The Ben and Emil Show - PP 22: Exposing e.l.f.'s ties to NXIVM cult

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

You look so good. You are a badass. You spread joy. In a lengthy report, e.l.f. Beauty has been accused of having ties to NXIVM cult that could put their business in peril. We dive in to this report and the findings were...pretty shocking. Let us know what you think in the comments. PLUS, Omegle shut down out of the blue and a market update after CPI numbers showed inflation has come down considerably. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome. We're back. It's episode 22. Today we are going to be talking about a lot of things, namely the recent short attack on eyes lips face, also known as elf cosmetics, elf beauty. Eyes love face? Eyes, lips face.

Can you believe this guy? I thought you said love. Geez, can you have you? I honestly wish we could run the tape back real quick because I guess when you said eyes lips face. Eyes lips face. I would never say that. Clearly, someone hasn't had a girlfriend in a long time because every guy I know knows what Islip's face is. I thought you said eyes love face.

Well, they do. Eyes love being on face. Mine sure love being on face. Also, we're going to be talking about CPI numbers that came out and it made the stock market go, boom, to the up, meaning good. And also, Omagels shut down. And also some wisdom, words of wisdom from, walking corpse billionaire Charlie Munger

who is 99 years old and just flat out refuses to die so he's doling out some Warren Buffett advice yeah and some Warren Buffett advice pretty good advice so stick around if you want some solid sage financial and life advice yeah here's how to succeed so let's get right into it huh so what is a short attack

no it's not when it's not when you break onto the set of Top Gun 3 and Tom Cruz comes up through your ass That's very good That's very good Yeah Because he's short Yeah

Anywho It's short The governor of Florida Keep going You know He starts marching his ass In his little high-heeled dress shoes Yeah

After you Or when your short shorts Freak out and they choke you You said Dylan Yeah Yeah Exactly

Yeah Well no not that kind of short attack This is the kind of short attack where... Too short from... Jesus. Just let me get to it. So, also, excuse my throat, I was... They know, they watched last week.

We had sinus things, and we were getting over it. So, as we all know, shorting a stock means you are betting against it, meaning you think it's going down. So a short attack is when basically this research group called Spruce Point Capital came out with a research report. that we will be going over spruce point management excuse me they they put together this report nailing elf beauty and proclaiming that it is a short from here so i actually i went on spruce point caps have you watched their youtube video i think bruce points yeah no you should send it to me it's

it's only two minutes and i think it's worth watching because it's uh it lays out what's happening and it's also so funny i just i just i just love a see them them trotting out the c of spruce point capital he is uh what i would maybe describe as not camera ready and sure well it's a good not camera ready and uh well wait wait before we show this i i do want to show um there is uh look at their website so spruce point capitals or spruce point management but it's spruce point cap dot com they've got a ton of short reports on all sorts of stocks i mean you keep going on they've got they covered um they've been around since wow at least 2010 but uh oh wow i remember liquid metals they put out these short reports and some of them work in the sense that

they actually the stock ends up taking a hit not necessarily due to them but maybe they might have exposed something to the market that everybody else didn't know about but i love these look at these really look at the like they put out a short report on i robot which which is the company that makes rumbas. And for the audio listener, it's just a, the thumbnail is, it looks like a ninja and there's like a flaming Roomba. It's just all really poorly photoshopped or like AI generated images. I mean, this one, this one is just a guy with a Pinocchio nose.

But yes, not all of them work out. I mean, yeah. For Premiere, there's one called Premiere Inc, and it's just like a calm looking dead body. Like kind of a nasty dead body. Yeah, it's like a nasty, shitty-looking dead body. Oh, look at this one for Church and Dwight Co. These are just, it just says, these are just boxes of condom. I'd like to know what's going on at Church and Dwight Co.

Yeah, here's one for Sintas Corp, the company that does, like, industrial level dry cleaning and laundry. Absolutely disaster A Canadian Tire Corp Yeah There's a guy sitting on a fire while two trucks

Two trucks are just like falling into a hole Oh here's another person in a bed But look what's on the monitor It says so Oh Jesus Christ

But like For example So they're not always a hit Here's Dropbox One for Dropbox And it's just a mouse on a table Anyway

they did one for SMCI in January of this year and since then the stock has nearly quintupled so it's not an exact science so and by the way this is also makes Bruce Point's advice with the grain of salt here sure and we are also obviously it goes without saying but we will say it anyway we are not endorsing their report we are simply sharing it because it is very entertaining yes and very fascinating so that and I'm deeply invested in Elf in Islup Face. Eyes love. Eyes love face. Look at this one for Oatley real fast. It is a cow drinking spilt shitty chocolate

oat milk. Very funny. Don't cry over spilt oat milk. Oh man. Some of these are just really good. I'd like to get someone from Spruce to just talk about who does their graphic design. Well, and the best thing about this is the Elf Beauty one. They have a nice image of the Grinch here. Yeah, the Grink. The Grink. Yeah. So, was the grink there? so also they are not the only ones who do this kind of thing there's another company there's another group called citron there's hindenberg yeah the hindenberg had a couple high profile ones adani was a huge one yeah the indian company um what was their other really big one um blanking i'm blanking too anyway let's let's watch this video huh here we go let's see what the cio has to say

Hi, Ben Axel here. CIO and founder of Spruce Point Capital Management with an explosive and concerning new report on Elf Beauty, the tickers ELF. Now, they're a marketer of cosmetics. As a result, their brand equity is highly sensitive to their alignment with females. In fact, we estimate...

Jesus Christ, dude. Get a fucking external microphone, man. It's also all so reminiscent of, like, the images they create to where it's just like... No thought going into it. They're just like, sure, that's good enough. Yeah, Jesus, God. How many views does this have?

290 views. Wow. Over 80% of the customers, 75% of the workforce, and 2 thirds of the board are women. In addition, 60% of the revenue is to Target, Walmart, and Ulta Beauty. Wait, wait, pause it? Do you hear him suck in every time he's been... So, every time there's a lot of women. They sell to target, Alta, Walmart.

