30:32
  to get worse with the rise of AI.
• 30:35
  So there's a new piece for the business of fashion.
• 30:37
  Writer Sophia Qureshi argues that with artificial
• 30:40
  intelligence and large language models like ChatGPT, it's
• 30:44
  becoming increasingly easy for bots to flood websites and
• 30:47
  social media comment sections with positive product reviews,
• 30:51
  further eroding trust. Quote The line between authentic
• 30:54
  reviews and AI generated content is itself beginning to blur as
• 30:58
  review platforms roll out new AI powered tools to assist their
• 31:01
  communities in writing reviews. Ultimately, fake reviews can
• 31:05
  mislead consumers into buying counterfeit products, which
• 31:07
  represent a risk to a shopper's health and well-being, as well
• 31:10
  as their wallet. So All in all, the looming
• 31:13
  influence of AI and the skepticism towards influencers
• 31:16
  have created this perfect storm for the demise of reviews as a a
• 31:20
  popular form of content. And as a result, many social
• 31:23
  media users have fallen prey to confirmation bias, which is the
• 31:26
  tendency to interpret and remember information that aligns
• 31:29
  with our existing beliefs and preferences, which is what you
• 31:31
  said before, Meredith. So in addition to the
• 31:34
  proliferation of fake reviews, failure to disclose affiliate
• 31:37
  links or sponsored content is probably the most long standing
• 31:40
  issue in influencer marketing. And like I said before, Jaclyn
• 31:43
  Hill is always or often considered, I guess, kind of
• 31:46
  like the blueprint for this, which is a wild like statement
• 31:50
  to make when it comes to at least like beauty influencers.
• 31:53
  She has been using affiliate links long before so many
• 31:56
  influencers even knew what they were.
• 31:58
  Really. She was like one of the first.
• 31:59
  It's taken her a lot. I think it's taken her about 10
• 32:02
  years to start just moving it properly for sure.
• 32:04
  But I mean, like we said before, part of that is that things
• 32:08
  weren't catching up with them. So a fun little tidbit about
• 32:11
  this is that here for the T, the Drama channel, she actually
• 32:14
  started because she noticed that Jacqueline had so many affiliate
• 32:17
  links in her description boxes for makeup that she used.
• 32:20
  She never disclosed. And disclosing really just means
• 32:23
  like you're disclosing that you're going to be paid a small
• 32:25
  Commission, usually a small kickback if somebody clicks on
• 32:27
  the link and purchases something through that link.
• 32:29
  So here for the T wanted to educate consumers about what
• 32:32
  affiliate marketing was and how Youtubers like Jacqueline were
• 32:35
  profiting off of it without us knowing.
• 32:37
  Interestingly, a few years ago, Jacqueline started doing Amazon
• 32:41
  hauls and like save videos when her makeup reviews and product
• 32:45
  reviews were kind of falling off anyways, like in general when
• 32:47
  the beauty industry was going through this really big change
• 32:50
  mine. So now in addition to affiliate
• 32:52
  links in her makeup videos, these videos were literally just
• 32:55
  affiliate marketing videos, but like completely undisclosed.
• 32:59
  And then eight months ago she did start disclosing this.
• 33:02
  So there's a lot of questions around if she did get some type
• 33:05
  of like slap on the wrist or something from the FTC, but that
• 33:08
  was ten years after joining YouTube.
• 33:11
  Wow, that's wild to me and I do think that it can be so easy.
• 33:18
  I feel like all you would have to do is to put after all the
• 33:21
  links in parentheses. You could just write may earn
• 33:24
  affiliate Commission. You don't even have to say how
• 33:26
  much you earn. You can just say I could earn
• 33:29
  it. And I don't think that will
• 33:31
  detract people from necessarily buying something if you are
• 33:35
  showing it in a way that it looks good.
• 33:38
  And the other thing I would say is that just from a user
• 33:41
  experience perspective, I often wonder how many people are
• 33:44
  actually buying through affiliate links.
• 33:46
  Yeah. Me too.
• 33:47
  I mean I will click on like all, I mean, I guess it's not swipe
• 33:50
  up anymore, but I will click on a link in like someone's
• 33:53
  Instagram story. If they're like, here's my pants
• 33:54
  or whatever and I really like their outfit, I'll click on it.
• 33:57
  But I don't think I've ever actually purchased it.
• 34:00
  Like I'll look at it, I might screenshot it, save it for
• 34:02
  later, but I've never like impulsively purchased it.
• 34:05
  Yes. I can't think of a single time
• 34:07
  I've used someone's affiliate link.
• 34:08
  And so I also wonder, I mean, Jacqueline's a little bit
• 34:12
  different because she does have this huge following and she was
• 34:14
  in the game so much earlier. But I really do wonder these
• 34:18
  days how much she's making from affiliate links.
• 34:21
  I doubt that it's that much. And then the other thing that I
• 34:24
  would say that I caution people about this, especially if you're
• 34:27
  someone who wants to become a content creator, is there is no
• 34:30
  legitimate way for you to ensure that you are getting all of the
• 34:35
  money that you should be from affiliate marketing, right?
• 34:39
  Like, yes, it's saying that 30 people clicked on my link and
• 34:42
  five people bought, but maybe 10 people bought and you don't get
• 34:47
  all of it. It's not like going into a job
• 34:48
  and punching in every day and knowing I was there from 8:00 AM
• 34:52
  to 5:00 PM. And this is the money that I
• 34:54
  make. It is not a reliable source of
• 34:57
  income. And you know, a brand being
• 35:00
  honest with like, I'm sure there are plenty that are, but I'm
• 35:03
  just saying like, there's no concrete way to ensure that
• 35:06
  you're getting the money that you should be getting.
• 35:08
  Oh. My God, I've never thought of
• 35:10
  that before. That is such a good point.
• 35:13
  But have you ever found like as a content creator, and if you've
• 35:15
  had brands approach you for different deals and things like
• 35:19
  that, have you found that they ask you to not disclose?
