Dec. 29, 2021
S3E20 Bonus Patreon Episode (The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe)
Cult or Just Weird
Wanna chat about the episode? Or just hang out?
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Chris & Kayla interview Stephanie McNeal, Senior Buzzfeed culture reporter, and author of the article on LuLaRoe:
Rise & Fall of LuLaRoe Discovery+ documentary featuring Ms McNeal:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16125656/
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This episode was originally published to Cult or Just Weird patrons (https://www.patreon.com/cultorjustweird) on 12/21/2021.
Transcript
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Kayla: Hey there, Patreon Patrons. This is, this is Kayla from culture. Just weird.
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Chris: This is Chris from, I think they know what it's from because they're on the culture. Just weird.
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Kayla: Patreon introducing ourselves, man.
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Chris: This is Chris, also from cult or just weird? On cult or just weird?
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Kayla: Shockingly. You're listening to us on our own podcast.
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Chris: Yes, on our own podcast. Bonus content.
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Kayla: So, listeners, we are doing something a little different with this week's bonus content. We like to mix things up around here at culture. Just weird, especially at the end of the year when we're all giving presents and stuff.
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Chris: This is a present. Wait, what's the present? Our patrons always get bonus content.
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Kayla: Kayla, our patrons always get bonus content. But I do want to say our patrons are getting this bonus content first this time around, and then in about a week we're actually going to be releasing this one wide to everyone.
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Chris: So I guess it's more like on our main feed.
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Kayla: On our main feed, it's more of a present to non patreon listeners. So sorry, Patreon listeners.
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Chris: No, they still get to listen to it first.
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Kayla: You get to listen to this first. You get a leg up on everybody else. And then we will be releasing it wide because there's something special in this episode that we want to make sure that everyone has access to.
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Chris: Yeah, this is one of those ones. We were like, oh, this is perfect. Bonus content. But we also wanted to have a wide release, so we kind of figured, yeah, best of both worlds, Washington doing the early release for patrons thing.
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Kayla: So if you're listening to this on our regular feed and you like this episode and you want more bonus content, more bonus episodes, then you can check out our patreon@patreon.com. Culturejustweird.
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Chris: Anyway, what is the bonus content?
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Kayla: Well, Patreon Patrons and those listening, Chris and I recently watched a documentary produced by Discovery called Drumroll, please.
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Chris: It's called drum roll please. That isn't, that's actually, I wonder if there are drumline cults. Is that what this is about?
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Kayla: The documentary is called the rise and Fall of Lularoe.
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Chris: Yes. I do recall watching that with you.
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Kayla: As our listeners can probably determine. It is about the multi level marketing company and meteoric source of recent scandal, LulaRoe and its rise and fall.
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Chris: Yeah, it had a, I don't know if it was a meteor because it, like, it rose and then immediately crashed.
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Kayla: Parabola, Nike swoosh. But upside down. Nike swoosh.
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Chris: The meteoric swoosh.
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Kayla: The meteoric upside down. Swoosh. For those who may not know, Lularoe is a clothing MLM that became popular due to its super soft, super colorful leggings. It was founded by a woman named Deanne Stidham and run by her husband Mark, and their children, their many children.
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Chris: I thought it was a mold company. You said it was a leggings company.
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Kayla: Oh, my God. For a second, I had no idea what you're talking about. And I was like, is that a different, like, mold? Is it a different, like, pyramid scheme?
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Chris: Probably. There's probably a pyramid scheme out there where they're, like, trying to sell mushrooms or something.
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Kayla: We'll get to the mold. So not mold. Not Lula mold. LulaRoe was founded in 2012, has that lovely, traditional MLM structure where there is a network of distributors that buy into the company to sell its products. Products. There's an upline, downline chain system. You know, everything that you.
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Chris: What is that shaped like? If you drew it out? Yeah.
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Kayla: It'll be shaped like a triangle.
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Chris: I see.
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Kayla: And if you made it 3d, maybe. Whoa, whoa.
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Chris: Pyramid, tetrahedron, let's call it.
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Kayla: Sure. By 2015, the company had 2000 distributors. So part of that Nike swoosh rise that we're talking about, by 2017, it had more than 80,000 distributors.
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Chris: Wait, hold on. What? What was that again?
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Kayla: 80,000 distribution.
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Chris: Where did it start? As it went from zero to 80 in, wait, how long?
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Kayla: Five years.
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Chris: Oh, my God.
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Kayla: And it's. In 2017, it was predicted by Mark Stidham that they had exceeded $1 billion in sales. It's a big deal, my friends.
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Chris: Define sales, mister Stidham.
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Kayla: Well, 2017, that's kind of where the apex of the upside down Nike swoosh occurred, because things went kaput, so the clothing degraded in quality. Leggings started, like, having holes ripped in them when they were put on. Clothes were arriving to distributors covered in mold. That's where the mold comes from.
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Chris: Not, like good, like blue cheese mold.
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Kayla: No, bad mold. Stinky, gross mold. The graphic design became absurd. I'm sure many of you have seen the, like, Samantha bee piece about, like, how the leggings would often be printed in such a way that, like, the cute little designs ended up making your, like, a genital and behind region look untoward.
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Chris: I think my favorite one was of the leaning tower of Pisa legacy.
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Kayla: There was a legging. Leggings covered in the leaning tower of Pisa.
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Chris: And they looked like.
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Kayla: Not that leaning tower of penis.
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Chris: Yeah. Leaning tower of peen. And we'll just let you use your imagination or Google search.
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Kayla: Google it. And then that same year, a class action lawsuit was filed against LulaRoe accusing the company of being a pyramid scheme.
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Chris: Wait, so they're actually going after an MLM for pyramid scheme? Because that feels rare.
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Kayla: You watched the documentary.
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Chris: I know, I'm just. I'm asking a credulous question. Listen, man. Okay, fine.
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Kayla: No, sorry.
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Chris: That was everyone. Jesus Christ. Definitely go watch the documentary. But my fake. I've already seen this question is, hey, Kayla, that's crazy because usually mlms don't get. Are not able to be prosecuted for that kind of thing.
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Kayla: It is crazy. It is crazy. And if you go back and listen to our original episodes on mlms and pyramid scheme structures way back in season.
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Chris: One, when we think it was like nine and ten, I want to say something like that.
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Kayla: You did an entire episode. Kind of like the history and context for mlms. You'll learn why it's so hard to prosecute companies for being pyramid schemes.
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Chris: Yes. You can also go check out the dream. They do a better job of describing why that is the night than I do, although mine is shorter, but the dream is better.
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Kayla: So over the next few months after this class action lawsuit was filed, Lularoe hemorrhaged sellers. It mounted huge debts, it laid off a number of internal employees. It faced further lawsuits. And I guess I don't want to spoil, but watch the documentary, and you will see how they fared under these circumstances.
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Chris: Yeah, there were some, like, really weird things that happened.
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Kayla: It gets weird, you guys. We don't want to just like, just rebuild the documentary for you because you're gonna go watch it after this, but, yeah, it gets weird.
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Chris: Yeah. I won't tell you some of the weird details just to save you spoilers, but there are definitely a few things where it's like, wait, what happened?
