0:00

Welcome to Maintenance

0:02

Phase, the podcast that so

0:04

loves the world that we've

0:06

given our

0:11

only

0:17

begotten co-hosts. It

0:20

broke down halfway through. It

0:22

started strong though. It started strong.

0:24

The strongest part was

0:26

your confidence when you said, I've got one.

0:32

You should know well enough by now to

0:34

know, ooh, it's going to be dark. Part of the issue

0:36

here is that I am not a lady

0:39

who was raised in a church. It takes

0:41

me a minute sometimes to catch on to be like,

0:43

oh, his Bible talk

0:44

is happening. Got

0:47

it. I am Michael Hubs. I am Aubrey

0:49

Gordon. If you would like to support the show, you can do that

0:51

at patreon.com slash maintenance phase.

0:54

You can also buy t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, all manner

0:56

of things at Tee Public. Both of those things are linked

0:58

for you in the show notes. Michael.

1:01

Aubrey. Today. Today.

1:03

We are talking about

1:05

Brittany Dawn. I'm so excited because

1:07

all, literally all I know is

1:10

that there's something, something Christian weight

1:12

loss, something, something. I've never heard

1:14

of this person. Bless.

1:15

A couple of content notes before

1:18

we get into it. There are a lot to be had

1:20

for today's episode. We are going

1:22

to talk about police violence.

1:24

We are going to talk about cruelty to animals.

1:27

We're going to hit on some transphobic rhetoric.

1:29

We're going to talk about miscarriage.

1:31

I feel like Stefan, this

1:34

episode has everything. I

1:36

feel like you're doing this to get me interested. It's

1:39

like a writing prompt. It's like, how can

1:41

I, how can I tie all of these things together?

1:43

But then what about you? Are you familiar

1:46

with Brittany Dawn? I was not

1:48

before this episode. This was

1:50

one that was heavily, heavily requested

1:52

of us. So I thought I would

1:54

dig in and see what was there and I will tell

1:56

you what was there was a

1:59

kernel of.

1:59

a conflict that I understood

2:02

and then a bunch of things

2:04

that grew up around that sort of kernel

2:06

of a conflict that made

2:09

me feel kind of complicated. I have

2:11

complex feelings

2:12

on this one. So we're going to invite

2:15

folks into the complexity. I don't like

2:17

these episodes. I don't like it when current

2:20

day events are as complicated as history. So

2:22

I thought we would start out with

2:24

an Instagram post, as we often do, on

2:27

an influencer episode. Let's take a

2:29

look at the Instagram. I'm about

2:31

to be influenced. I am going

2:33

to ask you to describe the post

2:36

that I just sent to

2:36

you. Ooh, wow. Good God. So

2:41

this is from an account called Real Brittany

2:43

Dawn. It's a photo of

2:46

an extremely thin woman

2:49

wearing bikini bottoms and

2:51

a crop top top. And she's sideways

2:54

to the camera, like mugshot style. So

2:56

you can

2:56

see how like impossibly

2:59

flat her stomach is. Like she looks two

3:01

dimensional. Yeah. The post says

3:04

facts every female should know.

3:07

One, every girl has roles

3:09

when they bend over. Two, when

3:11

someone says you're beautiful, they're not lying.

3:14

Three, any girl you ask will

3:16

have a stretch mark. They're beyond normal.

3:19

Four, you should have more confidence.

3:21

It's actually really attractive. Five,

3:24

you're allowed to fall in love with yourself

3:27

and you should. Six, it's

3:29

okay to not love every part of your

3:31

body, but you should. Seven,

3:34

everyone's boobs are uneven.

3:36

We just did an entire bonus episode

3:38

about my wax skeleton. So I

3:40

feel seen by this. Eight,

3:44

you should be a priority. Not

3:46

a second option, last resort or a backup

3:48

plan. Nine, you're

3:50

a woman. That alone makes you pretty

3:53

damn remarkable. Ten, most

3:55

of all, even on days when your

3:57

makeup lists slash lounging and swimming. you're

4:01

absolutely beautiful. And it's

4:03

from 250 weeks ago. Which is

4:05

a weird way to do that, but

4:07

I guess that's like five years. Tell me your thoughts,

4:09

Michael. Man, I

4:12

feel so mean saying this. But

4:14

it's like,

4:15

clearly like a thirst photo of

4:17

like a very conventionally attractive

4:20

woman. Who's like, you don't have

4:22

to be conventionally attractive, Bestie. It's

4:25

very, I feel like it's very emblematic

4:28

of the time that we're in,

4:30

where it's all about like loving yourself and

4:33

body positivity and all this. But

4:35

it's like, it's oftentimes very like

4:37

conventionally

4:37

attractive people telling this to you.