• 35:22
  Because I think sometimes that's the argument in favor of
• 35:26
  creators or influencers is if they're not disclosing, it's
• 35:29
  like, well, the brand probably pays them more to not disclose
• 35:32
  and so they just go with it. So I've never had someone say
• 35:35
  don't disclose, but I do think that most brands are not great
• 35:39
  about telling you that you need to disclose and how to disclose.
• 35:43
  I think actually as I've been on there longer, it's gotten
• 35:46
  better. A lot of the places that I've
• 35:48
  worked with will give you the FTC guidelines and say, you
• 35:52
  know, you need to do XYZ thing if you have questions.
• 35:54
  These are the FTC guidelines. I have had a couple, I think
• 35:58
  there was one time where I said like I had to sort of push back
• 36:01
  on someone and say like, oh, well, I, I, I do have to
• 36:04
  disclose XYZ thing. And they were like, oh, OK,
• 36:07
  yeah, that's fine. But I've never had a brand reach
• 36:10
  out to me and say like, oh, if you don't disclose, we will pay
• 36:13
  you more money. But I will also add that that
• 36:16
  the brands that I work with, especially in 2024, which isn't
• 36:21
  tons, tends to be very ethical and want to also not get in
• 36:29
  trouble. But the creator will always get
• 36:31
  in trouble before the brand, which I also think is just sort
• 36:33
  of such a reflection of like individuals over corporations
• 36:37
  are the ones who end up paying for, you know, the cost of doing
• 36:40
  business. Yeah, 100%.
• 36:42
  And that's kind of our experience too.
• 36:45
  I'm trying to think from a business perspective when we
• 36:48
  have advertisers and stuff, I would say more and more in the
• 36:52
  probably even just in the last like 18 months, there's usually
• 36:55
  something in the brief that says like you must disclose based on
• 36:58
  XYZ. But we just got our first US
• 37:01
  deal and the yay. Yeah, it's very exciting because
• 37:05
  we do have a big US audience and like the, I guess the
• 37:09
  regulations and like the guidelines section of that
• 37:12
  contract was so extensive. I was like, OK, either this
• 37:16
  brand has been burned before or they're so much stricter maybe
• 37:19
  in the US than they are in Australia, I don't know.
• 37:21
  But it was actually like really eye opening.
• 37:23
  I couldn't believe like how much we had to like sign and kind of
• 37:26
  agree to, I guess in terms of disclosing, which is good
• 37:28
  because that's like the way that the industry obviously needs to
• 37:31
  go. But I agree, I've never had a
• 37:33
  brand in our experience as a business, like say, you know,
• 37:35
  can you not disclose? But I also feel like the brands
• 37:37
  that you're working with, like they know they can't get away
• 37:40
  with that, saying that to you. And I think business to
• 37:42
  business, they know they can't get away with that either.
• 37:45
  Yeah. Definitely.
• 37:46
  I mean, if a brand comes at me out of pocket, which happens
• 37:49
  from time to time, like I'm going to, you know, shut it down
• 37:52
  pretty quickly. So I get the brands who I do
• 37:55
  work with I usually find to be quite ethical and wonderful to
• 37:57
  work with. OK, so I wanted to talk about
• 38:00
  promoting scams because this is another thing that it's happened
• 38:04
  for a while. I'll give it a kind of a, an
• 38:06
  older example in the beauty space, but we're seeing it more
• 38:10
  and more, especially with gambling like creators promoting
• 38:13
  gambling and crypto, we saw a lot in recent years.
• 38:17
  So influencers are frequently accused of not having real jobs
• 38:21
  and providing no real value to society, which everybody knows.
• 38:24
  I don't agree with those who don't understand the industry of
• 38:26
  content creation or how influencer marketing works love
• 38:29
  to call influencers grifters or scammers.
• 38:32
  And while this is not the truth for most creators and everyone
• 38:36
  deserves to be paid for their work, even if it is quote UN
• 38:38
  quote just posting TikTok videos, there have been a few
• 38:41
  notable examples over the years that seemed to validate this
• 38:44
  reputation. So in 2018, high profile
• 38:48
  Youtubers Tana Mojo and Gabby Hannah promoted a brand called
• 38:51
  Kenza Cosmetics on their channels.
• 38:54
  In these posts, which went out to millions of followers, the
• 38:57
  creator said that Kenza was doing doing a promotion for 48
• 39:00
  hours only, where their makeup brushes were free and all you
• 39:02
  had to do was pay the $10 shipping.
• 39:04
  This obviously sounded too good to be true, and tons of people
• 39:07
  flocked to Twitter to warn against buying from the company.
• 39:10
  Some users noted that there was nothing online about the company
• 39:13
  and their website didn't look legit.
• 39:15
  And then some Kenza customers jumped in, posting about how
• 39:18
  they had ordered from the website months ago and still
• 39:20
  hadn't received anything. One even shared a screenshot of
• 39:23
  like 50 emails that she had sent to Kenza's customer service with
• 39:26
  no response after not receiving her brushes.
• 39:29
  People also found the same brushes on Aliexpress for like
• 39:32
  $5, which obviously is like half the price of what consumers were
• 39:36
  paying for the alleged $10 shipping.
• 39:38
  It was obviously just a very sketchy situation.
• 39:41
  So drama and commentary channel started reporting on this.
• 39:43
  Again, this is 2018, so this is before mainstream media really
• 39:46
  covered the creator economy. I think if this happened today,
• 39:49
  I mean, the Internet culture journalist would be on it.
• 39:52
  But Tana did not say anything. Gabby Hannah did respond to the
• 39:56
  backlash. So Gabby made a video talking
• 39:58
  through how many brand deal offers she gets and turns down
• 40:02
  basically trying to say that like she did the Kenza deal
• 40:04
  because she liked the brushes and felt comfortable advertising
• 40:07
  them to her followers. She was trying to I think use
• 40:10
  this video to explain why she is a reliable source and that she
• 40:14
  they should be OK with the Kenza deal.
• 40:16
  But then in the video, she said I'm.