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Kayla: Yeah. And you're like, all the best documentaries do this, right? So the company still exists, if you're wondering. But watch the documentary so you can learn the exact fate of Lularoe and Deann and Markstiddim. And on a less hahaha note, all of the people who. Whose lives were ripped apart by Lularoe, which happens when people get involved in pyramid schemes.
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Chris: Yeah. One of the things I liked about this documentary was because we'd already seen the other documentary on Lularich, which was on, what was it?
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Kayla: On Amazon Prime.
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Chris: Prime. And, you know, the. The totally fine, not unethical company taking down the totally unethical. Anyway, what I liked about this one rise and fall of Lularoe was that it focused more on the stories of the retailers than it did on Deann and Mark, which is like, you know, I get it. Like, they. They have an interesting story, and you do want to, like, you know, talk to the cult leaders, like, that's interesting. But this documentary did a good job of, like, highlighting what it was like for, you know, boots on the ground people.
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Kayla: It reminds me of that wonderful, beautiful time in history when there were two fyre fest documentaries out.
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Chris: Oh, yeah.
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Kayla: And the Netflix one did nothing, have Billy McFarlane in it, but was like, you know, beautifully produced in its own way. And the Hulu one had Billy McFarlane in it, and it was just like, it was great to be able to have those two different contexts. I love both of those documentaries, and I feel the same way here, where it's the rise and fall of Lularoe. I very much appreciate that they focus on the retailers and the people whose lives were directly affected by the fraud, by the scam, by the pyramid scheme.
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Chris: Kayla, are there any other comparisons, you would say, between Fyre Fest documentary and Lularoe documentary? Are there any other similarities?
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Kayla: I feel like you want me to say something specific, and, I don't know, nothing specific.
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Chris: I'm just calling out the fact that we live in fraud world.
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Kayla: Oh, yeah. Everything is fire fest. I think Fyre Fest is the most compelling story of all time, and, yeah.
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Chris: And it is the definitive event of our age.
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Kayla: Everything is a beautiful facade that will shred you to pieces once you step past that initial screen. Lularoe, no exception. And I think the rise and fall of Lularoe Rowe does a really good job of capturing that. Exactly just how much it put some of these people's lives through a shredder today. We specifically want to talk about this documentary, not necessarily both of the documentaries. We're not doing a compare and contrast by our fest situation. This one, like we said, it's on discovery plus. You can go watch it now. It was produced in partnership with Buzzfeed Studios, and that's because one of the quintessential investigative articles about LulaRoe was written by Stephanie McNeil, who's a senior culture reporter for Buzzfeed. So this documentary, they interview her. Yeah, they interview her. They interview McNeil.
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Kayla: They interview Jane Marie from the dream, the host and the producer that you already mentioned. They also interview Rick Gallen Ross, a cult researcher and founder of the cult Education institute. We've talked about him on the show from time to time. And like we said, they interview a lot of the retailers. And there's a lot of, like, you could tell they were self recorded interviews that. That people were doing, probably from the comfort of their own home during the pandemic.
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Chris: Oh, yeah. There were several that looked like it was, like, from somebody's phone.
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Kayla: Right, right. And you. You've already said that you. We both already said at this point that you liked that aspect of it. But I guess, you know, as a general question overall, what'd you think about the documentary? Did you like it? Did you think there was, you know, information presented? The documentary is a cult.
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Chris: No, no, Lularoe is a cult. I mean, it definitely has charismatic leader. It definitely. Okay, look, we're not here to do the criteria for Lular. Are we? Are we gonna do that?
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Kayla: No.
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Chris: No. Okay, so in purely and just reacting to the dot, to the doc, it's. Yeah, it's hard for me to say without spoiling too much, because I think one of the more interesting things to me was the thing you brought up early on about. Oh, yeah. They're actually getting some blowback for being a pyramid scheme, which is rare for mlms. And I think there's just something about Lularoe, just something about how quickly it rose and felt. Because, like, a lot of these other mlms, like, they've been around a while. Like, herbalife has been around, like, decades. Mary Kay's been around decades upon decades, you know? But Lularoe is relatively recent, and their growth was insanely fast. That's probably part of why it was they ran into trouble that many mlms don't necessarily usually run into.
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Chris: Which I think is part of what maybe got more traction for the pyramid scheme. Right, right. Like, if they hadn't had all those, like, hey, here's a bunch of mold.
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Kayla: Right? Yeah. I think it. I think it fell victim to a similar situation that, like, you would see in the WeWork documentary, where literally the company just. It grows too. It grows too big, too fast for the, like, initial grifters to maintain control over it. And it, like, it exceeds even beyond, like, the scope of their crypt.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Kayla: And you see that in the WeWork documentary about the WeWork buildings and, you know, that whole cult situation. And I feel like that, like, that's a more similar story to this than, you know, maybe a documentary about, like, Mary Kay would be, or even a documentary about herbalife. There. There is that difference because of, I feel like these other mlms, you're right, they have the more, like, progressive growth or the more, you know, maybe it is explosive, but it's not this explosive.
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Chris: Yeah, you guys should totally watch the wework documentary as well.
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Kayla: Don't remember what it's called, but it's very good.
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Chris: I don't remember the name of it because it's been a while, but, yeah, like, it's. It's interesting because growth, fast growth problems is not. That's not just a grift, MLM thing. Like, that's. That's something that can plague any legitimate business and does plague legitimate business. So I guess maybe what's interesting to me about it is that it's like, are they really getting in trouble for being a pyramid scheme, or is this just another manifestation of the very common problem that new startups that grow too fast find themselves having?
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Kayla: It's also a problem that charities and nonprofits can find themselves having where if, like, I. If all of a sudden, you know, if you are doing a specific kind of, like, say, you. You are. Your charity is feedthemanatees.com, and then all is the best one. All of a sudden, you know, a huge news story runs on, like, this. Many manatees are in need of help, and it, like, becomes the hottest news story in the country. And the country is swept by the plight of the manatees. And then all of a sudden, you is, like, the only feed the manatees organization.
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Chris: It's just me and my underwear.
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Kayla: Everybody who wants to help starts funneling money towards you. That becomes a problem that makes it almost difficult in some ways for smaller nonprofits and charity work to figure out how to properly distribute those funds, because it's like, oh, shit. All of a sudden, we have a shit ton of money that we don't have the internal infrastructure to know how to deal with.
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Chris: Kayla, this one's easy. You build a giant robot manatee with all that money.
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Kayla: You build a giant robot that takes care of all the manatees.
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Chris: It would have little pods that the manatees could, like, swim into. Kind of like seaQuest.
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Kayla: Save the manatees, you guys. But back to the rise and fall of Lularoe. I think that this documentary did a really great job of, like, of balancing the personal, lived experiences of the people targeted and victimized by Lularoe. Like, were talking about with the analysis of, like, experts and journalists, like, you know, like Stephanie McNeil and Jane Marie and Rick Ross and, you know, other entrepreneurs and journalists that they had giving their expert opinion.
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Chris: Oh, yeah, they had that business consultant, too.
