S4E12 - The Dirt (Black Oxygen Organics takedown)

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Ceara Manchester: People don't start mlms unless they know they can make tons of money.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: Earning an MLM.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: And doing it off the backs of, you know, all the people who are losing money in them. So there's. There has to be, like, a questionable moral compass happening with people who start mlms. Like, I just don't believe, like, a good person starts an MLM.

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Chris: Are we recording?

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Kayla: I just started recording right now.

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Chris: Okay. Because now I want to go into butt head voice.

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Kayla: Should we do an entire hey, Beavis episode? The problem is that I can't do a Beavis voice. You can, butthead. See, you can do both of their voices. I can do neither. It's not good for our schtick.

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Chris: In case you guys can't tell, we've been watching a lot of. Let's see, what's it called again? Oh, yeah. Beavis and butthead.

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Kayla: I. You know what? I'm gonna spin this into being relevant for this season.

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Chris: Ooh.

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Kayla: Cause it's self care, something we have found as elder millennials. It is very comforting to return to media of our youth and not even necessarily like, a cartoon. I guess we was embedded as a cartoon.

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Chris: It's a cartoon.

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Kayla: But, like, putting on nineties music videos, nineties commercials, nineties media, like beavis and butthead. It can be very comforting in the nostalgia, in the. Just like. And then also come also Beavis and butt head is just great. So if you are of a similar age as we are, maybe try little Beavis and butt head.

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Chris: Hell, yeah. Are we shilling for Paramount plus now? Is that.

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Kayla: God, no. Never.

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Chris: Okay, actually, yes.

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Kayla: Yeah. Paramount plus.

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Chris: Where else are you gonna watch it?

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Kayla: Hire me. Paramount plus, okay? That's the extent of my business, is Beavis and butt heads.

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Chris: That's it. That's the show. Happy Beavis and butt out, everybody.

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Kayla: Are you ready for a new episode?

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Chris: I am, absolutely. I could not be more ready to talk about some cult or just weird with you in this boiling hot room.

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Kayla: It's very hot right now, but it's gonna get a whole lot hotter. I don't know. It's not actually.

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Chris: This is like the nugget couch part two.

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Kayla: It's not the nugget couch. Also self care. I have a question for you.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: As per Yuj on this show, what is the worst part about mlms? Like Lularoe or herbalife or Amway? And I'm asking this question aside from the millions of dollars scammed from hardworking people and the lives destroyed by the crushing grift.

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Chris: Okay, so I can't say. The raw exploitation of the people that.

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Kayla: Yeah. What's the worst part of them? Outside of those things? Outside of the grift itself?

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Chris: I don't know, man. Their products are just so lame.

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Kayla: Oh, that's interesting. Okay.

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Chris: The whole thing is just lame. I'm. You know what? I shouldn't be saying this because, like, there's probably people that we have listening that have. And I know my mom listens and she did it. Mary Kay. And. Okay, you know what? Mary Kay is not lame.

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Kayla: We've talked. We talked about this on our previous MLM episodes. Some of the products are actually good, useful. That's well below.

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Chris: I guess it depends on the company. But, like, maybe I was just primed to say that, because you said Lularoe, and I'm like, I don't know, I guess you find. But even then, like, the leggings. The leggings that they started selling were pretty good, and then they turned into moldy leggings with ripped apart the leaning tower of Pisa going into the crotch. So I don't know, I guess there's just something. I don't know, like, there's just something inherently, like, jokey about it, about the whole thing.

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Kayla: You are going to dig this week's. This week's topic then.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: And I just did a pun there that you'll understand later.

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Chris: Dig.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Cool.

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Kayla: So to answer my own question, that was a good answer. Wasn't the answer I was looking for.

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Chris: Oh, okay. Well, let's just record again, and I'll just give you. Until I get the right one.

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Kayla: Until you get it. The worst part, I think, is that they're still around. Like Lularoe.

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Chris: That's fair.

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Kayla: Still around. Herbalife, still here. Amway unique. Like, we have covered a number of mlms on this show. Some, you know, not so bad, like the Mary Kay episode, some pretty bad. Like, beachbody. We've even talked to other shows about even more and worse mlms. And, like, the horror stories never really seem to end with this. Like, even with. There's with, like, documentaries and court cases and explosive media exposes around and around anti MLM community, but, like, a single company will have, like, a downfall, and then they'll somehow seem to stick around exactly like Lularoe. Like, Lularoe fucking exploded. It is still there.

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Chris: And I think it's like a cockroach.

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Kayla: It is exactly like a cockroach. I think for us, and probably for activists in the anti MLM space, it's kind of disheartening. It's kind of frightening. It's disempowered. It sucks. It sucks.

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Chris: I mean, it doesn't matter that it explodes, kayla, because it's not about the business, right? It's about the pyramid. So, like, if. If LulaRoe explodes, that's cool. They just do round two of ye olde pyramid. Second verse, same as the first.

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Kayla: Never ending. Like you said, cockroach. Yeah, but it's not the only story to tell about mlms. We know a lot of the big names. We've said some. There's also beachbody and Cutco and Doterra and Nuskin and Avon and a million others. We know these names because they seem Teflon. No matter how many people know that these companies are scams, no matter how many people expose them, no matter how many times they're in the news, they stick around. So why does every MLM seem to have such staying power? The answer.

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Chris: Money.

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Kayla: The answer is that they don't.

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Chris: Oh, wait, what? No, but you said Lularoe's still around, and, like, everything's still. Amber's still around.

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Kayla: But that's not the only story. There's another side to the MLM story that we really haven't touched on as much. Like, the heartening, empowering, less sucky side.

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Chris: Because this is our, like, helpers good news, like, helpful seasons. Oh, that is okay. I love that. This is like, you're doing the, like, the MLM episode, like, but branded for, like, the helper season.

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Kayla: This is us telling the side of the story of the mlms that do get taken down.

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Chris: Hell, yeah.

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Kayla: And that get taken down gloriously.

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Chris: Ooh.

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Kayla: So, yeah, let's go ahead and tell one of those stories today.

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Chris: Oh, okay. This is gonna be great.

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Kayla: I have another question for you then, Chris.

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Chris: Yeah. Yes. I am excited.

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Kayla: And it is this.

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Chris: Oh, my God. What are you gonna ask me?

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Kayla: Would you like to eat some dirt? I have a follow up question.

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Chris: Is this, like, the dirt ice cream or. No, just plain dirt.

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Kayla: I have a follow up question. Maybe it sweetens the pot a little.

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Chris: Does it sweeten the dirt?

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Kayla: What if that dirt cost dollar 110 a pop? Is it a dirt pop that make the prospect more attractive to you?

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Chris: How much dirt are we talking about?

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Kayla: I'm talking, like, okay, a $110 bag of dirt is, like, this much bag.

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Chris: Okay, so you're holding your hands about a foot apart. That's a big bag.

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Kayla: I mean, I wouldn't even call it a big bag for $110. Like, to eat?

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Chris: It's a big bag.

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Ceara Manchester: What?

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Kayla: I'm saying is that if you go to, like, Home Depot and you get, like, potting soil, those bags of potting soil are humongous. This has a football field. They're not $110.

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Chris: Right. You have describing, like, a chip lock.

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Kayla: Yeah, a chip bag. Like, of dirt.

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Chris: Sure.

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Kayla: And you don't have to eat it all in one sitting. It's like you can make teas out of it. You can make various things out of it that we will talk about. But would you eat some dirt?

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Chris: No. Okay. Okay.

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Kayla: Okay. Actually, I can sweeten the pot even further.

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Chris: Okay. I don't think you sweetened it the first time, though.

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Kayla: What if I told you that eating said dirt would cure all of your symptoms?

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Chris: Oh, there it is. Okay. Oh, now, all of your symptoms. Yes, definitely.

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Kayla: Well, what symptoms am I talking about.

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Chris: First of all, and it doesn't matter. Cause I don't want them. Symptoms are bad.

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Kayla: Do you want me to say the.

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Chris: Symptoms definitely eat dirt if it cured symptoms? I don't know if I would eat that much of the. Wait a minute. Do I know what you're gonna be talking about?

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Kayla: Do you know what I'm gonna be talking about? This is the dirt that I'm talking about. I'm not talking about your dirt. I forgot that you eat dirt.

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Chris: Oh, God.

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Kayla: I forgot that you actually do eat dirt.

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Chris: I do eat dirt. I do.

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Kayla: I know. Do you wanna explain your dirt?

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Chris: Okay, hold on. Let's back up here. Okay. Would I eat a bag of dirt the size of a chip bag all in one sitting?

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Kayla: No one's asking you to do that.

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Chris: Would I spend $110 to buy a bag of curative dirt that I didn't have to eat all in one sitting that lasted me like a. Like a month or something? I guess the answer there is yes. But it depends on if it actually cures. I'm assuming that because it's dirt, that's not true. And also, this is an MLM you mentioned so already I'm thinking it's not true. So. But if it were, then, yeah, I totally. That dirt, the dirt that I tell.

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Kayla: Us about, your dirt, the dirt that.

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Chris: I eat, that is, has some. So I have looked this up before.

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Kayla: I've eaten it daily for 15 years.

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Chris: Some. There is some backing to this. So this is why I do it. It's a. It's like a mineral clay. It's not exactly dirt. It's a mineral clay that is supposed to help with your digestion. And it also contains a lot of, like, trace minerals and a lot of calcium. So it's like, you know, it's almost like its own little, like, multivitamin type. It's basically a multivitamin. It's. And I mix. I don't just, like, sit there and, like, you can't eat clay because that would, like, make you choke. You just. I mix it in with. With a. With a drink that, you know, like a water or something.

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Kayla: That's what you do with this dirt.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: You can mix it up.

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Chris: So, like. Yeah. Okay, so maybe the.

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Kayla: So maybe you would fall for this.

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Chris: Sounds like maybe this is what I'm susceptible to. I don't know.

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Kayla: So maybe you're wondering about the symptoms that it can address for you, because, you know, with your dirt. Your dirt's just giving you some trace vitamins and minerals. Like, it's not solving any major problems.

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Chris: Well, it does say that it's supposed to, like, keep your digestion healthy. I don't think it talks about any specific symptoms.

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Kayla: Well, let's get into some specific symptoms. Okay, so what if this magic dirt that I'm now selling you, what if I said it could address your chronic fatigue?

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Chris: Ooh, that sounds good.

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Kayla: Your weight gain, which I think is controversial, to call that a symptom, but we continue on.

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Chris: But it's certainly a powerful marketing.

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Kayla: Yes, it is. Inflammation, migraines, candida, joint issues, anxiety, depression, low blood sugar.

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Chris: I don't know if it can do all this.

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Kayla: Infertility, acne, arthritis, asthma, brittle nails, thinning hair, PM's, cramps, cancer, autism. Step right up, and I will give you this snake oil and more.

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Chris: Okay, so definitely, you're way past the OTC one two cure line there.

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Kayla: Oh, there's a really important one that I forgot, though. It can also cure you of your parasites.

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Chris: Oh, is this like it does? It cures you of the parasites, and then parasites cause everything.

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Kayla: Did you know that every human being has parasites? Yeah, and they're probably causing your symptoms, whatever your symptoms may be, even if they're just normal expressions of human experience.

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Chris: I have heard the people that think that parasites cause everything. I think that's like, what the.

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Kayla: The people who get blue, I think.

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Chris: Yeah, those leaf drinks believe that's why they think that the.

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Kayla: Well, but that's unnatural. This is dirt from the earth. We'll talk exactly about what I think. I'm using dirt in a bit of a pejorative. We'll get into the specifics of what the product is.

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Chris: Yeah, maybe it's mineral clay, Kayla.

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Kayla: It's the mineral clay that you keep in our closet. I first came across the topic we're discussing when I was. Surprise, surprise. Scrolling TikTok last year.

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Chris: Oh, yeah.

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Kayla: I happened upon a video in which a woman was preparing a special bath for herself, and we got kind of like a before, during, and after. If I remember correctly, first she drew the bath and, like, into this crystal clear, steaming water.

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Chris: Oh, God.

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Kayla: She dumped a bunch of dirt.