• 40:18
  Not sure what quality people were expecting when they paid
• 40:23
  $10.00 for 10 brushes. But I would also add manage your
• 40:28
  expectations a little bit. I knew nothing about this and I
• 40:31
  guess it's probably a face at the time, but to me, it does
• 40:35
  remind me a little bit of when I sometimes look at subscription
• 40:39
  boxes. You know, there are all these
• 40:41
  subscription boxes. I feel like kind of they're
• 40:42
  going away now, but there would be brands in them that like,
• 40:45
  you'd be like, I've never heard of this brand.
• 40:47
  And then when you would click on the brand, like the Instagram,
• 40:50
  it would have like 70 followers and like then you'd go on the
• 40:54
  website and there would be like no products you could buy.
• 40:58
  So I think that there's just in 2018, I bet was kind of like I
• 41:03
  got the early days of drop shipping.
• 41:04
  So I'm sure that people were probably like, Oh my God, look
• 41:08
  what we can do. We can create these brushes.
• 41:10
  All you have to do is pay for shipping, which by the way,
• 41:13
  $10.00 for shipping is actually kind of a lot if you ask me for
• 41:17
  something as light as brushes when you can get so much free
• 41:20
  shipping these days. And her closing comment reminds
• 41:23
  me of like what a salty TikTok comment will leave me.
• 41:27
  It'll be like somebody whose profile picture is a picture of
• 41:30
  a dog. And then the bio just is like
• 41:32
  spread kindness. And then it'll be like some
• 41:34
  comments like that. That's.
• 41:35
  A good point about the early days of drop shipping.
• 41:38
  I mean, both of them only did Instagram stories.
• 41:40
  And I'm just so curious like how do these companies that just pop
• 41:44
  up, like how do they have so much money to pay Tana Mojo for
• 41:47
  an Instagram story or Gabby Hannah or whatever?
• 41:48
  Like how do you have the funds for them?
• 41:51
  Because I think that it's typically a company that has a
• 41:55
  lot of companies above it. I think it's usually like some
• 41:57
  bro who has started a bunch of different, you know, drop
• 42:02
  shipping companies. And so he has that money because
• 42:05
  like, he's also in crypto. So true 100%.
• 42:09
  OK, well Speaking of that, around the same time as the
• 42:12
  Kenza cosmetic situation, Youtubers Jake Paul and Ricegum
• 42:15
  promoted a website called Mystery Brand.
• 42:17
  According to The Verge, Jake and Ricegum were paid at least
• 42:20
  $100,000 each to drive their followers to the website, which
• 42:24
  was basically just an online gambling platform where users
• 42:28
  would pay for different, quote, mystery boxes, quote, UN quote,
• 42:31
  in hopes that the prizes inside were luxury items.
• 42:33
  So some of the prizes that users could allegedly win included
• 42:37
  Airpods, iPhones, laptops, luxury cars, fashion, even a
• 42:42
  $250 million mansion. But as with all gambling, the
• 42:47
  chances of actually winning or even making your money back that
• 42:50
  you would spend on was low. Obviously most people won prizes
• 42:53
  that you could get at an arcade. So Jake and Rice faced backlash
• 42:57
  for promoting gambling on their platforms, especially given both
• 43:00
  of the creators had predominantly very young fan
• 43:03
  bases. In response to the backlash,
• 43:05
  Ricegum responded in a video explaining they offered him way
• 43:08
  more than $100,000 and he made the video because the website
• 43:13
  seemed easy enough and the money was too good.
• 43:16
  So problematic. But I mean at least he was
• 43:18
  honest with his followers and said they paid me way more than
• 43:21
  100, $1000 I guess and that's why I made the video.
• 43:25
  I mean, if you go to a convenience store here in Los
• 43:30
  Angeles, you're going to be able to buy a scratch ticket.
• 43:32
  Like it's the same thing to me as promoting a scratch ticket.
• 43:35
  It's kind of on you if you decide to take that gamble.
• 43:38
  To me, there's something different between buying
• 43:41
  brushes, makeup brushes, and saying like, Oh my God, I might
• 43:47
  be in a house. Like one of those things where
• 43:50
  it's like, if it was so easy, everyone would do it.
• 43:53
  So that's how you should know that it's probably too good to
• 43:55
  be true. Yeah, and there's a difference
• 43:57
  between spending money expecting to get brushes and not getting
• 44:01
  them versus spending money on a mystery box or whatever online
• 44:05
  on this website and, you know, getting a shitty prize and
• 44:09
  understanding that that's part of the deal.
• 44:10
  I guess it's because their follower base is so young, but
• 44:13
  that's like a whole other conversation about like kind of
• 44:15
  where where is the ownership on I guess the influencer knowing
• 44:20
  who their fan base is versus fan bases parents if they are
• 44:23
  children knowing what their kids are watching and engaging in.
• 44:26
  It's like a whole bigger conversation there.
• 44:29
  But the same influencers, Jake Paul Tana Mojo got in trouble
• 44:33
  again because they were promoting crypto pump and dumps,
• 44:37
  which I feel like is the most recent kind of influencer scammy
• 44:40
  or like fraudulent thing to promote.
• 44:42
  So in 2021, there was a wave of influencers promoting
• 44:46
  cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes.
• 44:48
  Influencers like Jake Paul, Tana, Mojo, Keemstar and some of
• 44:51
  the members of Phase Clan and even Kim Kardashian made posts
• 44:54
  asking their millions of fans to invest in relatively unknown
• 44:58
  cryptocurrencies which created a FOMO effect backed by claiming
• 45:01
  the coins value was on the rise. This strategy, which is called
• 45:04
  pump and dump, has existed for decades on the equity markets as
• 45:08
  a form of securities fraud that is often compared to a Ponzi
• 45:11
  scheme. Promoting these schemes became a
• 45:13
  popular way for influencers to make a quick buck during the
• 45:16
  crypto craze around 2021 to 2022.