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Kayla: I think something else good that it did was it really dug into the importance of hope and community in our lives and how we're missing that in a lot of ways. And how, you know, mlms like LulaRoe exploit those needs by, like, filling them in this very hollow way.
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Chris: What a group exploiting people's fundamental need for hope in order to manipulate how they act and behave.
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Kayla: It happens.
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Chris: Weird.
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Kayla: I know it did. You already kind of mentioned this, but it did very much cut right to the heart of. Is Lularoe a cult?
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Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, and the answer is yeah.
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Kayla: I was gonna say no. I was gonna say, yeah. It's. It's. It's really hard to not ask that question when it comes to mlms. Like, how can you not ask if it's a cult? Because they all end up taking this weird, like, cult of personality situation where you're obsessed with the founders and there's, like, you know, big concerts where Katy Perry shows up and everyone's all wearing the same clothes, because especially for this, it's a clothes mlm.
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Chris: Like, they're all chanting the same, like, don't be a stinker thinker. Don't match yourself. It's your fault if you. Yeah.
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Kayla: Anti factuality. Just check off all of the boxes of our criteria.
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Chris: We called Mary Kay a cult. If Mary Kay is a cult, Lularoe is hell. A cult. I'm sorry.
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Kayla: I mean, I. Yeah. Yes. Lularoe's a cult. I think that is the. We're definitely agreeing. We are agreeing with each other.
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Chris: All right. The end.
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Kayla: I think that they also. The rise and fall of Lularoe. I appreciated that. They spent a good chunk of time talking about the chain of victims. So not just the people who are like, this is how Lularoe hurt me, but also, this is how Lularoe hurt me and then incentivized me and empowered me to then hurt others.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: And, like, it's really hard to have to face how and how you've been victimized by an MLM. And I think it's probably even harder in some ways to face how you victimized others while being a part of that.
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Chris: Yeah. Groups that have that. It's one of the most insidious, like, horrifying things.
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Kayla: Yeah. But you know us on this show.
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Chris: I do know us. You know us especially. I know me because I am me.
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Kayla: It's not enough for you and me to necessarily just sit here and talk about the documentary. So we actually had the opportunity to talk to Stephanie McNeil herself, the Buzzfeed reporter.
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Chris: Whoa. The person who drafted that report on Buzzfeed and also was interviewed in the documentary that I'm totally surprised that we interviewed, even though I was there.
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Kayla: And now she's talking to us, and we got to, like, get her opinion on a few things.
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Chris: Yeah, it was cool as hell.
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Stephanie McNeal: Hi, I'm Stephanie McNeil, and I am a senior culture reporter for Buzzfeed News.
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Kayla: I want that title. I'm not going to lie. I'm very jealous of it.
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Chris: That's a pretty good. Yeah, that's a good job.
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Kayla: That's a good title. So, yeah, I guess jumping right in. What brought you to this particular story about Lularoe?
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Stephanie McNeal: The first story I ever read about Lularoe, that really piqued my interest. Washington. The first lawsuit, when it was filed, I remember reading about it, and the headline of the story was that the leggings ripped like wet toilet paper, which is just like a great image, right, to think about. And I had heard about Lou La Rowe a little bit. I think I had heard about it on the radio. People were talking about it on a morning show or something. But I didn't own any of the clothes. I didn't really know anyone who sold them or anything like that. So at the time, I was really interested in consumer reporting and a little bit interested in LLMs, but I hadn't really started on that yet. So I decided to write up a story about the lawsuit.
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Stephanie McNeal: And I needed some of these photos, right, of the leggings that are ripping like wet toilet paper. So I found a Facebook group on where women were talking about the clothing. And the women there were really helpful, and they were really passionate, which was kind of surprising at the time because, you know, who knew how people could be this passionate about their leggings? Ribbing. And they sent me all these photos that were just, like, so crazy and were telling me these stories about how they were, like, out at. Out walking around or out at work or something like that, and the leggings would just, like, completely get shredded, like a dog had attacked them or something. So I wrote the first story, and it had all these great images.
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Stephanie McNeal: And then I started getting a lot of emails from people who had actually been consultants in Lularoe who were selling the clothing. And I was really struck by the things they were telling me about how they felt really confused by the way that their businesses were going and they felt like they were losing money or they wanted to get out of the business, were having trouble doing so. And there was just something about getting a lot of messages about it. And then I started reading the Facebook group more and reading about everything that was going on. And I just kind of knew that this was a story that I should keep following. So I did.
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Chris: One of the things that I became really curious about watching the documentary was the settlement. And so you talked about both. You know, you talked about the lawsuit being the thing that kind of got you into it. And it seems like the settlement in Washington state, and not to. Not to spoil the doc, but for people that are following this, did. Did settle in February with, I believe it was a $4 million settlement. Yeah. So I guess my question for you is, what do you think is different about Lularoe that actually has been able to get legal traction? Because the settlement wasn't just. It wasn't just about the leggings that were bad. It was actually, they said the lawsuit itself was about whether Lularoe was a pyramid scheme or not.
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Chris: And it seems like the MLMs have been very slippery to avoid that sort of thing. So why did that not happen with Lularoe?
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Stephanie McNeal: It's really interesting how MLN's are able to be so pervasive in this country, because there's a lot of elements about the. Some things that some of them do that are explicitly against the laws of the United States. And there's a really great podcast out there called the Dream by Jane Marie, who actually appears in the documentary that kind of goes really in depth into how this is allowed to happen. So I recommend that to anyone who's more interested. But the short answer is that, you know, there's just not a. A lot of regulation, and there's just, I think, just bigger fish to fry for a lot of, you know, bigger, you know, like attorney generals and stuff like that. It's really.
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Stephanie McNeal: It's really interesting how they've just been able to proliferate despite doing things that technically, you know, are at least frowned upon, if not just full against the law. I think with the Lularoe instance, one thing that you will see if you watch the documentary is the women who feel like they were wronged by Leroux have a very. Have a lot of passion, and they feel very strongly. And from the very beginning, they have had this mentality of that, their strength in numbers. They have worked together for years to try and, you know, reach justice in righting the wrongs. They feel that they suffered. So I kind of think that has something to do with it, although I don't really have any evidence for that.
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Stephanie McNeal: I think, you know, Lou Laro has been able, the people who have, you know, been kind of fighting against Lularoe and what they think was the bad practices that Lularoe did have really done a good job of keeping it in the media and, you know, writing to their attorney generals and really just keeping it, you know, say, standing up and saying, hi, this happened to me. I feel like this is really wrong. Like, will you do something about it? So I think it's that. And then also, I think Lularoe just grew so incredibly fast that, and it was in such a short amount of time. You know, in just a couple of years, they grew to, like, so many tens of thousands of retailers. And I think a lot of other mlms are a little more under the radar.
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Stephanie McNeal: They grow a little more slowly, although I don't have, like, a ton of evidence of that. But just this explosive growth, I think that kind of makes some, you know, good officers of the law kind of sit up and be like, oh, you know, I wonder what's going on there. So, yeah, that would be my theory, although I don't have a lot of concrete evidence to back that up.