The corporate values have to be aligned with its check. partners. Now, this company's had quite the bit of success in the past couple years due to viral TikTok and social media marketing campaigns. But guess what? They partnered with to lead these endeavors. I'm speeding this up.

And the two co-founders were members of the nexium cult. Some of you may know that Keith Reneery, the Vanguard cult leader, was sentenced to 120... I'm going to go... Wait. He's got to be making these himself. He's got to be making these himself. for the audio listener

he's talking about Keith Reneer the leader of nexium cult and he said he was sentenced to 120 years in prison and this like comic book pop art that looks like

when Batman hit someone on the face and goes pow yeah it says 120 years in prison I'm gonna speed it up even more because this is kind of funny to me

20 years in prison for sex trafficking of women not just to be certain the two co-founders weren't implicated or alleged have done anything wrong but we find concerning evidence that they continue

first of all i can't understand what he's saying anymore slow it down well because we're going to be getting into it i don't want him to spoil the thing but it's just so the graphics are just folks i wish you could see it god i wish you could see it audio listener you got to get with the program you really do but like fucking hire a video intern or something he can he'd turn this whole thing around yeah jesus god he's doing it from his house with no external mic yeah Using word art

Oh shit I forgot to promote our latest episode of Ben and Emile on splitting the bill By the way I guess I just did Great go watch that Yeah go watch that Watch our new series

Follow us on socials Our next call in bonus episode Is gonna be this month So go sign up on Patreon if you haven't yet And okay so Right into the presentation Let's dive into this thing Shall we

And I was looking at it last night And I was only read I only read the first two pages, and I thought, oh, this succinctly sums it up. But there's so much more here, and it's not as, it's, I kept going back and forth between thinking, okay, this is all bullshit, and now that he's actually got some good points here. So we're going to kind of dissect it. But first of all, it is worth noting that Elf's stock has 10xed in the last couple of years. It's gone from, like, the teens to well over $100.

it went from just kind of being not a dud but just it hadn't gone anywhere it had been teetering between like $10 and $15 for years and then yeah it blew up doing part or so according to Spruce Point doing part to them hiring this

uh marketing TikTok marketing company yeah and they started blasting it just absolutely blasting their shit all over TikTok Movers and Shakers, baby. That's the name of the marketing firm. I wish I had paid attention to that, man. I wish I...

I mean, a girlfriend surprised everybody. Yeah, I know. I always reference an ex-girlfriend, but she... Are they giving you shit for that? Yeah, they've given me shit for that. But this ex-girlfriend from years ago was like, oh, you should buy stock in El. No way.

It's cheap makeup, and it's like, fine. And I said, yeah, that's interesting, because it was valued under a billion dollars, and I thought, surely that's... and I just, I didn't do it. This episode's going to be titled, should we listen to women? Okay, that's a little risky given what the subject matter is here.

But so, should we sum this up? So they say after conducting a forensic review of elf beauty, a multi-brand company that offers cosmetics and skin care products, we have grave concerns about its continuing brand equity, given its business relationship with movers and shakers, a marketing firm with ties to the notorious nexium cult with its, quote, joy messaging that appears to be eerily similar to the cult's science of joy teachings.

So what is the nexium cult, or what was it, Emile, since you know better than most? Look, it was a clubhouse for people, you know, it was innocent, you know? Yeah, yeah, sure. We just, the government started snooping around, put their nose in things that they shouldn't have had their nose in, and it shut down a place, a home for a lot of people where they could come get help

and maybe work on themselves. Yeah, what happened to the leader of this cult, Keith Rineer? Pow, 120 years in prison. Very good. Yeah, there were allegations of, or he was convicted for racketeering, sex trafficking of women, forced labor conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. So a total loser, in other words, a big old loser, a mega, a mega jerk, you know? We don't like him. But so according to Spruce point, they estimate that at least 80% of Elf's customers, 79% of its employees and 66% of its board

members are women. As a result, we believe Elf's brand equity and success is dependent on policies and practices in support of women's rights and health concerns. So they're, right, Elf themselves are even like aware of this risk factor. They stated in their own, um, disclosures like any, this is a quote, any damage to our reputation or brands may materially and adversely affect our business financial condition and results of, end results of operations and that vendors could harm our brands. Right. And that's, I mean, that's something that's just like lawyer speak that is in, it's really interesting if you ever are curious about what a company their risks are they'll tell you point like flat out what all the potential risks are and they really do cover everything so

going to quarterly filings for google or whatever or elf and see uh in the disc there's like a disclosure not disclosure section but like risk yeah risk section but so elf starts working with this company called Movers and Shakers. And Spruce Point is alleging that Movers and Shakers founders, well, so they say right here, while it is important to recognize that neither of Movers and Shakers founders were alleged to have committed or have been charged with any wrongdoing, we find alarming evidence to suggest that Movers and Shakers and or its founders may have continuing sympathy and or affiliation with the teachings of Nexium and former members who continue to support both Reneer and the cult.

Right. He's talking about, have you mentioned here? This is Evan Harwitz and Jeffrey Goldberg. They're the principles of movers and shakers, the primary faces. The main guy is Evan Harwitz. And apparently he was, he had this thing called like the executive success program. And people were pulling up his old websites. I mean, the stuff, it's all very like wellness speak.

And that kind of cult thing that makes you kind of. want to crawl out of your skin. Evan has consistently helped others bring more awesomeness to their lives. When he discovered executive success programs in 2011, he applied its revolutionary methodology to build a career out of his hobby of helping friends with their businesses.

