Was I In A Cult? - The Cult of Influencing: “The Algorithm Giveth, The Algorithm Taketh Away”

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

What happens when your entire life revolves around likes, follows, and perfectly staged smoothie bowls?For Lee Tilghman — better known as @leefromamerica — it meant rising to the top of Instagram’s wellness world… and losing herself in the process.This week, we explore what it means to devote yourself to the cult of social media: when every thought and action becomes about what to post, when friends are replaced by followers, and when your online identity becomes the only one you know.From the outside, the influencer life looks aspirational. But Lee asks: at what cost?____________COME SEE US LIVE!!Los Angeles • September 9, 2025With special guest: comedian Moses Storm@ Dynasty TypewriterVIP “Meet & Greet” tickets available!Not in LA? No prob — livestream available too!FOLLOW US for more culty content and behind-the-scenes chaos:Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacultSUPPORT THE SHOW:The average person spends over 2 hours a day on social media. If this episode resonated—or even made you rethink your daily doomscroll—share it, leave a review. Hug a friend IRL. Huge thank you to our Patreon members—you keep this thing going.Want ad-free episodes & exclusive content? → Join our Patreon.Have a culty story? We wanna hear it.Email us: [e-mail] if you want more from today’s guest, Lee from America:Her brand-new book “If you Don’t Like This, I Will Die” is out nowFind Lee → @leefromamericaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. Dear listeners, this episode contains graphic descriptions of smoothie bowls so beautiful they could summon actual spirits. If you feel the sudden urge to buy a jade roller or renounce all, carbohydrates please pause and call a friend thank you when you're looking at social media and you see an influencer and it's looking perfect just remember

you're getting out of a pie you're getting a tiny slice I had a very authentic page and listen to what happened to me I thought I was like the most loved person and I could never do anything wrong and then I was all of a sudden felt like I was the most hated person on the internet Welcome, everyone to was I an occult? Was I? I'm Liz Ayakuzi. And I'm Tyler Meesum. Real quick, guys.

September 9th, we were doing a live show at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. Come join us for the best Tuesday of your entire week. Moses Storm is our guest. He is a brilliant comedian. and he grew up in a doomsday cult on a school bus. It's going to be a great night. We're going to talk a little bit about our stories. Moses is going to tell us more of his.

We'll have some fun. We'll have some games. Tickets are in the show notes or at dynasty typewriter.com. Okay. Let's do today's episode, right? This is the cult of influencing. Now, that's a word that when I was growing up kind of meant that your friend's older brother was offering you weed. A bad influence.

Today, influencing means convincing strangers to, I don't know, buy a $90 candle that changes your aura to green. I don't know what they sell. If heaven were an algorithm, Lee from America would be its chosen profit. One of the first wellness influencers to go viral, Lee wasn't just serving smoothie bowls and spiritual quotes, which she was doing. She was the brand. Mindful mornings, macho lattes, candlelit baths, did it. digital detoxes, all perfectly curated for her ever-growing flock of devoted followers. You may remember her feed, a glowing blend of yoga, gut health, and gentle self-empowerment

with captioned mantras like, You Are Enough. Lee was a devoted follower to the algorithm's every whim, pulse, and shadow ban. But this wasn't just content. This was her digital doctrine. Her feed, the Holy Scrolls, her stories, the sermon on the mount, her DMs, a 24-7 confessional booth. It's something anyone with a handle can relate to, which is probably everyone listening, right? The validation, the comparison, the dopamine drip you get. But for Lee, it wasn't just a side habit. Wellness became her total belief system. It consumed every part of her life, her mind, her body, and her time. She gave everything to the algorithm. And in return,

and she lost touch with the real world, with her friends, with herself. Who needs matching tracksuits and Kool-Aid when you have a ringlight and some green juice? Now, Lee is out with a memoir about the entire experience. It's called, If You Don't Like This, I Will Die, which is a great title. And listeners, it's good. I really enjoyed it. I loved our chat, and I'm really thrilled to have her on the show to talk about something that is so relevant and so relatable. So without any further ado, let's welcome our former influencer and current human being Lee from America. Hi, I'm Lee Tillman, also known as on Instagram, at least as Lee from America.

I'm a ex-influencer, wellness person, lifestyle gal who was popular in the 2010s, and now I'm an author, and I just wrote a memoir telling my experience of influencing and what it did to me. And it's called, if you don't like this, I will die. I had a pretty normal upbringing. I'm from Connecticut along the Metro North Railroad. I grew up in a pretty competitive suburb of New York City. So I definitely grew up feeling the pressure to succeed. I was born in 1990, child of the 90s.

And so that means that I grew up coming of age as the Internet started to really permeate our culture. I was like 11 or 12 when I first got AIM. Aim, yes, AOL Instant Messenger. Okay, pause for anyone under 30. We got to explain the aim. Aim stood for AOL Instant Messenger. It was basically texting before texting existed. Launched in 1997 and at its peak in the mid-2000s, it had over 50 million users.

