The Diet and Fitness 'Influencer' Phenomenon: How Screwball Scammers Become Rich and Famous

Stop taking diet and health advice from weird people who lie.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw an explosion of the low-carbohydrate diet fad, led by an overweight diet doctor by the name of Dr Robert Atkins.

The low-carb craze was a counter-reaction to the low-fat paranoia of the 1980s and early 1990s. The star of that movement was a fanatic by the name of Nathan Pritikin, who ran a "Longevity Center" where he charged patients US $6,000 for several weeks of the "Pritikin Program." He died in 1985 at only 69 years of age, after committing suicide while hospitalized for terminal leukemia.

Atkins' reign as a diet guru came to an end at the age of 72 when he slipped and violently hit his head against an icy NYC sidewalk. It subsequently emerged he had a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension, and that at the time of his death weighed 258 pounds (117 kg).

Further diminishing low-carb’s prominence were the results of long-term studies. While some highly-publicized short-term studies found greater weight loss on low-carb diets, clinical trials lasting 12 months or more invariably found no difference.

After Atkins died in 2003, it looked like the low-carb craze was in its death throes.

However, it was given a new, albeit temporary, lease on life by a flabby pseudoscientist by the name of Gary Taubes.

Taubes wrote patently misleading articles and books, and got very rich in the process. No-one seemed bothered by the fact that a guy who claimed to hold the answer to "Why We Get Fat" was sporting a generous tire around his own midsection. Taubes co-founded a 'non-profit' called NuSI that in fact made him and fellow anti-carber Peter Attia millions of dollars.

NuSI was the low-carb movement's Great White Hope, the 'research' outfit that was finally going to silence critics like me who repeatedly pointed out that tightly-controlled metabolic ward trials had consistently shown isocaloric low-carb diets offered zero fat loss advantage.

NuSI co-sponsored a metabolic ward study - and when the results were in, it showed the isocaloric low-carb diet offered zero fat loss advantage.

Just like I'd been saying for years.

The Church of Low-Carb threw a hissy fit, angrily slandered the lead researcher, and went back to driveling irrational nonsense with fellow cultists on Active Low-Carber Forum.

Taubes quietly abandoned the low-carb gig, and instead joined another overweight zealot, Robert Lustig, in blaming all the world's evils on sugar.

Low-carb lost its mantle as the numero uno diet fad. Its limelight was stolen by the even more absurd paradigm of veganism, and by intermittent fasting, which cleverly transformed the once-frowned upon habit of skipping breakfast into a hot new diet trend.

Astute marketer Dave Asprey, who belongs to a fairy tale profession known as 'biohackers,' confessed he had been "too keto" and instead began pimping intermittent fasting and "time-restricted eating."

Jimmy Moore, an obese idiot who made millions giving fat loss advice to other obese idiots, went from Livin' La Vida Low-Carb to intermittent fasting, then to Livin' La Vida Lowlife. The bombastic slimeball molested a 13 year old girl, and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.

An emaciated, hebephilic, pathologically dishonest, cyberbullying stalker from South Australia called Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone claimed to have followed a low-carb diet with poor results, so instead began pimping sucrose-enhanced raw vegan diets and running a sleazy website titled "30 Bananas a Day." He attracted lots of followers because, well, lots of people are amazingly stupid. He falsely accused every other male in the fitness industry (including me) of using steroids, only for it to emerge that - despite his broomstick physique - he was a prolific steroid user himself.

Like Moore, Johnstone was later accused of sexual predation and rape, but lucky for him he lives in Australia where a large portion of the police and judiciary are also sex predators, so he's still walking around free. Last I heard of this idiot was a May newspaper article about couples with large age gaps (must have been an especially slow news day in sleepy Adelaide). While his partner is a silicone-filled submoron over 20 years his junior, Johnstone looked about 20 years older than his actual age.

And people pay nutters like this for diet and health advice.

Demented vegan whack-job, Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone.

Humans seem to possess an unwavering desire to exalt the very worst their species has to offer. The aforementioned were PR-oriented influencers and authors who largely had no clue about diet and health, but sure knew how to make a buck from gullible idiots.