He enabled his clients at Evan Horowitz advising to achieve 30 to 300% revenue growth within 12 months. And by applying the toll he gained in ESP, Evan quadrupled his own revenue in one year. After decades of coaching and training, and degrees from Stanford and Harvard have been immediately recognized how the different tools of ESP were from anything else he had done. He now advises others using ESP's proprietary system so that more leaders may achieve greater personal fulfillment and accelerated impact on the world. Fuck, man, I got to get my own proprietary system.

Yeah, it gets me jacked up to increase views by 300%. Maybe we should hire movers and shakers. We should. If anybody out there has a connection to movers and shakers, please let us know. No, I'm just kidding. to work with these people. But so that proprietary system they were talking about, it's the like rational inquiry

thing that, um, that was like the curriculum for nexium's leader. Yeah. Well, so not so spruce point, also, just to go back to the, uh, the presentation here, they point out, I mean, it's kind of just, they're pointing out that they're not without any

kind of scandal before, uh, noting that they've, have settled charges that they use sanctioned products from North Korea. Dude, that's like, I'm like, you're bearing the lead with this fucking nexium connection. I mean, yeah, that's interesting. And then the... They sentenced, one of its board members was involved in a college admission fraud scandal and was sentenced to prison.

They also acquired Naturium for $355 million, despite numerous critics alleging the founder committed fraud by failing to adhere to FTC guidelines around marketing products that she had a financial interest. in. That's a big acquisition for a company Elf's size. Yeah, it's also so great they, um, he paid so the guy who was discharged from the company Mcglashen had pleaded not guilty to charge. That's the first name.

No, that's his second, his last name Monclashash. Bill McClashen had pleaded not guilty to charges from the U.S. Justice Department that he paid $50,000 to have his son's ACT admissions exam results doctored and agreed to pay another $250,000 for a fake football profile to get his son into USC.

Hell yeah, dude. God. He cares about his son. What my defense would be is, Your Honor, this is a man who loves his son. Nothing more, nothing less. He didn't know that this was a crime. He thought that he was just greasing the wheels.

He wants his son to be able to join a frat at USC. He wants his son to get tackled. And if that's a crime, truly, I mean, this kid's going to get clobbered out there. Yeah. I'll tackle your kid for 10 grand. in, buddy, you don't need to pay $250,000 one of these fake football profiles. Jesus.

So, Spruce Point is saying that, I mean, we're going to get more into it. But so a couple important things to note, apparently Movers and Shakers was recently acquired by this company called Stagwell on November 2nd for $15 million. We got to start a marketing

company. Dude, I want to start one of these phony things that, like, executives feel like they need us to turn their shit around. Oh, my God, yeah. Though Movers and Shakers is unlikely to be a material contributor to Stagwell's $2.5 billion of revenue, we believe it is a material factor in Elf's continued success with its female and Gen Z customer base. As a result, we, not us, but Spruce Point is short Elf. They're saying that they trade at a large premium to cosmetic and beauty companies on the belief that it's 20% plus revenue growth is sustainable.

If Elf's retail partners or end female customers revolted at its joy and, quote, badass messages while realizing that Movers and Shakers founders remain connected to Nexium loyalists, we could see 45% to 65% downside risk to Elf's share price as recent sales momentum evaporates. Currently, Elf's sitting at just under $5 billion valuation. It must be so annoying that now every brand has to pretend like they're good brand. Yeah, man. I mean, that, yes. Must have been so nice to just be like, I don't know. We're shitty guys. Buy our shit.

Yeah. If I were running a brand, I would lean into just being brand and not like, I'm trying to not be anything. But you can't. The whole, that's the thing. Elf's own brand values and superpower stress, among other things that it is guided to, one, do the right thing. Two, execute with speed and quality.

And three, operate cruelty free with respect to animals, but by extension, we believe all living being. We should start a pro cruelty makeup company where we're, just cruel to men, but it has nothing to do with testing the makeup. It's just, we've got a guy strapped to a chair in a closet somewhere. No, but we got to test the makeup on him. We insult him, and we test it. We don't need to test the makeup on him because we know it's good.

Our shit is good. And that's what we have those chimps for. Yeah, we have monkeys that we tested on, but we got this guy. His name is Dylan. Dylan. And we just torment this guy all day, verbally and physically. we're not like a hurting him and we let him go at the end of every day

but he's he's the guy that we are cruel to shut up in there bitch so as uh I was going to call you Elon as my as a joke or you thought like it accidentally my brain

I was crossing wires that's awful so as my esteemed colleague Emil has already pointed out elf lists in its in its material risks that any damage to their reputation or brands may materially and adversely affect their business, financial condition, and results of operations, and that they rely on third-party suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and other vendors, and they may not

continue to produce products or provide services that are consistent with our standard, and they may harm our brands or consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction. Yeah, we would want someone to do a TikTok about how we're not on the up and up. this was the most this is a pretty interesting slide so they're saying that they believe elf's recent success is directly correlated with its creative tic-tok and gen z viral marketing campaigns led by movers and shakers so i mean this is also the worst thing about not only do you have to be good but every even if you're just a small business you have to be on ticot you ever seen like those those ticot that go viral of just like a dentist office yes it's the dentist's like

coming out with a giant toothbrush like doing some fucking dance and then it's Poor fucking dental assistant has to, like, be like, God, I just want to go to work. I don't want to do this. Or that kid who was in charge, there was a kid, like, last year who went viral because he, it was like a car repair garage, and he made some shitty TikTok of, like, a giant cat dancing above the building. And it was great, though. And he said, like, my boss said, oh, give me a raise if I can hit a million views.

Yo, make this go viral. Oh, okay, good for you. Do you know what I'm talking about? Fuck. But if I was, if that was my dentist and I saw it, I'd switch dentists. Yeah, me too. I'd go, get back in the chair. I went to the dentist recently.

You know how long, you know how late they were, had me sitting in the chair waiting? An hour. And I was sitting there going, I'm about to fucking leave. And I've never done that before. I was getting, I'm a pretty patient guy when it comes to that kind of shit. I'm very understanding in there. Oh, it's just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes.