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Kayla: No, it does feel like that. I feel like even just watching the documentary and it's. We've followed the LulaRoe story for a long time, but watching the documentary, when the dates are mentioned, it's like this, only this was in 2017. This is happening in 2017. This is happening in 2016. It's just like, thinking about how quickly that growth happened.
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Chris: Yeah, you're on to something.
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Kayla: It's got to be. That's got to be part of it. That's not really a question, just an observation.
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Chris: Do you think the, you said the community building, do you feel like Lularoe maybe did, like, quote unquote, too good of a job with the community building, and then that sort of, like, worked against them?
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Stephanie McNeal: That's definitely a possibility. You know, I think one of the things that LulaRoe has done really well is creating these very tight knit online networks with a lot of followers. And I think, you know, as we see with anything in the Internet, on social media or with Internet creators, people have a lot of loyalty to the people who they follow on social media. So I think. I think when these bigger people spoke out and said, hey, I want to be honest with you guys. This is my experience. I think people really took that to heart. But I think one of the things that's great about social media as well is when something like this happens to someone, they have a voice and they can rally together.
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Stephanie McNeal: There's a scene that I don't think made in the documentary where one woman who's been very active in the Facebook group called another woman who was very active. They were talking about how, you know, they've never actually met in person. They live completely different parts of the country, but, you know, they talk every day and they really have bonded over this. So I think that's really powerful as well.
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Kayla: Could you talk a little bit? So that's, you know, we're talking about the community. I think that something that goes along with it that's mentioned in the documentary as well, is a sense of hope that something like an MLM can bring to somebody. Could you talk a little bit about the role of hope in all of this, in the community building, in the, you know, in the prosperity gospel, in just the meat of what makes an MLM?
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Stephanie McNeal: So I think we all are taught from a very young age this kind of toxic mentality that the only thing that is holding us back from, you know, achieving great things is ourselves. Right. And obviously, it's a lot more nuanced than that. But I think one of the things that mlms do a really good job on is tap into this narrative that, hey, we are giving you all the tools you could ever possibly need to succeed. All you have to do is take them and work hard. And then, well, you know, if it didn't work out for you, that's kind of on you.
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Stephanie McNeal: And so I think when people buy into that belief, it can be very powerful because when they are finding success, it's even more rewarding than if you're working for the man and you're, you know, making good money and doing well. You know, it's not something that you built. But they, a lot of people who are in multi level marketing companies, they really see it as their own small business. And that has a little think of a little bit higher level of emotion and just a little bit more. It just feels different, I think, than working at a career and having success in the career. So I think when it doesn't work out, a lot of people blame themselves, and that can be really damaging.
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Kayla: Yeah. That's part of what gets so brutal about it, is just that having that sense of hope and then having that sense of hope dashed. And that really, for us, ties into the cult aspect of things like MLMs and specifically lularoe. And the documentary really gets into the comparisons to a cult. And is it a cult? And when were watching the documentary, it got us really thinking a lot about the precision of the word cult. And that's kind of really what we discuss a lot on the podcast. We didn't know we'd be discussing that a lot. But it can be, you know, it's a really useful word, but it can also be an imperfect word, and, you know, there's nebulous meaning there.
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Kayla: So could you maybe talk a little bit about what the word cult means to you and why you think it gets applied to something like Lularoe?
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Stephanie McNeal: Yeah, I think we have to be careful in using that language, quite frankly. I think we're kind of in the age of the scammer right now, and the cult. And I think, you know, people like to use that word on something like Lularoe. And, you know, I think, like you said, I think it's a very, like, nuanced thing. You know, I think there are religious cults, there are cults of business, there's cults of personality. So I think it's, I don't really know either way if I think that Lularoe is a cult. I don't really feel comfortable saying that. But, you know, I think that we really have to just listen to the women who had these experiences and listen to what they're saying.
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Stephanie McNeal: And there are so many people in our documentary, in other media who have said the way I felt, like when I was in Lularoe, I felt like I was in this cultish Persona organization. And so I think that's really interesting. So I think that's probably a more precise way to think about this, is listening to what people are actually saying rather than, you know, trying to debate whether it's a cult or not.
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Kayla: That's like, that's a good point. Yeah. Is needing to debate it actually a part of it that's interesting, actually, I.
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Chris: Kind of want to follow up on that. The, what do you think is the essence of what people mean, though, when they make that comparison? Like, what do you think is, like when they say cult and they apply it to, you know, all the different things, like you said, like religious or business or whatever, and then to something like Lularoe, like, what are they actually saying? Like, what is the meat of what they're saying there?
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Stephanie McNeal: I guess what they're saying is that it's almost like a thing that warps your perception of reality, I suppose. You know, believing one thing that might not be true and, like, group think, I suppose. And that's something that, with Lularoe, I think one thing that a lot of people have told me is when they were in Lularoe, they viewed things one way, and they viewed their own success or failure one way, and they viewed the business one way. And then when they quit Lularoe and they got out of it, the perception that they had was a lot different than what they had previously. So I think, like, if we're going to look at all the things people call a cult, I guess that would be my answer of what it seems. But I don't know. What do you guys think?
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Kayla: That's. Yeah, that's the. That is the eternal question.
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Chris: It feels like we have hours and.
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Kayla: Hours of content, I think.
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Chris: Hard to say.
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Kayla: We have a criteria, a list of criteria, and it's always expanding. And we think we actually were going to expand the list of criteria based on stuff that was talked about in this documentary. We talked a lot about in the show how there were consequences to leaving. So I think that talking about high control groups and cultist groups, it makes sense to us to always try and evaluate and apply and figure it out. But, yeah, it's such a nebulous word. So thank you for trying to pin that down. It's not easy. We are reaching the end of our time here. So there's one question that we want to. That we try to ask folks who are in this work and folks that we interview.
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Kayla: You're on the Internet a lot and you are writing about Internet culture and you're seeing things like mlms and influencers. And sometimes that can be hard to stay sane. I know it is for us when we're doing research. So how do you take care of your mental health and how do you do self care when you're also doing this work?
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Stephanie McNeal: That's a good question. I will say that I try to focus on things that aren't super dark, so that helps. I did breaking news and some politics stuff before, and it was just a little too dark. So I think knowing what your limit is. But one way that I disconnect from the Internet is I try not to go on social media on the weekends, like Twitter. I have an Instagram for my, I have a work account for Instagram and I don't go on that on the weekends. So I think that's probably my best way to disconnect.
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Kayla: That's so smart. I'm going to copy that.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Stephanie McNeal: Go on Twitter on the weekends. It's like nothing good happens on Twitter on the weekends or ever.
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Chris: But, yeah, I. Yeah, I've. I've found that the less time I spend on Twitter. Yeah. The better off I feel, the better. Yeah.
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Stephanie McNeal: If you want to read the news, like, you know, read the news, but there is not going to help you on the weekend.
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Kayla: That's. I will try to take that to heart. I will do my best.
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Stephanie McNeal: It's hard. It's hard.
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Kayla: Thank you so much for sitting down with us. We really appreciate it. Having your insight on this group is invaluable. It's a great documentary. We're so excited for our audience to hear this conversation and then to go check it out.