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Chris: Like, am I to be envisioning, like, potting soil here? Cause that's what I've been envisioning this whole time is, like, you know, imagine.

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Kayla: A cross between your mineral clay, like, that kind of consistency, but the color of the potting soil.

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Chris: For our listeners, the clay that we're talking about is like a. It's kind of like a fine powder. I mean, that's what clay is, right? It's like a very fine particulate matter. So it's like, that's what the clay is. And so you're saying it's like, that's fine dirt. A fine dirt.

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Kayla: It's definitely dirt, but it's, you know, okay, it's worth $110, so it's a little fancy.

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Chris: Very fine.

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Kayla: So the dirt dissolves into the water. It turns the bath into kind of like, a rusty brown pool.

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Chris: So it looks like you're just taking, like, a poo bath.

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Kayla: Poo bath. Maybe a tea bath. Cut to a pov of the woman instead. Bath. Like, you know, we're gonna get a shot of her legs, her feet, in this tepid pool of would be mud hot. And then we get the aftermath, the money shot. We get the parasites.

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Chris: Oh, no, no.

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Kayla: The video zoomed in on, like, little bits left behind in the back, and these were bits that the woman claimed were worms and parasites that had crawled.

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Chris: Out of her, like, out of her skin.

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Kayla: Her skin.

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Chris: Ew.

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Kayla: While she had been in the bath. So whatever this dirt was, it was so magical that it drew literal parasites out of her body upon use.

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Chris: That didn't happen, but it's still really gross.

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Kayla: I ralphed immediately, or at least, like, metaphorically, and then immediately searched for more of these videos.

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Chris: Yeah, of course.

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Kayla: And, like, yeah, some of these videos have, like, little, like, wriggling worms in these baths. I want to be sick thinking about it. Oh, God. Okay, so I looked at this trigger.

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Chris: Warning for this podcast.

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Kayla: This was my introduction to black oxygen organics, or boo, as it was often known in its vast social media circles.

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Chris: Okay?

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Kayla: And yes, it was dirt being sold for dollar 110 a bag.

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Chris: And I mlm.

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Kayla: Yes, it was an MLM, okay? Like other mlms, it had a meteoric rise. The company was founded under a different name in 2015, but the Boo label, it exploded under the Boo label in 2020, largely thanks to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Chris: You know, the nice thing about this product is, like, when you wind up with a garage full of leggings, like, what do you do with that? Right? But, like, if you wind up with a garage full of dirt, you just start a garden. Like, that's not that bad.

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Kayla: You can just grow some food. Actually, I don't know if you can. I don't know. We'll answer that question. We'll get to that as the time comes. As we know, a lot of mlms actually grew during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. I learned recently that there was a 13% increase in people working for mlms from 2019 to 2020. And since Boo occupied the space of alternative wellness and health claims. Oh, yeah, you can imagine why it gained a particular foothold, right? But the company closed its doors in November 2021, just a year and a half after its rise to the top.

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Chris: Oh, no. Boo.

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Kayla: So what happened, boo? Boo. Luckily, we have a special interview today with somebody who actually had a hand in bringing down Boo.

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Chris: What? Seriously?

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Kayla: Because just as swiftly as Boo's star rose, so did its debunkers online.

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Chris: So we have the, like, one of the people that. One of the people, like, shove the stake in the heart of this bullshit enterprise.

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Kayla: There were a lot of online anti MLM activists who took immediate action against the company's bonkers stances, and they did things like infiltrating the community and exposing the darker sides of the scam by debunking the various claims of boo and even leaking recordings of private company meetings to the public and stuff like that.

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Chris: Hell, yeah. I like these people so much already.

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Kayla: I just talked to one. One of those activists goes by MLmombe online. So, like, mlmombe.

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Chris: Oh, okay. Got it.

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Kayla: And agreed to chat with us about her experiences in helping to expose boo.

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Chris: Would you say that she is the magic dirt of society that is helping remove these MLM like symptoms that we are experiencing?

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Kayla: I will let her answer that question. Okay, so let's talk to her now and get the rest of the story.

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Chris: Can't wait.

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Kayla: Can you introduce yourself to our audience? So tell us your name, your pronouns, and just a little bit about your anti MLM activist background or whatever you want to share.

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Ceara Manchester: My name is Kira Manchester. I am anti MLM activist and consumer advocate. I have been involved in the anti MLM movement for about five years. And I've had my page mombi for about four, a little over four. I started in April of 2018. I got into it because a family member had joined herbalife.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Ceara Manchester: And another family member had kind of asked me to look into it because they thought it sounded a little off. And they know I'm the kind of person that likes to deep dive into subjects. And so I'm like, yeah, I'll look into it. And it was like the rabbit hole of a lifetime.

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Kayla: Herbalife.

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Ceara Manchester: Herbalife is one of the big companies that's been around for a long time. And they're very well, like, politically connected. They have their hands kind of, in lots of places, even with, like, regulatory agencies. And people don't realize that mlms go that deep into it. When I first started off, it was pretty obvious to me that they were pyramid schemes. That was my initial reaction, but I didn't understand that they were cults until later.

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Chris: Can I ask, did you get started in consumer advocacy because of your anti MLM involvement, or was it the other way around?

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Ceara Manchester: Because of my anti MLM involvement. Because I tend to choose to focus more on, like, health and wellness mlms, which usually include a product that's dangerous, you know, because they're making these health claims and people are going off of their medication. Right. You know, they're not going to the doctor and stuff like that. So it's more like anti MLM. Consumer advocacy. I would consider anti MLM, like a subset of consumer advocacy.

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Chris: Got it. That makes sense.

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Kayla: Yeah. Especially with stuff like herbalife, where, you know, they have the little pop up shops now, and it's like, they don't call themselves herbalife, but you're just like drinking a shake made from herbalife products and. Yeah, it's. It's a. It makes sense that's the one that kind of got you into it, because that rabbit hole.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. Issues connected to that product, they try and hide, and they're very sneaky. So, you know, they try and get things wiped clean in a lot of companies.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Herbalife's a scary one. So I know about herbalife. What I don't know about is this. What's it called? Boo. So there's this company called Boo. And my understanding is that you are an expert on this particular MLM. And so I guess my question is just, what is boo?

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Kayla: All I told him is that it's dirt with health claims.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. That's the simplest form of it, yes. Boo stands for black oxygen, organic. So it's just called boo for short. And it's actually dehydrated bog mud.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: That they then rehydrate in water to either, like, bathe in or, like, put paste on their bodies, like, mask or to consume and put in every single orifice you can think of.

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Chris: Oh, God.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah, we're going. We're going down that rabbit hole. The woo. Rabbit hole with this one.

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Chris: Right, right. So is it, like, okay, so I. I get this dirt product in the mail. Is this the type of thing where, like, I. Instead of lularoe leggings in my. In my garage, I just have, like, just bags of dirt?

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Ceara Manchester: Yes, yes.

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Chris: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: Bags of dirt that costs, like, 100 and something dollars.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: $100 dirt. Awesome.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Ceara Manchester: Like, this big of a bag.

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Kayla: They're so small. They're so small. They're shockingly small for the high price point. And the thing that I keep seeing is that there's this claim of something called fulvic acid in the product. Like, what is that? That they're saying is like, oh, this is the magic part of the magic dirt.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah, well, they didn't set us, like, here, eat some dirt. They sold it as a fulvic and humic acid supplement. And so, fulvic and humic acid is, like, naturally found in dirt. And their whole belief system kind of comes from the idea of, like, plants, because it's used a lot in, like, fertilizers and stuff. So what will happen is that the fulvic acid and the humic acids, they can grab onto, like, nutrients, and then the plant sucks it up and then can utilize it, and they're thinking the same thing is happening in their body, and they think it's detoxing them because some of the things that it will grab onto are, like, heavy metals, whereas a plant can utilize some of those.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: But I. In your body, they think it's taking it out, but it's not because we're not plants. Yeah.

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Chris: I didn't even know there was such thing as full Vegas, but it sounds like that there's sort of, like, this. They take this scientific true thing and then use it to kind of, like, create their own, like, marketing claims about it. Is that the idea?

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Ceara Manchester: Yes, basically. Because that's how most kind of, like, pseudoscience is. They always take something that sounds a little bit scientific, but then make it bullshit. Right, right.

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Chris: Just run away with it.

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Kayla: Yeah, all the time. With. Especially with the health and wellness stuff. Like, it's always, oh, this is the one true cure. Or, like, when you get into the more woo stuff of, like, oh, they're going to throw out, like, quantum mechanics words and just, like, totally use it. Yeah.

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Chris: The word quantum is just its own red flag at this point.

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Kayla: Wait, do you get that with boo? The quantum mechanics stuff?

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Chris: Oh, really?

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: Classic.

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Kayla: We. I feel like we need a little more background, but I want to come back to that for sure. That is right up our alley. So I guess just to kind of go back to the beginning, can I get your take on the founder of Boo? I think his name is Mark St. Ange. Like, I read in an article that he's actually been in the dirt selling business for, like, 25 years. And, like, boo was just kind of the latest iteration. Like, what is your take on this guy?

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So he basically started off as, like, a glorified massage therapist.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: But he calls himself, like, all sorts of other titles. And he claimed that he worked with his mom, who was, like, an esthetician, and they were looking for things like mud mass, like new kind of innovative products. And so he had gone to Germany, I believe it was, and he saw these mud baths that people were going into, and he claims he. Somebody saw somebody get into the bath out of a wheelchair and then get out of the bath walking. So that's where the miracle mud came from.

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Kayla: Oh, God. Okay.

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Chris: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: And so then he came back to Canada, because he's from Canada, and he was trying to figure out, how am I going to get this mud all the way from Germany over here, this miracle mud? And then they started testing the mud around Canada, which they do have a lot of bogs there, so. And bogs, when stuff is, you know, sitting and aging, that's where the fulvic and humic starts to develop in the dirt. And so what they ended up doing is he tested it, and lo and behold, the bog that was ten minutes away from his house happened to have this crazy amount of fulvic humic acid.

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Kayla: What a miracle would have happened to Winston?

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Ceara Manchester: And so he started taking the mud from there, and originally he was keeping it in a washing machine and bagging it up in Ziploc bags.

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Chris: I'm sorry. Mud in a washing machine is just a great. I don't know. Is that, like. I feel like it's a metaphor there or something?

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Kayla: Oh, God.

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Ceara Manchester: And then he was selling these Ziploc bags of the mud to his clients, like his massage therapy clients, basically, and they kept coming back and wanting more and then telling their friends, and he's like, I have to turn this into a business. And that's his story. Anyways.

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Kayla: He sounds. I mean, he seems like somebody who is very good at telling people that maybe some things that they want to hear. Like, I watched a very brief interview with him before. It was boo. It was like Goldenrod or Golden Moore. Golden Moore, yes. And there was just like, there's a tiny little snippet of an interview of him talking to, like, a morning news producer. And I just, what I really noticed about it was the interviewer was not pushing back on any of the claims. It was just like, it just felt like a mouthpiece for some of these claims. Like he. He said, like, yeah, the miracle mud. And here are the things that it cures, and here are the claims that it makes. And instead of having any sort of follow up questions or, like, is there proof, is there evidence?

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Chris: Doing their job as a journalist.

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Kayla: Wow, that sounds cool. I'm going to try this out. Do they, you know, we talked about how they have, like, you know, scientific words. Does boo, or did boo try to, like, did they do scientific studies? Like, did they use further appeal to science in that way?

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah, they had what they called a clinical study, which was the biggest joke of all. Now, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce it correctly, but do you know what, like, the carwellian photography is?

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Chris: No, no.

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Ceara Manchester: It's. They take, I guess it. I don't know how to explain it. It takes, like, pictures kind of like, moisture has something to do with moisture in the air.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: But a lot of, like, new age pseudoscience y, like, you know, crystal shops and stuff will have these things advertised where you can get a picture of your aura.

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Chris: Oh, yeah, I have seen that. I've seen that.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: In fact, the crystal shop that I visited in Sedona had, like, do aura photography here.

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Ceara Manchester: Okay, so that's what that is. That's carwellian or I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. Photography.

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Kayla: Got it.