I'm like, starting to go, like, hey, you know, I got shit to do. Clean my mouth. Anyway, Evan, what was his name, Spielberg? Evan Horwitz? Yeah, he, I mean, he was on to something when he said, when he was boasting about his accolades. Look at this shit, man. I mean, you can't, you can't argue with it.

10x. The stock absolutely rallied. At the crux of this, they're saying that movers and shakers is so tightly correlated with nexium, and that is problematic for Elf because if Word were to get out that they're linked to this nexium cultish marketing firm

the backlash would be so great that it would harm their sale and that Target and Walmart and Ulta might pull their product, right? Honestly, I'm having a hard time finding this convincing. Also, I was having a hard time like the use of like badass

is not, I would never link that to nexium and I get that they were showing a bunch of things where how pervasive it was in nexium's materials and everything but that's been kind of thing for a while truly I mean the entire 2010s was like women are badass

I'm glad you said that because in this in this slide they note that there were comments made on glass door by former movers and shakers employees alleging cult like tactics that are used in the C.E. saying offensive things to multiple female co-workers. One Glass Door Post referenced the head of HR as a cult member.

Yeah, the VP, this Lorraine Dorro, the VP of people in culture, was an espion, which I guess is also known as an exe member. Because the ESP thing. Is that really it? Yeah, ESP is the executive success programs. uh so yeah i you could probably go on glass door and search the word cult and find it in so many companies especially a small marketing company but even large that's the whole thing is the the success of these companies kind of hinges upon people buying into the the brand and being like i mean even

i have friends who work at google and it's like you see people who are like i'm a google and i fucking i wear my Google merch and I like and if I was a Google I'd probably do it too I mean life is good at Google or at least it used to be before they started pulling back on all that shit but I mean some of the best benefits in the world and work workplace

things you could you know ever ask for right so I'm with you when it's it seems like a reach that okay so because yeah they movers and shakers talks a lot There's a lot of references to being badass and badass women. But they also mentioned a big part of their campaign for Elf was spreading joy and creating joy.

And around the word joy, both of those things were a big part of Nexium, apparently. It's like, Keith Renier's thing was joy and like, oh, it's all about creating joy and badass women. and like one of his one of those programs DOS which was like the woman I don't want to say subsidiary but it was like it was like the subcult of the cult that was just for for women um let me get out of here this is the cult for women yeah this oh it was called dominus obsequious sororium it was a highly secret women's society within the organization So that's kind of what they're alluding to. But even if, I feel like Spruce Point's thing here is even if the connection is tenuous. Is that the, that's not the right word I'm looking for. No, I think that's. Even if it's like, yeah, it's like not exactly strong.

It could be enough in the age of social media, given the fact that a lot of Elf's fan base is, right all you need is one elf girlie being like listen up ladies yeah it is over we are now buying i don't know name another makeup brand uh fuck come on mr redlon someone has another red line that was actually pretty quick yeah i was just a target i'm actually destroyed yeah i do love uh so we're switching to mac oh here's one mary k am i right ladies over 60 oh boy so here's the as you touched on they're talking about the co-founder of movers and shakers having a long association with nexium dating to at least 2011 makeup brand natural you guys all look beautiful without it damn dude fuck that was good no seriously you guys no but women actually

hate that why because it doesn't matter what you think they my favorite makeup for themselves my favorite makeup brand whatever one you like whichever one you like you like i beat him to it but make yourself look like a fucking clown see what i care i don't think you look like a clown queen whatever you want to do babe what bip yeah whatever you want to do no i think that your cat eye looks good i think you're very good at it what women aren't sensitive about cat eye so so so So they're saying that not only did these guys have connections to Evan Horowitz specifically has strong connections to Nexium dating back to at least 2011, they are still loosely connected at least through social media. Oh, and I think one of them testified at trial.

Yes, documentary evidence that Horowitz gave character testimony on behalf of Brandon Porter, the disgraced doctor who performed unauthorized human experiments. The two co-founders appear to have been close with Allison Mack, who was sentenced to prison, and Nikki Klein, two central players in the nexium cult. And they include a picture of Allison Mack, Nikki Klein, and then the two Movers and Shakers co-founded. So pretty strong evidence that these two guys... God, look at these motherfuckers. We're starting to... We love being badass.

We're trying to bring people more awesomeness. Yeah, we do love awesomeness. So then they also employed at least one X, uh, DOS member. who defended Reneer's branding of women. That's the cult for women. Yeah. So get out of here. If you're looking for the mixed gender cult, it's down the hall.

So there was, apparently, Movers and Shakers had someone on the payroll who defended Keith Reneer's use of branding women. Because that was one of the things that they did. They branded these women. To bring each other closer. It was a bonding experience. I'm going to let you go with that one. So this, and the person's employment was during the time that it was well known

by the public of nexium's practices uh wow i did not know that keith veneer was ultimately arrested in mexico huh so anyway oh yeah and here's the brandon porter the guy the doctor right one of the movers and shakers um gentlemen yeah brandon porter the doctor who lost his medical license in new york for allegedly conducting these experiments continues to support nexium he also uh he states on this is from Brandon Porter. Oh, hey, maybe you're about to read it. Yeah, his LinkedIn also states that he advises, he quote, advised it. So this is a doctor who did all this fucked up shit, lost his medical license on his LinkedIn. He looks like a fucked up AI, by the way. Yeah. He, I don't know how to describe that man, but he states on his LinkedIn that he advises the CEO of a mid-sized advertising

agency in the United States. Wonder who that could be. And he says, I am an expert in the science of joy. I help people discover and grow their capacity for joy, no matter their Gee, there's that joy connection again, man. Holy shit. And so Mr. Horowitz, the co-founder of Movers and Shakers, testified on Brandon Porter's behalf during his medical license review. So pretty fucked up. And Brandon Porter, whose social media profile says, like we said, advising the CEO of a mid-sized advertising agency, he frequently likes posts by Horowitz. And specifically, he could just be bookmarking them.