Here's a free tip, folks: If someone presents info and goes to great lengths to back it up with verifiable science (note, this is not the same as The Science™, brought to you by BigGov/Media/Tech), then they are an information provider.

If their shtick relies on a heavy dose of novelty, gimmickry, dogma, bombastic claims, and/or wacky behavior, then they're an influencer.

Influencers, by and large, are fuckwits.

Look Who's Back

Guess what? Low-carb is back, baby.

Except they don't call it “low-carb” anymore. The sugar alcohols and pork rinds are gone, and it's now called the “Carnivore Diet."

And no discussion of the Carnivore Diet and influencers would be complete without a mention of Brian Johnson, a.k.a The Liver King.

I spend very little time on social media. I couldn't care less how many chicken breasts Wally Winstrol eats a day, how many 'frog pumps' Clara Clenbuterol does, or how many weeks Chuckie the Vegan Cheetah likes to go without showering.

So I didn't know who Liver King was or what he looked like until late 2022 when a workmate mentioned he'd been exposed as a steroid user. I'm sure I heard the name somewhere previously, but never took any notice.

In order to offer my colleague some sort of informed reply, I entered "liver king" into a search engine, and after about 0.036 seconds my reaction was:

"People seriously thought this joker was natural?!"

Followed by an exasperated series of expletives.

For those who don't know, Johnson a.k.a the Liver King reportedly made a 100 million dollars or so by pimping an "ancestral diet" consisting of ... meat.

That’s it. Just meat. With the occasional raw egg for theatrical effect.

But Johnson wasn't your regular steak eater. Heck no.

The Liver King posted footage of himself eating giant raw livers and wolfing down bovine penises and testicles.

"Why eat vegetables when you can eat testicles?" asked the profound king of cleansing organs.

Don't get me wrong, I love meat too. But I draw the line at eating shlongs.

Some of you who also spend little time on social media may be asking, "what the ...?"

This was my reaction also.

Great minds...

According to Johnson, eating a particular animal organ strengthens the same organ in your own body.

The theory holds a kernel of truth; we know natural thyroid extract can indeed help a struggling thyroid. No-one on the planet, however, has ever demonstrated that eating balls will fortify your own pelotas, or that eating penises will turn your pea-shooter into a fireplug.

I find it interesting that, in this era of so-called 'alpha male' influencers (i.e. Freemasons whose daddies were in the CIA) who become overnight psy-ops sensations issuing angry, rapid-fire admonitions for men to man up, a guy who literally tells other males to eat dicks and balls can become an Internet phenom and a multi-multimillionaire.

Bless humanity. Dumber than a dead dingo's donger, and that's on a good day.

The Liver King attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, whom he dubbed "primals" and whom he urged to follow his "Ancestral Tenets." Regular folk who didn't eat a bucket of liver and genitals each day were dubbed "sub-primals" (read: inferior subhumans).

Note here the cultivation of an elitist cult-like mentality, in which followers are deemed the enlightened ones and outsiders are considered subhuman suckers. Many diet faddists employ this strategy, which pits their followers against the outside world: Vegans versus murderous "unethical" meat-eaters, low-carbers versus Evil Big Carb and all those who remain under its spell.

Eating genitals instead of vegetables was but one of Liver King's "Nine Ancestral Tenets" ("Sleep, Eat, Move, Shield, Connect, Cold, Sun, Struggle, Bond”). Follow these tenets, assured the King, and you'll be living in harmony with Mama Nature. Or Papa Nature. Rugged manliness, rippling musculature, and eternal happiness would be yours for the taking.

The Nine Ancestral Tenets mentioned nothing about driving around in a customized Hummer, flying around in private jets, or living in an 8,300-square foot Spanish revival-style mansion, with a hot tub and cold plunge pool. They overlooked the fact that cavemen didn't have power racks, Olympic bars and kettlebells at their disposal. Nor did they have personal, live-in chefs to prepare the large amounts of animal flesh Johnson claims to have consumed every day.

Brian Johnson's life was about as ancestral as an iPhone.

When asked if his obviously enhanced physique was natural, Johnson lied. Repeatedly.