4:40

And so it's like a weird, like the message

4:42

and the messenger are

4:44

just like incongruent. But

4:46

then if you talk about it, you sound like such a dick. Yeah. You're

4:49

the one shaming someone for being in a bikini just

4:51

because she's thin. Yeah. It's

4:54

like, that's not really it. It's just annoying. Take

4:56

it quite in that way.

4:59

I think there is a tendency to want to

5:01

believe that it is dickish to talk about

5:03

this kind of stuff. You're like, you're

5:05

like, let's be dickish, Mike. No, no, no, no,

5:07

no, no, no, Mike, join me. I'm

5:10

going out on a limb, baby. Come

5:12

on out. There's a nice breeze. You're like,

5:14

we are going to be skinny shaming today, Mike. You

5:17

know what? It's fucking real

5:19

and we're doing it. Get in, loser. We're skinny

5:21

shaming.

5:24

No, I think,

5:26

look, I think there are a few things here that feel

5:28

like, as you have noted, like sort of

5:30

a rich text for a cultural moment,

5:33

which is this idea that

5:36

you should love your body and love its flaws and sort of perform

5:38

a kind of satisfaction with your body. Right.

5:43

Yeah. All the while continuing

5:46

to pursue

5:46

pretty ruthless and

5:49

continually narrow standards of both beauty and

5:51

beauty. And when someone my size or shape or someone

5:54

who looks like me says these same things, what we are

5:56

doing is we are doing it. We

5:59

are doing it.

5:59

met with is like threats

6:02

and harassment and like

6:04

wild, intense, awful reactions.

6:07

Yeah. If these are things that resonate with you,

6:09

by all means, go to town. It

6:12

feels like it is worth noting that those

6:14

are things that some people are culturally permitted

6:16

to say and some people are not. Yeah. Right. Dude,

6:19

if you're going to start

6:19

with number one, everybody has roles

6:22

when they bend over. Show me the roles.

6:24

Totally. You're showing me a distinct

6:27

lack of roles. I see like no body

6:29

fat on this person. Also, no stretch

6:31

marks. Also, no uneven boobs. Like

6:34

none of what she is mentioning is depicted

6:36

here. Well, I can't see the boobs. I need

6:38

to see more to determine the boobs. I'll make

6:40

a determination at a later time. Like we'll be our official

6:42

boob judge for today. That's what

6:44

people go to this show for. They're like, I want to hear Mike

6:47

comment on women's bodies. I

6:48

want to hear a man's opinion.

6:51

Noted women body expert, Michael

6:53

Hobbs. I

6:56

mean, the other thing I'll say about that number one is every

6:58

girl has roles when they bend over is a very

7:00

specific that's speaking to a specific audience.

7:03

It's not speaking to me. Right. I have roles

7:05

when I stand up. I have roles when I lay down.

7:07

I have roles in every like there's not a

7:10

there's not an angle on me or a posture

7:12

on me that doesn't have roles, right? So

7:14

it's normalizing this for a very specific

7:17

group of people who are close to

7:19

thinness. You know, I only followed like six

7:22

people on Instagram. I had to unfollow

7:24

this guy who I added and

7:26

he posts these like mirror selfies

7:28

of like I used to be so ashamed of my body, but

7:30

like I finally sort of made peace

7:32

with the way that I look. He's like

7:35

tall and thin and lean and he has

7:37

like a visible six pack. He's always

7:39

been thin and lean and he's

7:41

like insecure about being skinny,

7:43

but it's like he has like

7:45

the body that I literally would have killed for

7:48

in high school, like for much of my young life. It

7:50

was like I wanted to look like Guy

7:52

Pearce in Memento and he looked like fucking Guy Pearce

7:54

in Memento and like

7:55

I don't have any like animus for this person.

7:57

It's totally legible as human behavior to me. I

8:00

just don't want to encounter that on social media. I don't

8:02

really, that's sort of why I only use Instagram

8:05

to like keep in touch with like high school friends and people

8:07

that I know personally. Yeah, that's my personal

8:09

Instagram account as well. It's just like

8:10

straight up like people I know and then

8:13

comedians. That's it. And

8:16

a couple of like tattoo artists. And

8:18

your personal Insta is mostly your dog.

8:21

Not mostly. Yeah. I 100%

8:23

took a video of him this morning scratching

8:26

at his food bowl and then I had to talk

8:28

myself out of posting

8:29

it. Why? You should have

8:31

posted it, Aubrey. Well, just like who needs to see a dog

8:33

scratch at a dog bowl. You should have been like, one, every

8:37

dog scratches its bowl. Two,

8:40

believe in yourself

8:42

and your dog. You got to make it into

8:44

inspo Aubrey and then it's okay to post. So Michael,

8:47

shall we start at the start with Brittany Dawn? Should

8:50

I not have clicked on her Instagram profile? I'm on her

8:52

Instagram profile. Oh no, Mike. Oh, there's

8:54

a category in her stories for cyber

8:56

bullying. That's probably where we're headed,

8:58

I guess. We'll get there. Okay.

