Curate This: Influencer Crimes

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth n Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
How are you to do?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Pretty well? Do you do? Oh? To you? I'm good, well,
happy for you, thank.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
You, and I'm happy for you and all your joyful
bounties and also with you. Yes, let us give thanks,
let us give thanks and praise Saren.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
It is right to you, you know.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I do the nineteen ninety four movie Clifford.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Okay, do you know this film? Is that what a
lot of people don't?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Short? Wow? Look at you? Do you agree? Now?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
And then my brain works totally.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Do you know the other star in that movie, Clifford Martin?
And just think of a kind of a curmudgeingly humorous actor.
Oh gosh, my last name rhymes with Hoden.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Charles Groden. Yes, that was like I was. I could
see him and I was trying to remember his name.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So Martin shirt is like this annoying character in the movie,
and Charles Groden is a long suffering person. Right, yeah,
Well you know who loves the film?

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Ummm, Saddam hussaying, no.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Good, guess I'll tell you it this way. Martin Short
was on a flight from LA to New York. And
he had never met this person who loved the film,
and this person wanted to talk to him all about it.
And this is like, this is a movie was a bomb?

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Nobody ever goes hey.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Look was it Henry Kissinger?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Good? Guess no, So I'll just I'll read you. This
is how Martin Short tells the story. Okay, quote. Half
an hour into the flight, I noticed a figure hovering
in the periphery of my vision. Nicholas Cage crouched in
the aisle beside me, his eyes locked on mine. Can
I just say something to you? He said, a very
Nick Cagy intensity in his voice. The dining room scene

(01:41):
in Clifford with You and Charles Groden, where he's confronting
you and you keep lying to him, a sustained battle
of wits, much of it improvised, in which Clifford drives
Groad's character the edge. Well, I broke my VCR watching it.
I watched that scene twenty five times in a row,
and I rewound it so much that the machine jammed
and the tape broke. What Nick Cage man? I love

(02:03):
Nick Cage. I want to meet him if you could
ask me there if you have. If I met like
a genie and they're like, you get three wishes, two
of them would be Nick Cage.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Related, Meet Nick Cage and what's the other one?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Got to meet him again? He likes me, so we
hang out and become friends. We like we race cars
and we compare, like our various comic book collections, and
our kung fu fighting and like weather Jack, I like
your your karate g Have you seen my kung fu outfit?
We show up surprise each other with sunglass gifts. Let's
make that happen. I know, Nicholas Cage. If you're listening,
we could be best. So there you go. It's ridiculous,

(02:39):
right it is?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
And do you want to know what else is ridiculou?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Oh my god, I'm here.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
For social media influencers. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast

(03:08):
about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always
ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Damn right.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Influencers in them. Yeah, I'm talking about the folks who
leverage their online presence, yes, particularly on social media, to
affect the opinions, the behaviors, the purchasing decisions.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yes, of consumers. I'm assuming their audience.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, it's like that's an academic way to put it. Yes,
it's very nice and how minded they build a following,
like they create this engaging content, yes, and they interact
with their audience and they establish themselves as like a
credible source.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Of information at an entertaining one.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, and like and usually like in a specific niche.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Okay, all right, so they lurk.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
They darken the doorways of social media platforms like Instagram totally.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
They're almost like street level famous YouTube.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah, YouTube, YouTube TikTok.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
And yeah, so they have or they want you to.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
Say, by the way, that is now called ekis in Spanish,
Oh it's sekis Okay, so YouTube TikTok and ekis.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
And then Insta. So they want you to think that
they have this like specialized knowledge experience or like authority
so that their opinions are valuable.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Totally, or a great life that you're envs like you.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
And they build this trust through interaction. What they want
you to think is transparency totally and like a consistent
brand voice.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah. So the endorsements, the recommendations, they carry weight. They
impact people's decisions on things including purchasing stuff totally products
and services and and so, like you know, they focus on,
like I said, a specific niche beauty, fashion, fitness, technology.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Travel, gambling, advice.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
How do yeah, how do they do it?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Zara? How do they do Elizabeth? Great questions Aaron.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
They create and share various types of content a.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Photos, videos, steady stream of stuff, live streams.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
It's all just like tailored for this audience. Sometimes they
do collabse that's true, very true, to promote these products
or services. It's like sponsored content, reviews, ambassadorships.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, brought to you by Yetti cooler, so you're.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Like the toblerone ambassador. They get commissions for like hawking
this stuff, and I understand, yeah, And then they have
all like these affiliate links and stuff, and they can
track the sales through their recommendations. Some of them sell
their own stuff merch digital courses, and they do public events,

(06:00):
they do conferences, met and greets.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
They've really changed the name of fame.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
They really really have. And here's something that I find interesting.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
What is that, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
We like to classify and label everything, including influencers. So
there's a categorization for influencers based on their following. Oh
really yeah, so mega influencers are celebrities and public figures
with millions of followers. Millions, okay, so mega influencers, macro
influencers have five hundred thousand to one million followers.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Okay, I didn't know this was about brokenewer.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Mid tier influencers they're fifty thousand to five hundred thousand.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Micro influencers they have ten thousand to fifty thousand followers.
And then there's nano influencers and that's one thousand to
ten thousand followers. Okay, So, and then there's me, the
anti influencer.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Wait, so wait a minute on Ekis on Twitter. Then
I would have been a nano nano because I had
like some like six thousand. Yeah, I didn't even know
what I was.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
That it was right there in front of you. You
could have monetized.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
I can't wait to tell my family I am.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
The anti influencer. Yeah, I have a private account. I
have less than a thousand followers, and I'm an anti
influencer in that if I were to profile a product
or a lifestyle as cool, it would instantly make it
uncool and.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Lose money that's not true.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
I deflate brand, but I can.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
See people being less likely to buy that ruin fads.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
I am an anti influencer, but influencers, right, they're this
great trope.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
By the way, just interrupt for a second. Would you
want to be to have and wield that power? It
feels like something you would hate.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
No, I couldn't. I could. I wouldn't want to. I
would find it exhausting. Yeah, Like I dabble on social media,
so I'll post something every now and then, but like,
I don't have how the interns do it with our
Instagram account.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
I can't.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
I couldn't keep up with that.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
I stay from social media now. It's all gotten lame anywhere.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
It's exhausting and I don't really care. And so you know, we.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Also, I mean there's just when I go into Instagram now,
it's like I don't see people who I follow anymore. No,
I'm like, wait, what happened? I didn't add any of
this stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
There's all this stuffy social media I have, But yeah,
I don't go in there because it's ads and it's
stuff I don't know why I'm being.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Shown and they've really changed the game.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
And then if you look someone up who's a friend
of yours and you see all this stuff that you missed.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah. Yeah, do you have to pay to be an influencer?