And before AIM guys, there were chat rooms, which were real weird. and real creepy, but you'd enter them with your friends and you'd talk to random very possibly dirt bags, strangers,

and we loved it. We would run home to get into these chat rooms. It was the wild west of the internet. And then AIM came along and Robb, do you remember AIM?

Of course I do, yeah. Remember the away messages? Oh, I always had the best away messages, yeah. Like away, but probably still here. Because you want people to kind of like ask about your well-being. Yes.

Right? Like, you want them to do a wellness check on you. Remember, like, everybody loved posting, like, song lyrics as their away message? Like, I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter. And you just be like, okay, BRB. Is Liz okay? Should we check up on Liz? Right.

It was so that. It was the communication platform for an entire generation, myself not included, until MySpace, Facebook, and eventually smartphones took over. AOL shut it down on December 15th, 2017. R-I-I-M. Goodbye. We all used AIM as an extension of our socializing, as you might say. Yeah, instead of passing notes, we would all talk about AIM.

I think I was also really drawn to talk to people online. That's just like, you know, instead of prank calling, we were doing those too. But we were just like going on chat rooms and giggling and having a blast because we were like, is this real? Like we're talking to someone in Russia right now? This is crazy. It really was crazy. I found an interest in food and cooking when I was around 16 or 17. I stopped eating, which is not necessarily normal, but was pretty normalized for my town. Eating disorders, specifically anorexia. Adderall was starting to become very popular and a lot of girls were going on Adderall and just like shedding weight over the

course, with a couple months, and who was on TV, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Jennifer Est, and these women who were thin. Yeah, Kate Moss, extreme weight loss was good, and everybody was dieting. And that was just the culture. All the popular girls, we were all watching what we ate. Okay, so in my school, I don't know about yours, but that you were either popular or you or not, and I was a popular girl. And so I was allowed to run in those circles. And now, for the mansplaining portion of our show about female eating disorders. So by the mid-90s, eating disorders were the third most common chronic illness among teenage girls. Surveys showed that up to 60% of high school girls were trying to lose weight at any given time.

And to be fair, I don't think the pressure to stay thin has gotten a whole lot better 30 years later. But back then, extreme thinness was definitely idolized. I mean, I think Kate Moss said, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Pizza tastes better than anything feels. Sorry, Kate. Sorry. And here's the part people didn't want to talk about. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.

Up to 5% of people with anorexia die within about four years of diagnosis, and untreated cases can be even worse. So while magazines were glamorizing heroin-cheek, real girls were dying. And that concludes the very uplifting facts portion of our show. I just lost weight so fast. Everybody was like, whoa, you look great.

And I thought I looked great too. And I was like, oh, I'm really good at losing weight. And the validation that I got was intoxicating, mostly from other women. And that led to a bout of anorexia that got so severe that I was drawing the attention of my teachers. One of my friends' mothers said to my mom, your daughter's struggling, and I remember my mom,

she was trying to talk to me about it, but I didn't want to take it, so she would send me AOL links on email. My mom would send me these messages of, you know, I think you have this. You have the hair on your arms. You have the gaunt, white face. Like, you know, I'd lost the color.

I'd lost the glint in my eyes. My parents were at their woodson. But I think I was ready. I was like, oh, I think I had gone to a pizza party with my girlfriends and noticed that they were all eating pizza and they were just like laughing and having fun. At that point, I think I was only eating fruit or something. And I just thought, how are they all so normal? And so I think I said to my mom, like, I'm ready.

I want to get help. So let's do what we need to do. I had to go to treatment in Florida, my senior year of high school. I walked in with my suitcase and my bag and they, you know, strip searched me and I would say the first week or two, I was terrified and I hated it. And then after about two weeks, I really loved it. I loved the self-reflection. It was like art therapy, group therapy, movement therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, where they would call my parents in. Authenticity was a word that they kept throwing up there, like, you need to be authentic to your inner self.

I really latched on to these kind of psychoanalytical terms, listening to my body, getting into my body. I mean, these were all things that I really found helpful. I think it was so, I was such a sponge, which is what helped me get better. Okay, so I got out of treatment. I went to St. Joe's in Philly, a really small liberal arts school. Okay, this is the mascot fun thing we do, but this one demands more. So St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where Lee went to school, as one of the most unique mascots in college sports.

The Hawk. The school's motto is, The Hawk will never die. And to embody that, the student inside the suit, he never stops flapping his wings. Every game, no breaks. It's about 3,500 flaps per night. What?

Yeah. The Hawk is so legendary, it was inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame, a Valhawian grounds that honors only 38 mascots. I mean, we're talking about icons, like the Philly Fanatic, San Diego Chicken, Bucky Badger, Big Red, Goldie Gopher, even Mr. Met. So going straight to college after going through treatment proved to be a challenge for Lee. I really found college difficult. I had just been through this life-changing experience where I'm sitting across from people who almost died.