9:01

Brittany Dawn was born in 1991 in Texas.

9:04

There is not a lot out there

9:06

about her childhood or even about her

9:09

early rise because she is a person

9:11

who had a lot

9:13

of pretty organic growth or

9:15

at least organic seeming growth on

9:18

social media. That is born

9:20

out today. She has 442,000 subscribers on

9:22

YouTube, 483,000 followers

9:26

on Instagram. And

9:30

she has 1.3 million

9:32

followers on TikTok. That's a lot for just

9:34

like a normal ass person. Most of what we

9:36

know about Brittany Dawn's early life are things that

9:39

she herself has said in videos and

9:41

Instagram posts and all of that kind of stuff. She

9:44

reports that she worked as a vet tech

9:46

in early adulthood for several years. From

9:49

there, she gets into a bodybuilding

9:52

world. She loses

9:54

a small amount of weight. I think the

9:56

number that I saw in one of her early posts was

9:58

like 30 pounds.

9:59

Oh, you love this. This is this is Aubrey

10:02

Katnipp, like the thin person who lost

10:04

a tiny amount of weight and then becomes like a weight

10:06

loss influencer.

10:07

Absolutely. So she like her

10:09

early Instagram posts are an overwhelming

10:12

number of before and after photos

10:14

of herself split screen. She

10:18

starts looking more muscular because she's bodybuilding.

10:20

She starts looking more toned and

10:23

these before and after photos

10:25

of essentially like a thin person who's

10:28

not particularly toned. And then a thin

10:30

person who's thinner really, really,

10:32

really take off on social media.

10:34

People

10:36

eat it up. Okay. I couldn't

10:38

help myself. And I Google image searched for Brittany

10:40

Dawn 2014. Damn it, Michael.

10:42

And yeah, she's like super buff. She

10:45

does look like a bodybuilder. And

10:47

like her before pictures are all just like a normal

10:49

looking person.

10:50

As Brittany Dawn is posting her

10:52

sort of fitness content. She also starts

10:54

talking about her

10:57

own personal history of what she

10:59

considers

10:59

problem drinking and also disordered

11:02

eating. She tags her posts

11:04

with ed recovery hashtags. She

11:08

includes like a bunch of like ed warrior

11:10

kind of stuff. And some

11:12

of those posts are before and

11:15

after

11:15

photos, which is an extremely

11:18

wild choice to make to say, I'm talking

11:20

about my ed recovery. Here are my before

11:23

and after photos, which

11:25

means other people who are looking for

11:28

eating disorder recovery content are going to click

11:30

through and get these kinds of

11:32

before and after photos, which they are a very

11:34

clear statement of the before

11:37

photo is what a body should not look like.

11:39

And an after photo is what

11:41

a body should look like. Right. And

11:43

to your point earlier, I would say her before

11:46

photos are something that I absolutely

11:48

would have loved to have had in

11:50

like high school and college. Yeah. So I'm

11:53

sending you a quote from a piece from the Dallas morning

11:55

news. Okay. It says over

11:58

five or so years, Brittany Dawn grew. following

12:00

by posting pictures and videos about her

12:02

own transformation and a seemingly idyllic

12:05

lifestyle. Her feed is filled with inspirational

12:08

messages. It takes zero dollars to

12:10

be a decent person with a good heart, images

12:13

of her modeling fitness wear, healthy snacks,

12:15

and two-foot pizzas, trips to Hawaii,

12:17

a pit bull with 10,000 followers of its

12:20

own, and a Range Rover. Many

12:22

of her followers say her life looked like something they

12:24

wanted for themselves, someone who practiced

12:27

what she preached.

12:28

Okay, I have no idea where this episode

12:30

is going, so I'm like,

12:33

what are we foreshadowing here?

12:34

We're not foreshadowing much here.

12:37

This is genuinely like a fast forward.

12:39

This is a wealthy, thin white

12:41

woman who sort of has the world by

12:43

the string, and she's doing very standard

12:46

issue influencer stuff. Aubrey, there

12:48

is nothing standard

12:49

issue about two-foot pizzas. Okay. Okay.

12:51

I don't even know what that is. As

12:53

her following grows during

12:56

this time, she starts offering

12:58

services to her followers for

13:01

a fee. Oh.