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Now?

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I mean, what's up?

Speaker 3 (08:29):
I don't know, but we need to get back to
like group emails.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
There you go. There.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
It is so we got the trope of the influencer,
like an airhead who can create the image of success
and coolness and people just follow blindly.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
I like to see people in public trying to get
into the game and create quote unquote content.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yes, like in restaurants and stuff, and they're like reviewing
the food they're eating and they're alone, the cameras on
like a little tripod on the table.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
You and I We're at Heifeiburger in Oakland and saw
a guy doing that.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Right, That's what I was thinking of.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
It was. It was a really weird thing to watch,
Like he had multiple cameras set up.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Totally on a table by himself. He turned his personality on.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, and then was like talking. It was really strange.
But yeah, that's content. I don't like that word.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Just like marry not content.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
You make stupid videos. It's not content, you make stupid videos.
I have really set myself up to be like the
grumpy old gal today anti influencer. It's nine days out
of ten these days anyway, influencers in public. So it's
wild and like you see them making their videos and
like crowded airports.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Oh yes, I've seen that gyms parks their like yoga stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yeah, and they've got like some friend filming them. Okay,
take it from the top. Yeah, the light's really good.
It looks foolish.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
It also just doesn't look like real or present or
any of the things you would really want from somebody
who is trying to influence you. But it's so performing.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
When you see it, it makes me think of like
if I hear a jingle and a commercial, I automatically
think about what it looked like when they were recording
in the studio, Like, well, someone like shredding on a
guitar and the guy from the ad agency is like,
I'm sorry, but that's just not giving toyotas on right now,
like I need to take it from the top. Or
like a vocalist at the mic like singing her heart

(10:18):
out and the producer clicks on the speaker and says,
you know, that was great, but I need you to
put a little more of a growl in the words
Maxi pad and she's like, okay, got it, got it,
Like okay's just again.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Come on, grab the keys, let me go, let's go.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
So all that said, I have for you today some influencers,
criminal ones, ones that ran afoul of the law while
in the act of personal myth making. So that's what
being an influencer is, right, it's personal myth making, creating
a persona and a lifestyle that's simply not true, not attainable,
it's mythic.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
So I'm going to start outside of these here, United States,
home of innumerable grifters and cons who sail the social
media sees that we're going over to Bele Italia.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh heck, yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
I want to tell you about Kiara Feranyi. Yeah. So
she is one of the most prominent figures in Italy
and fashion media digital entrepreneurship saren. She was born in
nineteen eighty seven in Cremona, Italy. Her dad was a dentist.
Her mom, Marina Degardo, is a Sicilian writer who worked

(11:28):
as deputy director for the fashion brand Blue Marine. So
she's in that.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
So she's kind of a nepo baby.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, and she's got these sisters. And when she was
sixteen years old, she got scouted by a modeling agency
in Milan. Sixteen Oh okay, when she was six. They
were like, yeah, look look at those gams.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
You're going You have a future, You have a future.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
So she modeled for a couple of years. She gave
it up. In two thousand and nine, she and her
ex boyfriend Ricardo Pizzoli, they started her fashion blog call
The Blonde Salad.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Wow. Yeah, just a word salad.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Maybe it means something, and it sounds better an.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Italian sounds better than the original Italian?

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Exactly?

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Isn't a soup? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (12:12):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
His name is Rick Soup exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah. So twenty eleven teen Vogue named her Blogger of
the Moment. So that's who I lost out to that year, apparently. Yeah,
it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
I thought you had a good shot that year. I know,
I've been blogging it.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Up her blog. Though her blog didn't just stay a blog,
oh no, it evolved into a full scale talent agency
and fashion brand. She had like a footwear collection. She
was making millions of euros. Twenty fifteen, she became the
first fashion blogger to appear on any Vogue cover for
Vogue Espanya.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Oh look at her.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
She got featured Forbes thirty under thirty.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Don't you buy her way on into that?

Speaker 3 (12:55):
I think probably? And she was the subject of a
Harvard Business School case study. Really a different kind of criminal.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
So by twenty seventeen, Kiara had ten million followers on Instagram.
Ten million.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
She launched these collections. She had a capsule collection, like
literally with n Espresso in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
The coffee maker. So it wasn't closed, it was like
which coffee.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
It was like special coffees. She had fragrance quote initiatives,
as some sources called them. I have a fragrance initiative
and I, you know, put on the old squirts and
then walk out of.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
I have a fragrance initiative. Like when I've been in
like a closed room for a while, someone comes up
and I'm like, I know it's crazy in here.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
That's right, that's an initiative.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
We have to take an initiative.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
So she appeared in documentaries like Kiar for any unposted,
and then she had this reality series The Ferragnz What
and that ran from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three.
Because he she married an Italian rapper called Fedes fed Easy.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Oh so this was their portmanteau.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
And his real name is Fredriko Luccia.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
He didn't stay with that.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
That's a good nose, right, I mean, that's like that's
you could be smooth, don't know, he's like one of
those illustrated man types. He looks like the desk in
a poorly performing high school's detention room. Like he's all
scribble city. So the couple there they became known as
Faragnez and I know I'm not saying that, like, you.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Know, sure the benefit of their yeah Italy exactly.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
So they had two kids before separating in early twenty
twenty four. But they'll always have that reality show. I'm
shocked it didn't last, to be honest. Oh so a
lot so she served as a judge or like guest
judge on shows like Project Runway, Making the Cut and
the San Remo Music Festival. She's just everywhere sounds and
she also she's got all these brand partnerships mashups. If

(14:59):
he will late in twenty twenty two, she partnered with Balco,
a well known confectionery company, to launch a limited edition
pink Christmas Pandora, branded with her logo.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
That's a bread, right, what is Pandora? What is Pandora? Elizabeth? Clearly,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I'm so good at asking.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yes, great question, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Pandora is a traditional Italian sweet bread. Okay, you have
it during Christmas?