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Ceara Manchester: Okay, so their clinical study was based on that?

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Chris: No, no.

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Ceara Manchester: And they also, like, in it, they. My friend Amanda did, like, a really good video, like, breaking the whole thing down. She's a nurse, so she, like, understands it way better than I do. But if you, like, look at it, they give them basically, like, things that are known, like, actually scientifically known to take out heavy metals from the body before they give them the boo. And so they tested them beforehand, like, they're heavy metal levels, and then they give them, like, a detox, basically. Then they give them the boo and be like, oh, look, the boo took the metals out, but it's like. But you just gave them something that's, like, scientifically proven to take metals out. So how is it the boo? You know? Like. Right, so it was that.

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Ceara Manchester: And then seeing how their aura changed, that was what the whole clinical study was based on.

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Chris: Oh, no, that is. There are multiple levels of bunk and that you just described. There's. Yeah, there's, like, the. You're. You're just. You're actually testing something else that we already know is that works. And then, like, why are we taking these photos of people's or. Yeah, okay. That is. That is. It's not a clinical study.

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Ceara Manchester: No, it's not.

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Kayla: No.

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Chris: Can I also ask one thing I'm curious about as we talk about, you mentioned, like, the mud baths and everything, and I hadn't thought of that before, but. But now that you say it, yeah. Like, I kind of feel like I've heard a lot of. I don't know. I don't know if claims is the right word, but, like, oh, mud baths are good for your health. Right? Like, I have a mud that I.

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Kayla: Put on my face. Like, how to, you know, cleanse my face or whatever.

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Chris: Like, there's, like, mud springs or. So, like, it kind of feels like this is maybe this. This old thing that he's tapping into. Do you have any sense of whether, like, any of that stuff is, like, also, like, is.

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Kayla: Is putting dirt on your body just bad for you across the board? Like, this boo specific, I think.

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Chris: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: I think, though, like, warm mud baths and stuff, it's just like taking a warm bath, you know? So if you're going in a hot spring or a hot mud bath, it's the heat that's relaxing your muscles. So obviously, you're going to feel a little bit better afterwards. So I think that's, like, the actual science behind it. And it somehow went from that because he kind of started off just doing, like, you know, rubbing it on the body, probably warmed up, you know, so probably people feeling that and getting some relief from a heat treatment and that somehow turned into, like, you can cure Covid and diabetes and cancer with dirt.

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Kayla: Yeah, that's the thing that actually makes.

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Chris: A lot of sense when I, you.

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Kayla: Know, put my mud mask on or my clay mask on or, like, go get a facial and they do, you know, put the mud mask on. I'm nothing going at it thinking, oh, this is going to detox me. I'm going at it to be like, this is a relaxing act. This is a relaxing ritual. Like, that's the benefit that I think.

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Ceara Manchester: Is maybe your skin feels a little softer.

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Kayla: Yeah. Relaxed.

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Ceara Manchester: And that's it. You know, but just.

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Kayla: You mentioned curing Covid and diabetes. Like, yeah. What are the. What are the claims of boo? Like, what do they say it can do? And then my big one is, can we talk about the parasites? Because that's how I came in. The first time I learned about boo, it was actually last year, right before they shut down. I started getting served the TikTok videos about the boo baths and the pair and, like, showing the parasites that were left over in the bath after.

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Ceara Manchester: Well, that's kind of like how I came across it is I was in anti MLM group and I saw a post where somebody was talking about, like, miracle mud, and I'm like, what the fuck is this? You know? And nobody was really interacting with the post. And it was, like, redacted. But I just, like, I could see that the post itself had been a public post. So I went in and I. I, like, took some of the key terms and I just searched it on Facebook and I found the person's page and I'm, like, looking at it and it was just post after post of these cure all claims. And I mean, like, literally everything you can imagine. Covid, diabetes, cancer, autism. I mean, like, you name it, right? They had these on.

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Ceara Manchester: Like, I could send you a post so you can see them. They're bad. They're literally everything you could think of. Their big thing was like, the detox, and then it turned into the parasites. I don't know how much the company themselves pushed that so much as that the people who were already into the whole parasite type of woo. Right into boo.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: And it's a detox. So of course it's detoxing the worms out of you.

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Kayla: And are they saying the worms are like. Like, I just have a hard time picturing, like, I get into a bath, and then I get out of the bath, and then there's worms in the bath. Like, are they saying these things are coming out of their skin? Are they saying they're coming out of their, like, mucus membranes? Like, how do the worms come apples?

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Chris: Quantum teleportation.

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Ceara Manchester: Yes. That's exactly. With one of the top.

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Chris: Wait, no, no. I made that up. Are you serious?

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Ceara Manchester: He said that they like your foot. Like, the foot baths they were doing mostly in the beginning that they were quantum tunneling out of your feet. That's why there was no holes for you to see, like, where the worm came out of your foot. They quantum tunneled out of your foot. Swear to God.

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Chris: I sincerely thought that I made that up. I am sorry.

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Kayla: We should all study Mlm, like we claimed that, right.

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Ceara Manchester: You already got it, boy.

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Kayla: We can make a lot of money and gloriously flame out. Worms are quantum tunneling out of your. I'm going to take a long time to, like.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah.

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Kayla: Is that the extent of the, like, appealing to quantum physics that boo does?

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Ceara Manchester: That was very particular of, like, people who followed one of their top raps, whose name is Adam Ringham, and he's very into, like, all of that kind of stuff and, like, energies. And I don't even know. He, like, mixes all sorts of, like, kabbalah type stuff and gotcha. He's just his little mix that he does. And then, of course, these cure alls, whatever he happens to be selling at the time, and then he also has his own ministry. And it gets weird. It's just weird. If you look at, like, any individual rep, especially people who are at the top, their profiles themselves are like their own rabbit holes that you could go down into, like, Mouville QAnon alt right cool anti vaxx conspiracy world, you know?

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Chris: Yeah. It's all tied together. Yeah. And we, it's like, what do we say? We usually say it's like a smorgasbord. Like, you kind of go to the buffet line and you're like, oh, I want some of that. It's like a little grab bag of.

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Kayla: Your pick auras and anti vax. Anti vax and lizard people and energy and put them all into a bag of dirt. And that's. Is that something that you think is emblematic of, like, the folks who got involved with boo as a whole, or is that just like, the top people? Like, what's the like? What would you say the average profile of somebody who, like, bought into boo would be?

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Ceara Manchester: I would say that's pretty much the profile of a lot of people who get into health and wellness mlms in general, because any of them that are kind of selling these cure alls usually are appealing to that demographic the most. And I do think that the pandemic and so many people becoming afraid of, like, Covid vaccines and stuff.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: And it's obviously way more mainstream than it used to be. I think that brought a lot more people into this kind of stuff. And so there's a very big crossover. Obviously, not everybody, but there is a crossover and then the detox type ones in particular really bring those people in. I call it the science denialism cult. I think it's a cult in and of itself.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like our next question was going to be how did boo get so popular online? So it sounds like at least part of that answer is Covid-19 really contributed to that. What else was part of that mix of how it got so popular?

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Ceara Manchester: I think it's because it was presented kind of like as a new company, and that's like a new theme that we're kind of starting to see with mlms is that people started to understand that if you get in early into one of these multi level marketing companies, you're more likely to build a big downline, make lots of money. But it's like everybody kind of realized it at the same time. So now what seems to be happening is they're jumping from like one startup to the next startup, trying to like make it big, but they like flounder, they get shut down like Boo or. So that's kind of just like the beginning of that, really. I mean, I'm sure it was happening to some extent before, but not in such mass quantities.

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Ceara Manchester: And Boo had actually been around for a while, but nobody knew about it. And it was like once it kind of got somebody in that kind of group that does that, found out about it was like everybody else came running over and I still follow some of those reps and they just do that. They go from startup to startup to startup, trying to make as much money as they can off the startup.

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Chris: Interesting. See, I have, that's really interesting. You say that because we've studied a few, not obviously, not as much as you have, but we've studied a little bit of mlms for the show. And this is the first I've really heard about, like, this demographic of people that are actually chasing the pyramid itself. Right. I feel like I hear a lot of like, people getting taken in by, you know, by the claims and the, you know, how much money you'll make and, you know, be your own boss and work your own hour, blah, blah. But what I haven't heard is like the sort of like naked truth aspect of people, like, understanding that it's a pyramid, but if I get in early, then I'll be good, right? Like, so it's really, is that like a common thing?

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Chris: Is that more common that I, than I understand or is that recent?

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Ceara Manchester: I've not I didn't notice it happening as much. Like when I first started, when I was in the anti MLM movement around, you know, 2017, 2018, eradic, I didn't really see that happening, but I saw it with Boo. And then like right now we've got things like Elamir, and now there's a couple other new ones that are popping up. Awakened is another one. It's like a weight loss one. And like, all the people from Boo pretty much went to Elamere and now a bunch of people from Elamir are now going to awaken. So it's like, it's a select kind of group of people. And I don't know if it's because I never kind of was hyper focused on that specific group of people because they joined these kind of health and wellness type ones before, or like it's becoming more popular.

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Ceara Manchester: More people realize that you have to get in early if you want to make money. And so it's turned into this thing. But like you said, then you're getting into kind of like your illegal naked pyramid scheme situation because like with Elamir, for example, they didn't have customers. They were just signing up brand reps and they ended up foregoing their customer requirements to get commissions. Oh, so they were just giving people money for recruiting people into it. And it's like that's a pyramid scheme, legal pyramid scheme. There's no product. They have a product now and they've opened up customers now, but there was like a whole month there that they were operating as a no product pyramid scheme. And that's what happens with the startups.

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Ceara Manchester: And so it's kind of like who gets in first and who can recruit as many into the startup at first, but then there isn't a customer base because people are starting to understand that mlms are shit, you know?

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Chris: Right, right. It's like the people that are realizing that would be actual customers are no longer interested because they realize it. So you're only left with these like pyramid chasers. That's really interesting.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. And I think it depends on the product too. People really seem to believe that boot was going to actually cure them of something. Whereas I don't think with Elamere, for example, since that's kind of the follow up, I don't think that they really believe it as much because like when they opened to customers, they were like, oh, we can only do 1000 customers a day. And they didn't even get like 900, they got like 800 and something. Okay. The first day so there isn't a customer base for that.

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Chris: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: With boo, there was. So people were just buying the dirt and eating it and stuff. But that's also closer to when we're like, we're still in lockdown with the pandemic.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: So I think people are more desperate for a cure than they are, say, now.

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Kayla: Right, right.

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Chris: Interesting. Right.

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Kayla: You touched on it briefly, but could you talk a little bit more about how you first came, became aware of boo? Like, what was that first thing that made you go, oh, this is something to keep an eye on?

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Ceara Manchester: Like I said, when I went to that person's profile that was selling this magic mud, and I just started scrolling and it was health claim after health claim after health claim of, you know, every disease imaginable and every ailment imaginable, which is illegal to do. You know, that's deceptive marketing. You can't market these medical claims like this without having the proper scientific evidence to back it up, which bhagma does not have. You know, an oral photography isn't proving. So it's not the.

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Kayla: Or photography. It's a clinical study. What more do you want?

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Ceara Manchester: So, you know, that was kind of. And it was kind of a joke at first because it was just this one post and I showed it, like, I admin a bunch of anti MLM groups, and so I have, like, a group chat with all the other admins of these groups, and I was like, look at this, like they're really eating dirt and thinking it's curing stuff, you know, it's funny, you know? And I thought it was just kind of like a one off because sometimes you'll see these mlms pop up that are like really scammy. Say they're going to cure everything, and then they just don't take off. They're just like gone, you know? And so that's kind of what I thought it was at first. And so were kind of joking about the whole thing with boo. Like just a joke.

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Ceara Manchester: And were even joking, like, oh, we should make a group about it. And we're joking about the different names and stuff. That's how we came up with booze. It was literally a joke. But then it started popping up. More and more people started, you know, posting about it in anti MLM groups. And, you know, people that you follow if you're following certain reps to kind of see what they're up to, you know, they started joining it and it was like, oh, shit, this is becoming a thing and I was like, you know what? I am gonna make a group. I'm just, I'm gonna do it. And that's how boo is woo was created.