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Chris: Yeah. And with the few seconds we have left, is there anything that you want to say to our audience that we didn't get to?
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Stephanie McNeal: Thank you guys for having me. And if you're interested in what I'm working on or reporting on, I have an Instagram account, E. McNeil, that you can follow and say hi. And, yeah, thanks for having me.
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Kayla: Hey there, Patreon Patrons. This is, this is Kayla from culture. Just weird.
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Chris: This is Chris from, I think they know what it's from because they're on the culture. Just weird.
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Kayla: Patreon introducing ourselves, man.
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Chris: This is Chris, also from cult or just weird? On cult or just weird?
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Kayla: Shockingly. You're listening to us on our own podcast.
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Chris: Yes, on our own podcast. Bonus content.
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Kayla: So, listeners, we are doing something a little different with this week's bonus content. We like to mix things up around here at culture. Just weird, especially at the end of the year when we're all giving presents and stuff.
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Chris: This is a present. Wait, what's the present? Our patrons always get bonus content.
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Kayla: Kayla, our patrons always get bonus content. But I do want to say our patrons are getting this bonus content first this time around, and then in about a week we're actually going to be releasing this one wide to everyone.
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Chris: So I guess it's more like on our main feed.
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Kayla: On our main feed, it's more of a present to non patreon listeners. So sorry, Patreon listeners.
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Chris: No, they still get to listen to it first.
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Kayla: You get to listen to this first. You get a leg up on everybody else. And then we will be releasing it wide because there's something special in this episode that we want to make sure that everyone has access to.
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Chris: Yeah, this is one of those ones. We were like, oh, this is perfect. Bonus content. But we also wanted to have a wide release, so we kind of figured, yeah, best of both worlds, Washington doing the early release for patrons thing.
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Kayla: So if you're listening to this on our regular feed and you like this episode and you want more bonus content, more bonus episodes, then you can check out our patreon@patreon.com. Culturejustweird.
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Chris: Anyway, what is the bonus content?
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Kayla: Well, Patreon Patrons and those listening, Chris and I recently watched a documentary produced by Discovery called Drumroll, please.
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Chris: It's called drum roll please. That isn't, that's actually, I wonder if there are drumline cults. Is that what this is about?
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Kayla: The documentary is called the rise and Fall of Lularoe.
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Chris: Yes. I do recall watching that with you.
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Kayla: As our listeners can probably determine. It is about the multi level marketing company and meteoric source of recent scandal, LulaRoe and its rise and fall.
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Chris: Yeah, it had a, I don't know if it was a meteor because it, like, it rose and then immediately crashed.
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Kayla: Parabola, Nike swoosh. But upside down. Nike swoosh.
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Chris: The meteoric swoosh.
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Kayla: The meteoric upside down. Swoosh. For those who may not know, Lularoe is a clothing MLM that became popular due to its super soft, super colorful leggings. It was founded by a woman named Deanne Stidham and run by her husband Mark, and their children, their many children.
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Chris: I thought it was a mold company. You said it was a leggings company.
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Kayla: Oh, my God. For a second, I had no idea what you're talking about. And I was like, is that a different, like, mold? Is it a different, like, pyramid scheme?
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Chris: Probably. There's probably a pyramid scheme out there where they're, like, trying to sell mushrooms or something.
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Kayla: We'll get to the mold. So not mold. Not Lula mold. LulaRoe was founded in 2012, has that lovely, traditional MLM structure where there is a network of distributors that buy into the company to sell its products. Products. There's an upline, downline chain system. You know, everything that you.
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Chris: What is that shaped like? If you drew it out? Yeah.
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Kayla: It'll be shaped like a triangle.
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Chris: I see.
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Kayla: And if you made it 3d, maybe. Whoa, whoa.
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Chris: Pyramid, tetrahedron, let's call it.
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Kayla: Sure. By 2015, the company had 2000 distributors. So part of that Nike swoosh rise that we're talking about, by 2017, it had more than 80,000 distributors.
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Chris: Wait, hold on. What? What was that again?
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Kayla: 80,000 distribution.
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Chris: Where did it start? As it went from zero to 80 in, wait, how long?
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Kayla: Five years.
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Chris: Oh, my God.
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Kayla: And it's. In 2017, it was predicted by Mark Stidham that they had exceeded $1 billion in sales. It's a big deal, my friends.
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Chris: Define sales, mister Stidham.
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Kayla: Well, 2017, that's kind of where the apex of the upside down Nike swoosh occurred, because things went kaput, so the clothing degraded in quality. Leggings started, like, having holes ripped in them when they were put on. Clothes were arriving to distributors covered in mold. That's where the mold comes from.
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Chris: Not, like good, like blue cheese mold.
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Kayla: No, bad mold. Stinky, gross mold. The graphic design became absurd. I'm sure many of you have seen the, like, Samantha bee piece about, like, how the leggings would often be printed in such a way that, like, the cute little designs ended up making your, like, a genital and behind region look untoward.
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Chris: I think my favorite one was of the leaning tower of Pisa legacy.
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Kayla: There was a legging. Leggings covered in the leaning tower of Pisa.
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Chris: And they looked like.
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Kayla: Not that leaning tower of penis.
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Chris: Yeah. Leaning tower of peen. And we'll just let you use your imagination or Google search.
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Kayla: Google it. And then that same year, a class action lawsuit was filed against LulaRoe accusing the company of being a pyramid scheme.
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Chris: Wait, so they're actually going after an MLM for pyramid scheme? Because that feels rare.
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Kayla: You watched the documentary.
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Chris: I know, I'm just. I'm asking a credulous question. Listen, man. Okay, fine.
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Kayla: No, sorry.
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Chris: That was everyone. Jesus Christ. Definitely go watch the documentary. But my fake. I've already seen this question is, hey, Kayla, that's crazy because usually mlms don't get. Are not able to be prosecuted for that kind of thing.
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Kayla: It is crazy. It is crazy. And if you go back and listen to our original episodes on mlms and pyramid scheme structures way back in season.
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Chris: One, when we think it was like nine and ten, I want to say something like that.
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Kayla: You did an entire episode. Kind of like the history and context for mlms. You'll learn why it's so hard to prosecute companies for being pyramid schemes.
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Chris: Yes. You can also go check out the dream. They do a better job of describing why that is the night than I do, although mine is shorter, but the dream is better.
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Kayla: So over the next few months after this class action lawsuit was filed, Lularoe hemorrhaged sellers. It mounted huge debts, it laid off a number of internal employees. It faced further lawsuits. And I guess I don't want to spoil, but watch the documentary, and you will see how they fared under these circumstances.
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Chris: Yeah, there were some, like, really weird things that happened.
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Kayla: It gets weird, you guys. We don't want to just like, just rebuild the documentary for you because you're gonna go watch it after this, but, yeah, it gets weird.
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Chris: Yeah. I won't tell you some of the weird details just to save you spoilers, but there are definitely a few things where it's like, wait, what happened?
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Kayla: Yeah. And you're like, all the best documentaries do this, right? So the company still exists, if you're wondering. But watch the documentary so you can learn the exact fate of Lularoe and Deann and Markstiddim. And on a less hahaha note, all of the people who. Whose lives were ripped apart by Lularoe, which happens when people get involved in pyramid schemes.