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Her pan, I just assume bread.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
It's a golden bread, a Dior.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
So it came from Verona Fair, Verona.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
The gentleman, come from there.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yes, it's known for its golden color. It has like
a fluffy Brioche like text. Oh that sounds good, signature
eight point star shape. You bake it into a special.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Mold Okay, there we go.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
It gets dusted with powdered sugar. It looks like snow
covered mountains. It's delishes.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Sound good?

Speaker 3 (15:52):
You've actually had it at my place?

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Have I?

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Because Sarah Tasioni, the Colabrian cutie. Yes, she always brings
one over.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
The it is Okay, I would like to try it
again because it sounds amazing. Apparently the first time you.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
Did, you did, but she just don't remember these things.
You know, you got drunk on Pandora and then we
had to wheel you out the door. So these things
are everywhere in the shops at holiday times, all right,
and they come in like those cool boxes. It's like
a curved top cardboard box, like a dome almost, and
the boxes are a lot of times really beautifully decorated.

(16:26):
Hers was special. It was a stylish pink box with
a red ribbon on top, and there was matching pink
icing on the Pandora.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Okay, the millennial, yes.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
And there are all sorts of pictures of her pretending
to take a bite of a slice of it where
she's like yeah, and then you know she's like spits
it out.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
I like it if she did that, and then like smile,
there's just crumbs all on her teeth and like I
love these Whereas.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
They caught her like mid where it's just like half
the pieces left, she's like and like a hand mark
of so it. But it wasn't just that the packaging
was cute and the was cute and she's cute. The
campaign was promoting a charity initiative.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
What's the charity initiative?

Speaker 3 (17:09):
I'm so glad? I asked that buyers they were led
to believe that a portion of each cakes I believe
would be donated to the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital in
Turin to support Turino, to support sarcoma and youing sarcoma.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Research, dear god, children's cancer, and that of.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
Course didn't happen, which is really you know why we're
talking about her. So in reality, the company Baloco, they
made a single donation of fifty thousand euros before the
promotional campaign began, okay, and.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
No further donations tied to sales volume, which is how
those things normally.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, that's the idea.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
And these these cakes were priced at around nine euros each,
and that's compared to the normal like you know, three, three,
seventy or four euros.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
So there's very specific like that.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
So there's like a steep mark. Her companies made nearly
a million dollars in licensing promotional revenue, and remember peeled
off only fifty k for kids cancer. Wow.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
So there was this journalist, Silvaggia Lucerelli, and she, like herself,
is pretty problematic and has been sued fifteen ways to
Sunday for privacy violations defamations right now, Well, she uncovered
the discrepancy, so I'll say, okay, good job.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Get on her. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
By early twenty twenty four, Italy's antitrust authority had opened
an investigation into both Farani and the Pandora company Ploco.
So they figured that the consumers had been misled into
thinking that the purchases triggered donations, when in fact the
donations was independent.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
So she and her companies were fined over a million euros,
and then the cake company got fined around six hundred
and seventy five thousand. She publicly apologized. She said she
believed that no trial necessary to prove her innocence, and
she's like, you know what, I'm going to go ahead
and donate a million euros to the hospital, and I'm
never going to mix charity and commerce in future promotions.

(19:10):
And then people started digging around some more and they
found other like hanky charity stuff. She did Easter Eggs
in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, and then
all these other branded collaborations that were supposed to have
a charity aspect to it. A similar structures payments to
her brands while no conditional donations were made. This consumer

(19:34):
group CODACONS filed complaints across all these Italian jurisdictions. Multiple
investigations were initiated into all this like aggravated fraud. So
October of twenty twenty four, Milan prosecutors concluded that she
had realized an unjust profit of two point two five
million euros via all these schemes, and they wanted to

(19:57):
do indicteror for aggravated fraud. By it's December of twenty
twenty four, she reached a settlement with CODACNS, agreeing to
compensate all the affected consumers with one hundred and fifty
euros each, reimbursed legal expenses, and donate two hundred thousand
euros to an anti violence charity for women.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
She essentially stole some two and whatever million euros from
all these charities, and she gets off with a slap
on the rest essentially.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
And then they withdrew their complaints. So despite the settlement,
January twenty twenty five, the Milan prosecutor formally indicted her
on aggravated fraud charges, along with Bloco's leadership and her
former manager Fabio Dmato. So a trial is set to
begin in September.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Oh so she actually still catch some with justice.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, she faces up to five years in prison.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Simultaneously, the scandal triggered legislative change, a sort of Jackie
Cougan situation. In early twenty twenty four, Italy enacted the
Ferrani Law, requiring influencers with over one million followers to
clearly disclose and legally structure charitable promotions to combat false
advertising and fraud.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
That's amazing they put her name on the law.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, if you got over a million. So let's let's
stop there for a bit. I need to hear some ads.
I'm hoping for one for some influencer stuff. That would
be amazing. When we come back, more social media scamming

(21:44):
Zareneth Saren All right, are you ready to influence?

Speaker 2 (21:48):
You don't have to get ready.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
If you stay ready, let me tell you something. Belle Gibson, like,
I'm talking about the star of such his as lethal
weapon three, what women want? Daddy's home too, tim and
boss level but with a stuffed up nose Bell Gibson,
which I have quite a bit anyway, because I'm a
delicate orchid. In the slightest thing sets my systems up.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
This is true.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
No, I said Belle Gibson, not Mel Gibson. Belle is
another Aussie and one who's also full of it. Oh
really yeah, So she was born Annabelle Natalie Gibson.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Does she Do you think she intentionally tried to make
it Bell Gibson. So it's kind of had like.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
That, probably Bell Gibson. Belle Gibson with boord and like
to do well in Tasmania Devil. She dropped out of
high school. She moved to Perth, Australia. She got work
at like a catering supply company, and she got super
into skateboarding culture there. Good for her, right, and she

(22:50):
was a big online presence in that community because that's
where all the action takes place with skateboarding is online totally.
That's really the spot really where everything happens. In July
of two thousand and nine, she moved to Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne,
Melbourne and the next year, when she was eighteen, she
had a kid. Congratulations. A couple of years go by

(23:12):
then she made it to the big time. She opened
an Instagram account. H No, she w buddy, I wish,
I wish. So she has this Instagram account. It has
now been deleted. I think healing underscore bell and she
claimed that she had multiple cancers, including a terminal brain tumor.