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Chris: That's interesting.

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Kayla: You don't know about boo is woo?

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Chris: No, I haven't.

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Kayla: I've read about boo as well, but.

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Chris: This is the first I am hearing of it. Before we do that, though, I will give them credit because at least I feel like eating dirt is probably safer than drinking bleach or turpentine. Right?

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Kayla: True.

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Chris: So, like, if you gotta do, if you got to eat something harmful, at least.

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Kayla: Well, I will say I feel like I did read, and maybe we can talk about this more later. But I feel like I did read that. Like, eventually they activists tested boo products and found things like lead and arsenic in the dirt. Is that real?

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. Yeah. There were a lot of different tests that got done first. It started with some of the actual reps because there was claims. See, the thing is, when I started booze woo, like, we had a ton of people join. We had 11,000 people try and join in the first month alone. Wow. We let in about 7000 of them, and we got to about eight and a half thousand total. But there's a lot of people who are, like, very wooy trying to find out what were about and kind of like, talk about what were doing to the boo people. So that's why we didn't let so many in. But about two weeks into having the group, one of my friends who also has anti MLM page, she found a post saying that the bog that they're getting their dirt from is next to landfill.

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Kayla: Oh, no.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah.

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Chris: That is disgusting.

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Kayla: Oh, no.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So basically, somebody who is kind of in the whole woo world, that's friends with a lot of these people, but isn't into MlMs, you know, so they're anti mlm, but into Wu. They had gotten pitched by a few friends and they started, you know, anti vaxxers. You gotta look at the ingredients, look at the labels, you know?

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: So she started deep diving, like, the company and where it's located. Where. Where's this dirt coming from? And it was actually owned by the land that the bog is on is owned by, like, a waste management facility.

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Chris: Oh, my God.

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Ceara Manchester: And their dump was right next to it. But then they tried to say it wasn't that location. But if you look back at those videos, like the one you were talking about on the news from even golden moor days, he will, Mark will say over and over that it's Castleman or Moose Creek, which is the same thing, because it's. The bog is located between Moose Creek and Castleman, Ontario.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: And he'll. I have, like, a montage that I've made of him just being like, Moose Creek, Castleman. Moose Creek, Castleman. So he's said over and over, and he lives, like, in Castlemanden. So it's ten minutes from his house. And there, when Golden Moore went public, he signed a 25 year contract with that bog, basically with the waste management company that owns the bog, which would have put us to, I think it was, like, 2019. He would have had a contract. So all of the mud over his whole career has been the same bog. Like, he had a contract to take the mud out of this bog. Okay. For 25 years.

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Chris: Wow.

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Kayla: So this guy knew he was selling a crap product. Like, I feel like that's something we talk about often, is, like, we have a hard time teasing apart. When there is a charismatic leader like this guy, or head of a, you know, somebody who founds an MLM, somebody who founds a cult, it can be hard to differentiate, like, who actually believes what they're selling and who is just scamming. I mean, it seems to me like this guy was just scamming, but what's. What's your take on it?

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Ceara Manchester: I'm kind of. I've always been kind of iffy on that. Okay. The way he talks about Mud is, like, I personally think he's got a bit of, like, a mud kink or something. I don't know.

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Kayla: He really going on right.

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Ceara Manchester: Something's a little weird there. And, I mean, like, heaving all these years and stuff. Like, you find him, like, online. He writes blogs that are, like, mudman. And he has, like, his license plate on his car says Mudman. And, like, he's really into mud.

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Kayla: Really into mud.

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Ceara Manchester: I heard, like, that he went by mud man for a while. Like, because went and, like, tried to deep dive. Like, who the hell is this guy? Where did he come from? And we couldn't find anything on him before, like, 1994. Oh, he just, like, doesn't exist, even though he's apparently lived in Castlemanden his whole life.

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Chris: That's weird.

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Ceara Manchester: Small town. And he apparently, like, helped his mom run her esthetician business, and he had his own massage therapy business. And there's just, like, no record of it. He went to, like, two different colleges. We couldn't even really find two. I think we found record of him at one, but then there was also, like, a different name that it was under too. And it's like. But then we couldn't find anything on that name. So there's something, like, really weird about history, because most people, there's, like, some records you can find, right? If you were like an adult.

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Kayla: Sure.

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Ceara Manchester: As an adult, there should be some record if you own a business or.

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Kayla: Yeah, business records are just. Yeah, various civic records.

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Chris: Something.

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Kayla: Yeah, something interesting.

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Ceara Manchester: So he's just kind of a sketchy character to begin with. And then. Yeah, then he bought this mud, and he's just been trying to sell it all this time. And I don't know, it's just. I kind of think he thinks there is something to it. But at first, I had heard from one of my informants. The first informant that I had, his name was Dave, who ended up getting blamed. Mark was convinced everything was Dave. Dave did everything.

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Kayla: Oh, no.

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Ceara Manchester: He thought. He. He even sued Dave in the lawsuit, said that Dave started Boo is woo. But I met Dave, like, two or three weeks after I had started boo as woo. Okay? I found him and contacted him. He was, like, never an admin in the group or anything. He was just an informant for us.

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Kayla: Okay?

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Ceara Manchester: Had been the top rep at boo, kind of, before they started getting into the whole parasite thing. And, like, there was still kind of health claims, but it wasn't like quantum tunneling worms out your feet, and you.

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Chris: Gotta watch out for those quantum worms.

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Ceara Manchester: It wasn't like that. And that's kind of. He had started speaking out because they had screwed him out of money at first. Okay? Then when he started hearing them talking about, like, parasites and stuff, he was like a. A holistic nurse. So it's like, he was into woo stuff, but he had a science background. Like, he was actually a nurse, so he wasn't like, full woo.

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Kayla: Right?

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Ceara Manchester: He still. He's like, something was too far for him, and the whole parasite thing was way too far for him. He's like, they're not getting parasites out of their bodies. Like, it's bull, right? And so when heard that, and then he also found out about it being near landfill. And then he's like, he had taken it for like a year or two years, something like that himself. So he's like, now he's been eating this bog mud that's next to landfill. That pissed him off, too, right? And that's kind of like, ultimately, we had the same goal of, like, exposing the company and, you know, reporting it to regulatory agencies, because that's dangerous. So we kind of, like, teamed up. And he had somebody that was still in the company that was feeding him information, so he was kind of our go between.

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Ceara Manchester: But eventually, I ended up meeting her. She became my second informant. Her name's Louise, and she's an amazing lady. She really helped with, like, the class action lawsuit that happened against Boo, you know, and got a lot of information on them from the backside. And, like, we kind of had an idea when it was going to shut down. And, you know, she helped incorporate a lot. She didn't actually try to, like, build up in boo, but somebody that signed up under her, like, took off and, like, way up the pyramid. So it kind of took her up the pyramid, too. And so. But then she didn't like stuff that she was seeing. She heard what were talking about with booze woo. And, like, on my Facebook page that it was next to landfill and all that, so she started investigating herself.

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Ceara Manchester: And she's one of the people who ended up doing one of the. The tests for the product. Okay. There had been one, you know, they usually do, like, a CoA, so a certificate of analysis. There had been one rep that had gotten a CoA on the product beforehand just because people were like, oh, but dirt can have heavy metals in it. And so she tested it just to see if there's something wrong with it. And hers did come up with, like, every test that I've seen has had high levels of lead and arsenic in it.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Ceara Manchester: And some of them, like, really high potassium. Like, dangerous levels of potassium as well. What ended up happening is Louise ended up getting testing done. She actually was like, there's all these claims. And she went to that Adam guy who ended up being, like, one of the tippy top. And this other woman, Carrie Ann, she was another tippy top. Like, Adam and Carrie Ann were pretty much the top ones when boo came crumbling down.

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Chris: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: And she had gone to both of them. Carrie Ann was the one that was under Louise, who had kind of, like, built up the pyramid. And she's like, you know, there's people making these claims. We should just test it ourselves. Let's get testing done. Then we have it, and we can be like, no, there's nothing. It's clean. Let's prove it. And so they all put money in, like, thousands of dollars to have it tested. And they tested a bunch of other companies, fulvic acid as well. So to compare it to, like, the competing products. And it came back that it had high levels of blighted Narsnik.

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Chris: So, geez, was mark on board with this testing, or was this just something that these folks were doing with their own time.

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Ceara Manchester: And I think he actually kind of argued them about it because I know Louise and him got into a big argument because she confronted him with the test results and was like, there's high levels of lead and arsenic in here. And he's like, no, it's a thin range, and every batch is a little bit different. And he's like, that's perfectly fine. It chelates heavy metals. And she's like, no, you're poisoning people. And you need to tell people that this is in the process. And they got the whole thing. And she's a recording of it somewhere, too.

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Chris: Wow.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So that's. That's part of it where I'm like, maybe he was just a scammer, because I heard that recording, and it's like she's telling him, like, I have third party certificate analysis. Testing. Yeah, these are the levels that's dangerous. You need to, like, stop selling this or tell people, or, you know, you need to do something. And he's like, oh, no. And he's just, you know, gaslighting her and trying to twist it around. Like, you're just trying to create issues that don't need to be there. And it's like, okay, well, you sound like every other MLM scammer, you know, head of an MLM that I've heard of. So it's like, I don't know.

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Ceara Manchester: That's where I get confused because it's like, I've seen both sides of them where it's obsessed with the mud, and then where he's, like, just being a typical, you know, scammer charlatan, you know? Right.

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Chris: You know, what makes me that reminds me of is, like, when you were saying how he signed a 25 year contract for the. For the property. It makes me think that, like, that's just going to warp your thinking. Like, even if he was a true believer at one point, and then, you know, maybe if he. If he didn't have that, like, that tremendous weight of, you know, I have to make this work because I'm in. I'm so in deep on this, you know, I wonder how that he would have maybe responded differently, right? Like, oh, you know, maybe he would have responded to those tests in a more reasonable manner if he wasn't like, I gotta make this work.

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Kayla: The mud has to work.

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Chris: The mud must work because I signed it. 25 year contract.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah, well, I mean, at the point we came in, his contract would have technically been up whether he had renewed it or not, because we're talking. This is like 2020, 2021, where boo is getting really popular, whereas the contract should have been up in 2019. But he was still getting it from somewhere. And, I mean, you can tell that was true, though, still, because he started off with Golden Moore and he was just selling it as, like, you know, like a mud mask or, like, mud baths for spas and stuff like that. It's like, I don't know why he didn't just stay with that, because there's a market for that, especially if you're talking about he started this and he claims it's his whole, like, Germany story that was, like, in the late eighties, right? That he started with all that stuff.

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Ceara Manchester: So back then, there probably wasn't a huge market for, like, mud bath products, so there was something to be built on. And he apparently did. I mean, the company got bought out and became public, and, you know, so it's like, people saw value in it. But then he tried to turn golden war into an MLM, but then he sold the MLM off when the company went public.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Ceara Manchester: Like, another company, you constantly see that, like, dichotomy with him where he's, like, very invested, and he's obviously trying to, like, start these business, and he's passionate about mud. But then it's like, is he just, like, you know, like you said, chris, that he's, you know, just invested in it? And then it's like he doesn't care what anybody says or, you know, he's tried to start mlms with it. And people don't start mlms unless they know they can make tons of money.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: Learning an MLM.

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Kayla: Right.

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Ceara Manchester: And doing it off the backs of, you know, all the people who are losing money in them. So there's. There has to be, like, a questionable moral compass happening with people who start mlms. Like, I just don't believe, like, a good person starts an MLM. Yeah.

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Kayla: There's always going to be. I think that dichotomy is a really good analysis. There's always going to be a little bit of both. It seems like there's kind of. They have to ride this line of true believer and just straight up grifter. Yeah, that's really interesting to analyze. And I feel like we're going to be talking about that forever of, like, what kind of person starts an MLM? Like, what goes into that?