He could be bookmarking them. He specifically, that's very good. He specifically also likes posts related to Elf Beauty. So at the very least, they're correct in saying that the co-founder maintains a connection to at least one person who is actively trying to dispute the case against Keith Rinear and still continues to have ties to nexium. Oh, babo. This is really embarrassing. I didn't know this before. Brandon Porter is actually my doctor.

And I, uh... No shit. Yeah. Is he a good doctor? Would you defend him to the New York medical license? I would if they called. He's helped me find joy. This fucking joy shit, man.

Well, so it gets a little hairier for the good folks at Elf because the CEO of Movers and Shakers appears to have a bit of a relationship of some sort to Elf's chief marketing officer, Corey Marsha, Marcia, Marshes. Come on, if you broke up. Marciz.

It's Italian. Marquisotto. Marquisoto. Is that good? I like that. Yeah. I don't know what it is. I don't even have it's Italian.

It ends in a vowel. Is that usually the thing? If it ends in a vowel, it's Italian. That's actually pretty good. Spaghetti. Confetti. Is that an Italian word? Yeah.

Confetti? Oh, mamma me, all this confeder! Jesus. So apparently, Evan Horowitz and Corey Marquis Sootot, Marquis, Marquis, Marquis, Marquis, Marquis Soto, thank you, Dylan, have appeared together in industry panels, and they seem to have a shared understanding,

this is from Spruce, Spruce Point's thing here, they seem to have a shared understanding of a unique term called Volofo. That's also Italian. Volo Fofo. Which is, which is, I just love this because they, they, they, they've got it. It's very cofifi. Yeah, it's very cofifi. They've got, they, she, Evan commented on something from her like Facebook or her

LinkedIn and just said, Volofo, V-O-L-O-F-O. With, with rockets. With rocket emojis. And then, um, she responded. Bam-de- Bam-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B. And then she posted another thing. with just emojis, and he responded,

Volofo, Corey. And I love this, because it just has it circled and says, what does VoloFo mean? I love the graphics guy at fucking Spruce Capital. What could Volofo mean? Very. Oh, very. Odd.

Looking. Old. I don't know. Velocity. on love only fans see but this is where I'm like oh this is where I'm like

okay some of the stuff is like I thought they were going to connect this to something like do they do they tell you what they think the lofo is no they really don't and also they've got this weird I know I think that it speaks to okay they have appeared

kind of grasping for straws here they've appeared together on multiple industry panels and seem to have a shared understanding of a unique term called Volofo. Oh, set him to jail. Yes, send him to jail, man. Short the stock down into the basement. Yeah, lean into the other stuff.

Spruce point. I mean, you can hire us. We'll fucking spread joy in your presentations. Using like North Korean slave labor and like a college admission scandal that got two bullet points, but they were like, what does Volfo mean? Yeah, yeah, it's

pretty ridiculous. They like, each other's posts on LinkedIn. Now, there's a connection that's indisputable. Right. Yeah, because I just skipped over it, but apparently the CEO of Elf went on to say that they really liked working with movers and shakers. Okay, that seems like standard fare.

I mean, if you're going to help my stock 10x, yeah, I'm going to really like working with you too. No fucking shit, man. Jesus Christ. I like how also they're getting credit for doing what would otherwise be obvious. Like, hey, you guys should get on TikTok. you're a cheap makeup brand okay go for young women yeah where are young women and talk about making

them feel good yeah so speaking of feeling good that's they're they're again leaning into the whole joy thing apparently keith rannier and next scene were all about joy the science of joy was something he wanted to help people experience more joy in life and then they've got but this is my only problem like am i naive or is it like joy is a pretty true but it is I know I know because they're connected to them and they're like doing this joy thing but it's all yeah it could just be that they just took what they learned from hey I was part of this cult and one of the biggest takeaways that I remember having the most effect on me was the concept of joy and shit and obviously if it worked on this the followers of this cult

maybe it'll work on these uh they're like look we're going to do nexium without the human experiments in sex traffic yeah we're going to make it just like lip stain and satin We're going to actually spread joy Without all of the Yeah they're even Like leaning into Spruce Point observes that Movers and Shakers

Corporate branding is yellow We also notice that a picture of a co-founder Horowitz shows him Yeah that a picture of co-founder Horowitz shows him donning a similar yellow sash This is a potential indicator of Movers and Shakers continued sympathy for the nexium

get the fuck out of here he's wearing a yellow sash in one photo that's enough for me and because their branding on their website is yellow ben i've got i've got one word for you what joelopho volofo valofo to you wait what would the thing be volofo we're we're putting our hands together audio listener and making a v actually i prefer like this the cute tehee u-woo thing Volofo. Yeah. So, Elf's marketing communications increased the messaging of joy not long after engaging Movers and Shakers.

An article suggests that Movers and Shakers became acquainted with Elf in late 2019, and the joy messages began to frequently appear in Elf's public messages in January of 2020. Yeah, no fucking shit. If you hired this marketing company and they are taking over your marketing, and a big thing is their fucking joy shit. And some of these are just like that. like very joy is a word

that people are going to use. Yeah, no fucking kidding. It was so exciting to be a part of Republic's Grammy Night and gratifying to work with a partner who shares our values of supporting diversity, inclusively, and joy through individual expression. Send her to jail.

Hold on, bitch. Isn't that nexium talk? Get the fuck out of here. Wait, show me your inner thigh. Do you have a brand? Sorry, that's... She does use it a lot. Yeah, she does.

She does. Well, because it became part of their branding. If that was their whole thing, look, on the next slide, they're fucking... But that's a fucking Christmas term. Joy to the world. Yeah, yeah. Perhaps a total... Yeah, they even acknowledged.