(23:33):
Tragic news and then she's like, oh, ps, I also
I healed myself through natural diets and holistic health approaches,
so you know that's the way it works with terminal
brain cancer and other cancers. I have had it up
to hear with pseudoscience, like science denial. Food is medicine, yes,

(23:57):
but it's not the only medicine. Yes, eat your color
is very important, but it's not the only medicine. If
you buy into this, please don't message me or email
us or leave some like wounded comment. I'm glad you
feel like you've accomplished something, but we are seeing people
dying as a result of the ignorance that blossoms in
this BS wellness culture.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Oh yeah, I know, legit, people that likely have been dying.
Amanda from MTV she died press cancer, which she could
have been treating it.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah, exactly, And TikTok not a source of health information.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Now, all the short form videos just generally.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Pasteurization important and safe.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah that's true.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Vaccines save lives. Yeah, yeah, Gibson was going around telling
the media that she had this brain cancer. She also
had blood, spleen, uterine, liver, and kidney cancer.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
What the hell?

Speaker 3 (24:47):
What bad luck? Right? Bad luck? No, not bad luck.
She said she got all of those as a reaction
to the Gardasle cervical cancer vaccine.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Oh wow, So she threw shade on real legit vaccine. Yeah,
and she's like, I got all the cancer.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
But she's like, you know, the thing is, what's great,
I cured my cancer with Whole Foods.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
So a.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Year after starting her Instagram account, she debuted The Whole Pantry,
which was a mobile app that blended healthy recipes, positive affirmations,
and wellness philosophy.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Now you know, I grew up eating health food. I
was a vegetarian as a kid, so I understand and
will argue for the benefit of food being key. But
I'm with you. I cannot stand this stuff that people
have been doing because now it's hard for people to
find the real science because of.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
These exactly exactly, so, this app, The Whole Pantry, was
downloaded two hundred thousand times in its first month, and
then it was later selected as one of Apple's best
food and drink apps in twenty thirteen. That is who
we lost out to that year's Zarin right. Okay, so
it was also slated to be pre installed on the

(25:54):
new Apple Watch in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Like a youtwo song.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Well you know how great Apple is when it comes
to judgment and pre installations.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
No products, it never failed, no, no always good ones. Yeah,
so around, I still can't get that YouTube bottom of
my computer, my phone, my iPad.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
It never around the same time, she secured a cookbook deal,
and when the book was launched in November of twenty fourteen,
she wrote in the preface that she had been quote
stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer.
But that didn't match up what she'd said in the
press and in her social media, Like she was telling
magazines that the cancer had reached her liver and her kidneys.

(26:29):
She posted on The Whole Pantry's Facebook page that her
cancer had spread to her brain, blood, spleen, and uterus.
And then she doubled down. She's like, you know what,
it's I don't just have cancer, I have heart failure too.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
I also have hair cancer.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
She said, that's that. Get damned hair cancer. She said
she had to have heart surgery quote several times.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Several times.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, and then she even died on the table once
and they were all clear and they brought her back.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
She didn't start doing near death experienced stuff and I
went to heaven and came back.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
But like, was that enough? No? No, what story people
would say, can we interview your doctors and look at
your charts? Like we've never seen anything like this for
someone who'd undergone multiple heart surgeries. She was shockingly scarfree.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Oh no, zipper or no, it was the chest.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
No, nothing, no, raised, it was you know.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Through the nose. So, like I said earlier, and we've agreed,
food is medicine. That's undisputed. And the whole pantry was
actually like a good thing in terms of promoting movement
and exercise and positivity and healthy eating.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, they'll name some good stuff and what they're catching
app wasn't. That's why it gets confusing.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
The app wasn't the problem. The problem was Old Girl's
Instagram account. So that's where she was like touting snake
oil stuff like coffee enemas, juice cleanses, detox liver cleansing,
which ps, that's what your liver does. For a living
and then like really dangerous stuff like anti facts and
drinking the pasteurized raw milk brainworm City basically. So either way,

(28:05):
she's making moves, she's doing deals, and she was living
large too, Like she had this really posh townhouse, she
drove a luxury car, elegant office space. She was getting
like cosmetic dental procedures. Yeah, she wore designer clothes. She
took all these really extravagant international vacations, sales of the
app and the book combined to bring in more than

(28:27):
one hundred million Australian dollars for our miracle gal. What
she was on the brink of expanding out into a
brand called The Whole Life, not just the whole Pantry,
the Whole Life, which seems like a lot, The Whole
Life all that's everything.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
I'm still stuck on one hundred million, the Australian dollars.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Right, No, one million million? Did I say it? It's
one million anyway, So she of course claimed charitable intentions.
So I feel like the Kardashians are the only ones
on this ship of fools who just take the money
and don't try to do some bogus I don't know,
maybe they do. I don't know willingly follow what they do.

(29:05):
Everything I know is through osmosis. I watch a lot
of stuff on TV, like a lot, but I draw
the line at around on that, Oh my gosh, I'm
so living my truth and honest and transparent. Anyway, So,
Gibbson said that she donated substantial proceeds up to three
hundred thousand dollars to various causes, including like children with cancer,

(29:28):
maternal health care, but investigative reports revealed that only a
few thousand dollars were actually donated, like two percent of
what she claimed. Yeah, And since rumors about her possible
fraud started to spread, people looked into all her business
dealings and it came out that her charitable contributions from
both twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen never made it to

(29:49):
the stated destinations. And Gimbson is like, that's a lie.
And the press were like, no, you're the lie. You
are one big lie.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
You're the lie. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
So Fairfax Media they found that she had quote failed
to hand over the proceeds solicited in the name of
five charities and had quote grossly overstated the company's total
donations to different causes When asked about this, two of
the charities backed it up. They were like, she used
our name in fundraising drives, but that was like as
far as we got involved, some of them got shady

