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Another week, another charlatan exposed, this time it's the popular health and fitness influencer known as the Liver King aka Brian Johnson. First, this is what the guy looks like and despite being 45 years old, the dude is obviously fucking ripped as fuck. Basically everyone had openly speculated (most famously Joe Rogan) that the guy was on the juice because it's just not possible to have and maintain a body composition like that without some serious injection help. Johnson has been asked this multiple times and he has always steadfastly denied ever using steroids and even insulted his detractors as narrow-minded idiots who can't dream big. He even put out a fake confession video with "prop" needles stuck to bone marrow and liver where he jokes about revealing his steroid stack, and goes out of his way to say "my camera man found the needles, I don't even know where to get this stuff!". Meanwhile, he continued to rack up millions of followers on social media and he turned that into a very successful "ancestral supplements" business that he bragged was taking in $100 million in yearly revenue.
The bodybuilding youtuber known as More Plates More Dates (who himself openly discusses his past and present steroid use) had an hour video on Johnson where he discusses some leaked emails. The emails were to a bodybuilding consultant from Johnson, and Johnson openly talks about the multiple different steroids he takes, costing about $12,000 a month.
Johnson's immediate response was a little bizarre:
But eventually, he owns up to it and explicitly says "I lied".
Despite the accusations, there doesn't seem to be a dispute that the Liver King eats what he preaches, with the vast majority of his diet being composed of meat, organs, and bone marrow. The supplements he was selling were basically freeze-dried granulated organs, which doesn't actually sound like a bad idea if you hate the taste of liver but still want its nutrients. There's also no doubt that Johnson works out like crazy, putting in what seem like two solid workout sessions a day (Granted, his recovery capacity is obviously assisted by steroid use).
The psychology at play is what is fascinating to me. In the emails, Johnson said he needed help with steroid management because he was planning to be the public face of a supplement company he was hoping would go big, and he was having trouble dealing with fat on his lower back. The fundamentals of his business seem sound, the supplements he was hawking don't seem completely useless, and he's charismatic and enthusiastic enough that he probably would've been ok without steroid use. Maybe it's just cover for his muscle dysmorphia, but he believed maintaining an impossible physique was foundational to his business success. Then he just lied and lied about it when asked, and only admitted when he got caught completely red-handed.
It's wild to me how people can brazenly lie and expect to keep getting away with it. A lot of them do indeed get away with it, at least for a while, and maybe that's just aided by a favorable media environment that they build around themselves. The nerdy scrutinizers that raise suspicions don't usually have that much reach, and MPMD's hour-long video just happened to be shocking and egregious enough to go viral and force a confrontation. Also, I've been vaguely aware of social media influencers, but I don't think I appreciated just how fabulously lucrative being successful on that front can be. I wonder how much the financial incentives encourage this kind of pathological lying.
Also, I don't really understand the relentless drive to pursue millions of dollars in wealth when your life is already great. If I was to fantasize about what I would do with fuck you levels of money, I'd play video games and have sex...which I already do. Maybe I'd travel way more??
Also also, I often wonder if I watch too much youtube, but man this platform still fucking delivers. I love it so much that it's almost embarrassing.
I mean, clearly it was. The required level of physical development in order to stand out nowadays is very high. There are about a million 20 year olds running around Tiktok with delt veins and a 140kg bench, it's no longer remarkable or enough to get you anything beyond a gig selling clothes for someone else. If you want to build like, an empire, you basically need to look like a comic book character and you need to claim to do it natty.
Few people are actually trying to replicate Liver King's diet and lifestyle - but even if buying supplements only gets you 10% closer, that's still an appreciable difference for many people who are struggling to build muscle and strength. And ultimately what Liver King is selling is a much easier pill to swallow (literally they are pills you can swallow) than 'you are lazy and need to train harder' or 'take steroids' or 'give up'.
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not a surprise. Much of the fitness industry is a scam...people on drugs and or with top tier genes pushing near-useless supplements . 21st century snake oil for youtube generation instead of carnivals.
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You're right, I didn't read that part closely enough and I overstated just how fully dedicated he is to his diet. And yup, it's totally weird how much he emphasizes the freshness of his ingredients given what he's injecting himself with every day. It reminded me of a friend who refused to get the vaccine because he didn't trust where it came from, but then he caught himself and admitted to taking random drugs from people at parties.
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Doesn't MPMD co-own a telehealth clinic? It's shortsighted of him to leak personal health information edit that Johnson disclosed directly to him (as a prospective client for MPMD's defunct health consulting business).
He gets a ton of clout online for exposing fake natties. I think it's worth it for him.
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Consider the proposition through the lens of expected value and it may seem less mysterious. He made a lot of money, and I doubt he'll be made worse off following the perhaps-inevitable reveal than he would if he had never tried.
There are some truths that we pretend not to notice even when they are staring us in the face -- among them, that steroid use isn't basic fucking table stakes for the masculine ideals ubiquitous in video entertainment, that whoring their bodies to disgusting slobs with executive producer titles isn't the same for young women seeking roles who aren't blood relatives of someone powerful, and that the cat-and-mouse game of using PEDs and defeating PED testing isn't as central to the skillset necessary to succeed as a professional athlete as being good at kicking the ball or whatever.
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First time huh?
I'm a bodybuilder, the more time you spend in the fitness industry the more you realize that no one is natural. This was an obvious case, everyone "in the know" is not surprised at all.
I know ripped lean natural people with farmer strength. And I know big and strong with some fat on. Big and ripped = some medical help.
I'd add the caveat that 'big' means bodybuilder big. I know plenty of 'big' (compared to the average guy) people who are pretty ripped, and personally I have yet to hit a point where I get so fat I don't have visible abs (despite currently being 90kg at 5'10").