I, myself, almost died. And all of a sudden now I'm like kind of supposed to go play Frisbee on a college campus, sororities, and guys and I'm not really into this. And so I started to go online at my freshman year of college. I was online and I was looking for other people who maybe have been through what I had been through and I found a blog called Kath Eats Real Food, Curf. She was the first food blogger that I think I ever found. And I loved looking at what this kerf girl was putting in her oatmeal like peanut butter

and stuff. And I thought, okay, there's no blog yet about a girl who, who is in recovery from a eating disorder in college, I'm gonna start one. So I started it and within like a couple months I had hundreds of thousands of readers and I posted my breakfast and my lunch and I would post from my dorm.

I actually went in really deep and it wasn't cool yet. It wasn't like cool like now if you're an influencer in college like you can make a lot of money and it was like oh she's kind of like a nerd. I was like I said on the blog all day, every day. And then by the spring, a freshman year, I looked out the window. It was like a beautiful spring day. And I saw everybody hanging out on the quad. And I thought, oh, my God, I don't have any friends. Something inside me was like, that's where you should be, not here.

And so I deleted the blog on a whim. And I was like, I'm going to go be offline. And that summer, I woofed, which is worldwide organic organization for farming. For anyone wonder, wondering, Wolfing, spelled WWOOF, stands for worldwide opportunities on organic farms, a global program where volunteers trade farm labor for room and board. It started in the 1970s in England and now connects around 100,000 volunteers a year with about 12,000 host farms in over 130 countries. Four to six hours of farm work per day, planting, harvesting, taking care of animals, and in exchange you get food housing

and the experience of living the back-to-the-land lifestyle. My sister actually woofed in Italy and she loved it. Okay. Okay, but here's a crazy story. She was outside of Rome. Her friend got placed on another farm

that was also in a rural area outside of Rome. And it turned into like a horror movie, okay? She was only fed one bowl of plain pasta a day. Apparently the host would have these parties with fresh fruit and amazing food for his guests, but he wouldn't let her or her roommate eat any of it. At one point, she was forced to shoot a pig to put it out of its misery. And then, this is the creepy part, he takes her cell phone. So she was unable to call her parents. And she was getting thinner, and she got all these bug bites on her legs. So she, like, needed to find a way to

escape. And finally, she got him to call a doctor for all the bites on her legs. And she got the doctor to help her and her roommate secretly escape this farm. Well, but Italy's beautiful, though, isn't it? I mean, it is really lovely other than that. But fortunately, Lee's woofing experience was a positive one. So I worked on a farm out in the Hamptons. It was a coming of age summer. I lived on this beautiful old estate and worked on a two-acre farm

in exchange for worm and board and food. And I lived with a bunch of people from Maine, and they taught me all about organic food, farming, eating locally, looking at all these people who are so happy and healthy and vibrant and working with their hands. And I thought, I want to be a farmer when I grew up. I went back to school and was very private, didn't have a blog. Like, my sophomore year, I worked at a smoothie bar,

and I learned about organic smoothies, which is important for the next phase, which was the future, which is graduating from college. then I moved to New York and Instagram had just come out and I was using it and I was starting to craft this persona of like a cool New York City girl in 23, 24. I'm working in like corporate restaurant industry. I'm out with clients sometimes until 6 in the morning and we're partying a lot and I'm noticing that it's not healthy and I want to be healthy and I start to make these big smoothies and

I pour them into a bowl and I think to myself, wow, this is really cool. I started posting my smoothie bowls, which were big oatmeal bowls with tons of toppings. And I think to myself, wow, this is really cool. And it's the Instagram flat lay moment. So everything is bird's eye. And now I have these beautiful smoothie bowls that you literally can't scroll past without looking at because they're like purple and green and yellow and pink that I, people love them. I would always hashtag all my photos so that if someone else was searching those hashtags, they would find my smoothie bowl or my cute outfit. at the club and think, that's a cool girl.

She's, like, healthy, and she goes to clubs. Like, I want to follow her. It's 2014. I started to get random followers, which nobody was really doing. And her handle became at Lee from America. And it described me without putting me into a niche. Like, I just wanted to be me. And I became kind of a local influencer in New York City.

And then I went viral in January of 2015. My following grew by thousands in, like, hours. I was crying. I called my mom. I was like, Mom, I've got viral. This episode of Was I in a Cult is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And yes, if you're thinking, wait, don't you too read a lot of progressive ads? You're correct.