"For the record, I've never taken steroids," he stated on No Jumper. "I've always told the truth, I still tell the truth."

Liver King rarely told the truth. He was the king of bollocks, not just eating but spouting them. He was a seasoned liar, able to remain completely unfazed while shamelessly deceiving his followers.

Ancestral Tenet #10: Make Like a Pin Cushion

Then the truth finally came out, in the form of leaked emails. It turns out there were only seven Ancestral Tenets, which were:

1. Testosterone cypionate (an injectable form of testosterone);

2. Omnitrope (synthetic human growth hormone);

3. Deca Durabolin (nandrolone decanote, an anabolic steroid);

4. Winstrol (stanozolol, an anabolic steroid);

5. IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor);

6. CJC-1295 (a synthetic peptide that that stimulates the release of GH and IGF-1, believed to promote muscle growth);

7. Ibutamoren (a chemical that also increases growth hormone levels and insulin-like growth factor-1).

Despite repeatedly lying through his teeth and insisting "I don't touch" anabolic drugs, the truth was that Johnson was spending the princely sum of US $11,000 per month on Omnitrope alone.

This wasn't TRT or even judicious steroid cycling - it was flat out drug abuse. Johnson's reckless polypharmacy was about as 'ancestral' as, well, a caveman living in a large luxury house and driving a customized Hummer.

Johnson's voluminous drug intake came to light after a chap named Derek, who has a YouTube channel called More Plates More Dates, shared a series of partially redacted emails in an hour-long video in November 2022.

The emails contained correspondence from Johnson to an unnamed bodybuilding coach in mid-2021. An email sent on June 29, 2021 - a couple of months before the Liver King social media push kicked off in earnest - explained Johnson's goals to the coach.

"I'm the face of several brands, including Ancestral Supplements, and I've just hired a team to build the Liver King brand with the goal of 1MM followers by March 2022." (sic)

The entire Liver King phenomenon was a marketing scam. Johnson, who built his body using copious amounts of powerful drugs, would strut around shirtless and perform PR stunts. He would attribute his muscularity and supposed 'optimal' health and fitness to his supplements and deployment of his Ancestral Tenets. He would feature liberal imagery of his wife and two sons, portraying them as a happy, contented family unit - which he would again attribute to living the Ancestral Tenets.

He would lie to his predominantly male audience and tell them that by eating like him and taking his supplements, they too could become marvelously strong and healthy and attract their own "Queen."

When asked if there was something else going on besides eating genitals and dragging weight sleds, he would rabidly insist he was 100% natural and belittle those who suggested otherwise.

By promoting these lies, he aimed to build a massive fan base of 1 million followers in only 6 months.

In a shining testament to the prevailing gullibility of the human race, it worked. Spectacularly.

“I’m Sorry. For Getting Caught.”

Within days of being outed as a blatant fraud, Johnson posted his so-called 'apology' video. The brazenly insincere video was in fact another bolus of egregious lies and self-serving PR.

"Before social media, I was rich and anonymous and after social media, I'm still rich, but no longer anonymous. I never expected this kind of exposure," claimed the guy who explicitly set out to lure a million followers in only six months.

Always the theatrical charlatan, Johnson filmed the video while sitting on a throne-like chair.

Barely a minute into the video, and the seemingly impossible happened: Johnson sank to even lower depths of shamelessness. He claimed the Liver King charade was a well-meaning experiment designed to help young men and people suffering from mental health issues.

It wasn't to increase Liver King's wealth and feed his ego. It wasn't to finance his luxury lifestyle and allow him to buy lavish new toys. Nope, it was all "for the 4,000 people a day who kill themselves. The 80,000 people a day who try to kill themselves. Our people are hurting at record rates with depression, autoimmune, anxiety, infertility, low ambition in life."

"Our young men are hurting the most, feeling lost, weak and submissive."

If, like me, you've lost friends and relatives to suicide, there's a good chance you view the Liver King with a deep sense of disgust right about now.

Misleading impressionable people about how to build a muscular physique is one thing, but claiming you did it to rescue aimless young men and save people from suicide is truly disgraceful.