(30:23):
little bits of money or no money at all.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
One of the big claims was that the whole pantry
donated three hundred thousand to charity, not just the cancer stuff,
but like you know, healthcare and impoverished countries and like
schools and sub Saharan Africa.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Oh that that old.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
People always picked the same ones because it's like, oh,
you're doing such good work with those ports children and
some South in Africa who don't even have deaths at schools,
and those kids with cancer.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Tell me the name of the country or the city
or the village, like no, just deepest, darkest stuff. So
at one point she said she was working with twenty
different charities. Twenty Yeah, that was a major exact.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
It's also a nice round number. She should have gone
with eighteen, I know.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
So they presented with all this damning evidence of her fraud.
She admitted like, okay, yeah, that is a major exaggeration.
So the press they really start digging in. They calculate
that she had donated a total of about seven grand
spread among three charities, and that's a long way from
three hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
The best kind of Reporters also found she doesn't even
tip at restaurants.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, and then a thousand of that seven thousand was
only donated after the media investigations came to light. She's
got to throw another thousand in it. And some of
the seven thousand wasn't even donated in her name or
the company's name. It was just under someone else's name.
Because you know, I make a lot of really big donations,

(31:45):
but I do it under my other name, Mackenzie Scott,
like the same name as ex wife of Jeff Bezos,
happens to donate billions or sometimes I donate under the
name Bill Gates. Oh yeah, the pet name that my
friends have for me.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Your longer name Bill and Melinda Gates.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Yeah yeah, that's it's like,
you know, a family thing.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Thank you for all the money, you.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Know, me and Darlene shyly So. One of the charities
that Gibson said that she was fundraising for was to
support treatment for a kid with brain cancer. The only
thing is her parents never saw a dime. They didn't
know that their kid was being used as a fundraising too,
And then they were like starting to wonder if she
only befriended them and their kid in order to do

(32:29):
research on what it's like to have brain cancer?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Are you kidding? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Apparently she was like asking a lot of questions which
you don't really need to ask if you yourself have
brain cancer, She's like.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Does it hurt on side of your head or like
in the center?

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Totally. So in February of twenty fifteen, things started to
come crashing down. A close friend of Gibson's confronted her, like,
have you been cheating the charities? And do you have
cancer in the first place? You have to tell the truth.
Her friend told her, No, said Gibson, I do not.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Have to tell the truth.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
So her friends saw that Gibson was not just getting
one over on people. She was hurting people people with cancer.
So she's like, I know what I gotta do. I'm
going public. She got in touch with the cops, a lawyer,
and an investigative journalist. Oh no, that's the start of
a joke right there.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Seriously, I'll walk into a bar but here's the.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Thing, none of them really interested in what she had
to say.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Why not?

Speaker 3 (33:21):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
But then was she not good at telling the stories?

Speaker 3 (33:23):
You walk in, my friend, you'll find that a lot
of people don't want to step to these influencers. They
just like that thing, you know. Yeah, you'll see. So
the Melbourne newspaper The Age, stepped up. They broke the
story and in March twenty fifteen, after reports identified her
charity frauds, it was revealed that she made up her
cancers and then also lied about her age, her personal

(33:46):
life or history so she couldn't escape it now. In
April of twenty fifteen, she admitted to Australian Women's Weekly
that her claims about all of her cancers were just fiction.
As she said, quote, none of it's true. And she
said it wasn't her fault though, I mean, it never is.
She claimed that it was the way that she was
brought up. Her mom neglected her. She said she had

(34:09):
to take care of her. Yeah, she said, you had
to take care of herself. And her autistic little brother
from a very young age.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Was he really autistic?

Speaker 3 (34:16):
She never got to be a kid. It was everyone
else's fault. Throughout the whole interview, she never apologized. It
should be noted that her mom then gave an interview
stating that that was all her claims were false and
that her little brother is not as I knew. I know,
I know, I don't know how. So here you have

(34:38):
this woman who has all these deals, books, apps, with Apple,
lifestyle brands, you name it, and it's all built upon
her having a bunch of different cancers and treating it
with stuff like apple cider, vinegar.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
And nobody was suspicious.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
No, and then now she admits made it all up,
never had cancer.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
I'm a fraud.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
And so this made people wonder, like, what's up with
these big corporations or shoveling cash? He like, didn't they
investigate before signing on to like basically endorse her brand
And where's the due diligence? Yeah, so we're talking about
like her cookbook publisher was Penguin Books. So and then
you got Apple and the watch launch, all that breathless,

(35:21):
fawning coverage in the Australian press. Everyone seemed to look
the other way because the story was just too good
and she was making them too much money. So let's
look at Penguin. I like to go after publishers. So
Lantern Books was the imprint, the Penguin imprint that put
out the cookbook. They were like, hey man, it's a cookbook.
We only vet the recipes. It actually looked into her

(35:46):
sort of Before the book was published. They made her
answer questions on video about the information in her preface
that told her sob story, and I guess they thought
it was good enough, like you know, things got hot though,
So Penguin pulled the from the shelves. Claimed it was
because it was asking Gibson for confirmation of her stories
and she wasn't providing it, And they wound up having

(36:07):
to pay thirty thousand dollars to the Victorian Consumer Law
Fund as a penalty for not validating her you know,
the veracity of.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Claimed and doing their due diligence essentially, Saren, what about Apple?
What about Apple? Isabeth Pocket?

Speaker 4 (36:22):
Apple?

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Long?

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Last you ask a question? At first, Apple refused to
pull the whole pantry app from the app store?

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 3 (36:30):
They said that the only thing they cared about was
that the app worked like it said it would, And
they're like, it's functional, or get off our backs Wow.
But then they quietly removed it from the Apple Watch,
like she didn't get the U two treatment. They just
like pulled it. And then they quietly took the app
off the app store and erased all the promotional material

(36:50):
that included whole pantry And like, did they explain themselves?