Yeah, but here's the deal. If all our listeners just switch to progressive, I mean, maybe we wouldn't have to keep reading these ads. We could just sit back, cult. free and ad-free. But until then, fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. Those are the things people say about drivers who switch to progressive and save hundreds. Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. I actually have progressive and it has saved me hundreds. So I guess that makes me a financial

genius. Or at least insured. Yeah, visit progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates, potential savings will vary not available in all states or situations. So now, Atlee from America, was gaining new followers by the minute. It was 2015, and I had built my page to be so cool that the first Macha brand that app reached out, they said, we want to send you macha. I said, great, for $73, I'll post about you. And they were like, great, where do we send the check? And I was like, okay, so if I just made $75 for a sponsor post that easily with 12,000 followers, what is 100,000 followers going to bring me in?

And I was like, yeah, I'm quitting my job in a movie to L.A. And I'm going to go be a wellness blogger. I want to be in L.A. And so began her pilgrimage to the Mecca of Wellness, Los Angeles, California. Well, at least in the West Hollywood Silver Lake, Los Angeles. That is the land of Sparolina, Soundbaths, crystals, and, where mercury is always in retrograde and everyone is busy either manifesting booking a big job or a rich boyfriend or both where finding yourself on an ayahuasca journey in the desert is called

Wednesday where your therapist is also your rakee healer and your dog has a specialized raw food diet where no one has a job but everyone has a brand and where a smoothie costs 24 dollars but it does come with a side of spiritual awakening. And pearls are replaced with mollabates. And I moved to L.A. And I would experiment with juice cleanses. I really dove into L.A. life. I started to go to moon circles and just I loved L.A.

I loved it. It was also kind of nerve-wracking being in a new place. And so I was kind of alone. And like I said, in my history, what do I do when I'm a little nervous and I'm in a new place? I go online. I start to post more and more. I thought, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all in. I would go to Aeroon and write down the foods that I wanted to try and I would get home.

And then I would email the brand and say, I saw your product in Aeroon. Can you send it to me? I'll post about it. They were like, sure, we'll send you our cereal. And then I would like sell it out. That was a new thing. She was quite innovative and forward-thinking for the time. Yeah, and the sponsorships, well, they kept coming in.

Nobody was doing gifting. So I just became a waitress for like a year. I worked at a very chic, popular brunch spot in Echo Park. They were all models and actors and actresses and comedians. And they all had been there for like years. And they all wanted to leave because they all wanted to be like cast in the next movie. And I was the first one to be able to afford to leave. And I was like, yeah, I'm famous for my smoothie bowls.

Like, and I can afford to leave. and I moved into my own apartment and left my job. I don't remember how much I was making a month, but I think I was starting to make six figures, like 100K. I mean, that's pretty impressive and better than most people who moved to L.A. to chase the dream. My page was macha, yoga, self-care, baths, travel, lifestyle, healthy food, and self-love. I was projecting this image of perfect health, and I loved it.

I loved my quest for health. It all stemmed back to being in treatment at 17 and finding joy in self-knowledge. It was my job. It was my job to be healthy. And all like the societal markers of success, which is in America, money, visibility, fame, being liked. Everybody knew to go to my page and I'm growing 7,000, 8,000 followers a month. And it's so hypnotic. So this show is called Was I a?

a cult. So where's the cult you are asking? Well, I'll just describe my experience and your listeners can pick the culty aspects. But I think that the way that I found success, I can only speak for myself. I found that the more I gave my time to Instagram, the more successful I'd be. And Instagram is instant success, instant highs and instant lows. And before she knew it, was all consuming. The algorithm had indoctrinated her every thought, her every move. She wasn't just posting things here and there as Lee from America. She was living every moment as her. And somewhere along the way, Lee from Connecticut was gone. I would wake up in the morning and have a hot cup of lemon water and meditate for 45 minutes. Sometimes I would film the meditation. So then I would go

to the gym and have a collagen macha latte. And I would film the workout and film the macha. And then I would make breakfast and make a smoothie or a paleo toast. And then in the afternoon, I would do lunch and I would usually post that. And then I would go back on stories and maybe do a Q&A. And then it would be night time. And I would post my candlelit dinner or by myself because hashtag isolation or my candlelit bathtub. And then I would say goodnight to everybody. So I was bringing everyone around with me everywhere I went every day for years. I do believe that in order to be successful, we need to sacrifice things that bring us pleasure. So whether that's family or friends or our health, I decided to sacrifice social.

But ironically, not social media. That got all of her devotion. So that means like if somebody said, hey Lee, you know, come to this event tonight. I would say, no, I can't because it's not anything that I'm going to be on Instagram tonight, it's that like I have only this much energy, right? We only have so much energy in the day. And I'm giving it all to Instagram. And I'm giving it all to my followers.