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Chris: Yeah. And I feel like it, like, blends together, too, sometimes.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Ceara Manchester: With Mark, it's like, I mean, he only really tried to start one with gold and more. And you know, it didn't last long. So, you know, maybe he just thought that was a bad idea and then people approached him. He's like, oh, I've kind of done it before. And these people are successful in, you know, they have a history of being in multi level marketing. Maybe this can actually work. So I don't know that I would say he's like your, I think Carlo, that was like the president of the company, he has a history of being in multi level marketing. He's one of these like lifelong jumps from company to company kind of, but like in corporate level. Because if you look at mlms, they're actually very, like, incestuous.

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Ceara Manchester: So, like, somebody will work in corporate at this one and then they jump and they start their own over here and then bring in somebody from this MLM to work for them. And it's, they're all kind of weird and connected because there's these people who know that they can make a lot of money by being at the top of them, you know, in the corporate, I'm not even talking about like in the pyramid themselves, but like being in corporate, whether CEO's, CFO's, presidents, you know, founding members, you know, donators and stuff like that. So. And those people, I feel, are more like they know what's up. They just know that they can make bank off it and they just don't give a shit.

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Kayla: Right, right. So you talked a little bit about the informants that you had and like some recordings that were made and the, the tests. But could you talk a little bit more about the anti boo activism that went on in boo as Wu? Like, yeah. What tactics did you use to kind of help take this spoiler alert, the company's gone. I think we talked about it a little bit to help take the company down. We can talk about exactly what the downfall was like, but I'm interested to know, like, what exactly you guys did as activists to really dig into this one.

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Ceara Manchester: I mean, it's kind of the same thing I've been doing since I started anti activism. But I think people just heard the message with Boo because they were so outraged that people were eating this dirt that was coming up that it's next to landfill and it's got heavy metals in it and they're saying parasites are coming out of them. And I think it was just like the perfect thing for people to kind of like, for it to click because I know, I've been saying it for years that if you see false health claims, report them to regulatory agencies, because if we get enough reports in that's going to flag it to those regulatory agencies that there's something going on.

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Ceara Manchester: That's how it works, like, with the FDA, when they start getting a whole bunch of reports that people are having, you know, adverse reactions to some homeopathic product. Like, I remember, I'm just thinking of, like, the teething gel that the little kids had that had, like, belladonna in it.

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Kayla: Oh, God.

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Chris: Oh, Jesus.

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Ceara Manchester: And it's like there was too much in it because, you know, homeopathy is supposed to have, like, nothing in it. It's nothing.

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Kayla: Right, right.

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Ceara Manchester: Somehow, like, the belladonna was like the ingredient that they diluted, but for some reason, some belladonna was, again, actually getting into it. It's like a homeopathic baby teething gel.

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Kayla: Oh, boy.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So, like, that's kind of the kind of things that I think of is like, you know, there's a product and then, you know, people are getting sick or hurt by it. And so a lot of reports go in. And so that's kind of what you have to do. You have to get their attention. You have to get a lot of reports in for them to even kind of look at it and consider it. You know, if there's 20 people doing it, they're like, it's not a big deal. It's not hurting enough people. Even if it's hurting people, until it's reported and they see that it's hurting people and enough people basically getting hurt, then it's an issue.

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Ceara Manchester: And the same, they need to see that there's, like a consistency to the claims that are being made with the FTC, that they are consistently, deceptively marketing these products. So it's not like, oh, one off here. Somebody says, oh, yeah, you know, I had a cut on my arm and it healed it in a day. You know, like, they don't give a shit about that. But, you know, when you have people being like, oh, it helps with autism. And, you know, a lot of people are saying that same thing about this one product. People are reporting that because they don't just know it, you have to report it.

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Kayla: Right?

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Ceara Manchester: And then you might get some action on it. So that was kind of the whole push is like, we can see this is dangerous. They need to at least look into it, you know, because the government can obviously look into things way better than we can is just, you know, the average person online trying to dig for stuff. So it's like, you know, if people are eating dirt, that's dangerous. They're making these health claims, that's illegal. You know, this is coming from a landfill. That's dangerous. Some of the stuff that was processed at that landfill was not great either. You're talking like, cows that had mad cow disease and stuff.

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Kayla: No.

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Ceara Manchester: Yeah. Being.

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Kayla: That's where you get the parasites. You're gonna get the parasites from the flu. Yeah.

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Ceara Manchester: So, like, in other. Just like, you know, they were. There's a whole picture you could see in, like, google maps where they're like, a whole pile of, like, tires being burnt. And it's like, they might be doing that safely, but is it getting into the land? You know, because they usually buy land, and it's like, okay, if they mess up that land.

386
00:58:16,180 --> 00:58:16,532
Kayla: Right.

387
00:58:16,596 --> 00:58:20,420
Ceara Manchester: But you're not expecting that land to be taken and eaten, you know, so it's like.

388
00:58:20,580 --> 00:58:21,460
Chris: Right, right.

389
00:58:21,580 --> 00:58:44,642
Ceara Manchester: And any runoff from rain and stuff that's getting into bogs because that's literally kind of what bogs are. They're, you know, these stagnating waters that have been sitting there. So they're gonna get run off. They're usually a low point where the ice age was and where there was, like, a bunch of snow and stuff had sat and created a divot. And so things are going to run off into the bog. Yeah. So it's just.

390
00:58:44,746 --> 00:58:45,946
Kayla: Yeah, it's really gross.

391
00:58:46,138 --> 00:59:08,604
Ceara Manchester: Yeah, it's a lot of dangerous kind of stuff that could be happening that needed to be looked into just for people's safety even. Not even to be like, oh, yeah, we got an MLM down. But, like, people are getting hurt by this. You know, people are having reactions. I mean, how safe can be eating dirt all the time? Be like, how? Like, I mean, like, even you just went outside and ate your dirt right now.

392
00:59:08,692 --> 00:59:09,320
Kayla: Right.

393
00:59:09,900 --> 00:59:12,516
Ceara Manchester: I mean, I feel like there's a lot of things that could be in there.

394
00:59:12,628 --> 00:59:19,932
Kayla: I mean, I wouldn't want to do it. Like, I see the dogs walk in my neighborhood, and, like, I mean, I live on a busy street. Like, I don't want to. I don't know what's going into.

395
00:59:19,996 --> 00:59:20,476
Ceara Manchester: Yeah.

396
00:59:20,588 --> 00:59:30,044
Kayla: So to buy it from, you're getting a bag from a company. Like, I don't actually know what they're doing to make that dirt safe, and then they're not actually doing anything to make the dirt safe.

397
00:59:30,092 --> 00:59:30,612
Ceara Manchester: Right.

398
00:59:30,756 --> 00:59:31,084
Chris: Yeah.

399
00:59:31,132 --> 00:59:53,614
Ceara Manchester: And I mean, a lot of the reasons that we actually don't have parasites, like, issues in countries like the United States is because we have, you know, this whole concept of, like, hygiene and cleanliness and, you know, proper sewer systems and things. So it's like you're, if you're eating the dirt, you're eating the stuff that you've, like, has stopped us from getting parasites, has stopped us from getting like, tetanus and stuff, you know, like.

400
00:59:53,702 --> 00:59:54,070
Kayla: Right.

401
00:59:54,150 --> 01:00:14,886
Ceara Manchester: That's where that comes from too, you know? And I mean, there's so many things that can be in the earth that are dangerous, but we've created this hygiene system in our country that's like, we know not to do that, so why are we doing like, okay, and you're eating dirt, but, you know, grown adults, it's like, you don't know all the things that can be in dirt, right?

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01:00:14,918 --> 01:00:27,090
Chris: It's like the raw water trend, you know, it's like, there seems like there's several things where we've decided to, like, forego the things that are even like, fluoridated water. Honestly, like, it kind of goes back to that og thing.

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01:00:27,210 --> 01:00:49,950
Kayla: There's like this mentality that like, well, if it's outside of the systems that we've created, if it's outside of these, you know, hygiene systems or the sewer systems or this, like, if it's outside of those systems, it's better for us somehow. It like, goes back to naturalist felt. Yeah, naturalist. So that's better for you? No, it's not, because that's what's going to actually make you sick. It's really good to point out.

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01:00:50,070 --> 01:01:20,940
Ceara Manchester: It comes down to like an innate fear of authority, in my opinion, because they're terrified of the government or the lizard people or the illuminati or whoever they're making their bad guy at the moment. But, and I think that's how a lot of people get into this is through fear mongering. And that's kind of like why I think it's a cult. Like science denialism is a cult, and it has many kind of charismatic leaders within it, you know, depending on what area that you're in. Because, like, you know, the anti vaxxers, they have their leaders.

405
01:01:21,100 --> 01:01:22,748
Chris: Oh, yeah, there's a whole pantheon.

406
01:01:22,844 --> 01:01:34,300
Ceara Manchester: Wakefield and Sears and all, you know, all of them. And then, you know, like every kind of little group has got theirs. So it's like a mega cult because there's like multiple cult leaders in their own little offshoots of it.

407
01:01:34,380 --> 01:01:35,060
Kayla: Right, right.

408
01:01:35,180 --> 01:01:47,268
Ceara Manchester: And it just. It's dangerous. It's all around. It's dangerous, you know, and it's, you know, you can figure that out with science, but people don't want to listen to science. And it's scary because they think it's all a big conspiracy.

409
01:01:47,404 --> 01:01:47,740
Kayla: Yeah.

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01:01:47,780 --> 01:02:03,852
Chris: You know, so would you say with boo, then the. The thing that really took them down was less. It's less about the pyramid and more about the health claims and the dangerousness of what they were doing and the. And the actual tests that were running, analysis of the actual composition of the dirt.

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01:02:03,996 --> 01:02:12,298
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. For them, it was absolutely the health claims of that's what got it. Because the first thing that happened was we got Health Canada. We're the first one that did anything about it.

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01:02:12,394 --> 01:02:12,818
Kayla: Okay.

413
01:02:12,874 --> 01:02:55,766
Ceara Manchester: That we knew of that, like, made a statement that they were calling the product, but. Because FDA and FTC were investigating them, but they didn't make announcement about it at first, but eventually they. They did, and they were investigating them. We found out that there was a hold on their product from the FDA. So we had a pretty good idea. The FDA was starting to investigate them, too, but they were still somehow managing to get product, like, into the country. So because it comes from Canada, so they're getting into the United States with an FDA hold on the product. So that's illegal, too. So there's all sorts of weird illegal things happening with this company eventually. Then the FTC had sent them a letter, a warning letter, but that happened kind of at the same time they, like, shut down.

414
01:02:55,878 --> 01:03:07,362
Ceara Manchester: They got a warning letter very soon, around that time. But then the FDA came out, said, yeah, they'd been investigating that they're recalling the product, that they had done their own testing, and there was high levels of lead and arsenic in the product.

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01:03:07,486 --> 01:03:08,378
Kayla: Oh, boy.

416
01:03:08,554 --> 01:03:12,882
Chris: So what was the thing that actually did? Like, why did they shut down when they finally did?

417
01:03:13,026 --> 01:03:28,354
Ceara Manchester: I think it's because they knew that they were getting investigated. It was gonna be recalled by the FDA, and they got no warning letter from the FTC. So they knew shit was it was going down. They're gonna get shut down. So they just kind of closed it before they got in trouble type of thing.

418
01:03:28,482 --> 01:03:34,610
Kayla: How did that. How did the shutdown of the company play out? Like, what was that day like when they actually were put?

419
01:03:34,950 --> 01:03:41,014
Ceara Manchester: Nobody kind of believed it at first because they just, like, sent out an email, and apparently the email wasn't supposed to be sent out.

420
01:03:41,102 --> 01:03:41,850
Kayla: Oh, no.

421
01:03:42,430 --> 01:03:59,686
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So they all got this, and then the boo reps are like, what is this? What's going on? Like, is the company shut down? Like, what's going on? Somebody's like, oh, no. Boo's email got hacked, and I'm just messing around. And. And then it came out no, that email is real. It just got sent out earlier than it was supposed to. And.

422
01:03:59,758 --> 01:04:00,656
Kayla: Interesting.

423
01:04:00,838 --> 01:04:11,940
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So that was kind of. We're all confused because, like, we can only really go off with, like, the reps are the ones getting the email, you know? So. Yeah, and they're conspiracy theorists, so they're like, oh, my God, somebody hacked the system.