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Probably not, of course not.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
They're Apple, They're the big dogs. They owe no one
anything like.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Back off saren why asking somebody? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Elle Australia magazine they wrote a glowing piece on her
in their December twenty fourteen issue. It came out, they
got a couple tips that like, you know, she's not
really telling the truth, everything's actually made up. Magazine ignores it.
Then another magazine, Cosmopolitan, which has like the same publisher
as El Australia, they gave Gibson its twenty fourteen Fun

(37:21):
Fearless Female Social Media Award, and then they also got
tips via email like hey, look, she's not what she
says she is. They ignored them.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
We already gave her the three f awards, so we're
going with it. There.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
It is then Gibson admits to the lies. Everyone figured
they'd do something like, you know, Stripper of the Award
the award that you and I should have won totally.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
I mean, if anybody's a fun, fearless female, if you're me. No.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
They claim that she had been quote reader nominated and
reader voted, like, so blame the reader. Yeah, nice, don't
worry that. When the award came out, the magazine's associate
editor said, they quote put forward the nomination myself. So
it was the readers or was it the staff? Does
anyone tell the truth around here?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Is there any accountability anymore? Zero?

Speaker 3 (38:06):
May twenty sixteen, consumer Affairs Victoria cav initiated civil proceedings
against Gibson and her company. They cited misleading and deceptive
conduct under Australian consumer law. March twenty seventeen, the Federal
Court of Australia upheld most allegations. They figured that like
Gibson had no reasonable basis to believe she had cancer,

(38:27):
and that she had engaged in deceptive conduct.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
She should have stuck with skateboarding.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Honestly, like it'd be a different world for her right now.
They tried to enforce the judgment that like search warrants
on her property.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
In twenty twenty twenty twenty one, Raids and Stuff.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah, they tried to recover the unpaid debts, which like
at this point is north of five hundred thousand dollars.
February twenty twenty one, a court registrar classified the case
as abandoned, though, but enforcement actions continued. In early twenty
twenty five, Netflix least a dramatized series called Apple Cider Vinegar,

(39:03):
dramatizing her story and against wellness scams, and that was
based on the investigative book The Woman Who Fooled the
World by bo' donnelly and Nick Toscano. I have neither
read nor watched either influencer. Hell, that's where we are,
So let's take a break, little breather, listen to some ads,
maybe they will influence you. And when we come back,

(39:24):
I have one more for you, Zaren. Hey, Hey, I

(39:48):
got one more influencer for you today, Elizabeth Dunnon.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
During the break, I was practicing influencing the interns. They
just looked at me and kind of hung their like
shaggy heads and they're like, what are you doing here?

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yeah, but look they're all wearing your exact same outfit.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Who I didn't even notice you influenced them. Yeah, that's
good job. Thank you. I've learned so much today.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
How many followers do you have? I have two and
their dogs.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Yeah, I've got the same too and their dogs.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah. Carolyn Callaway, Yeah, she was the ultimate New York
lifestyle right. Was born in nineteen ninety one in Falls Church, Virginia.
She went to the Tony Boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy.
Her great grandpa was a real estate mogul who developed
most of Sarasota, Florida.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh fun fact, there you go.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
So she started out as an undergrad and art history
at NYU, New York University, and then she got fixated
on going to Cambridge like just like determined. It took
her three applications, but in twenty thirteen she went to
Saint Edmund's College, Cambridge. She had to fake her transcripts
to get in, but whatever, what do you mean she
cheated her way into Cambridge?

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Yeah. So she made a name for herself there, but
not academically. No. She joined Instagram and it was on
that platform that she created a highly stylized feed like
and her signature were these long diaristic captions.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Oh yes, I remember people talking about this.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah. So her Instagram journey that began with glamorized depictions
of her student life at Cambridge, and she bought followers
and used targeted ads to build her following. Her feed
was aspirational, it was dreamy. She got the nickname Gatsby
of Cambridge.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 3 (41:36):
I'm not Kiddingaty of Cambridge?

Speaker 2 (41:37):
I mean you do know who? Did you read the book?

Speaker 3 (41:41):
I haven't read the book, but we all know that
what we see on Insta isn't the honest truth at all.
It is a created identity.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
A couple of friends of mine who just post pictures
of food that they've horrifically cooked.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
My god, when people post pictures of dinners and you're like,
don't tell anyone you maybe.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Did your car run over that?

Speaker 3 (42:00):
And it's like the flash was on and it's just
and it's two colors on an entire play.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, it looks like something like you know, in two
year olds make your food out of mud.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
It's so brutal. Or the worst is like, look at
this beautiful party spread and you're like, oh.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Money, don't take don't you are those paper napkins? Yea?

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Is it a plastic table cloth? I am the biggest
stob in the world. So if you think that I'm
going to look at an Instagram feed and not judge,
no I am. I am judge, jury executioner, Lady Justice.
I am a pcently lady host justice exactly all right. So,
but we had, like, you know, this beautiful thing on Instagram.
The basics of life, though, like getting rejected from colleges,

(42:42):
not being able to pay your rent, looking frumpy. Those
things aren't interesting unless you're an anti influence.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
So around twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, she's at the height
of her Instagram, okay, and because of that, she secured
a six figure US book deal with Flat Iron Books
for a memoir that was supposed to be titled and
we were like and we were like multiple outlets. New

(43:10):
Yorker The Cut reported different amounts. The Cut said it
was three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars with a one
hundred thousand dollars advance, so that brought it up to
four seventy five. Carolyn herself sometimes refers to it as
a five hundred thousand dollars book deal. All I can
say is that is insane. That's an insane Amountred thousand

(43:30):
dollars is an insane advance like this, Just we don't
see numbers like that, not.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
In publishing, not anymore, not even like authors who actually
do write their books. I do have like a history
of writing books.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
No, no, So the book was pitched as an expansion
of her Instagram captions. It was like coming of age
story right Instagram the Empire. It was set against her,
like romanticized Cambridge years. But the reason you haven't heard
about it it was never published. The deal fell apart

(44:03):
before the manuscript was delivered, so she had to return
what was left of the advance to Flatirn. And she
claimed that she walked away from it because the publishers
wanted to quote a cookie cutter memoir that didn't reflect
her true voice. But there's another account, one that painted
a different picture, that the project collapsed due to Carolyn's procrastination,