Eventually, if you stop hang out with your friends, they'll stop asking you to hang out with them. I think sometimes I would say yes. And then I would like cancel out the last minute because I just was like, ah, I know this is going to mess up my, not only my Instagram, but my health. I was obsessed with getting nine hours of sleep. And I was worried that being at a well-lit restaurant would mess with my circadian rhythm and I just was a hermit like so I was completely addicted to my phone and to

Instagram I just like need to always be on I was very approachable and I would always respond to DMs that's what got my followers to I think fall in love with me in many ways they really thought but like I was their bestie and I really thought they were mine and I was also having DM conversations with followers who would say hey I love your sports bra where's it from but I felt like I was talking all day because also I was talking on stories. I would set up my camera and I would talk to the camera for an hour or two.

But I'm not actually having any in-person communication. No one's really seeing me. So that's what I mean by isolated where like I'm really just living for my followers. I didn't have anything else. I didn't have like anything really else to live for. We'll be right back.

Hey, Liz, after listening to this episode, I've decided I'm going to be an influencer. Oh, let's practice. Hold that macha cup higher. Now just... Right here. Good. Now say, just casually walking through my leaves and my new cashmere sweater. No big deal. Hashtick Blast. Okay. That I can do that. Okay. That's pretty good. But now, now let's do it with Quince. I will influence for Quince because Quince actually gives you the influencer look without the influencer price tag. Okay. Now let's say I want to talk about the 100% Mongolian cashmere sweater. I got from Quince.

Easy. Just say manifesting abundance in my sweater that looks designer but costs way less. Okay, nice. I also got a really nice ring from Quince last month. How about when your jewelry matches your soul, hashtag self-care. Liz, you are really good at this. Okay, I did buy some wine glasses. Because self-love starts with a perfectly poured cabernet.

Hashtag wine Wednesday. Okay, I got it. Just find a product, add a dramatic line, and slap a hashtag. tag on it. There you go. But the truth is, Tyler, Quince makes it easy to look polished and cozy. They partner directly with top-tiered ethical factories and they cut out the middleman. So it's luxury quality without luxury prices. But I will say this. Keep a classic and cozy this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince. Go to quince.com slash cult, free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash cult.

Don't forget the slash, or more importantly, the cult. Hashtag not staged, hashtag actually worth it. Hashtag, honestly, Quince, your stuff is so good. I don't know what to do every time I go on your website. I need something new. Quince.com slash cult. So Lee from America was living quite an isolated life offline, but online, she was interacting, talking all day long.

And for a while, it was working, because despite everything she was giving up, the gains were quite seductive. Yeah, the money is intoxicating. I was making great money. I was about to buy a house in L.A. I was turning down brands. I had a team of people. I had a manager. I had a assistant.

I had hired an events coordinator. I hired a design studio. I had a business coach. I had a whole team of supporters that I was paying their salaries as well. the world was my oyster but deep down something was like the way you're doing this

is not sustainable because it was just me because that's what everyone said they're saying we you know you could double your income if you hire someone to make the content for you like someone did make the smooth

you will post them but I was the product I was the yoga smoothie girl like you can't replace that and besides it was all she thought about all day anyway it's hard to turn off the content it is I always had like a notes app and my thought of like what to post next.

And I was just always out into the list. There was like hundreds of ideas for reels and posts and videos to make. Also when you're an influencer, you're like a TV producer. You're ideating, creating, filming, editing, copywriting, posting, community engaging, post editing. Also in your 24 hours channel. So it's like taking the spotlight and turning it on myself and finding great joy and happiness for a bit. and then solely being like, I don't know who I am anymore. Lee's story is a bit unique because she was in the cult of the algorithm.

She was the most devoted follower and put it before everything in her life. And at the same time, she was becoming her own kind of leader. She had actual followers, hundreds of thousands of them, who listened to her words and advice as their own doctrine of sorts. If she stopped washing her hair for a week, they stopped washing their hair. If she detoxed her armpits with clay, well, so did they. It's safe to say she wasn't just sharing her lifestyle. She was also shaping theirs.

And I'm also starting to feel the pressure. Like, okay, there's a lot of people watching me. At this point, I had 378,000 followers. I'm starting to feel a little burnt out. I'm starting to feel these feelings like this is not sustainable, but I was just down there in the trenches, still DMing, still making smoothies. but I was starting to find it difficult to always be on camera

because I didn't want to gain weight because it was my job to be healthy. And I was just using my body as an experimentation tool, which there's nothing wrong with that. But when you take it extreme and when you add and everything else that I'm talking about, it got dark. I was experiencing some health issues that might have been from God knows what, stress of the move, potentially the damage of under-eating and binging and purging from years prior.

but I was starting to experience some hormonal issues and energy dips, and I was supposed to be the picture-perfect version of health. And after so much isolation, she finally let a little real life in. I eventually started dating somebody pretty seriously, and he was long-distance. He comes over, and we spend like two weeks together, and I went from posting two or three times a day and being in that flow, that steady output of content,

to maybe posting once a day or once every two days. And the algorithm harmed me, for that. She's not on as much. It's like data. It's like it doesn't have to be emotional. It can just be like, oh, I'm growing at 7,000 followers a month, and I got distracted, and now I'm growing at 4,000 followers a month. So what does that tell me? That tells me that if I leave this and start to invest in my romantic life or take a couple days off to be with family, I'm paying the price of less followers. I need to keep going and growing. I cared about Instagram more than the relationship.