• 45:19
  Unlike traditional pump and dump schemes, which rely on trading
• 45:22
  boiler rooms to call it potential investors and convince
• 45:25
  them to buy stock in the target company, bravenewcoin.com
• 45:28
  explains that cryptocurrency pump and dump relies on social
• 45:31
  media to function, making influencer marketing the perfect
• 45:34
  medium to facilitate these schemes.
• 45:36
  Writer Alex Lielker writes quote.
• 45:38
  These schemes target low capitalization crypto currencies
• 45:41
  and digital tokens that can easily be manipulated with low
• 45:44
  trading volumes. Instead of boiler rooms, the
• 45:47
  price pumps are conducted by spreading hype and fake
• 45:50
  information about a coin on social media.
• 45:52
  So in these instances, the influencers basically tell their
• 45:55
  millions of followers that they're making money off a
• 45:57
  crypto coin. A fraction of their followers
• 45:59
  will invest inside coin expecting to make gains as well,
• 46:03
  and as more followers buy in and the price spikes, the influencer
• 46:06
  sells their shares, makes a profit, and then that drives the
• 46:10
  share price down which basically screws our followers out of that
• 46:14
  same return. So different variations of the
• 46:17
  scenario can play out depending on how the coin functions.
• 46:20
  Some are more transactional while others function more like
• 46:22
  pyramid schemes, but the result is similar.
• 46:24
  The influencer walks away with profit that they essentially
• 46:27
  indirectly took from their fans own pocket.
• 46:30
  So once consumers caught on to the scam, the backlash was
• 46:33
  really intense. Four members of Phase Clan were
• 46:36
  actually suspended or fired from the collective for promoting a
• 46:39
  pump and dump scheme. And in 2022, Kim Kardashian was
• 46:43
  actually fined by the SEC for promoting a pump and dump
• 46:46
  scheme. Kim advertised the
• 46:48
  cryptocurrency Ethereum Maxx on her Instagram without disclosing
• 46:51
  that she was paid to do so, driving the price up before the
• 46:54
  company planned to sell to investors.
• 46:57
  Kim was reportedly paid $250,000 to promote wrote this coin on
• 47:01
  her Instagram and she was fined 1.26 million.
• 47:04
  My question would be like, was Kim also buying this and then
• 47:10
  selling it? Because like 1.26 million is
• 47:13
  really not that bad for a fine for Kim Kardashian, first of
• 47:17
  all. And considering like part of it
• 47:19
  could be paid in the 250 that she made from them.
• 47:23
  So I think there's got to be, and I think there had to be more
• 47:26
  for her to do a deal like that 'cause I don't think she would
• 47:28
  do something for as low as 250 at this day and age.
• 47:32
  That's what I was thinking. 250 for an Instagram post for Kim
• 47:35
  feels low. Yeah, I think that this to me is
• 47:39
  so much shadier than all of the other things.
• 47:41
  But at the same time, I would bet you that Jack Hill has
• 47:45
  gotten more shit for affiliate links than Kim Kardashian has
• 47:49
  gotten for this. That is such a good point and
• 47:51
  this is quite literally like low key stealing money from your
• 47:54
  followers like it's wild. Yeah, Martha Stewart went to
• 47:58
  prison for like, less than this. No, legit, it's actually so
• 48:02
  wild. And I think we know because it
• 48:05
  it all kind of came to a head like really quickly, the crypto
• 48:08
  craze and all this pump and dump stuff and the backlash was quite
• 48:12
  severe very quickly, which is good.
• 48:14
  I think the general consumer, well, actually maybe that's
• 48:16
  maybe that's an overstatement, but I would say this has
• 48:20
  dissipated a lot. Like I think 2023-2024, we don't
• 48:23
  really see influencers promoting crypto, possibly because we know
• 48:26
  what they're doing now because they got in trouble so quickly
• 48:30
  or maybe just because everybody started getting in trouble,
• 48:32
  they're like, this isn't worth it.
• 48:33
  So that's good. But I agree, it's so much more
• 48:35
  insidious than just not disclosing your affiliate link.
• 48:38
  OK. The next little type of not
• 48:41
  little, but the next type of fraud that I wanted to talk with
• 48:43
  you about. And I'm so interested to hear
• 48:44
  your perspective because we're going to talk about TikTok shop,
• 48:46
  but in Australia we don't have TikTok Shop.
• 48:48
  So I really want to hear what it's like for you.
• 48:52
  Yeah, like as AUS consumer and a creator yourself.
• 48:56
  So for anyone that is like not super familiar with TikTok Shop,
• 48:59
  I think it's actually only in the US, Brazil.
• 49:01
  There's only like 4 or five countries that have it right
• 49:04
  now. So in September 2023, TikTok
• 49:06
  Shop officially launched in the US.
• 49:08
  The concept stems from #tik T.O.K Made me Buy it, allowing
• 49:12
  users to shop the products they see without having to leave the
• 49:15
  platform. Her Tech Crunch quote creators
• 49:17
  can tag products to make it easier for users to buy things
• 49:20
  from in feed videos and live videos.
• 49:22
  Brands can make their own product portfolios, which can be
• 49:25
  accessible on their profile pages.
• 49:27
  TikTok Shop also has a dedicated tab, which it rolled out to
• 49:30
  other markets in June to let users search for different
• 49:32
  products, discover products through recommendations, browse
• 49:35
  items in different categories and manage their orders.
• 49:38
  So there have been many issues with TikTok Shop.
• 49:40
  The first being that the feature was in response to existing
• 49:43
  predatory business models flourishing on the app, like
• 49:46
  MLMS and drop shipping. According to journalist Chase D
• 49:50
  Benedetto for Mashable quote the idea built on an already growing
• 49:53
  community of multi level marketers and drop shippers,
• 49:56
  businesses that don't make, store or ship the products
• 49:58
  they're selling using TikTok for you pages as advertising space
• 50:01
  and TikTok lives as the new social media selling haven.
• 50:05
  OK. So what are your high level
• 50:06
  thoughts on that before I keep going when?