We have it in writing that the Liver King "experiment" was a carefully pre-orchestrated marketing ploy designed to push Johnson's supplement brands.

In 2019, I lost a cousin in Adelaide and a good friend in Spain to suicide. Try as I might, I can't even begin to see how their lives could have been saved by some serially dishonest charlatan with an aversion to showering and a penchant for eating bull's dicks.

We're supposed to believe that all around the world, young men are wiping their brows and exclaiming:

"Whew! I had major depression, and was close to committing suicide. But I was saved when an obscenely rich carnival barker with an unachievable physique and bad hygiene used large amounts of growth hormone and steroids and lied about it! Thank you, Liver King!"

Note the similar MO to Andrew Tate, the ephebophile who suspiciously blew up out of nowhere to become one of the most talked about influencers on the planet. If you’ve listened to even a smattering of Tate interviews, it’s clear the guy has an elephantine ego. He is fond of reminding everyone about the millions of dollars and 33 supercars (note the Masonic numerology) he reportedly accrued by engaging women to degrade themselves on OnlyFans. In interviews, he raucously laughs at the “stupid” males who subscribe to these women, reveling in their gullibility and immorality.

After doing his best to morally corrupt females and exploit lonely and sexually frustrated males, he then criticizes morally corrupted females and claims he is trying to empower lonely and sexually frustrated males.

How sweet of him.

Liver King dialed up his ‘apology’ video bullshit even further when he claimed:

"In 2021, I was 43, I didn't feel 100%, physically or cognitively, so I went to get monitored and managed by a trained hormone clinician to see WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON WITH MY LIFE!"

Let's hit the pause button right there. By 2021, before his big push for 1 million followers kicked off, Johnson was already posting as the Liver King, singing the praises of his 'ancestral' diet and lifestyle.

We now learn that, at the relatively young age of 43, he didn't "feel 100%" in the body and cabeza.

Which begs the question: What the hell was he doing giving such bombastic fitness and life advice to other impressionable folks?

We all have our ups and downs - no shame in that, it's part of life. But why did Johnson aggressively portray himself as living an idyllic blissful existence, the physical and psychosocial epitome of healthy 'ancestral' living?

Why was a guy who was in desperate need of health and life advice aggressively promoting himself as an all-knowing source of health and life wisdom?

He claimed his Ancestral Tenets were the surefire path to physical and mental excellence, but it seems they'd failed him so badly he needed ungodly amounts of drugs to function, including $11,000 a month worth of synthetic growth hormone.

The "trained hormone clinician" he consulted was in fact a bodybuilding coach. Johnson knows full well no trained medical professional in their right mind would look at his drug habit and say, "oh, to get to 1 million followers, you need more IGF-1 and a potent beta-adrenergic agonist or three to get rid of that pesky back fat!"

A trained hormone clinician would say something like, "son, you keep this up and your wife and kids will be in mourning a lot sooner than you think. I can monitor you in an attempt to minimize the damage, but I don't agree with what you're doing and would strongly urge you to reconsider your business plan. You're already rich - how much is enough, exactly?"

Many - if not most - influencers lie. And they clearly feel no shame about it. They deceive for the greater good, and that greater good is not public health - it's their personal wealth.

In a country where people drink way too much and where illicit drug use is matched only by New Zealand and North America, I personally couldn't give two droppings if a grown adult runs a brief cycle of testosterone to put on a few kilograms of muscle. I'm more concerned about the meth-addled peanut having a furious argument with his imaginary enemies in the shopping centre car park.

However, when someone presents themselves and their lifestyle as the anecdote to the world's woes - everything from poor physical health to suicidality - it's not okay when they are concealing the true secret to their 'success':

Drug use.

It's not just that many of these influencers are dishonest. Many of them are clearly bonkers. Johnson had a penchant for walking around shirtless in public pointing his digit skywards and yelling "P-R-I-I-I-I-M-A-L!!" He even flew to the UK so he could stand shirtless and perform biceps curls in front of the Buckingham Palace gates. Johnson told the bemused guards, "I'm here. I'm the Liver King."

Yeah, like they gave a shit.

