Can we talk about this for a little bit?

Yeah, and Mormons have, of course, there is now a pretty wide range of Mormons too, of course, right? So you have more what you could call fundamentalist Mormons who, you know, observe The special underwear, which is very real, which comes from the church and which, you know, is they literally release it every year.

And for women, there's different sizes of of, you know, strap and all this stuff.

And it is it is quite controlling.

But then you have all the way to, you know, the these Mormon influencers that we're talking about.

You know, you would you would they certainly do not wear underwear.

the underwear in, in public.

so all of that physically yes

Yeah.

You know, that there's this written record.

And I do think working on this story just helped me really understand how anything in a digital record, anything in text, there is a weight, there is a solidity, there is a seriousness that is imported when you read it, um, out of context of the speaker, of the owner of this material, that does give it a kind of, um, gravity.

Whether it's something said in jest, whether it's something said in anger, it doesn't have the ephemeral quality anymore of that kind of speech.

Even, even being yelled at or yelling at someone or screaming at someone or cursing, like, the way that that actually sort of dissipates in the ether, that it doesn't when it's written down, it sounds maybe pedantic to lay out like that, but it's not when you realize how much you're writing down.

And I, you know, I think of when I was in college, I wrote a paper about a guy whose archives were in my little liberal arts college in Connecticut, and he wasn't terribly, um, important or famous or anything.

He was an academic.

And, and so maybe you can talk about that weird gray area that's happening.

talk about that weird gray area that's happening.

Yeah.

So this guy from the beginning of the story, we kind of come back to him.

And once he was hacked, so not only did the hacker get into his one password and release a ton of personal information about him on BitTorrent, the hacker used his information to get into his Disney Slack, which is why they were sending that message.

And Disney...

Somehow had a ton of information either sitting on Slack or accessible through Slack that the hacker also uploaded to the Internet.

And that included, you know, Social Security information for a lot of its employees, spreadsheets, financial information.

That is a big

Uh, how do we move from that to do- domestic stay-at-home moms who are Mormon from Utah sort of taking over pop culture? How did that happen?

Yeah.

So again, this is like we're talking about social media, uh, in, on a sort of larger trend level, but also like I am a white woman living in New York City.

I speak English, right? So this is like I just wanna...

You know, I have my own niche, even if I'm trying to get outside of it and be a reporter and read and write as, as much as I can.

You know, w- we're, we're coming from a, a particular perspective.

So, you know, this is not the definitive story of the world's internet, but what happened here on a kind of pop culture, um, in the influencing world, um, before the pandemic, um, what happened when shutdowns and lockdowns occurred is that this specific way people were monetizing on Instagram stopped because of being stuck at home.

It was, it was muted to a little-

Hmm

... um, specific, uh, role in, in the tech industry, um, that's maybe lesser known than some place like California, but, um, Mormons embrace technology really quickly.

And then the third thing is that they share.Mormonism is a very close-knit, um, religion.

Many Mormons live in Utah, so they're, they're also really closely kind of concentrated.

Um, everybody knows everybody's, um, you know, fellow members in their ward, their cousins, their grandparents, and so there's a lot of, um, talking to each other and following each other.

You know, Mormons, um, have pretty strict codes of conduct, so they're also, like, always watching each other and looking what they're- what each other, um, is up to, ah, following each other when, you know, someone's emulating good behavior.

Women especially.

Today I'm going to make, um, this sort of potato, broccoli, egg thing.

Hmm

... um, specific, uh, role in, in the tech industry, um, that's maybe lesser known than someplace like California.

But, um, Mormons embrace technology really quickly.

And then the third thing is that they share.Mormonism is a very close-knit, um, religion.

Many Mormons live in Utah, so they're, they're also really closely kind of concentrated.

Um, everybody knows everybody's, um, you know, fellow members in their ward, their cousins, their grandparents, and so there's a lot of, um, talking to each other and following each other.

You know, Mormons, um, have pretty strict codes of conduct, so they're also, like, always watching each other and looking what they're- what each other, um, is up to.

Today, I'm going to make, um, this sort of potato, broccoli, egg thing.

Yeah, it's a microcosm for our entire system, really.

It is.

And what MLM does is instead of looking at that and thinking, "Hey, why is this the way that it is? And maybe we could do something about that." It's, "Keep going and maybe you'll get in that club one day." And we're all just trying to get into that fractional club instead of looking at the whole shape and saying, "Well, does it have to be this way? And is there a way that the distribution could be fairer?" And what's so crazy and makes you kind of put your tinfoil hat on is, the Amway founders and other people in multiple marketing have politically pushed and contributed to the policies that have made that inequality more stark.

Like bringing down the marginal tax rate, fighting any kind of wealth tax, which would take some of those profits and put them back in, and then tearing apart those social welfare systems that do give you something to fall back on then and that are equal, that everyone has access to, whether that's, you know, they wanna get rid of Social Security, pulling apart public education.

All of that is to get rid of those collective safety nets that we all share and push this Wild West where you can make a lot of money if you're willing to exploit a lot of people.

Yeah, overtime.

That's why we have all of these things and for a while after the New Deal in this American era where MLM was conceived, that stuff was something to be prideful about.

Ronald Reagan was a spokesperson for GM when the union at GM was really important, and of course there were all kinds of ways that GM was always trying to undercut the workers 'cause of course their interests are-... different.

Give us an example of a company that does that.

Oh, sure.

So the oldest one is Amway.

The guys that invented MLM did it with a company, a vitamin company called Nutrilite.

Richard Devos and Jay Van Andel who founded Amway, they started as Nutrilite salesmen, and then they did what always happens in MLM, which is they picked up all their distributors and started their own company, which is Amway in the late '50s.

Amway is the biggest and most influential, um, MLM in the world.

There's also Herbalife, there's Mary Kay, there's Shaklee, Tupperware, I could go on and on.

A lot of Republican money comes from multi-level marketing.