• 50:08
  I first heard that this was coming about a year and a half
• 50:12
  ago. Someone told me that live
• 50:14
  shopping experiences were becoming really big in other
• 50:17
  parts of the world. So to prepare myself for the
• 50:19
  fact that this was coming to TikTok and I kind of tucked it
• 50:23
  away in the back of my mind, but it really has impacted the app
• 50:28
  experience in a negative way. And I'm fed so many ads and it's
• 50:32
  made consuming content much less interesting.
• 50:35
  And it's very apparent to me the TikTok is prioritizing creators
• 50:40
  who utilize TikTok Shop. Oh.
• 50:42
  My God, that's so interesting because yeah, like I said, we
• 50:44
  don't have it here and we also don't have the creator fund, so
• 50:48
  we don't really make any money off of TikTok, the company here.
• 50:52
  So I feel like like our experience is so probably like
• 50:54
  from the US perspective, it's probably feels like, you know,
• 50:57
  early days of 2020 still on my app.
• 51:00
  In some ways that sounds lovely, Like I do like the creator fund,
• 51:03
  but since TikTok Shop really launched, they have dialed back
• 51:06
  a little bit on the creator fund and they want creators to focus
• 51:11
  on TikTok shop. And I went from getting like
• 51:13
  maybe two or three spammy type emails asking about
• 51:18
  collaborations per week to getting like 3 an hour in my
• 51:22
  e-mail inbox asking me like, hey, we have this body suit and
• 51:26
  it's on TikTok shop and will you make something for it?
• 51:29
  And we'll send you a free one. And then you'll get 15%
• 51:32
  Commission. And then I'll look at the
• 51:33
  reviews and they're like, it smells like plastic and you're
• 51:37
  like, I don't want this. OK, yes, Because that is one of
• 51:41
  the things when I was researching this section of the
• 51:43
  episode that people were saying, like creators were saying, is
• 51:46
  that now they get constant emails from sellers trying to
• 51:50
  get them to partner with them. Because essentially TikTok Shop
• 51:53
  has an affiliate funnel for sellers where it lets them work
• 51:56
  with creators on a Commission basis.
• 51:58
  So there's already like, a lot of like, legal issues and kind
• 52:02
  of outright scams on this. According to the Better Business
• 52:05
  Bureau quote, almost half, as in 48% of TikTok users have
• 52:09
  purchased something they've seen on the app, putting a
• 52:11
  significant number of users at risk of being scammed by
• 52:14
  dishonest third party sellers. The app's largest demographic is
• 52:17
  10 to 19 year olds, a group that may have reduced awareness
• 52:21
  around identifying a scam. So one of the biggest things,
• 52:24
  like you said, is that TikTok shop sellers have been accused
• 52:27
  of pressuring popular creators into featuring their shop in
• 52:31
  content or partnering with them for Commission.
• 52:33
  So one of the creators at Peachy Rad, she posted on Twitter in
• 52:38
  February writing one of the reasons people keep promoting
• 52:41
  TikTok shop is because all the different third party sellers
• 52:44
  literally will never stop DM ING creators and trying to wear them
• 52:46
  down. I get like 50 DMS a day and I've
• 52:48
  only taken like 4 official offers in the span of a few
• 52:51
  months. They start DM ING you in other
• 52:53
  places and emailing you too. Like I can see why some people
• 52:56
  also just have whole accounts dedicated to TikTok shop now.
• 52:59
  They don't leave people alone. Yeah.
• 53:02
  And you know, I am not someone who wants to use my platform to
• 53:07
  sell a lot of stuff. I am trying to move away from
• 53:12
  how much stuff I consume. I think that's a good way to be.
• 53:16
  And it does feel like so inauthentic to the app too,
• 53:22
  because the origins of TikTok were so much more fun and that
• 53:25
  we were just like sharing these little parts of our day.
• 53:28
  And it felt like you remember the the beginning of the
• 53:30
  pandemic. I remember like sort of some of
• 53:33
  the tag lines around TikTok were like everyone is a star.
• 53:37
  So that was sort of the beginning of what TikTok was
• 53:40
  like in those early days of TikTok.
• 53:42
  But now it's become like you got to be monetizing your content,
• 53:46
  you got to be hustling. And it feels like we're
• 53:48
  harkening back to that girl boss era that we're just changing the
• 53:52
  method. We're using TikTok shop instead
• 53:55
  of selling, you know, Beachbody, which I don't know.
• 54:00
  Did you have Beachbody in Australia?
• 54:02
  We I've never like engaged with Beachbody, but I know what it
• 54:05
  is, yeah. Right.
• 54:06
  And so it's like, we don't, I don't really see anybody
• 54:08
  promoting Beachbody anymore, but I see people being like, no,
• 54:11
  because it's the way you need this hoodie.
• 54:15
  You're like, they also do it in such a way.
• 54:18
  You figure out all the buzzwords when you start to watch these
• 54:21
  videos, they're very easy to deconstruct.
• 54:23
  They'll always start it with a like, I was so unsure about
• 54:26
  buying something from TikTok shop.
• 54:27
  So right away they do the same things that MLMS do, which like
• 54:31
  people try to recruit you to an MLM.
• 54:33
  The first thing they'll say is, I know I was skeptical at first.
• 54:36
  They do the same thing and then they'll say, but the quality of
• 54:39
  this sweater is so amazing or it's selling out or, you know,
• 54:44
  they'll use sort of like the Gen.
• 54:46
  Z language of like, do you have a sweater that just sweaters?
• 54:50
  This is one of those and you're like, no, it's not.
• 54:53
  It looks like shit. That's the other thing is like,
• 54:56
  I was looking at this very popular American flag sweater
• 55:00
  that I keep seeing on TikTok shop, all right?
• 55:02
  And I looked at the video of the person wearing it who's like, I
• 55:05
  finally broke down and got the viral sweater.
• 55:07
  By using keywords like that, you're also letting people know
• 55:11
  that it's something that's a trend that they should buy into
• 55:13
  by being like, this is viral. This is so good.