Spruce Point says perhaps a total coincidence, but in late 2020, Elf's holiday album featured a remix of Joy to the World and Elf tapped Movies and Shakers to design the campaign and produce the brand's first ever album. And then they go on to talk about how badass was also terminology used by Nexium. subcult of women and uh that that uh which we're finding out you're not supposed to call women badass yeah why not i don't know because a nexium i think it's like you know let's take it back from nexium they shouldn't own it's not nexium it's like at first we liked cheryl sandberg's lean in now we're pissed at cheryl sandberg's lean in women could have it all now you're not supposed to

say that they can have anything i think Oh, okay. I should ask my mom what she thinks. Yeah. She's probably going to be like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. So, yeah, they say Spruce, intended or not, Spruce Point finds repeated references by the CMO of Elf to the word badass as it relates to women. She keeps talking about badass women. Badass boss ladies.

And Elf has a built-in renegade badass spirit in our veins. That's Cory Markisota. This doesn't sound like nexam shit to me. This sounds like what it looks like. A woman in her 50s who's the chief marketing officer who just only knows how to... A big part of her thing is... Yes. Yeah, yes, queening, and I don't fucking know.

So they go on to say, yeah, their valuation is... I mean, I would just say, dude, you don't even need all of this stuff. I would just say, wow, the stock is 10xed. can this sustain itself? Maybe not. I mean, women comment, or people who use makeup, comment and let us know. How often do you switch brands?

I'm sure that it's quite frequent. Also, get someone to make a bunch of TikToks being like they use North Koreans to lay labor. Yeah, also, can somebody 10x our brand? We're looking to grow our brand by 300 to 1,000%. And to do that, we're going to have to spread copious amounts of joy. man through individual expression I spread joy everywhere I go man is that true

do you think that's true yeah I do be smiling I do be smiling my favorite thing is to tell women I like to encourage women to smile what better way to spread joy than to encourage a stranger to smile yeah say excuse me sweetie smile more

yeah no that's what I love to do that's how I spread and they usually they don't react positively at first but then I just smile back at them which is frustrating for us yeah it's frustrating for us because we're trying to spread joy yeah we're good guys

I said, you know what'd be badass? You smiled more. Hey, you know it would be badass? Bitch, comma. Try smiling. See what that does for your day. Hey, don't wear so much makeup. Yeah.

You would look better without it. And smile more. So, what do you think, Emil? Do you think that they're, they're, I think that they're onto something in the sense, only in the sense that even if the connection is, not all there, it could be enough to tarnish the brand's reputation just for being associated with. I mean, we'll see if some TikTok Gurley's latch onto this. As of now, the stock is up. If Spruce Point really wanted to capitalize on shorting the stock, what they ought to do is...

Call your daughter. No, they ought to pay some TikTok Gurley's. Pay a TikTok Gurley $1,000 and have them start spreading, infiltrate the... hey girlies stop buying elf because they support nexium which it was a you know was it was a what go ahead was a was a well to quote you it was a great thing it was a great thing before the government stepped in and stopped it we were trying it was described to me because i i knew very little about it and um my girlfriend described it to me as a lot like science like a more modern probably like six wait what the amount of times you said girlfriend this episode oh this episode yeah not enough maybe

if we had a girlfriend counter someone in the comments let us know but uh yeah it's like i was going to say a modern day scientology but scientology is still around yeah okay but what did she describe it as she said it was a cult women love that's what she said her her take on it was that it's a cult she said it was like this it was this crazy cult led by this guy my girlfriend said that the the washington generals or whatever they're called are a football team but I didn't know anything about it I thought I was thinking you knew it was a cult

I didn't I really didn't because I in my head I keep thinking of the purple pill the nexium acid reflux pill and I was like was it like some kind of was it like herbal life or something

that's what I thought I knew that it was like there was a bad guy I truly did not pay attention to all of the nexium stuff it just went off my radar I don't know what was going on I really didn't know

I knew that it was bad and some actress got caught up in it. That's all that I knew. Some Smallville actress. Yeah, some actress was... She boss-bitched too close to the sun. And the heirs... Eris.

Seagram's heiress. Yeah, I was going to see... No, we have Jameson in here. We don't support Nexene. We don't drink. Wouldn't touch the stuff. Yeah, I wouldn't touch it either. Seagram 7.

I don't even know what it is. Is that whiskey? Yep. Stupid. Where they fucked up. So, yeah. In conclusion... In conclusion, I'm shorting...

Elf? Yep. Well, my friend, if you were shorting Elf today, you'd be very sad. Do you know why? Because it's up. Everything is up, yeah. It's like a sea of fucking green. It's insane.

It's like an incubus song out there. A certain shade of green. My guy, I do not know that one. How does it go? It's so much better. Oh, yeah, yeah. When everyone is in our... you in wait you got to take off your shirt and hold the mic like this i swear to god dude that

guy pissed me off in college in high school mike you're just trying to seduce everyone's girlfriends working for me color me seduced so cpi came out today for us two days ago for everybody else three point two percent which was lower than expected and so what did stocks do they fucking rallied hardcore man they love CPI they love it when the CPI goes down why because it means the stocks when the CPI hits

very good that's actually pretty good that is a layman's way of just did a real life meme for the audience is that the kid getting blown away in the old TV show yeah because it indicates that the Fed is probably done hiking rates

and hiking rates bad for stocks pausing or lowering rates, good for stocks, generally. And then this guy from, they're always trotting out people from the Fed and this Austin Goolsby. What a name. Dork ass name. Dork ass name. Hey, Gooseby.

Hey, Gooseby. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. You know, no wonder he works to the Fed. He's a fucking nerd. Hey, Gooseby. Hey, Goolsby, why don't you get me a pizza, huh?

Fucking dork. Give me your lunch money. he said this year could see the could see the fastest non-war-related one-year fall in U.S. CPI inflation in a century with an unemployment rate that never gets above 4%. He's saying that inflation progress is continuing.