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Can you blame him?
If a large enough contingent of people are so fucking stupid that the fact Johnson is on roids needs to be "exposed"; Why wouldn't you, a shrewd businessman pocket the large amounts of stupidity tax that is sitting on the table there waiting for you there?
Is shrewd now just a synonym for full of shit? Because when I was growing up shrewd meant you were clever enough to make money through the system, and people who couldn't do that, who just lied constantly about their actual business were called con artists.
The first step to eliminating corruption is wanting to eliminate corruption.
Liver King is shrwed. There isn't exactly a crisis of people peddling a supplement and a lifestyle in this day and age, there are more fitness "influencers" than you can count.
If you read his emails from the MPMD video, its evident the man is smarter than he lets on and knows how to market his specific business in exactly the way it needs to be done.
I am not denying he is smart or that he made a lot of money. But I think shrewd should be reserved for people capable of making money without being dishonest, because there is no challenge to lying to people if you have any charisma at all. It is a cheap and lazy way to success.
Especially when you are jacked, and especially especially when you are talking to people who want to get jacked like you. Beyond that, every time you hand wave gifting as just business or caveat emptor you make grifting a little more socially acceptable. I love a Mamet play as much as anyone else, but I have no admiration for anyone doing it to real, ordinary people.
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How can you not blame him when he lied under his own volition. I can understand his rationale for doing so though.
I don't respect him for it but getting mad at a fitness influencer for lying about being natural is like getting mad at a dog for barking. It's just what they do, learn the game and don't be fooled next time.
yup
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Because it's immoral to take advantage of people's stupidity. So yes, I can blame him.
Yeah sure but a guy selling supplements is really the bottom of the totem pole on that, I'd devote more headspace to guys selling highly leveraged penny stocks or ponzi schemes.
I mean, it's not going to keep me up at night or anything. If I were going on a crusade, you're right that he's not the one I would go for. But what he did is still wrong, even if he almost certainly will never face consequences because there are bigger fish to fry.
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You already have the answer:
Who thinks about the future when you're making that much money? It seems unlikely he actually committed any fraud or other crime, and courts seem extremely unwilling to rule that advertisements aren't protected speech, so unlike a fraudulent money manager or inside trader or whatever, it's not like there's going to be any real consequences. He isn't going to lose that money or go to jail. He probably never really considered whether he could get away with it forever, because why would he? The bit in the MPMD video about charlatans is spot-on.
There are plenty of billionaires, such as CEOs, who exact good judgment. He wanted to get rich and famous, and mission accomplished. Good for him, i guess. Unlike SBF, he chose a better way to get rich...a way which he keeps his money and does not go to jail (although he may be sued), which I guess makes him smarter in that regard.
Did Liver King engage in poor judgement, if his goal is to make a bunch of money and get some attention? Plenty of legitimate companies engage in ridiculous marketing, implying their gadget/concoction/scheme will make you healthy/rich/popular. And it rarely bites them in the butt particularly hard. He's ethically compromised but that is also true of plenty of CEOs.
seems like you're moving goalposts a bit. Your original post is that making a lot of money clouds judgment. Maybe for some it does, but plenty of examples of people who have way more money than liver king not succumbing to such temptations.
Maybe I was unclear, but the point was that he had no need to think about "what if I'm eventually exposed?" Lots of charlatans, hucksters, and frauds get a lot of money ripping people off and never face consequences. He was making money, and so what if it eventually ends? It's not like his particular type of lying is likely to result in legal consequences. If a CEO ordered a marketing campaign that was obviously bullshit, but not legally actionable, and was the subject of some big expose in a newspaper, resulting in negative press, but earned millions of dollars with very low risk, would we ask "how did they think that would ever work?" It did work! (Maybe yes if it were long-term bad for the company, but Liver King probably has all the money he'll ever need).
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Who benefits from the truth?
When The Rock - who is promoting his new movie specifically on being huge - will the studio tell him to stop saying he only tried steroids as a kid once and then stopped? Do they want him being honest with their teenage audience about the huge amounts he must be taking combined with the inherent potential health risks, and how their entire business model is essentially an arms race of "unrealistic male body standards"?
When health magazines put these liars on the cover do they benefit from telling their audience "but you'll never actually look like this. Ever. It's laughable to even imagine and they're lying to your face"?
Will Jimmy Kimmel when he and all of the other actors are lying their asses off by omission about how they got their physique (lots of "chicken, rice, broccoli*" but no mention of TRT and the rest)? Not if he wants access. Which is why all these people allow actors to come on and talk about "miraculous" transformations and their diets and almost never ask them about steroids. It's not a coincidence: you would assume that a naive person would ask this question more than they do, just out of curiosity. They just know better.
If you want to sell your liver products (since you can't sell the steroids) you need to sell something aspirational - which is what Liver King was doing with his idea that his "Ancestral Truths" could fix people's deep problems. You need that hook.
The only people who don't profit are pedants on the internet who want to take aim at "fake nattys". In fact: they profit from exposing people. Which is why they're the ones making noise.
* TBH this is said so much that I honestly think some people are doing the actor's equivalent of winking to the "smarks" since "'it's just chicken, rice and broccoli bro" is a common sarcastic meme whenever some actor suddenly gains a ton of muscle in an unrealistically short timeframe.
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Well, is there any down side? He faces no criminal charges or lawsuits, right?
If you have no shame at all it seems like a fine way to become a celebrity and make money.
he can def. be sued, like what happened to Lance Armstrong.
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Is there any legal liability in him selling products based on a lie? I'm sure there were plenty of people who were convinced that his lifestyle was what he said it was and purchased products on that (very legitimate) assumption. I have no idea.
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