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01:04:12,100 --> 01:04:13,300
Kayla: Right, right.

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01:04:13,460 --> 01:04:23,120
Ceara Manchester: So it's like, you know, we're like, okay, but, like, are they shut? Because this says that they're shutting down. So, like, is that true? Is this real? And they're like, oh, no, the haters hacked us. And we're like, okay, but we're the haters.

426
01:04:23,900 --> 01:04:24,524
Chris: We didn't do it.

427
01:04:24,532 --> 01:04:33,518
Ceara Manchester: We're the haters, and we didn't do this. So is this real? You know, and then we got confirmation that it was real, and that was it. They just closed up shop.

428
01:04:33,694 --> 01:04:35,870
Chris: Interesting sort of sudden, like that.

429
01:04:35,950 --> 01:04:46,610
Kayla: What did that feel like? Once it sunk in and it really. You all knew that, like, oh, it's over. What did that feel like? Like you took down a pretty big deal company. Like, what did that feel like?

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01:04:47,230 --> 01:05:27,606
Ceara Manchester: I mean, kind of just in shock for a while because it was like, damn, we, like, we actually did it. Because when you've been doing this for, you know, multiple years on end, and I even just trying to get people interested in reporting these health claims and trying to get them to understand that, you know, these are pyramid schemes, that they're cults, and that this is particularly dangerous, the health and wellness ones, and that, you know, we can actually do something about this. You know, we can go and report. Everybody has the ability to do it. You just go online and file a report. You see something sketchy online, take a screenshot of it and send it to regulatory agencies. There's nonprofit organizations like Tina who will take in reports as well. And then they'll send those reports.

431
01:05:27,678 --> 01:06:02,406
Ceara Manchester: They collect them for certain companies, not just mlms, either. They'll take them, collect them, and then they'll have their lawyers kind of, like, send a letter, sending a warning to the FTC or the FDA warning about the product so it has a little bit more weight behind it. And it's like, there are options out there for what, you know, any one person can do something, you know? And if we all kind of do it, we might actually get things like boo. Happening where we take them down. But we need that collaboration. People have to be willing to spend the next minute or two to report a health claim right now.

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01:06:02,558 --> 01:06:41,088
Chris: But it's really inspiring, though. Like, it's really nice to hear, like, because I feel like you don't hear that very often, particularly with mlms or even wellness companies, where the, you know, like, the consumers actually win a battle. And it's nice to hear that, like you said, with. With some collaboration and just, you know, like, a short amount of time to. To report something that it can be done. I think that'll be really inspiring for our listeners, and I think that's, like, an easy action item for them, too. Right? Like, what can I do? Like, I'm just listening to the. Oh, it's. It's about filing the report. It sounds like they don't even need to start a blog. They don't need to, you know, like, all they need to do is just. If they see something. If you see something, say something.

433
01:06:41,224 --> 01:06:43,486
Chris: Yeah, it sounds like that's what it is.

434
01:06:43,608 --> 01:07:12,914
Ceara Manchester: Oh. Like, I get credited a lot of times with, like, taking boo down because I started boo as woo, but, like, it would not have just happened if it was me reporting. It was everybody that was reporting. These claims got boo taken down. It was the whole community within, not even just boo as woo, but the. There was other groups that were, like, more of the pseudoscience type people that had come up that were fighting boo. There was two of those as well. Dave had his own group, and there's a completely separate one. And they were all reporting, too, because they saw that were doing it, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's report it.

435
01:07:12,962 --> 01:07:32,342
Ceara Manchester: And, you know, it was kind of even the collaboration of, like, the woo side and, like, the pro science side, like, working together to get this company down, because we all recognized that this was dangerous, you know, because it got. That's how bad boot was, that even people who are into that kind of stuff were like, okay, this is a little too much for me, too.

436
01:07:32,526 --> 01:08:07,460
Kayla: Wow. That collaboration is also really nice to see. Like, that's part of why we really wanted to talk about boo on our show is like, yeah, we've talked about Lularoe, and we've talked about some of these companies that, like, we'll even get lawsuits. We even have these big, explosive documentaries, and it's like, oh, we all know it's bad, but the company's still around. It was really nice to see boo is gone. And it was because of. Yeah, it was because of people actually finding those reports and doing the activism, like you've been doing. And so then to hear that there was a collaborative effort amongst folks who often have really diametrically opposed ideologies.

437
01:08:07,540 --> 01:08:08,084
Chris: That is nice.

438
01:08:08,132 --> 01:08:08,732
Kayla: That's just nice.

439
01:08:08,796 --> 01:08:10,040
Chris: Yeah, it was nice to hear.

440
01:08:10,620 --> 01:08:48,450
Ceara Manchester: My informants were all on that side, you know, because they were all people who had worked in boo and the people who got the class action started. That was the other thing that probably led to them shutting down, too, is because they have, like, an FTC warning letter coming in. They have the FDA investigating and holding their product. Now there's class action setting up. But, like, the class action, that was all, like, people who kind of woke up and saw that there was a problem with booze, trying to find victims who had been hurt by boo and, like, getting that class action together. So, like, that was all them. That was people who are into all that stuff, trying to, you know, they were doing consumer advocacy. Let's go.

441
01:08:48,750 --> 01:08:50,982
Chris: And class actions are company killers.

442
01:08:51,086 --> 01:08:53,166
Kayla: Let's do it. Yeah, let's get more from.

443
01:08:53,318 --> 01:08:58,350
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. You get one on young living right now. The essential oils.

444
01:08:58,470 --> 01:09:00,206
Kayla: Is that what's next for you? Is. Is.

445
01:09:00,278 --> 01:09:01,435
Ceara Manchester: Yeah, that's what I've been.

446
01:09:01,557 --> 01:09:02,879
Chris: They've been around a while, right?

447
01:09:02,959 --> 01:09:05,399
Ceara Manchester: Oh, yeah. For nearly 30 years.

448
01:09:05,519 --> 01:09:06,127
Chris: Wow.

449
01:09:06,263 --> 01:09:11,935
Ceara Manchester: But, yeah, there's. There's a lot going on with them. That's a whole thing if you're into mlms. And. Oh, yeah, you know, woo.

450
01:09:11,966 --> 01:09:24,767
Kayla: Stuff you've mentioned a little bit about, like, where some of the top sellers went. You know, some of them have jumped, shipped to other mlms or have gone off and done their own thing. Do we know anything about what's going on with Mark himself? Like, what's. What's he done since the fallout?

451
01:09:24,903 --> 01:09:27,479
Ceara Manchester: Pretty much just gone into hiding. Interesting.

452
01:09:27,599 --> 01:09:28,483
Kayla: Okay.

453
01:09:28,671 --> 01:09:54,622
Ceara Manchester: He's gone out of the, like, public eye pretty much. I mean, he was even apparently, like, hiding in his car when they were trying to serve him papers for the class action in his mud man car. But what ended up happening is, I believe, from the evidence that I've seen, that him and maybe Carlo together are kind of, like, white labeling it to another MLM company. Oh, boy. So I don't think boo's, like, actually gone.

454
01:09:54,796 --> 01:09:56,090
Kayla: Interesting. Okay.

455
01:09:56,130 --> 01:10:00,870
Chris: Do you expect Mark will crop back up somewhere at some point, like, you know, just resurface?

456
01:10:01,250 --> 01:10:29,078
Ceara Manchester: I mean, I think he'll stay behind the scenes, but I think he'll definitely still have his hands in it. Like, that's what I think what he's doing right now, it's a company called youngevity, and they're known for kind of, like, picking up what's left over from these, like, collapsing mlms. They'll like, buy out the rights to their products, to their email lists, and, wow, that's what they did with Boo. But, like, the packaging is, like, pretty much identical. It looks like it was, like, leftover boo, like, packaging just. They changed it to youngevity on there.

457
01:10:29,134 --> 01:10:34,090
Kayla: And all the silos are saying, yeah, well, I'm recycling.

458
01:10:34,390 --> 01:11:13,832
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. So all of the, like, you know, same people went over to it. They're all youngevity reps now on top of other mlms because they're, you know, rarely just in one. And they say it's, like, 99.9% the same. It came from the same source. Boo had a, like, a testing because mark was getting sick of, like, everybody coming out with their own testing and being like, there's heavy metals or heavy metals. So he got testing done, apparently to prove that there wasn't. And he has this, like, 93 page safety report, but it never got released because the company got shut down. But lo and behold, young Jevity pops up, and they've got a 90 something page safety report.

459
01:11:14,016 --> 01:11:23,878
Ceara Manchester: And I even have, like, evidence of Carrie Ann and Adam to those two top reps when Boo went down saying that it is boo safety report.

460
01:11:23,974 --> 01:11:25,030
Chris: Yeah, that makes sense.

461
01:11:25,190 --> 01:11:34,318
Ceara Manchester: I've actually been talking with a. One of the writers over for Tina Tooth and advertising, that nonprofit I was talking about before.

462
01:11:34,414 --> 01:11:34,790
Kayla: Right.

463
01:11:34,870 --> 01:12:11,708
Ceara Manchester: And I'm trying to show him the evidence, but they got really kind of scared that people were watching. So when they first announced that youngevity was doing it, they were like, oh, it's 99.9% the same, and it's the same source and all this stuff. And then I don't know if they got told to, like, shut up or they just got paranoid, but they, like, deleted all that stuff. And now, as time has kind of progressed, they're starting to kind of admit it again. So I'm kind of, like, trying to convince Tina, like, no, it's the same shit. You know, they're saying it's the same stuff, and, you know, but it's like, proving that to them so that they can do it.

464
01:12:11,724 --> 01:12:37,758
Ceara Manchester: And it's like, then they got to try and prove it to the FDA and FTC to then maybe, hopefully get it shut down. So it's a lot of just screenshotting stuff and looking back and old screenshots from boo days and stuff, trying to find stuff. But there is a connection with young Jevity and Boo already. So when Boo knew that they were starting to get in trouble for mass reporting, they had, like, a compliance crackdown where they told reps, like, you got to stop doing this shit. You can't beat saying it cures everything.

465
01:12:37,934 --> 01:12:38,406
Kayla: Oh, wow.

466
01:12:38,438 --> 01:13:11,058
Ceara Manchester: Didn't work. They continued doing it, of course, but when that happened, they had a lot of mlms will have a compliance agent to, like, help keep the reps in line. I don't know why they have them, because none of them seem to be able to do their job, but they ended up having young Jevity's compliance agent come in. So, like, why is young Jevity loaning their compliance agent to boo? Unless there's some kind of connection there. So. And then they happen to buy the whole email list for the customers and the brand partners, and then they offered them to join youngevity free. They'll get them, like, free product back.

467
01:13:11,194 --> 01:13:13,170
Chris: Okay, so they clearly had a relationship.

468
01:13:13,290 --> 01:13:13,714
Ceara Manchester: Yeah.

469
01:13:13,802 --> 01:13:21,786
Chris: Question I actually meant to ask up front, and I totally forgot. Boo stands for black oxygen organics. Correct.

470
01:13:21,938 --> 01:13:22,602
Ceara Manchester: Correct.

471
01:13:22,746 --> 01:13:24,910
Chris: What the hell is black oxygen?

472
01:13:25,930 --> 01:13:43,142
Ceara Manchester: Well, I mean, it's gone through very many names, but there's always been kind of after gold and more, there's always been some kind of combination of, like, black and organics or oxygen or some kind of. So, you know, just because it's like a black powder when it's dehydrated.

473
01:13:43,246 --> 01:13:43,990
Chris: Okay.

474
01:13:44,150 --> 01:13:55,696
Ceara Manchester: You know, because it's like old, thick bog mud. It's not just regular mud. It's bog mud. Yeah. So it looks black when it's dehydrated. So. And then organics is just, you know, a marketing term pretty much, because.

475
01:13:55,798 --> 01:13:56,516
Chris: Right.

476
01:13:56,708 --> 01:14:05,292
Ceara Manchester: I mean, it's not like you're growing it. So, like, what's. What's organic? You know, it's like calling, like, sea salt organic. It's like, that's an inorganic compound. Right.