• 55:15
  This is the one that everyone has, right?
• 55:17
  When you look at the sweater on the person versus the pictures
• 55:22
  that you can see on the TikTok shop, the American flag is like
• 55:26
  an inch below the collar on the like one that everybody owns.
• 55:30
  And so it looks really awkward. Like people don't usually have
• 55:32
  the logo like right below a collar.
• 55:35
  But on the TikTok shop, it is like 6 inches below and looks
• 55:40
  much more normal. But I'm like, that's the other
• 55:42
  piece of it is like the things that you're seeing are, I think
• 55:46
  like made in AI half the time. No, totally.
• 55:49
  And that's one of the problems is like the fact that a lot of
• 55:52
  these will not, I don't know about a lot, but some of the
• 55:55
  problems would be that shops are advertising products, taking
• 55:58
  your money, sending you things that are not what you bought or
• 56:02
  they never send them and copyright infringement as well.
• 56:05
  So shops selling products with designs, illustrations,
• 56:08
  packaging, that kind of stuff that they don't have the rights
• 56:11
  to use. We have two more types of like
• 56:13
  influencer scams to talk about. The next one is fake giveaways.
• 56:18
  So in the late twenty 10s, luxury giveaways became a staple
• 56:21
  on influencers Instagram grids. The post for these giveaways
• 56:24
  would feature the celebrity surrounded by luxury items like
• 56:27
  bags, shoes or technology. And interestingly, these
• 56:30
  giveaways are not about the celebrity or the influencer
• 56:33
  getting followers. Typically a giveaway requires
• 56:36
  you to follow the person who is promoting it.
• 56:38
  So it is kind of a way for them to grow their following.
• 56:40
  Typically, these giveaways ask you to follow a specific
• 56:43
  Instagram account that is tagged in the caption, go to that
• 56:46
  account and then follow all of the accounts that that page
• 56:50
  follows as well. So that page is the company
• 56:52
  running the giveaway and the accounts that the page follows
• 56:55
  are all the brands who have bought in to get promoted in the
• 56:59
  giveaway. So a couple of years ago, pop
• 57:01
  culture creator IG famous Dana investigated these giveaways.
• 57:05
  She was actually sent a copy of an e-mail that was sent out for
• 57:08
  a giveaway follow trained with Khloe Kardashian.
• 57:10
  So I will just made a couple excerpts from it.
• 57:13
  So again, she didn't receive this e-mail.
• 57:14
  This was sent to her from somebody like a follower.
• 57:17
  Presumably. Chloe just welcomed a second
• 57:18
  child, which gives us the perfect timing for our
• 57:21
  motherhood. Targeted giveaway.
• 57:22
  We have exclusive rights to help stock Chloe's nursery and
• 57:25
  playroom and included in this giveaway.
• 57:27
  Each company joining the giveaway can ship a product box
• 57:30
  which we will bring it to Chloe directly.
• 57:32
  This gives you a huge advantage and in with the Kardashians.
• 57:36
  The cost of this giveaway is 8500 USD and is available on a
• 57:40
  first come, first served basis. We also have very limited
• 57:43
  product placement spots for 12,500 USD.
• 57:46
  This includes featuring one of your products on the main
• 57:49
  giveaway photo with Chloe. OK brands that are doing these
• 57:52
  giveaways, they are providing the influencer or the celebrity
• 57:54
  with like free product, obviously presumably free
• 57:57
  product for the quote UN quote winners and they are paying
• 58:00
  thousands of dollars to join this giveaway.
• 58:04
  So essentially, these giveaways, when you look at it like this,
• 58:07
  are an easy way for an influencer or a celebrity to
• 58:10
  make like a really quick and easy, easy paydays.
• 58:12
  And the companies that run these giveaways obviously take a cut
• 58:15
  of the brand fees. And then, like I said, the brand
• 58:18
  presumably has to fork up free products for the winners of
• 58:21
  these giveaways, if there even are winners, which is highly
• 58:25
  contested. So in 2022, Kim Kardashian and
• 58:28
  Scott Disick were sued for $40 million, so $20 million each for
• 58:32
  promoting these luxury prizes that were part of a fake lottery
• 58:35
  scam. The plaintiffs who participated
• 58:38
  in the contest but did not win, claimed that the Australian
• 58:41
  company behind and giveaway Curated Businesses organized it
• 58:44
  to collect and sell their data to advertisers.
• 58:46
  This lawsuit brought about questions regarding the
• 58:48
  legitimacy of these giveaways and if people actually ever win.
• 58:51
  For this specific giveaway, Kim promoted it on Instagram, as
• 58:55
  well as Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris
• 58:57
  Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Sophia Ritchie, Gretchen Rossi from
• 59:00
  Real Housewives of OC, and Christine Quinn.
• 59:03
  Curated Businesses also told TMZ that they did have authentic
• 59:06
  winners and they had the paperwork to show it.
• 59:09
  Now I was looking at their website, the frequently asked
• 59:12
  questions section on their website.
• 59:14
  It's so sketch. So they say.
• 59:17
  How is the winner selected? We engage the services of a
• 59:20
  third party facilitator to conduct a random draw of all
• 59:23
  eligible entrance. It's north North.
• 59:26
  Literally. North is like a the Earth has
• 59:28
  probably got like, like a hat with like a bunch of names in
• 59:31
  it. Yeah, it's just pulling it out.
• 59:33
  Absolutely. I'm dead.
• 59:34
  And then one of the the question right after that they talk about
• 59:37
  like Australian government laws and stuff right after that says
• 59:40
  nobody from my company slash race slash ethnicity has ever
• 59:44
  won. Why?
• 59:46
  That is such a sketch thing to have to put on your frequently
• 59:49
  asked questions page. FA QS only exist too because
• 59:55
  someone has asked the question before.
• 59:58
  No, it's actually wild. So then they have a link and if
• 1:00:01
  you click on the link, it says previous winners can be viewed
• 1:00:04
  here. Almost every single winner on
• 1:00:06
  this page has an asterisk beside that says like so and so.