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Chris: Yeah. One of the things I liked about this documentary was because we'd already seen the other documentary on Lularich, which was on, what was it?
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Kayla: On Amazon Prime.
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Chris: Prime. And, you know, the. The totally fine, not unethical company taking down the totally unethical. Anyway, what I liked about this one rise and fall of Lularoe was that it focused more on the stories of the retailers than it did on Deann and Mark, which is like, you know, I get it. Like, they. They have an interesting story, and you do want to, like, you know, talk to the cult leaders, like, that's interesting. But this documentary did a good job of, like, highlighting what it was like for, you know, boots on the ground people.
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Kayla: It reminds me of that wonderful, beautiful time in history when there were two fyre fest documentaries out.
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Chris: Oh, yeah.
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Kayla: And the Netflix one did nothing, have Billy McFarlane in it, but was like, you know, beautifully produced in its own way. And the Hulu one had Billy McFarlane in it, and it was just like, it was great to be able to have those two different contexts. I love both of those documentaries, and I feel the same way here, where it's the rise and fall of Lularoe. I very much appreciate that they focus on the retailers and the people whose lives were directly affected by the fraud, by the scam, by the pyramid scheme.
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Chris: Kayla, are there any other comparisons, you would say, between Fyre Fest documentary and Lularoe documentary? Are there any other similarities?
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Kayla: I feel like you want me to say something specific, and, I don't know, nothing specific.
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Chris: I'm just calling out the fact that we live in fraud world.
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Kayla: Oh, yeah. Everything is fire fest. I think Fyre Fest is the most compelling story of all time, and, yeah.
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Chris: And it is the definitive event of our age.
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Kayla: Everything is a beautiful facade that will shred you to pieces once you step past that initial screen. Lularoe, no exception. And I think the rise and fall of Lularoe Rowe does a really good job of capturing that. Exactly just how much it put some of these people's lives through a shredder today. We specifically want to talk about this documentary, not necessarily both of the documentaries. We're not doing a compare and contrast by our fest situation. This one, like we said, it's on discovery plus. You can go watch it now. It was produced in partnership with Buzzfeed Studios, and that's because one of the quintessential investigative articles about LulaRoe was written by Stephanie McNeil, who's a senior culture reporter for Buzzfeed. So this documentary, they interview her. Yeah, they interview her. They interview McNeil.
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Kayla: They interview Jane Marie from the dream, the host and the producer that you already mentioned. They also interview Rick Gallen Ross, a cult researcher and founder of the cult Education institute. We've talked about him on the show from time to time. And like we said, they interview a lot of the retailers. And there's a lot of, like, you could tell they were self recorded interviews that. That people were doing, probably from the comfort of their own home during the pandemic.
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Chris: Oh, yeah. There were several that looked like it was, like, from somebody's phone.
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Kayla: Right, right. And you. You've already said that you. We both already said at this point that you liked that aspect of it. But I guess, you know, as a general question overall, what'd you think about the documentary? Did you like it? Did you think there was, you know, information presented? The documentary is a cult.
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Chris: No, no, Lularoe is a cult. I mean, it definitely has charismatic leader. It definitely. Okay, look, we're not here to do the criteria for Lular. Are we? Are we gonna do that?
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Kayla: No.
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Chris: No. Okay, so in purely and just reacting to the dot, to the doc, it's. Yeah, it's hard for me to say without spoiling too much, because I think one of the more interesting things to me was the thing you brought up early on about. Oh, yeah. They're actually getting some blowback for being a pyramid scheme, which is rare for mlms. And I think there's just something about Lularoe, just something about how quickly it rose and felt. Because, like, a lot of these other mlms, like, they've been around a while. Like, herbalife has been around, like, decades. Mary Kay's been around decades upon decades, you know? But Lularoe is relatively recent, and their growth was insanely fast. That's probably part of why it was they ran into trouble that many mlms don't necessarily usually run into.
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Chris: Which I think is part of what maybe got more traction for the pyramid scheme. Right, right. Like, if they hadn't had all those, like, hey, here's a bunch of mold.
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Kayla: Right? Yeah. I think it. I think it fell victim to a similar situation that, like, you would see in the WeWork documentary, where literally the company just. It grows too. It grows too big, too fast for the, like, initial grifters to maintain control over it. And it, like, it exceeds even beyond, like, the scope of their crypt.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Kayla: And you see that in the WeWork documentary about the WeWork buildings and, you know, that whole cult situation. And I feel like that, like, that's a more similar story to this than, you know, maybe a documentary about, like, Mary Kay would be, or even a documentary about herbalife. There. There is that difference because of, I feel like these other mlms, you're right, they have the more, like, progressive growth or the more, you know, maybe it is explosive, but it's not this explosive.
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Chris: Yeah, you guys should totally watch the wework documentary as well.
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Kayla: Don't remember what it's called, but it's very good.
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Chris: I don't remember the name of it because it's been a while, but, yeah, like, it's. It's interesting because growth, fast growth problems is not. That's not just a grift, MLM thing. Like, that's. That's something that can plague any legitimate business and does plague legitimate business. So I guess maybe what's interesting to me about it is that it's like, are they really getting in trouble for being a pyramid scheme, or is this just another manifestation of the very common problem that new startups that grow too fast find themselves having?
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Kayla: It's also a problem that charities and nonprofits can find themselves having where if, like, I. If all of a sudden, you know, if you are doing a specific kind of, like, say, you. You are. Your charity is feedthemanatees.com, and then all is the best one. All of a sudden, you know, a huge news story runs on, like, this. Many manatees are in need of help, and it, like, becomes the hottest news story in the country. And the country is swept by the plight of the manatees. And then all of a sudden, you is, like, the only feed the manatees organization.
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Chris: It's just me and my underwear.
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Kayla: Everybody who wants to help starts funneling money towards you. That becomes a problem that makes it almost difficult in some ways for smaller nonprofits and charity work to figure out how to properly distribute those funds, because it's like, oh, shit. All of a sudden, we have a shit ton of money that we don't have the internal infrastructure to know how to deal with.
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Chris: Kayla, this one's easy. You build a giant robot manatee with all that money.
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Kayla: You build a giant robot that takes care of all the manatees.
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Chris: It would have little pods that the manatees could, like, swim into. Kind of like seaQuest.
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Kayla: Save the manatees, you guys. But back to the rise and fall of Lularoe. I think that this documentary did a really great job of, like, of balancing the personal, lived experiences of the people targeted and victimized by Lularoe. Like, were talking about with the analysis of, like, experts and journalists, like, you know, like Stephanie McNeil and Jane Marie and Rick Ross and, you know, other entrepreneurs and journalists that they had giving their expert opinion.
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Chris: Oh, yeah, they had that business consultant, too.
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Kayla: I think something else good that it did was it really dug into the importance of hope and community in our lives and how we're missing that in a lot of ways. And how, you know, mlms like LulaRoe exploit those needs by, like, filling them in this very hollow way.
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Chris: What a group exploiting people's fundamental need for hope in order to manipulate how they act and behave.