477
01:14:05,436 --> 01:14:08,720
Kayla: Right. Gluten free aren't tired.

478
01:14:09,260 --> 01:14:10,076
Ceara Manchester: Right.

479
01:14:10,268 --> 01:14:22,770
Kayla: So I think I know what you're going to say, but we got to get this one for. For our listeners. Cult are just weird. We try to figure out if things are cult or if they're just weird. Is boo a cult, or is it just weird?

480
01:14:22,940 --> 01:14:24,118
Ceara Manchester: I think it's a cult.

481
01:14:24,294 --> 01:14:25,510
Kayla: I think that we would agree.

482
01:14:25,630 --> 01:14:26,510
Chris: All right.

483
01:14:26,670 --> 01:14:30,934
Kayla: Based on everything you've told us today, it's an MLM, so it's going to hit those.

484
01:14:30,982 --> 01:14:33,614
Ceara Manchester: Yeah, I think they're all cults. They're commercial cults.

485
01:14:33,702 --> 01:14:40,610
Chris: Mark certainly sounds like a charismatic leader. Certainly sounds like there's a whole lot of antifactuality going on.

486
01:14:41,030 --> 01:15:25,408
Ceara Manchester: Okay. Commercial cults aren't necessarily exactly the same as religious cults because they don't have to have a charismatic leader, they tend to, you know, like, I actually don't think that Marc was that charismatic at all. He's a little bit awkward. And I mean, we have jokes about, like, even how he would pronounce words. Like, our big one that we have in, like, the admins of booze woo was how he used to say libido because he said libido. So we even have, like, we have like, a meme of him just going, libido, libido. But, yeah, I don't think he was actually that charismatic. But that's the thing with commercial cults is it's not necessarily like a religious one. They don't have to have that figurehead. It's kind of, there is a hierarchy to it. So there are, like, people following certain leaders and stuff.

487
01:15:25,504 --> 01:15:36,152
Ceara Manchester: And, like, in a multi level marketing, it's obviously like the uplines, right, the CEO's and stuff. But they might not be worshipped in the same aspect as, like, a religious cult would.

488
01:15:36,336 --> 01:15:36,696
Chris: It's.

489
01:15:36,728 --> 01:16:22,838
Ceara Manchester: They're kind of worshipping, like, the MLM itself, the mindset and all that kind of, you know, thing. The dream, the business opportunity fantasy. You know, it's not necessarily a leader. And, and you see that in different ones, you know, because there's many different kinds of cults. There's political, there's religious and spiritual, and. And MLM just happened to be a commercial one. Yeah. You do often do see, like, some of the CEO's and stuff do get kind of worshipped in a way and are very charismatic because I think it's the same kind of abuse tactics that are used to, you know, in all cults, regardless of what it is. And so the people who would start an MLM might be naturally gifted with those manipulation tactics. And so then it does kind of get that. Yeah, almost religious overtone.

490
01:16:22,854 --> 01:16:32,622
Ceara Manchester: That's what you're seeing with, like, Gary young and young living. Right. You know, thinking he's a prophet. Like, there's obviously some kind of, like, religious crossover happening, and people did kind of worship him.

491
01:16:32,726 --> 01:16:48,860
Chris: But I do like the point that you make, though, about the, like, in a commercial cult, like an MLM, the charismatic leader, like, is the money. It is the dream. It is the promises. Like, that is the inspiration that ordinarily you get from maybe a particularly charismatic person.

492
01:16:49,280 --> 01:16:59,960
Ceara Manchester: And just the whole culture of it, that whole boss babe tribe or humbro. We call them the dude bros, their crypto schemes and stuff.

493
01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:01,472
Chris: Hustle culture, baby.

494
01:17:01,576 --> 01:17:09,650
Ceara Manchester: Yeah, exactly. But it's MLM specific. And people get so obsessed with it. It's a lifestyle. It's not just a company.

495
01:17:09,730 --> 01:17:21,570
Kayla: You know, I think that covers all of our questions today. So I guess our final one is just, where can our audience find out about more of you and your anti MLM work? Like, what are you working on next? You know, where are you on social media?

496
01:17:21,690 --> 01:17:38,942
Ceara Manchester: I'm on all the platforms. I probably hang out on Facebook and Instagram the most, which it's mombi hash anti MLM on Facebook. And it's, like, at mljtainde M Mombi. So it's like, mombi of the M and Mambi is, like, the MLM part, too.

497
01:17:39,006 --> 01:17:39,622
Kayla: Love it.

498
01:17:39,726 --> 01:18:12,740
Ceara Manchester: But you can probably just look it up as Mombi hash anti MLM on Instagram and Facebook. And I also have a website that I have, like, a blog and a bunch of resources. Like, if you'd like to report mlms, I have a whole page on there that you can report resources to other anti MLM creators and just, you know, articles and other resources. If you just want to learn about multilevel marketing, a whole bunch of stuff on there, even anonymous posting. So if you know something about an MLM and you don't want your identity to be out there, you can come over and make a blog post yourself and give us the dirt.

499
01:18:14,800 --> 01:18:30,214
Kayla: Dirt. I see what you did there. Well, Kira, thank you so much for your time today. You got to learn all about boo. I got to learn so much stuff that I didn't know. And our audience now knows not to spend $110 on a bag of dirt that you're supposed to eat. Don't eat it.

500
01:18:30,262 --> 01:18:31,542
Ceara Manchester: Don't eat dirt. Kids.

501
01:18:31,726 --> 01:18:32,638
Kayla: Don't eat dirt.

502
01:18:32,734 --> 01:18:33,990
Chris: Stay in school. Don't eat dirt.

503
01:18:34,070 --> 01:18:40,398
Kayla: And thank you for having such a heavy hand and taking down. The more these companies that can go down, just the better.

504
01:18:40,494 --> 01:18:58,890
Chris: Yeah, seriously, it's very inspiring. Like, when you do, you know, as you. I'm sure you know more than us, but, like, you do a lot of these stories about these mlms, and sometimes it kind of feels like you're just pissing into the wind a little bit. And so here, one that's like, no, that one actually got shut down is. I mean, that's super. That's super valuable.

505
01:18:58,970 --> 01:19:03,690
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. I mean, that was really the first one that the anti MLM movement took down. You know, like, that's great.

506
01:19:03,730 --> 01:19:04,434
Kayla: It's amazing.

507
01:19:04,522 --> 01:19:10,194
Ceara Manchester: We can do it. We. You know, it was like. That's always what I've been trying to, like. I want people to know that they can do it, too.

508
01:19:10,282 --> 01:19:11,618
Chris: Yeah, it can be done. Yeah.

509
01:19:11,674 --> 01:19:18,698
Ceara Manchester: Yeah. You just sitting at your house, like, average person can do something. We all do it. Then things happen.

510
01:19:18,834 --> 01:19:19,122
Chris: Yeah.

511
01:19:19,146 --> 01:19:21,110
Ceara Manchester: Like shutting down booze.

512
01:19:22,480 --> 01:19:32,104
Kayla: So that was the interview. What. What do you think of black oxygen organics or boo? Now that, Now that we've dug into all the.

513
01:19:32,192 --> 01:19:41,952
Chris: Dirty details, I think that I am upset that you didn't let me ask the question boo hoo.

514
01:19:42,136 --> 01:19:42,860
Kayla: I.

515
01:19:45,080 --> 01:20:45,294
Chris: You forbade me from saying boo hoo. I thought that was a great question. I don't know what was the problem with it. I really don't. No, but. No, it was a very good interview. I thought that she was excellent. I thought she hit all the right notes for me in terms of being skeptical of pseudoscience and wellness, but still working with people towards a cause, even if they don't necessarily exactly align with her worldview. Yeah. And also, it was inspiring. Like, I think that the idea that actually. Oh, shit. We sometimes can actually fight back against this bullshit is rare. It feels very rare. It feels like water in a desert these days. So I thought it was really nice to hear that. And also how much. And also how actionable it is, actually, even for. For people who don't. Who aren't her.

516
01:20:45,342 --> 01:21:15,682
Chris: Who aren't, like, a consumer advocate, who aren't people that, you know, she, like, has a blog, and she's getting contacts, and she's, like, doing all this stuff, like, as she described. You don't have to do all that. You just have to. If you encounter something that's like, hey, this is a false claim. This is something that could be potentially harmful. You know, just. Just make the, you know, the regulatory body, you know, submit a complaint to the regulatory bodies that. That it's relevant for, like the FDA or the FTC or something like that. So, anyway, there's lots of ways to.

517
01:21:15,706 --> 01:21:18,338
Kayla: Be a helper, and this is just one of the ways.

518
01:21:18,434 --> 01:21:19,722
Chris: Yeah. Overall, good.

519
01:21:19,826 --> 01:21:24,170
Kayla: So we've got one more thing to do before we can officially wrap up the episode.

520
01:21:24,250 --> 01:21:25,722
Chris: What's that, Kayla?

521
01:21:25,786 --> 01:21:37,260
Kayla: I mean, we talked about it in the interview, but obviously, we have to talk about it amongst ourselves as well. Is black oxygen organics? Is boo a cult? According to our.

522
01:21:37,340 --> 01:21:40,692
Chris: According to our criteria, yeah, that's why the people are here.

523
01:21:40,716 --> 01:21:41,828
Kayla: That's why we're here.

524
01:21:41,884 --> 01:21:45,400
Chris: That's the whole shtick, the whole schtick of the show.

525
01:21:45,820 --> 01:21:56,800
Kayla: So the first one, charismatic leader. I know that our definition of charismatic leader differs slightly from Kira's definition. I think by our definition. Yeah, we got one. We got one?

526
01:21:57,160 --> 01:22:23,860
Chris: I don't know we have one, but I wouldn't say that means that it scores highly on that criteria. Right. I think that it's present, but it sounds like the guy was not necessarily super charismatic. It sounds like he had the right product for the right audience and let the sort of the dream of it all of making it with the MLM kind of carry the day.

527
01:22:24,440 --> 01:22:34,688
Kayla: But there were a lot of charismatic acolytes. It seems like the top sellers were kind of picking up some of the slack that maybe Marc himself may not have had.

528
01:22:34,784 --> 01:22:44,256
Chris: Yeah, potentially. I still wouldn't say it's as high as Mary Kay or some other groups that we've done, but it's present, but not high for me.

529
01:22:44,328 --> 01:22:46,580
Kayla: So then how about expected harm?

530
01:22:47,160 --> 01:22:51,352
Chris: It sounds like that was actually the thing that got it taken down. That sounds like the main thing.

531
01:22:51,416 --> 01:22:53,936
Kayla: You eat lead, you're eating arsenic, right?

532
01:22:54,008 --> 01:22:56,840
Chris: So don't do that. Don't. Don't drink lead and arsenic.

533
01:22:56,880 --> 01:22:57,888
Kayla: That's harmful.

534
01:22:58,064 --> 01:23:01,264
Chris: We already get enough lead in this country and our drinking water.

535
01:23:01,352 --> 01:23:04,752
Kayla: We don't need more lead. We already are chock full of microplastics.

536
01:23:04,856 --> 01:23:05,632
Chris: All right, so, hi.

537
01:23:05,696 --> 01:23:16,294
Kayla: On that presence of ritual, people were taking baths saying there's worms in them. Quantum tunneling. I mean, like, I. I feel like.

538
01:23:16,302 --> 01:23:18,078
Chris: We didn't necessarily quantum worms, too.

539
01:23:18,134 --> 01:23:37,814
Kayla: Tunneling worms into it, but, like, we know. We know with mlms what the ritual looks like. It's the parties, it's the Facebook lives, it's the instagrams. It's the words that are used. We talked with Kira about the different boss terminology and quantum tunneling. Come on.

540
01:23:37,942 --> 01:23:43,506
Chris: Yeah, I think I've seen a Star Trek episode about quantum tunneling worms, actually. That sounds familiar.

541
01:23:43,618 --> 01:23:47,194
Kayla: I think that's what dunes about, right? So. Hi.

542
01:23:47,282 --> 01:23:48,162
Chris: Hi. Okay. Yeah.