• 1:00:09
  One asterisk subject to eligibility verification.
• 1:00:14
  What the fuck does that mean? There's like two winners out of
• 1:00:17
  like the years that they've done it, where it says like they've
• 1:00:19
  won it and they don't have this asterisk beside them everyone
• 1:00:22
  else. Including people from like
• 1:00:24
  2020-2021 like years back says they won except maybe not
• 1:00:29
  because they might not be eligible.
• 1:00:30
  Like it's so shady. That is wild.
• 1:00:35
  Yeah, just don't enter these giveaways because I believe in
• 1:00:37
  my heart of hearts, nobody wins these.
• 1:00:39
  Yeah. I mean, the other thing that I
• 1:00:42
  really want to caution people against and like, listen, I have
• 1:00:44
  a lot to learn, but do not underestimate how valuable your
• 1:00:47
  data is. Like when people wonder, like,
• 1:00:51
  did you know Kylie still has a clothing line?
• 1:00:53
  No, remember, Kylie started a clothing line, Kai.
• 1:00:56
  Kai, the clothing line, remember, Like, it was like a
• 1:00:59
  year ago, we never hear about it now.
• 1:01:02
  We don't hear about Kai. And if you go on there, you'll
• 1:01:04
  see see that like the latest drop is very similar to a recent
• 1:01:08
  Skims drop. And you know, I don't think that
• 1:01:11
  the brand really took off when it first launched.
• 1:01:14
  But make no mistake, they will still collect your data and they
• 1:01:19
  will still, I would argue most likely sell that, use it with
• 1:01:22
  their other businesses, etcetera.
• 1:01:24
  So don't underestimate how valuable data is.
• 1:01:27
  And a lot of times people will say to me like, well, whatever.
• 1:01:29
  So they have my name and my address.
• 1:01:31
  No, it's not just that they have your spending habits.
• 1:01:34
  They might be tracking you with cookies they might like.
• 1:01:36
  It is really valuable things that other brands want to try to
• 1:01:41
  understand consumer habits. And we've seen data be used in
• 1:01:45
  such horrible and insidious ways that have literally impacted
• 1:01:49
  like politics and social justice over the years.
• 1:01:53
  It's not just, oh, I'm going to get a targeted ad for something
• 1:01:56
  that I actually want to buy. Right.
• 1:01:58
  OK. And the last quote UN quote scam
• 1:02:01
  that we wanted to dive into is kind of a newish one that's
• 1:02:04
  making its everyday across social media.
• 1:02:06
  It's called master resell rice or MRR.
• 1:02:09
  So I was actually introduced to MRR via CC or Chelsea Suarez,
• 1:02:14
  who makes content about MLMS and scams on YouTube.
• 1:02:17
  Chelsea did a video on Jordan Cheyenne, who was the mommy
• 1:02:20
  YouTube who is now notorious for forgetting to edit out a clip of
• 1:02:23
  her telling her son to cry for her vlog thumbnail.
• 1:02:25
  That was like a big scandal. I think it was about two years
• 1:02:27
  ago now, because Jordan is now promoting MRR and calling
• 1:02:31
  herself an MRR expert on social media.
• 1:02:34
  So MRR is basically a new style of MLMMRR started with a single
• 1:02:39
  digital marketing course, Road Map to Riches, which came with
• 1:02:42
  the rights to resell it. And this particular course
• 1:02:46
  started blowing up on TikTok in the middle of 2023.
• 1:02:49
  So MRR is when someone, usually a creator but not always,
• 1:02:52
  creates a course and then sells the rights to resell that course
• 1:02:57
  for 100% of the profit. So basically you're buying the
• 1:03:00
  course and they frame it as giving their followers this
• 1:03:02
  opportunity to make money off the work they've already done.
• 1:03:05
  So if you buy a creators course or an E guide instead of just,
• 1:03:08
  you know, like, I don't know, sending it to your friend after
• 1:03:11
  you've read it or used it, you can just sell it to them now for
• 1:03:14
  100% of what you paid for it. So the caveats to these quote UN
• 1:03:18
  quote rights is you don't have the copyright, obviously, you
• 1:03:21
  just have the resell rights. So you have to sell it under the
• 1:03:25
  existing course name. You cannot change or remove
• 1:03:28
  content, but you can add content to it.
• 1:03:31
  So I guess if you are like buying someone's course and then
• 1:03:35
  you create like YouTube content and you want to resell it, you
• 1:03:38
  can add like a module about YouTube for example, Which I
• 1:03:42
  guess for somebody who is like interested in building a YouTube
• 1:03:45
  channel that might make the course more valuable to them
• 1:03:48
  than buying it from someone else who didn't add that module is I
• 1:03:51
  think the theory behind it. However, you also have to resell
• 1:03:55
  this course at at least how much you bought it for.
• 1:03:58
  So if you bought the course, these courses are like hundreds
• 1:04:00
  of dollars. If you bought this course for
• 1:04:01
  like $400.00, you can't sell it to somebody for 200.
• 1:04:04
  It has to be 400, yeah. And I mean, that is not chump
• 1:04:07
  change with some of these courses sell for, you know,
• 1:04:10
  $477. You could go take class at
• 1:04:13
  Community College for that. Oh, absolutely.
• 1:04:16
  It was such a pyramid scheme vibe.
• 1:04:18
  Like I don't know if it's quite a pyramid scheme, but it's such
• 1:04:20
  a vibe like that because it's like you're reselling this thing
• 1:04:23
  like you don't actually own the product.
• 1:04:24
  You don't even it's not even really like a physical product.
• 1:04:27
  Somebody else created it anyways.
• 1:04:29
  So now the added layer to this, there's like an added layer of
• 1:04:32
  boss babe to this. People are now teaching others
• 1:04:35
  how to buy and sell courses with MRR.
• 1:04:38
  So like a resell of a resell market essentially.