Jimmy Moore was adored by the low-carb crowd. Not only was he full of crap and annoying as all get out, but he was a child molester.

Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone was a cowardly psychopath who relentlessly threatened, cyberstalked and defamed innocent people - and the vegan crowd loved him for it. The idiots didn’t like it so much when he began turning on them. But it wasn't until girls started coming forward to accuse him of sexual coercion and rape that his fortunes started to unravel.

I never ceased to be amazed by some of the utter loons people will take dietary and health advice from.

People will read, laugh and shake their heads at the examples I've given above, but the cycle never ends. As the above-mentioned shysters fade away, others will rise to take their place, spouting 'expert' wisdom that is every bit as ridiculous and false.

People never seem to learn. Rather than settle in the sensible middle ground, they have to keep swinging from one extreme to another.

But I/My Bro/Workmate/Auntie Mavis Follow [Insert Name of Diet Craze Here], and I/They Feel Great, Mate!

Ah, ain't love grand? The euphoria and novelty of meeting someone new, who will one day bore and annoy you to tears.

It's as predictable as the lies from a politician's mouth: Every diet trend kicks off and is swept along by a wave of gushing anecdotes.

Then the inevitable happens. Complaints and reports of side effects emerge. People find it hard to stick to the regimen long-term, because of adverse effects, monotony and/or impracticality. One of the movement's leading gurus is exposed as a fraud or dies.

It becomes apparent that the perfect diet is not so perfect after all. The initial novelty factor and improvements that occurred from dropping highly processed foods and reigning in one's caloric intake become overwhelmed by the nutrient deficiencies inherent in the diet.

While a handful of die-hards remain, most followers lose interest or become disillusioned and jump ship in pursuit of the next hot fad.

Matt Stone once wrote a brief but epic piece that should be mandatory reading for everyone who embarks on any kind of diet regimen which has even the remotest whiff of fad about it. It was titled "Diets are Like New Girlfriends."

Of course, if Matt were to write that article today, he'd have to re-title it "Diets are Like New Personfriends" to appease the wokey dope PC crowd, but his core message still rings as true as ever:

Just about anything new is awesome and wonderful and I-think-I've-found-the-one at first.

Then reality sets in.

Here's a sampling (Matt's post can be read in its entirety here):

- At first you can’t sleep at all

- You announce it to everyone on Facebook

- You are 100% convinced you’ve found something that you can do for the rest of your life

- You go on and on talking to your friends about it until they are sure you have gone crazy

- Your friends and family express concern that you are going to end up hurt

- You enjoy eating it at first, but after a while even the smell of it makes your stomach turn

- After a few months you start daydreaming of other flavors, and want more variety

- Over time you start to notice bad breath and body odor

- You pass no gas at first, then after a few months you start farting a lot

- Your sex life gets steadily worse

- It makes you feel cold, lifeless, and empty inside

- You keep hearing that it’s your fault that things aren’t going well

- You find another and start the whole process over again

Sound familiar?

For the last sixteen years or so, I've been urging people to break the cycle of bullshit and stop getting sucked in by extreme diet plans.

While extreme dietary strategies may have their place in extreme circumstances, most people do not need them.

I know someone who sent his prostate cancer into remission after booking into a New South Wales health retreat and fasting for 28 days. Not a bullshit Dave Asprey intermittent fast where you skip breakfast save for a cup of overpriced coffee with cream in it, but a real fast with no food for 28 days.

Does this mean we should all stop eating for the next four weeks in order to prevent cancer?

Of course not.

There have been published reports of people with allergies or rheumatoid arthritis who have commenced vegan or meat-only diets and experienced improvements in their condition. That polar opposite dietary regimens can both produce such improvements strongly indicates that it is not what these diets included, but what they omitted that brought relief.

So again, does this mean we should all go either carnivore or vegan to guard against allergies and arthritis?

Not in any sane world.

In a series of coming articles for paid subscribers, I'll discuss the pros and cons of the Carnivore Diet. I'll discuss the seemingly positive research, and also the abundant research that shows these diets should be approached with considerable caution.

Until then, love, peace and cannoli instead of shlongs,

Anthony.