I was dating my followers. There wasn't really no any room for anyone else. Well, so I ended that relationship in the fall of 2018, and a week later, I launched my workshop series. Ah, workshops! Well, now we're getting into some culty territory. For a cult without a workshop is like a candle without a flame. A rose without a thorn.

A smoothie bowl without a motivational caption. Workshops had always been a very popular service that I offered. The workshops were also in beautiful settings, in light-filled rooms with flowers and ceramics, and you could bring the ceramics home, and everyone got a bag, and it was a very special experience. The workshop were always selling out, so I thought, okay, if they're always selling out, the demand's there. Let's raise the prices. And she did. From about 350 at the start of the series to now up to 500 for general tickets, and

And yes, some VIP spots pushing as high as $750. I posted the workshop series in the morning at 9, and by like noon, things were really bad because people were accusing me of cultural appropriation and white privilege because I was doing a matcha workshop and as a white person, much is from Japan and of white privilege because the cost was cost prohibitive. There was a lot of political turmoil during that time of the presidency, and Goop was blowing up, and she was luxury wellness, and I think people kind of always thought that I was the more accessible one, but then they saw these ticket prices, and they thought she's not accessible, and they got angry. My post went viral, celebrities and comedians and famous people were commenting on it, even being like, what the hell is she doing, that opened up the floodgates of hate to negativity, that they, insisted was, you know, helpful and constructive, but was really just hate and negativity. So that was the beginning of the darkness that took over because I all of a sudden saw how my community could flip on me. I didn't understand. I was so hurt. And every time I went on stories and started crying, I would get accused of white tears and like being insensitive. I just

was like, what is going on? Like my little cult people were turning against their leader. I'm lost in the sauce, but I also could tell that my followers were lost, too. I could see how angry they were, and I was so confused because I thought that we were all in a relationship together. It was so crazy. It was wild. I thought I was like the most loved person, and I was. I thought I could never do anything wrong. And then I was all of a sudden felt like I was the most hated person on the Internet.

And I was dumbfounded that I could be disliked. Oh, no, I need to be liked by everybody. If you have like a deep-seated need to be validated, you need to be hearted and liked. You know, I need likes to live. I need likes to make money. You need likes. You have to. You'll have to be liked on Instagram.

That was how I was getting all my validation and sense of self back then. You could maybe tie it back to being in high school and walking down the hall and loving that validation that I got from being thin and being liked. But it's a survival mechanism for a lot of women. You need to be like to be okay and safe in the world. I never thought about being liked as a way to feel safe. But when you think about it, yeah, that makes sense. I really truly was distraught. I felt terrible.

I really had a lot of self-hate after that. It shattered my ego, the belief that like all women support women. It shattered my understanding of the Internet. Back then, thought that it was still just such a beautiful place. But for many years after that, I was really in so much pain about it. Cults will build you up and then break you down without a second thought. You think the leader and the group, the system has your back.

But what they really want is your loyalty, your energy and your complete devotion. And the second you falter, the second you stop serving the cause, you're out. Excommunicated without a second thought. And then you're forced to face the hardest truth. You were never loved for you. The affection, the community, the belonging. It was never real. It's all conditional.

The cult didn't need you for who you are. It needed you to keep its illusion alive, to recruit others like you to prove the system works. And then you realize the identity that you had in the cult. It was never really yours. They don't give a shit about Lee from Connecticut. They only cared about Lee from America because she wasn't a person, she was a product.

And products, well, they can always be replaced. We'll be right back. Okay, so I've spent years investing in my face, honestly. It's one of my favorite things to do. I love products. I love trying products. My husband makes fun of me for all of the products that I have. But I love finding ones that work and are affordable.

But my neck has been totally neglected all these years. And then I kept getting older. And guess what? My neck was the one who reminded me of that. So I decided it was time to become a neck person. And I started using GoPure's Titan and Lift neck cream. Okay, hear me out. What I love about this product is a bunch of things.

But one, I love that it is specifically turrets. targeted for my neck, which honestly just helps me remember to give this area attention. It's got Bacuchiole, I hope I'm saying that right, which is a plant-based alternative to retinol. If you've used retinol, you know what it does. It improves texture and firmness, but Bacuchial, it is natural, so it is far gentler than retinal. It's also something I just actually enjoy using. It's cruelty-free. I'm personally newer to this specific product, but I've already noticed changes. And I checked out the reviews and clearly I'm not the only one who's into it. People rave about it. And it's not just the neck they target. They have a full line of science-backed skin and body care. And you can try all of GoPure's products risk-free for 60 days. And right now,

gopure has a crazy deal. For a limited time, you can get 57% off. Yeah, weird random number, 57% percent off the Titan and Lift neck cream. And skulls. and tone arm cream bundle. You can also get 25% off all other products by using our code in a cult at gopure.com. So head to gopure.com and use our code in a cult for a huge discount. And after you buy, do us a favor when they ask where you heard about gopure, tell them it was from our show. Was it in a cult. Now back to the show. Hi, I'm Jesse Prey and I'm Andy Cassette. Welcome to Love Murder. where we unravel the darkest tales of romance turned deadly.