543
01:23:48,226 --> 01:24:01,450
Kayla: What about niche within society? This is the toughest. Is it dirt drinking? I don't know. I know it's niche, but it became very. It got real popular real quick. But I guess even it's not right.

544
01:24:01,490 --> 01:24:13,796
Chris: Exactly. If were sitting here talking about, like, amway, then amway, not niche. This is like, I had never heard of boo, and I'm semi involved in the space thanks to this podcast. I'd say it's pretty niche.

545
01:24:13,868 --> 01:24:16,612
Kayla: All right, what about antifactuality?

546
01:24:16,716 --> 01:24:20,156
Chris: Oh, yeah. Rife. Rife with anti factuality.

547
01:24:20,188 --> 01:24:22,188
Kayla: Quantum tunneling worms.

548
01:24:22,244 --> 01:24:26,436
Chris: No, those. That is. That's true. Those exist. It's everything else.

549
01:24:26,508 --> 01:24:32,356
Kayla: I guess it's also, to be fair, the quantum tunneling came from one of the sellers. A lot of the claims, even like, the. The craziest claims.

550
01:24:32,388 --> 01:24:32,700
Chris: Right.

551
01:24:32,780 --> 01:24:47,108
Kayla: Cure your cancer came from sellers, not from, like, the people themselves, but the company themselves itself, claiming that, like, this dirt is going to make you stand up from your wheelchair. If you are a wheelchair user, it's.

552
01:24:47,124 --> 01:25:08,386
Chris: Like, that's anti factuality and the wide variety of the clients. So, like, the one true cure thing, right. Bam. Right there, scores it high in this category. But then you also have the whole, like, did tests on the. The quality of the soil that they are suggesting that you eat, and so that also factors in.

553
01:25:08,418 --> 01:25:08,586
Ceara Manchester: Right.

554
01:25:08,618 --> 01:25:12,466
Chris: There's some antifactually there or they're trying to hide science. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

555
01:25:12,618 --> 01:25:22,050
Kayla: So how about life consumption? I feel like this one, we're also going to have to rely a little bit upon our knowledge of how mlms operate specifically, rather than this one in particular.

556
01:25:22,090 --> 01:25:23,306
Chris: Dirt consumption.

557
01:25:23,458 --> 01:25:24,610
Kayla: Dirt consumption.

558
01:25:24,730 --> 01:25:28,948
Chris: Maybe just consumption. Consumption. If you're eating dirt, I don't know how you get consumption.

559
01:25:29,004 --> 01:25:58,022
Kayla: I feel like with something like this, it's an MLM. We know how MLMs operate. They force you to make your. And turn your entire life over to the quote unquote job. Your entire identity is becoming a seller. All you talk about, everybody in your life is turn into a potential recruit, like, life consumption. I cannot picture an MLM, particularly one that rose this quickly and died this quickly. I cannot picture it not having life consumption be, like, the thing.

560
01:25:58,086 --> 01:26:13,582
Chris: Probably. Yeah, we didn't really talk about that. So this is all just sort of, like, speculation based on knowing the industry, like, knowing what direct selling is. Like. My guess is that it's high. But I also don't want. This is, like, a bit of a shaky one for me, since we didn't, like, explicitly talk about this one.

561
01:26:13,606 --> 01:26:51,040
Kayla: Yeah, yeah. But again, people are taking TikToks of themselves, taking baths. And, like, there was a lot of this. We didn't really get into this in the show, but there was a lot of. If you read about this, a lot of the articles, and I remember a lot of the TikToks and a lot of the Facebook stuff, the people who were selling boo, the part of the way that they sold it was by showing how often they, like, used it on their kids and with their pets and with their. Their partners. Like, a lot of it was building, like. Like building their lives around their usage of boo. And again, we didn't.

562
01:26:51,120 --> 01:27:32,354
Kayla: We didn't really, you know, slot this into the episode if you want to learn more about that, obviously, you know, we're always going to link to the news articles that we used for this, but there was particularly an article, like, an NBC did an article that I drew a lot of this research from. And these people were in Facebook groups, and these people were showcasing Boo being, like, front and center in their lives and, like, changing their lives and whitening their teeth and losing their weight and, like, oh, my kid was not sleeping and was, like, doing really poorly in school and acting out. And then I started doing his regular boob. At was a totally different child, and I feed it to my dog. Like, it's very much about that whole MLM identity thing.

563
01:27:32,442 --> 01:27:39,784
Chris: Okay. That kind of speaks to what you were saying before, where it just kind of, like, seeps into every aspect of your life so that you can sell, sell.

564
01:27:39,872 --> 01:27:40,360
Kayla: Right.

565
01:27:40,480 --> 01:27:42,140
Chris: So maybe this is high, then.

566
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:46,540
Kayla: So how do you think we score on dogmatic beliefs?

567
01:27:48,720 --> 01:28:34,414
Chris: This is another unknown for me. It's definitely present to some degree because of the one true cure thing. I feel like one true cure carries with it an implicit like, and by the way, this is the only one, right? If this is the one true cure, it's, like, kind of implying that other curatives, other types of medicine don't work. Right. Like, especially with parasites. Right? That's. That's part of the parasite parasitology. That's not a good word for it. The parasite woo that's out there. The parasite wellness woo will say, effectively that every single. Every single malady can be traced to parasites. So that's why you got to drink bleach, right? Because you'll kill the parasites and you'll cure anything you got. Because everything's from parasites. So that feels a little dogmatic to me because it's definitely, like, black and white there.

568
01:28:34,502 --> 01:28:36,158
Chris: But other than that, I'm not sure.

569
01:28:36,214 --> 01:28:58,416
Kayla: I feel like some dogma was maybe coming in. You know, we talked to Kara about some of these soil tests that were being done by some of the top sellers, and we talked about how Mark was like, nah, nah, don't. Like, he was anti that happening. And it feels a little bit like, well, if. If getting outside counsel is not okay here, that feels kind of dogmatic.

570
01:28:58,528 --> 01:28:59,440
Chris: Yeah, I agree.

571
01:28:59,560 --> 01:29:01,184
Kayla: So I think at least medium to high.

572
01:29:01,272 --> 01:29:07,640
Chris: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Something like 78%. Wait, were you gonna say 0.2 or.

573
01:29:07,680 --> 01:29:10,280
Kayla: I was gonna say 0.3, so I changed at the last second.

574
01:29:10,400 --> 01:29:12,384
Chris: Okay, copy. That was a weird coincidence.

575
01:29:12,432 --> 01:29:12,704
Kayla: Yeah.

576
01:29:12,752 --> 01:29:13,344
Chris: Okay.

577
01:29:13,472 --> 01:29:14,816
Kayla: Chain of victims.

578
01:29:15,008 --> 01:29:18,016
Chris: Well, MLm is where we get this one from MLM.

579
01:29:18,048 --> 01:29:32,826
Kayla: And especially in this one, where it's like people are using it on their kids. Like, that's also a victim chain. Yeah, I guess the kids aren't victimizing someone, but, like, somebody getting recruited and then, like, using her harming their kids with it. Yeah, there's a chain there. Recruiting your friends. We know how these Mlms work.

580
01:29:32,898 --> 01:29:50,266
Chris: Yeah. MLM is literally where this criterion came from was the idea that you. It's hard to differentiate sometimes between the victim and the victimizer because you get caught in this recruitment chain. So that's. That's gonna be high for this because of the pyramid nature.

581
01:29:50,378 --> 01:29:56,474
Kayla: So then, last but not least, we have. Is it safe or unsafe to exit? I don't really know.

582
01:29:56,522 --> 01:29:57,658
Chris: Yeah, I don't know on that one either.

583
01:29:57,714 --> 01:30:42,400
Kayla: I didn't get the sense from our conversation, and I didn't get the sense from, like, any of the research that I've done that there's, like, a shunning practice or anything like that any more than there is in, like, kind of any other MLM. And this, again, this also didn't. It didn't. It was very, like, brief in the life of an MLM company. It rose very quickly from the time that it became, like, the boo that we're discussing to the time that it was taken off the market. I don't even know if there was time necessarily to, like, cultivate those kinds of practices. I feel like this is maybe a question we should maybe follow up with Kira about just to see, like, oh, is there, like, shunning going on? I did get the sense of that. Yeah, I did, actually. You know what?

584
01:30:42,480 --> 01:30:51,816
Kayla: I will. I also want to contradict myself. I want to quote that NBC article that I read to help us with this.

585
01:30:51,888 --> 01:30:52,552
Chris: Okay?

586
01:30:52,696 --> 01:31:31,132
Kayla: So in the article, and this article is called Magic how the Internet fueled and defeated the pandemic's weirdest MLM. And it's written by Brandy Zadronsny. It talks about a woman named Monica Wong who learned about boo and then, like, from Facebook or whatever, and then started using it as a product. And, like, you know, she's seeing everybody on. On this Facebook group that she joined. She joined this Facebook group, and everybody's being like, oh, my God. Boo is just, like, changing my life. My. My skin is clear. I don't have any more worms. Like, my. Everything is great. And then she was like, this is not helping me. And actually, my tummy kind of hurts. I'm not going to use it anymore.

587
01:31:31,266 --> 01:31:33,660
Chris: I'm not gonna eat dirt anymore. It hurts my tummy.

588
01:31:34,120 --> 01:31:36,120
Kayla: Let me quote you this. Paragraph.

589
01:31:36,200 --> 01:31:36,760
Chris: Okay.

590
01:31:36,880 --> 01:32:20,578
Kayla: Wong quit taking Boo and told the head of her Facebook group, a higher ranked seller who earned commission off Hwang's participation, about her new pains. When asked why she didn't alert others, Wong said the group administrators, boo sellers themselves, censored the comments to weed out anything negative. Quote, they'd never let me post that, she said. And then the article kind of goes on to talk about, like, the true believers, the acolytes, like, what these Facebook groups are filled with. So I feel like that's not quite the same as, like, it's an unsafe exit, but it definitely seems. Maybe this goes back to dogma. It's unsafe to criticize or it's unsafe to share your true experience. It does feel, though, that this woman had to exit. She felt pressured to exit quietly.

591
01:32:20,714 --> 01:33:06,910
Chris: Right. And Kira mentioned how, like, a few of her informants also didn't have great relationships with the company. And, like, that's kind of. Although I guess the stuff that had driven them to leave happened prior to them leaving, not as a result of their leaving. So I don't know if that quite fits in, but I certainly think that you're right that, like, unsafe to criticize is, like, synonymous with unsafe to leave. So it sounds like there's definitely some of that going on. Yeah, but. But you're right with, like, the. The speed of the rise and fall and sort of like, the. The locust like nature that. That Kieran mentioned was, you know, where there's, like, all these. All these MLM people, like, descend upon this. This one product, and they're like, oh, guess we can't. That's, you know, we've sucked that dry.

592
01:33:07,210 --> 01:33:22,838
Chris: Let's go to the next one that I know. That does make it sound like they didn't. Maybe they didn't really have that much time to build up this, like, you know, cult like nature of, you know, say only nice things and shun people who leave.

593
01:33:22,934 --> 01:33:23,878
Kayla: Right. Right.

594
01:33:23,974 --> 01:33:25,294
Chris: So low.

595
01:33:25,462 --> 01:33:28,782
Kayla: So then is it a cult or is it just weird?

596
01:33:28,846 --> 01:33:34,006
Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's high across the board, except for that last one. So that's a cult. Yeah, it's a cult.

597
01:33:34,078 --> 01:33:41,420
Kayla: Answered in the interview. It's answered here. Like any other Mlm we've come across as cult.

598
01:33:42,440 --> 01:33:44,540
Chris: You said come across.

599
01:33:49,840 --> 01:33:52,176
Kayla: Now, do you got anything else?

600
01:33:52,208 --> 01:33:58,208
Chris: I've been looking. No. Now that I've done the Beavis and butt head thing, I am good to go. That's it.

601
01:33:58,384 --> 01:34:11,994
Kayla: That's the end of this episode. If you want to know more about how you can participate in these consumer report type actions. We will be sure to link it in this episode. Otherwise.

602
01:34:12,122 --> 01:34:19,170
Chris: This is Kayla and this is Chris. And this has been cult or just dirt. Boo. Weird.