(44:24):
her chaotic process, her reluctance to edit or refine drafts.
Who told that side of the story.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Elizabeth told that side of the story, Thank.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
You, Natalie Beach. She met Carolyn at Nyuka or Caroline
at Nyu. Beach has said that she ghost wrote many
of Caroline's long Instagram captions, the ones that like established
her dreamy, diaristic style. I can't get over ghostwriting Instagram captions.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
I'm still thinking about ghostwriting the Whip, so i can't.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
But like there's like the Lana del Rey of it
all is a little.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Jills bear verjacent.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
It's very yeah, and but like ghost writing Instagram captions
come on as a.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Job as a job.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
And then Beach said she also co authored the book
proposal that landed the deal, and that you know, Caroline
just handled the photos, the ideas, the editing, the vibe
she vibed out on it. To September of twenty nineteen,
Beach published I was Caroline Callaway in The Cut, and
the piece revealed their friendship, collaborative work, and then the eventual.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Fallouts like printing text messages and yeah, it.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Talked about like Caroline's manipulation, erratic behavior. She had all
these emotional episodes, like you know, she would allegedly threaten
to self harm if Beach pushed back on anything. There
was the strain Beach had of being uncredited while her
writing is like building this brand, and the essay became
The Cut's most read story of the year. Reignited interest

(45:55):
in the collapsed book deal. I remember reading it when
it came out.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Sound like this is so much and you said her name.
I was like, oh I remember this. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
So with no book deal, what's a gal to do?

Speaker 2 (46:05):
I do not know Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
I don't know either. So how can she make the
money to support her dreamy install lifestyle. I wouldn't know
what to do?

Speaker 2 (46:13):
She knew what to show, how savvy girl.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
She started holding things called creativity workshops.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Oh no.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
She announced a creativity workshop tour in December of twenty eighteen,
and it was going to be this like multi city
road show. Is going to cost one hundred and sixty
five dollars a person, and attendees were promised creative guidance,
lunch care packages, personal letters, and fresh orchid crowns.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
She's going to monetize her fan base.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yes, the tour would hit cities like Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, DC. Yeah.
It really quickly began to fall apart. The first problem
is that she never booked the venues.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Are you kidding me that right there?

Speaker 3 (46:53):
That's a problem. Yeah, and then she ordered twelve hundred
Mason jars for the care packages. But she had no
place to store.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Them, so she did a total four seasons landscape.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
Yes for the events.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yes, and then she shows up with like, here's some
stuff I got at the Dollar Star.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
She's not a logistics lady. So the press and critics
they drew parallels to the disaster of the fire festival,
Oh y, we need to do it. And under mounting
scrutiny from Twitter users like Kayleie Donaldson, who called it
a quote scam, Caroline announced cancelations and refunds, but despite

(47:31):
the chaos, she did hold two in person workshops, one
of which took place in Brooklyn. A reporter from New
York Magazine attended the event and shared a vivid account. Yes, Zarines,
I want you to picture it. You are an aspiring

(47:57):
Instagram influencer. Your feed is all hydro flasks and Chanel
shopping bags and sun dresses and of course you and
all of it. Standing in front of a field of sunflowers,
your hands shielding your eyes from the sun, facing out
to the ocean, wearing a suggestion of a swimsuit, holding
up a peace sign at the color correct at sea.
You are a waif of a girl. You've got the

(48:19):
thy gap and the long brown hair meant for social
media stardom. You only have four seven hundred and forty
five followers. Though your feed is a little scattered, you
haven't seemed to lock into a real esthetic. You want
more than just the image. You want to create things.
You aren't sure what you want to be an entrepreneur.
You aren't one hundred percent sure what that means, but

(48:40):
it's what you want to that end. You've purchased a
ticket for Caroline Calloway's creativity workshop. You love her. She's everything.
She's so beautiful and stylish and witty and messy. You
wish you were her, and this would be the best
way to try and get as close to that happening
as possible. You took a couple trains to get to
Brooklyn early this morning. You walk up to a loft building,

(49:03):
triple checking the address on your phone with the one
on the building. This should be the place cars sit by.
People chat outside a coffee shop on their way to work.
You sit on a nearby stoop and wait. Pretty soon
people start showing up all manner of young white women
stream in from ride shares and public transportation and even
a bike. They are all impossibly cool in your estimation,

(49:25):
and you realize you are one of them, so you
must be cool too. You look up at the sky
to remember this moment when everything came together and your
journey truly started right here on the sidewalk in Brooklyn,
right here in the coolest place on earth. Your heart
is full, brimming with potential and serious bravitas of the moment.

(49:47):
Then a pigeon alights next to your shoe, hoops on
the sidewalk, coops and flies away. Wasn't supposed to go
like that? Those are yeazis. That was a close call.
Oh you saw Suddenly the door the loft swings Olga.
You get to a large open space and mingle with
the other attendees. You scan the crowd, but you can
see Caroline. You pour yourself a coffee with oat milk,

(50:10):
stroll through the root and listening in on conversations. One
woman tells another she came up from Florida. Another chimes
in that she's in town from Seattle. You pass a
woman talking about going to an Ivy League college with another.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Who's in nursing school.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
They discuss the difficulty of juggling posting with studying. One
woman clears her throat and sings a high note. Apparently
she's trained to be an oppersit. That's a good angle.
You think to be cute and sing opera and wear
European designer clothes and travel to European cities and speak
various European languages, just like the europe of it all.
It's a good gimmick. As dreamy pop music plays, a

(50:46):
staffer hands you a personalized journal with your name on it.
You are prepared to cherish it forever. You also get
a tot, a candle, a crystal, and a mason jar
seated for a DIY garden. The event tickets said you'd
also get an orchid crown, the pinnacle of Instagram cool.
Not just a flower crown, an orchid crown. You ask

(51:08):
about it and you're told there won't be crowns, but
you will get one orchid to wear in your hair
or pin to your top. You just have to make
sure you return it before you leave. Suddenly, the room
goes silent. Caroline has arrived. She's wearing a T shirt
that says scammer under a cart again. Across one side
of the room is a banner reading fire Festival in
handcut aqua paper letters. Caroline playfully identifies and waves at

(51:32):
the journalists present. She then declares that she won't allow
them to take photos with the orchids. For the next
few hours, you break into groups of five or show
and share your creations, poems, artwork that one woman sings
an aara. You wrote a stream of consciousness paragraph about
the beach. Caroline walks by as you read it and
gives a nod, moving on to the next group. Soon