Our episodes are long form, narrative-driven, and deeply researched, perfect for the true-crime officinados seeking stories beyond the headlines. Like the chilling case of Blanche Taylor Moore, the so-called Black Widow who left a trail of poisoned lovers. Or the shocking murders of Chad Shelton and Dwayne Johnson, where family ties masked a sinister plot. Subscribe to Love Murder on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. after i got canceled i probably pretended like i was doing well but i was not i lost a lot of

followers i continued on with the workshops fall and came the holidays came and i lost weight i stopped eating but i wasn't trying to lose weight i just the cancellation is such traumatic body experience that food wasn't really on my mind you know when you go through something really really sad and traumatic, you know, you lose weight. It's just like it can happen. She's exactly right. In fact, scientists call this trauma-induced anorexia. Up to 40% of people drop weight after something devastating happens. The other 60% of us? I've been there.

We put it on, baby. Just get fatter. I think you go one of two ways. You eat or you don't eat. But then, my body was like, whoa, this is not helpful. You need to eat more or you need to take care of yourself. he needed to rest. And so I was starting to feel that message coming up in my body, which was really stressful because I was like, I can't rest. I have like, you know, a million things on my play.

I think that I just slowly started to unravel, but I had to keep it together because I was Lee from America. And I was a strong, female, soft, gentle warrior who did like yoga poses while writing like, you deserve to not shrink. Meanwhile, I was shrinking. I was like, just make it to the end of the year. make it to the end of the year. I got a dog. I got a puppy. And I'd always wanted a dog. And Samson, my dog, he upended that perfect routine I had of waking up at five and going to work out. Because all of a sudden, now I had a puppy that needs to go out six times a day. Oh, and he doesn't know how to climb the stairs. He's afraid of the elevator. I didn't realize that puppies don't

come knowing how to climb stairs. He doesn't teach them that. Within a couple weeks of getting that dog in early January, I came home from breakfast. and my apartment flooded. And so I'm walking around my apartment. Everything is flooded. Everything is wet and sopping and moldy. And everything in my apartment at this point is gifted to me. Everything.

Down to the rug, to the bookshelf. I had not bought a book in years. I had not bought a piece of clothing in years because I was an influencer and everything is sent to you for free. I looked around, Samson's sopping wet, and I just took Samson, my passport, and my laptop. And I was like, this is all I need. I don't need any of this stuff. I don't want any of the stuff. I don't want any of it. I want to actually leave this now. So I left the apartment. I got an Airbnb. It was a very dark moment, but in retrospect, it was a moment of strength. And within a week, I logged off. I said goodbye. One last time on stories in my kind of high-pitched voice. And I said, guys, I'm just going to take some time off right now. I really need to be offline. I've really need to find myself. I think I said, like, you know, I'm going to miss you guys so much. It's true. I was going to miss them. And I got a couple messages before I logged off.

And then the last message I ever saw was, have a great trip. But before you leave, where's your necklace from? I just thought that was, like, so funny because I was just like, many people really didn't care about, like, my journey or my well-being. They really just wanted to shop me. And the next morning, I woke up and had, for the first, time in years my morning matcha and I didn't film it I didn't have to be in the pretty cup it didn't have to be perfectly frothy or perfectly green it was matcha for me and it was as sweet as it could ever be but all of a sudden I removed social media and I felt sweet bliss but right below that was a lot of the other stuff that I maybe had been dealing with that I'd

been pushing down from the cancellation from the breakup from just the years of being super online And I think oftentimes when you remove the thing that's causing the most pain, everything else comes up. So I walked into a treatment clinic and told them what I was dealing with and started treatment. So I finally got that break. I was just Lee and nobody knew I was an influencer. I didn't really tell anyone about it. I successfully moved back to New York without anybody really knowing I started fresh. And I was seeing all these articles in the news like Emma Chamberlain, a beauty influence.

or excess after 19 years creating content, citing burnout and mental health issues. You're also seeing stats of like Gen Zine and young kids wanting to be influencers more than ever, but then you're seeing all the influencers up here struggling. So I was like, this is an issue. I want to share my story so that they know it's not all rainbows and butterflies and free cars. You've got to pay the price. So what is it going to be? Are you not going to have a family?