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Kayla: It happens.
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Chris: Weird.
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Kayla: I know it did. You already kind of mentioned this, but it did very much cut right to the heart of. Is Lularoe a cult?
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Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, and the answer is yeah.
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Kayla: I was gonna say no. I was gonna say, yeah. It's. It's. It's really hard to not ask that question when it comes to mlms. Like, how can you not ask if it's a cult? Because they all end up taking this weird, like, cult of personality situation where you're obsessed with the founders and there's, like, you know, big concerts where Katy Perry shows up and everyone's all wearing the same clothes, because especially for this, it's a clothes mlm.
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Chris: Like, they're all chanting the same, like, don't be a stinker thinker. Don't match yourself. It's your fault if you. Yeah.
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Kayla: Anti factuality. Just check off all of the boxes of our criteria.
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Chris: We called Mary Kay a cult. If Mary Kay is a cult, Lularoe is hell. A cult. I'm sorry.
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Kayla: I mean, I. Yeah. Yes. Lularoe's a cult. I think that is the. We're definitely agreeing. We are agreeing with each other.
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Chris: All right. The end.
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Kayla: I think that they also. The rise and fall of Lularoe. I appreciated that. They spent a good chunk of time talking about the chain of victims. So not just the people who are like, this is how Lularoe hurt me, but also, this is how Lularoe hurt me and then incentivized me and empowered me to then hurt others.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: And, like, it's really hard to have to face how and how you've been victimized by an MLM. And I think it's probably even harder in some ways to face how you victimized others while being a part of that.
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Chris: Yeah. Groups that have that. It's one of the most insidious, like, horrifying things.
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Kayla: Yeah. But you know us on this show.
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Chris: I do know us. You know us especially. I know me because I am me.
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Kayla: It's not enough for you and me to necessarily just sit here and talk about the documentary. So we actually had the opportunity to talk to Stephanie McNeil herself, the Buzzfeed reporter.
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Chris: Whoa. The person who drafted that report on Buzzfeed and also was interviewed in the documentary that I'm totally surprised that we interviewed, even though I was there.
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Kayla: And now she's talking to us, and we got to, like, get her opinion on a few things.
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Chris: Yeah, it was cool as hell.
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Stephanie McNeal: Hi, I'm Stephanie McNeil, and I am a senior culture reporter for Buzzfeed News.
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Kayla: I want that title. I'm not going to lie. I'm very jealous of it.
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Chris: That's a pretty good. Yeah, that's a good job.
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Kayla: That's a good title. So, yeah, I guess jumping right in. What brought you to this particular story about Lularoe?
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Stephanie McNeal: The first story I ever read about Lularoe, that really piqued my interest. Washington. The first lawsuit, when it was filed, I remember reading about it, and the headline of the story was that the leggings ripped like wet toilet paper, which is just like a great image, right, to think about. And I had heard about Lou La Rowe a little bit. I think I had heard about it on the radio. People were talking about it on a morning show or something. But I didn't own any of the clothes. I didn't really know anyone who sold them or anything like that. So at the time, I was really interested in consumer reporting and a little bit interested in LLMs, but I hadn't really started on that yet. So I decided to write up a story about the lawsuit.
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Stephanie McNeal: And I needed some of these photos, right, of the leggings that are ripping like wet toilet paper. So I found a Facebook group on where women were talking about the clothing. And the women there were really helpful, and they were really passionate, which was kind of surprising at the time because, you know, who knew how people could be this passionate about their leggings? Ribbing. And they sent me all these photos that were just, like, so crazy and were telling me these stories about how they were, like, out at. Out walking around or out at work or something like that, and the leggings would just, like, completely get shredded, like a dog had attacked them or something. So I wrote the first story, and it had all these great images.
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Stephanie McNeal: And then I started getting a lot of emails from people who had actually been consultants in Lularoe who were selling the clothing. And I was really struck by the things they were telling me about how they felt really confused by the way that their businesses were going and they felt like they were losing money or they wanted to get out of the business, were having trouble doing so. And there was just something about getting a lot of messages about it. And then I started reading the Facebook group more and reading about everything that was going on. And I just kind of knew that this was a story that I should keep following. So I did.
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Chris: One of the things that I became really curious about watching the documentary was the settlement. And so you talked about both. You know, you talked about the lawsuit being the thing that kind of got you into it. And it seems like the settlement in Washington state, and not to. Not to spoil the doc, but for people that are following this, did. Did settle in February with, I believe it was a $4 million settlement. Yeah. So I guess my question for you is, what do you think is different about Lularoe that actually has been able to get legal traction? Because the settlement wasn't just. It wasn't just about the leggings that were bad. It was actually, they said the lawsuit itself was about whether Lularoe was a pyramid scheme or not.
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Chris: And it seems like the MLMs have been very slippery to avoid that sort of thing. So why did that not happen with Lularoe?
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Stephanie McNeal: It's really interesting how MLN's are able to be so pervasive in this country, because there's a lot of elements about the. Some things that some of them do that are explicitly against the laws of the United States. And there's a really great podcast out there called the Dream by Jane Marie, who actually appears in the documentary that kind of goes really in depth into how this is allowed to happen. So I recommend that to anyone who's more interested. But the short answer is that, you know, there's just not a. A lot of regulation, and there's just, I think, just bigger fish to fry for a lot of, you know, bigger, you know, like attorney generals and stuff like that. It's really.
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Stephanie McNeal: It's really interesting how they've just been able to proliferate despite doing things that technically, you know, are at least frowned upon, if not just full against the law. I think with the Lularoe instance, one thing that you will see if you watch the documentary is the women who feel like they were wronged by Leroux have a very. Have a lot of passion, and they feel very strongly. And from the very beginning, they have had this mentality of that, their strength in numbers. They have worked together for years to try and, you know, reach justice in righting the wrongs. They feel that they suffered. So I kind of think that has something to do with it, although I don't really have any evidence for that.
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Stephanie McNeal: I think, you know, Lou Laro has been able, the people who have, you know, been kind of fighting against Lularoe and what they think was the bad practices that Lularoe did have really done a good job of keeping it in the media and, you know, writing to their attorney generals and really just keeping it, you know, say, standing up and saying, hi, this happened to me. I feel like this is really wrong. Like, will you do something about it? So I think it's that. And then also, I think Lularoe just grew so incredibly fast that, and it was in such a short amount of time. You know, in just a couple of years, they grew to, like, so many tens of thousands of retailers. And I think a lot of other mlms are a little more under the radar.
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Stephanie McNeal: They grow a little more slowly, although I don't have, like, a ton of evidence of that. But just this explosive growth, I think that kind of makes some, you know, good officers of the law kind of sit up and be like, oh, you know, I wonder what's going on there. So, yeah, that would be my theory, although I don't have a lot of concrete evidence to back that up.
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Kayla: No, it does feel like that. I feel like even just watching the documentary and it's. We've followed the LulaRoe story for a long time, but watching the documentary, when the dates are mentioned, it's like this, only this was in 2017. This is happening in 2017. This is happening in 2016. It's just like, thinking about how quickly that growth happened.
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Chris: Yeah, you're on to something.
