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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.
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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