• 1:04:41
  This is why Jordan Cheyenne calls herself an MRR expert
• 1:04:45
  because the market is already quite saturated for MRR courses,
• 1:04:49
  right? Like when you search road map to
• 1:04:51
  riches on Etsy or Google, you'll find hundreds of pages
• 1:04:54
  advertising that same course and trying like people trying to
• 1:04:57
  resell the course that they bought.
• 1:04:58
  So now the problem is like, how do you stand out if you're
• 1:05:01
  trying to resell that course, which is the problem with MLM,
• 1:05:04
  Like you have to get in right at the bottom, otherwise you won't
• 1:05:07
  make any money. So enter MRR experts.
• 1:05:10
  So MRR experts basically sell their own course on how to buy
• 1:05:15
  and sell MRR courses effectively.
• 1:05:18
  Oh, it's so wild. So their courses will allegedly
• 1:05:21
  teach you how to market MRR courses.
• 1:05:23
  Well, so that your course is like, I guess the one that
• 1:05:25
  people choose to buy when they look it up.
• 1:05:28
  It's so wild. So the whole market hinges, like
• 1:05:30
  I said, on you being kind of the first person or one of the first
• 1:05:33
  people to buy a course. So you actually have a shot at
• 1:05:36
  selling it? Yeah, And I mean, I think also
• 1:05:39
  too, there's just this, there's a lot of the same dialogue
• 1:05:42
  happening where it's like, oh, so you don't want to make a ton
• 1:05:45
  of money just by selling a digital product and be able to
• 1:05:48
  quit your nine to five job. And that's kind of the same, you
• 1:05:52
  know, way that MLMS were often sold to women is like, they'd be
• 1:05:55
  like, why are you still working in nine to five when you could
• 1:05:58
  work half the amount of time and from your home and make as much
• 1:06:01
  money and be your own boss? And so there's kind of this like
• 1:06:04
  shame going on in it. So as the content creator
• 1:06:07
  myself, even though it's not my main source of income, it's sort
• 1:06:11
  of hard to watch it because I know and you know, all the work
• 1:06:15
  that goes into making a career in content happen.
• 1:06:18
  It's, you know, I'm not saying that it's the hardest career in
• 1:06:22
  the entire world or anything like that.
• 1:06:24
  I'm just saying that it is still work.
• 1:06:26
  It doesn't come easy. You still have to put a lot of
• 1:06:28
  work into it. So when I see people putting up
• 1:06:31
  videos that are like, oh, you say you want to make money
• 1:06:34
  online, Well, why aren't you to selling a digital course?
• 1:06:38
  I'm like, I can tell you right now, you're not going to make a
• 1:06:41
  lot of money from that, if any. For sure, And it's such binary
• 1:06:44
  language. They'll use language like, Oh
• 1:06:47
  well, not everything that sounds too good to be true is a pyramid
• 1:06:51
  scheme. Not everything is a scam.
• 1:06:53
  Like there are people making $60,000 a month from doing MRR.
• 1:06:58
  It's like, yeah, maybe there are a few people making that much
• 1:07:01
  money a month. Like that can be true, while
• 1:07:04
  also the fact that it is a scam can be true.
• 1:07:06
  Like it's not one or the other. Right.
• 1:07:09
  And I think I see people following this and falling into
• 1:07:13
  the trap of like, just get a Canva account, make a digital
• 1:07:17
  course, start selling it. And it's like, OK, so like, what
• 1:07:20
  do you have in your skill set that people are going to pay?
• 1:07:23
  Yeah. Like because that's the other
• 1:07:24
  thing now is they're saying like make your own, make a meal prep
• 1:07:27
  guide. I'm sorry, but like I'm not
• 1:07:30
  going to spend $400.00 for your meal prep guide.
• 1:07:32
  Like person who didn't go to, you know, school for be a
• 1:07:36
  registered dietitian or isn't a chef or a cook.
• 1:07:39
  Like I'm not going to buy your meal prep guide, especially when
• 1:07:42
  there's so much free meal prep guides out there.
• 1:07:44
  Like if you want to know how to market yourself better on social
• 1:07:48
  media, there are free YouTube videos.
• 1:07:50
  Exactly. There's so much free content out
• 1:07:52
  there. Like do not buy someone's course
• 1:07:54
  unless they are really qualified and you followed them and you
• 1:07:57
  really appreciate their advice and you know, like if it's
• 1:08:00
  affordable, I think that's kind of part of it too.
• 1:08:02
  Like one of my friends, she's trying to launch like an
• 1:08:04
  e-commerce side of her business and she bought a course from
• 1:08:07
  this female entrepreneur woman. Like she kind of has like a
• 1:08:10
  media business around that on how to do it.
• 1:08:11
  But the course was like, I don't know, I think it was like 40
• 1:08:14
  bucks. So she was like, you know what,
• 1:08:15
  I'm going to buy this, I'm going to see if I'm going to learn
• 1:08:16
  anything from it. She's like, I learned like two
• 1:08:18
  things, but that was worth the 40 bucks, you know?
• 1:08:20
  Right. And do you think that's like
• 1:08:22
  road to riches? Red flag.
• 1:08:25
  I don't know, go watch reruns of Susie Orman instead, yeah?
• 1:08:29
  Like listen to Diary of ACEO or something.
• 1:08:32
  I can't. OK, well, this has been so
• 1:08:35
  amazing. Meredith, thank you so much for
• 1:08:37
  joining me. Honestly, this is so fun.
• 1:08:39
  I'm sorry that I took up so much of your time, but we just had so
• 1:08:42
  much to cover this. Was so much fun.
• 1:08:44
  I loved being here. Thank you for all that you're
• 1:08:46
  doing. I am all about being in the
• 1:08:48
  Centennial world. Thank you.
• 1:08:50
  Infinite Scroll is a podcast written, produced and presented
• 1:08:53
  by me, Lauren Meisner for Centennial World.
• 1:08:56
  Additional research and reporting is by Annabelle Ben
• 1:08:58
  David editing is by Danny Fennig.
• 1:09:01
  Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys so much and I
• 1:09:03
  will talk to you next week. Bye.