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Kayla: It's got to be. That's got to be part of it. That's not really a question, just an observation.
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Chris: Do you think the, you said the community building, do you feel like Lularoe maybe did, like, quote unquote, too good of a job with the community building, and then that sort of, like, worked against them?
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Stephanie McNeal: That's definitely a possibility. You know, I think one of the things that LulaRoe has done really well is creating these very tight knit online networks with a lot of followers. And I think, you know, as we see with anything in the Internet, on social media or with Internet creators, people have a lot of loyalty to the people who they follow on social media. So I think. I think when these bigger people spoke out and said, hey, I want to be honest with you guys. This is my experience. I think people really took that to heart. But I think one of the things that's great about social media as well is when something like this happens to someone, they have a voice and they can rally together.
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Stephanie McNeal: There's a scene that I don't think made in the documentary where one woman who's been very active in the Facebook group called another woman who was very active. They were talking about how, you know, they've never actually met in person. They live completely different parts of the country, but, you know, they talk every day and they really have bonded over this. So I think that's really powerful as well.
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Kayla: Could you talk a little bit? So that's, you know, we're talking about the community. I think that something that goes along with it that's mentioned in the documentary as well, is a sense of hope that something like an MLM can bring to somebody. Could you talk a little bit about the role of hope in all of this, in the community building, in the, you know, in the prosperity gospel, in just the meat of what makes an MLM?
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Stephanie McNeal: So I think we all are taught from a very young age this kind of toxic mentality that the only thing that is holding us back from, you know, achieving great things is ourselves. Right. And obviously, it's a lot more nuanced than that. But I think one of the things that mlms do a really good job on is tap into this narrative that, hey, we are giving you all the tools you could ever possibly need to succeed. All you have to do is take them and work hard. And then, well, you know, if it didn't work out for you, that's kind of on you.
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Stephanie McNeal: And so I think when people buy into that belief, it can be very powerful because when they are finding success, it's even more rewarding than if you're working for the man and you're, you know, making good money and doing well. You know, it's not something that you built. But they, a lot of people who are in multi level marketing companies, they really see it as their own small business. And that has a little think of a little bit higher level of emotion and just a little bit more. It just feels different, I think, than working at a career and having success in the career. So I think when it doesn't work out, a lot of people blame themselves, and that can be really damaging.
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Kayla: Yeah. That's part of what gets so brutal about it, is just that having that sense of hope and then having that sense of hope dashed. And that really, for us, ties into the cult aspect of things like MLMs and specifically lularoe. And the documentary really gets into the comparisons to a cult. And is it a cult? And when were watching the documentary, it got us really thinking a lot about the precision of the word cult. And that's kind of really what we discuss a lot on the podcast. We didn't know we'd be discussing that a lot. But it can be, you know, it's a really useful word, but it can also be an imperfect word, and, you know, there's nebulous meaning there.
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Kayla: So could you maybe talk a little bit about what the word cult means to you and why you think it gets applied to something like Lularoe?
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Stephanie McNeal: Yeah, I think we have to be careful in using that language, quite frankly. I think we're kind of in the age of the scammer right now, and the cult. And I think, you know, people like to use that word on something like Lularoe. And, you know, I think, like you said, I think it's a very, like, nuanced thing. You know, I think there are religious cults, there are cults of business, there's cults of personality. So I think it's, I don't really know either way if I think that Lularoe is a cult. I don't really feel comfortable saying that. But, you know, I think that we really have to just listen to the women who had these experiences and listen to what they're saying.
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Stephanie McNeal: And there are so many people in our documentary, in other media who have said the way I felt, like when I was in Lularoe, I felt like I was in this cultish Persona organization. And so I think that's really interesting. So I think that's probably a more precise way to think about this, is listening to what people are actually saying rather than, you know, trying to debate whether it's a cult or not.
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Kayla: That's like, that's a good point. Yeah. Is needing to debate it actually a part of it that's interesting, actually, I.
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Chris: Kind of want to follow up on that. The, what do you think is the essence of what people mean, though, when they make that comparison? Like, what do you think is, like when they say cult and they apply it to, you know, all the different things, like you said, like religious or business or whatever, and then to something like Lularoe, like, what are they actually saying? Like, what is the meat of what they're saying there?
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Stephanie McNeal: I guess what they're saying is that it's almost like a thing that warps your perception of reality, I suppose. You know, believing one thing that might not be true and, like, group think, I suppose. And that's something that, with Lularoe, I think one thing that a lot of people have told me is when they were in Lularoe, they viewed things one way, and they viewed their own success or failure one way, and they viewed the business one way. And then when they quit Lularoe and they got out of it, the perception that they had was a lot different than what they had previously. So I think, like, if we're going to look at all the things people call a cult, I guess that would be my answer of what it seems. But I don't know. What do you guys think?
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Kayla: That's. Yeah, that's the. That is the eternal question.
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Chris: It feels like we have hours and.
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Kayla: Hours of content, I think.
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Chris: Hard to say.
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Kayla: We have a criteria, a list of criteria, and it's always expanding. And we think we actually were going to expand the list of criteria based on stuff that was talked about in this documentary. We talked a lot about in the show how there were consequences to leaving. So I think that talking about high control groups and cultist groups, it makes sense to us to always try and evaluate and apply and figure it out. But, yeah, it's such a nebulous word. So thank you for trying to pin that down. It's not easy. We are reaching the end of our time here. So there's one question that we want to. That we try to ask folks who are in this work and folks that we interview.
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Kayla: You're on the Internet a lot and you are writing about Internet culture and you're seeing things like mlms and influencers. And sometimes that can be hard to stay sane. I know it is for us when we're doing research. So how do you take care of your mental health and how do you do self care when you're also doing this work?
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Stephanie McNeal: That's a good question. I will say that I try to focus on things that aren't super dark, so that helps. I did breaking news and some politics stuff before, and it was just a little too dark. So I think knowing what your limit is. But one way that I disconnect from the Internet is I try not to go on social media on the weekends, like Twitter. I have an Instagram for my, I have a work account for Instagram and I don't go on that on the weekends. So I think that's probably my best way to disconnect.
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Kayla: That's so smart. I'm going to copy that.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Stephanie McNeal: Go on Twitter on the weekends. It's like nothing good happens on Twitter on the weekends or ever.
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Chris: But, yeah, I. Yeah, I've. I've found that the less time I spend on Twitter. Yeah. The better off I feel, the better. Yeah.
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Stephanie McNeal: If you want to read the news, like, you know, read the news, but there is not going to help you on the weekend.
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Kayla: That's. I will try to take that to heart. I will do my best.
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Stephanie McNeal: It's hard. It's hard.
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Kayla: Thank you so much for sitting down with us. We really appreciate it. Having your insight on this group is invaluable. It's a great documentary. We're so excited for our audience to hear this conversation and then to go check it out.
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Chris: Yeah. And with the few seconds we have left, is there anything that you want to say to our audience that we didn't get to?
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Stephanie McNeal: Thank you guys for having me. And if you're interested in what I'm working on or reporting on, I have an Instagram account, E. McNeil, that you can follow and say hi. And, yeah, thanks for having me.
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