Economic growth has been strong. The labor markets are vibrant. Positive supply developments allow blockbuster economic growth without added inflationary pressures. Soft landing? Sounds to me like this guy's promoting a pretty soft landing, dude. Getting a little, uh, Jack Nicholson. You know, Goolsby comes out, man, and he says, I swear to God, this fucking Austin Goolsby

coming out and saying it's a, it's a soft landing. I don't know. I'm, I don't, um... What did you just get self-conscious? It was good. I was doing it last night. with my lady i said hey well there goes the girlfriend counter again i swear to fucking god can we talk about omel yeah i did you see this clip of the guy almost starting a fight in the

senate today yeah okay all right do you want to play it or not it sounds like you want to play it no it's a good good well it's only a minute long this is pretty funny so you yeah this you you had this senator mark wayne mullen tried to fight labor leader shan O'Brien at a Senate help committee after reading his tweet where O'Brien says he'd take him any time, any place. Like he's self-made, sir, I wish you was in the truck with me when I was building my plumbing company, myself, and my wife was... I'm just going to fast forward to it. Sir, this is a time, this is a place. You want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here.

Two consenting adult? You want to do it now? I'd love to do it right now. Well, stand your butt up then. You stand your butt up. Staying your butt up then Wait, play the whole thing where he's like I love when he's like

No, no, sit down You're a United States Senator Actively Okay Sit down please Can I respond You're a United States Senator If you're gonna fight

You're gonna do it out in the parking lot After the Senate meeting is adjourned And you're gonna do it Slathered in Astroglide So that it is most entertaining For us and for the American people the loser has to trot his butt down Pennsylvania Avenue and get swaddled in the ass multiple times by the widow

stand your butt up stand your butt up stand your butt up say ass dude you can say ass we're all consenting adults play it play oh was there more hold it if we can't no I have the mind I'm sorry this is what he said you'll have your time okay can I respond Oh, no, you can't. I'd like to respond.

He did tell me to stand my butt up. Can we talk about how poor Bernie Sanders' posture is? I mean, dude's like fucking 80 years old. God, somebody get one of them TikTok animal chiropractors on his ass. We didn't let old people retire, I think. Yeah. There was one thing about mid-Somar that they got right, which was that old people should jump off a cliff when they reached it.

I've never seen it, and I wish I'd wish I. I got that too. Oh, dude, you don't want to see it. I know. It's too scary. I, yeah. I can't handle it. If you own Midsomar on DVD or Blu-ray, throw it off a cliff like one of those old people. Who wants to re-watch that shit?

You, Dylan? Yeah, once is enough, right? I'd see it again. Jesus Christ. you get yeah excuse me so

why don't you tell us what omega was for those of those who don't know Omega was a club for people to come together grow themselves

then the government started snooping around yeah is that what they did no Omega was a it was a place where you could meet people online it was a weird

video chat platform that would match you with people. Yeah. And it's... You ran for 14 years. Yeah. And it's shutting down in the wake of problems of... You know, the most high profile one is

it matched an 11-year-old with a pedophile. Yeah. And it's not the only case, but sure. Yeah, but like that's, I said, the most high... Right, right, right. And... Yeah, there was a guy this year who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for eliciting sexual material from underage girls as young as seven over the course of three years. And the BBC highlighted more than 50 cases of sexual abuse involving minors worldwide on O'Magle since 2021.

But, I mean, that's not unique to O'Mago. I'm sure that that shit happens on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The unique thing is that they were not protected under Section 230. 230 is the thing that allows people to be immune from suits when you, when you host a platform like Facebook, Instagram, whatever. And so you're not held liable for every little thing that gets posted on there. You know who else is immune from suits? That fucking John Federman, man. Really nice. Thank you. Fuck. I was just, I was just way to agree to finish. Sorry. He had it holstered. Yeah, I had it holstered. I think quick draw on the graph. I know. I love that

too bad nobody's still listening or watching um but yeah so because you know in order to operate these things and keep everyone safe it would it would create an insurmountable obligation of of going through every post and making sure you know everything was copacetic right so he i mean they had 70 million monthly users that's a that's a lot right he started it when he was this guy layf k brooks was 18 when he started it he said it was no longer sustainable financially or psychologically he didn't go into detail but he said that yeah safety and moderation tools uh put some bad actors behind bars working with law enforcement but at the end of the day it was not enough yeah i mean it's a you

should go if you go to a megal dot com it no longer leads you to the to the platform that matches you with people it's his long statement and it's an interesting read as if you're kind of interested in the future of what what the internet will look like and everything and it's also very odd you know me and ben were people who like the internet kind of like grew up around us and it's obviously a very different thing now so much more different what it is such a so much more different yeah uh you used to get your jollies with like our apps buddy i remember when people first got the iPhone and apps were a new thing and the hottest app was an animated beer where if you tilted your phone it tilted with the phone to make you look like you were drinking beer or like the fake gun that was just like you would swipe your finger and it would shoot bullets yeah that kind of stuff that's what the early internet was like that's what it was all about what was it for you or downloading porn and having it take forever just to show an image? I don't know. I kind of think about like those early internet users

who kind of get at what he kind of what Leif loved about the internet, which was that like connectivity for the first time. He talks about how he grew up in rural Vermont

and it was like he never could have imagined being connected with all these people and then he built this platform where it's like, wow, you can all of a sudden be matched with people and have...