(51:54):
the whole thing is over and you all spill out
onto the street. You have to admit it was kind
of a mess. That's Caroline. Knowing it's a mess and
still feeling it was worth it makes you in on it.
Caroline's in her presence, her authenticity content be damned. And then,
like the end of Animal House, a text comes on
the screen and it turns out you gave up on

(52:15):
being an Instagram influencer. You moved to Florida and you
got your real estate license. Good for you. There you go.
The workshops were a bust that didn't stop Caroline. She
held two workshops under a cheekier title, the aptly named
the Scam. No press was invited for those, but one

(52:36):
reporter did go undercover. Attendees were refunded if they were journalists,
and some semblance of delivery took place, but still it
was underwhelming. In April of twenty twenty, she responded to
Beach's essay with I am Carolyn Calloway, and she self
published it behind a paywall to raise money for COVID
nineteen relief efforts. Raised nearly fifty grand that's how we

(53:00):
people paid to read it. Then in twenty twenty three,
she released her memoir called Scammer, and it's a collection
of sixty seven vignettes, some new summ repurposed public and
critical response was mixed, but you know, amused, intrigued. A
guy from The New Yorker called it funny, engaging and
full of genuine insight. Really yeah, she continued building a

(53:24):
bizarre patchwork career. She joined OnlyFans in twenty twenty. Oh
and she sells literary themed softcore content and it apparently makes.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
A literary theme softcore on her body.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
No, so she does like cosplay of characters from stuff
like Harry Potter, Matilda and Beauty and the Beast, basically
like kid stuff. Oh and then there are partially undressed
photographs of herself captioned with details of her father's autopsy.
What yeah, yeah, yeah, there it is. Apparently she makes
a lot of money doing this.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, everyone only apparently does. So.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
She went around saying in the interviews that she started
her naked lady journey thanks to your alma mater, Playboy.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Oh there you go, and according to her stuff.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Yeah, she said. The magazine commissioned a photoshoot of her
addressed as a student in a library, but then Playboy
released the statement saying quote, Playboy does not have and
did not have any photoshoot planned with Caroline Calloway. Yeah. Oof.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
So.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Twenty twenty one, she launched a DIY skincare product that
called snake Oil, and it was like grape seed and
essential oils. Dermatologists were skeptical.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
If she leans into it, The hill Scammer shared sneak bar.
She was like, you know what, you're.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
In on it, but you're still spending the money. But
you know it doesn't matter, Like you could buy it
and be in on the joke. That's what I get it.
Twenty twenty three, she relocated to Sarasota, Florida with her
cat Matisse, where.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Her grandfather had founded the town.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
October of twenty twenty four, she made headlines again, not
for a scandal, but for refusing to evacuate during Hurricane
Milton despite mandatory orders. So why didn't she evacuate? Well,
she said she had trauma from her previous evacuation during
Hurricane Ian. She also doesn't know how to drive, and

(55:21):
the airports were closed. And then she posted updates from
her house promising that her forthcoming book would come out
quote if I survive yeah, and social media like she
got the world's worst influencer. Yet here's the thing about
Caroline Callaway. She embodies influencer culture's excess. I mean she

(55:43):
had all this mess with like she was getting evicted,
not paying a rent and it was just lawsuits against
her for that persona though was outpacing substance. She had
this painfully chaotic result. I am an agent of chaos,
as you like to say, but I like that chaos
to be organic. I just do one little thing to

(56:04):
set it in motion. But I don't orchestra you see
the earth with Yes, I want authentic chaos. So these influencers, like,
are they con artists? Performance artists? Deeply troubled, you know,
charismatic trying to navigate this brutal digital era. I'd like
your thoughts on that, because that question is my takeaway.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Oh okay, wow, that's quick. You know, like if you
don't like trim a tree and then a tree limp
falls on her person and hurts them, that seems to
be her mess. Yes, it's not like you with the
I seated the earth and this grew of the earth
with the conditions of sunlight and water. It's like, oh,
let's see what pops up. This is more like where
did that come from? Why didn't someone do their due

(56:43):
diligence and trim this tree? And she's like, I'm just
so messy.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
Well, and you know, messy people are entertaining to a certain.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yere right up. Util the mess is on you and.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
It gets exhausted.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
I sent you to the hospital or bankruptcy or.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Yes, you know what I need. I need to talk back.
That's my kind of social media.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
Oh oh my god, could you just see that? I
led get.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Hi, Zaron and Elizabeth, you want to hear something ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
When I was in the Navy back in the early seventies,
we used.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
To fly from Chicago to California, buy cors beer at
five dollars a case, take it back to Chicago, and
sell it for twenty dollars a case. Now that's ridiculous.
You were doing smoking in the bandit in the air force.
I love that, even though I don't like cors beer.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
How in the world was cores cheaper in California?

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Well, because you know, back then you couldn't get cores
east of the Mississippi. The whole thing in the smoking
the band it was legit. Like my father, I remember
when we went to Colorado. We were driving to California
and he was all excited to be able to get
COR's beer.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
He's like, we're going to go in Colorado and California.
I guess this is just fun.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Well, yeah, because all you have to do is you
go somewhere west and then you can fly somewhere back
east and all of a sudden, now it's super valuable.
We don't have that kind of regional fund anymore.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
Beer list, No, we really don't.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
I love that. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
That's awesome, And that's it for today. You can find
us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. We just one
lady Blogger of the seventeenth Century, awarded by Doanes Backpills
It's pretty Big Deals, Aaron, don't laugh. We're also at
Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram all the sash halls.

(58:31):
If you're on YouTube, It's Ridiculous Crime pod YouTube, Email
us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave a
talk back on the iHeart app, Please reach out. Ridiculous
Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced
and edited by Chief Ridiculous Crime brand Ambassador Dave Cousten,

(58:53):
starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by travel influencer
with two point eight million followers, Marisa Brown. The theme
song is by Tummy t Enthusiast Thomas Lee and face
Tuned flip Flop TikToker Travis Dunton. Post wardrobe is provided
by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
and mister Andre. Executive producers are feed curator Ben Boleen

(59:17):
and professional Instagram real consultant Noel grind dis Crime Say
It One More Time Geous Crime.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Four more podcasts
My Heart Radio Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.