Are you not going to have friends? Are you not going to have good health? Are you not going to have good mental health? And then I decided in 2022 to write a book, and the book just came out in August 2025. Lee's book, once again, is entitled, If You Don't Like This, I Will Die. It's very intimate. It's like reading her diary, in a sense. Right after I got off social media, I was convinced that it was evil, and I was really anti-big tech. But now I understand that it's not so black or white.

I see how social media has helped people. It can give us tons of information, but it can also give us misinformation. It can help us feel less alone, but it can also make us feel really alone. So it's just a very fine line. My feelings towards social media are, it is so much bigger and more powerful than us. We need to be staying vigilant and aware. It's just kind of up to us how we use it. You know, if it's of making us upset and we're finding it difficult, then

we get off of it or use it a little less. Which granted is a bit more difficult when you are relying on it for your everything. When you're looking at social media and you see an influencer and it's looking perfect, just remember you're getting like out of a pie, you're getting a tiny slice. And even it's so funny because now there's always like authenticity of influencers who are sharing their, you know, on perfect skin or their weight loss journey and, you know, things are bumpy, but it's still curated. That makes sense?

It's like once you're trapped into this content niche of authenticity, then you always have to stay authentic. And if you get too skinny or have two perfect skin, then you're unrelatable. So I believe that it's impossible to be authentic online. I had a very authentic page and listen to what happened to me. Read my book and you'll figure it out. But let me tell you that much. It was very inauthentic deep down. I still look back on that whole experience and I'm just like, that was crazy.

And I just don't think once you live that, you can't ever go back to it. And now she's catching up for lost time, so to speak. I looked around and realized that, like, everybody was married and having a kid. And I really did invest in my career in my 20s, but it paid off. And I have no regrets about that. I said at 31, 32, and was like, oh, no. Like, I really want to find someone. And luckily I did.

I'm engaged. And she has real world friends again. I love being around people. My friends and family and my fiance. say I just think it goes to show how different I am now because I really rely on the people in my life to support me and for me to be there for them. It's a huge part of my identity. And I'm liked by the people in my life for who I am. Not that perfect image that I was projecting online. So in the end, Lee from America walked away from the compound of the

algorithm. And Lee from Connecticut stepped back into her own life. No perfectly lit smoothie bowls, no yoga poses, no you're enough captions, just an uncurated messy but real day in the life of someone doing the best she can, just like the rest of us. I mean, the algorithm may promise love belonging, even salvation, but in the end, it doesn't love you back. And that's the thing about cults, whether it's a guru in the desert or an app on your phone. They convince you that your worth comes from them. But it doesn't. Because after the likes are gone, and the likes will go eventually, you're left with what's real, with the people who don't need a Wi-Fi signal to love you. And that is worth more than all the

followers in the world. And if you need some help in the healing process, there's always a $90 detox tea to flush out your regret. I need that. I definitely need that. Or you can always blame Mercury being in retrograde. It just is a catch-all for anything that goes wrong. If you want to know more about Lee's story, her memoir. If you don't like this, I Will Die, is out now, and we have a link to it in the show notes. Now, before we go, we just have to remind you our lovely listeners that we do have a Patreon page.

And the funds contributed, they really do help us to make the show. A show which is much more a labor of love than anything else. Yeah, we do also post the show without ads on the Patreon page for those who don't want to hear about insurance and clothing. And thank you to our newest subscribers, Julie LaVoise. That's what they call the singing contest show in Spain. La Voice. Renee Kretschmeier, Kim Kailovane, and Megan Fair.

And that is our. show. We will be back next week a really, very funny, very cool show about a dude whose father was in the mob. Yeah, that mob, the Guido White die. Hey, you looking at me?

Mob. You know? The mafia. You don't want to mess with them. They might feed you plain pasta. Dude, my family's in there already. My dad's Sicilian. Yeah, your dad's a graphic designer list. He's hardly He's a retired graphic designer.

A baby disappeared in the Mediterranean that nobody talks about in my family. And it is definitely mob-related. Yeah, he's no dawn. My dad would take me to the backroom of this pizzeria in Brooklyn. I was like, there's back rooms of pizzerias? I thought it was just the kitchen. He was like, no, there's a back room. It was probably two or three different pizzerias.

And I would meet these guys. and I just remember their hands being so big they just would shake my hand and like envelop my hand in their huge Italian hands and they all had slicked back hair one of them gave me a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card is just a gift he was just like yeah kid take this Wellina Colt is hosted, produced, written by Liz Intentional Living Ayacuzzi.

And Tyler Manifesting Mesem. Sound mixed and produced by Rob Personal Growth Para. Always growing. See you next week, everyone. In his midsection. We love you, Rob. Terrify me. Don't spare my life.

Crucify me. This September, CBS hits are streaming free on Pluto TV. I'm coming out. For this month only, stream full episodes of Madlock. I'm a lawyer like the old TV show. Fire Country. Elsbeck. I do love a mystery.

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