conversation with strangers around the world and this like information sharing thing that it like opened up and remember that scene in cable guy where he's on the satellite

and he's like talking about the information You play Mortal Kombat with your friend in Taiwan in Vietnam yeah the information super highway like this promise that the internet has turned into

just kind of a hellscape of posting shit and just immediately receiving a fucking dick yeah well do you remember i remember i didn't know what omega was i was first introduced to this concept from chat roulette yeah and i just went on chat roulette and it still exists so and it's mostly dudes jacking i mean that's what it was a lot of the time back then so uh i'm going to let's let's see what we can get on here um i've whoa god damn choose who you want to oh look

here's some guy in france i'm gonna reject him but he all you know So he also talks about, like, the, how he felt a safety in, in Omegel and the internet. And, you know, because he, he says, as a survivor of, as a survivor of childhood rape, I was acutely aware that any time I interacted with someone in the physical world, I was risking my physical body. The internet gave me a refuge from that fear. I was under no illusion that only good people use the internet, but I knew that if I said no to someone online, they couldn't physically reach three. the screen and hold a weapon to my head or worse. I saw the miles of copper wires and fiber optic cables between me and other people as a kind of shield, one that empowered me to be less isolated than my trauma and fear

would have otherwise allowed. So he kind of saw the internet as this place where it was like, it's safe to be, he felt like he could interact with people and whenever, if things went wrong, he was able to remove himself from the situation. Yeah. And, you know, he talks about, as we said, like he, they implemented a lot of practices where, you know, with their own moderation, you know, I believe in a responsibility to be a good Samaritan and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse.

That is exactly what Omega did. In addition to basic safety features of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state of the art AI operating concert with a wonderful team of human operators. Omega punched above its weight in content moderation and I'm proud of what we accomplished. And then he goes on to say, you know, we worked with law enforcement agencies, the National Center for missing and exploited children to help to help put evildoers in prison where they belong but it was never enough you can't like you can't

win the battle against evil doers on the internet i wish evil doers would were more like evil don'ters i wish they just would don't that's what i wish that would be my message to the world that's another pretty good one if i met robin will if i met since he's dead if i met to Will Smith's Blue Jeannie That'd be one of my wish One of my wishes I just want to read the last part of this

Read it The Battle for Omega has been lost Omega You said Omega No run the tape back I'm pretty sure you said Omega I just want to make sure people know What we're talking about

Go ahead keep going Eyes love face Eyes love face Go on The Battle for Omega has been loss, but the war against the internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omega, and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere. I worry that

unless the tide turned soon, the internet I fell in love with may cease to exist, and in its place, we will have something closer to a souped up version of TV, focused largely on passive consumption with much less opportunity for active participation and genuine human connection. If that sounds like a bad idea to you please consider donating to the electronic frontier foundation an organization that fights for your rights online dude sorry is there more he just but then he just thanks everyone and because the the his his vision of the internet is dead it is gone right like the spirit of that died i mean i think i would say that the first point where history started to change was when they went after napster and even now like i remember

at the time being pissed off being like, you can't stop someone from just borrowing your friend's CD and like making a copy of it, which is essentially what this is. It's like, no, that was taking money out of artist's pockets. It was more, I don't think that it's right. It's okay to do once in a while, but like, dude, I was pirating all of my shit. But I find it very interesting in the wake of like this, you know, and recently we've seen the pushback with Reddit and against They're like API practices and all that. They crack down with, I mean,

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. It's just a thing, a company that, and platform that people, obviously joked a lot about hating and being stuck there and whatever, but I do think a lot of people enjoyed it and were,

um, found it like a very useful tool. And, overnight it became something different. it's a remarkable different like the richest guy in the world was just like oh this is mine now it's it's not this thing that you guys used to share it i'm going to start promoting i'm going to start i'm going to change the algorithm it's going to be a completely different tool it's going to show you things that you know you never asked for it's going to promote all kinds of yeah it's also in

spirit i feel like his his view of the internet is closely closely aligned with that of bitcoin maximalists in that it's this kind of libertarian view of what the internet should be and what it should be which is how the internet kind of started the first communities were created by people who were savvy enough with the technology to create them in the first place and that was there that was the spirit of it it's just like hey let's all get together and nerd out over these over this shit and inevitably humanity's got its poison and it's going to leach into that

you know shut down the internet I mean you can't but that would be sick I wish a shark would just bite the cables that run under the ocean we'd need a lot of sharks I think it's fucking insane that there's just cables running

there's like however many of them a dozen that connect the North America to Europe yeah isn't that why Australian internet's so slow because it's got to go all that way. Yeah, but it's the speed of light, dude. I don't know why. Takes a half a second.

You've been to Australia. Yeah? It was fine. It was fine. I didn't check to see if the water flows in the other direction. The whole time I'm there, I'm like, oh, when I flush the toilet, I should notice if it looks funny

because the water flows in the other direction. Dude, this says Australia is plagued by internet disconnections, dropouts, and slow download speeds. Damn, dude. I did not know that. Maybe it's because the internet can't understand or accident. Six in 10 Australians have had issues with their service in the past six months.

How did they fit six Australians inside 10 Australian? That's actually a great question. We're six. We're stuck inside this one. Well, I guess that should, I, sorry we didn't get around to the financial advice, but we'll do it the next one. Oh, fuck. Yeah, that's okay.

We're not going to put in the title or anything. But, uh, and also we only talked about it like 10 minutes in, I think, right? Something like that. Anyway, we got a hell of a bonus episode. We're going to be talking about the butt wipe settlement, of which I am a beneficiary. Is that real? Yep. Tell me boys getting paid by the good folks at Cotonnell.

Tell me about it. They might have hurt my ass. No, I'll tell you in the bonus. Later. That's on time. I'm also going to talk about speaking of butt stuff. There is an airplane that I recently learned about that was so loud that it would cause people to shit themselves. No, because what?

sucked someone's butt. Is that what he said? Airplane. No. Also, just a bunch of other shit. We're just going to be goofing off. We're going to be boeing out. I'm not goofing off even then the...

Man, we didn't get around. It's showing off Jeffrey B. and his wife's fucked up photos. We'll talk about that in the bonus one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, love you very much. Hope you enjoyed this one. And if you're new here, smash that subscribe button. Hit that like button. And if you're old here, call your kids.

Yeah, they are. Yeah, if you're one in the demographic who's old as fuck. Hello. Hello, Mom. Bye.