13:02

She starts offering personalized meal

13:04

plans. Okay. She offers

13:07

macronutrient checks. She offers

13:09

personal training and one-on-one

13:12

fitness coaching. Okay. All

13:14

of the services have different prices, but the personalized

13:16

meal plans go for up to $300,

13:19

which

13:21

is a fair amount of money for a

13:23

plan and not any food. I was just going

13:25

to say, it sounds low, but I'm also,

13:28

my brain is so

13:29

fucking warped by doing so many of these episodes

13:32

on these grifters. That's so

13:34

much less than a Pete Evans retreat. Yeah,

13:36

exactly. We've looked into so many other fucking

13:38

weirdos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brittany

13:41

Dawn has claimed that she helped 5,000

13:45

clients during this time, but

13:47

when she was later asked to confirm that she

13:49

didn't know how many clients she had and neither

13:51

did her manager. So I'm

13:53

guessing that's an aspirational scale. I'm

13:56

guessing that skew is a little larger than what she

13:58

actually did. It's wild.

13:59

this by like being like a hot

14:02

lady who posts on Instagram. So all

14:04

of this is happening. Folks are paying

14:07

her for meal plans, all of that kind of stuff. And

14:09

in 2018 and into 2019, her

14:13

customers start to connect

14:15

through a Facebook

14:17

group. And as they start posting

14:19

about their experiences, they figure a few

14:21

things out. The first thing that they figure

14:23

out is that their personalized

14:26

nutrition plans were not

14:28

personalized at all. Of course. Oh,

14:31

that's like that dude who was making personalized

14:33

playlists for ladies that he met

14:35

on the Internet. And then it turned out they were all just the same playlist.

14:38

It's all just an endless loop

14:40

of hey there, Delilah or. It's

14:44

Connor Oberst and they all they all

14:46

should have seen right through it. They also figure

14:48

out that they're one on one support,

14:51

which some of the plans build. Like you get, you

14:53

know, personal support from Brittany were

14:56

a lot of generic texts

14:58

that were like, you got this girl. Oh,

15:01

hell yeah.

15:02

So she's automated all this shit. It

15:04

sure seems like it. There

15:06

are also funny little details about

15:09

this. One customer ordered something that came

15:11

with a packet of that said it came with 21

15:14

amazing recipes and

15:16

the packet arrived and it only had 11 recipes

15:19

in it. Nice. I

15:21

wanted them to be like, not only

15:23

was it not 21 amazing recipes, it was just 11

15:25

recipes and they were just OK.

15:28

The

15:31

next thing that they figure out is that many

15:33

customers had previously dealt

15:35

with eating disorders and

15:38

signed on because they felt like

15:40

this was a safe way to do what

15:42

nearly everyone feels pressure to do. Right.

15:45

Which is sort of quote unquote get healthy, which just means

15:47

get thin. You know, you have

15:49

a bad business model when like it

15:52

works until your customers start

15:54

speaking with one another. It's a bad sign.

15:58

So folks start going back through.

15:59

her old posts and

16:02

screen grabbing Instagram posts

16:04

that show her using hashtags like

16:07

ED warrior eating disorder warrior

16:10

and also hashtags in the

16:12

same post like be healthy

16:14

and skip dinner.

16:15

Yeah, that's not that's not what I would classify

16:18

as ED recovery necessarily. Correct.

16:21

I would describe that with the term ED somewhere

16:23

in there. They also figure out

16:26

that some of them have requested

16:28

refunds when they sort of figured this out

16:30

and they were like, Oh, well, if it's not personalized, give

16:32

me my money back. What?

16:35

Those requests for refunds rarely

16:38

even got a response email.

16:41

Those who sort of escalated to complaining

16:43

on social media got an even clearer

16:45

message. Their comments were deleted

16:47

and their accounts were blocked. Okay.

16:49

Brittany Dawn, another good sign. The handful

16:52

of customers who were offered refunds

16:54

were offered either partial

16:57

refunds or were

16:59

asked to sign a non-disclosure

17:02

agreement.

17:02

Oh wow. Getting their up

17:04

to $300. Okay. Uh

17:07

huh. The funny thing is she could actually hide

17:09

behind like technicalities and be like, well, it was

17:12

personalized. You just happened to have

17:14

the same characteristics

17:17

as every single other person. Unfortunately.

17:20

There's a path to this that I can sort

17:23

of understand, which is like up

17:25

to 5,000 clients is a lot of people

17:28

to manage, especially if you're

17:29

not trained, especially if you don't have staff. Yeah.

17:32

Like, I think there's a good faith way of getting here. I don't know that

17:34

Brittany Dawn took that good faith way to get

17:37

here, but usually if you sort of take

17:39

that route, you would go, I'm so sorry. Let

17:41

me level with you. Here's

17:42

what happened. Yeah. Of course

17:44

you're going to refund. This is what we're going to do when we're on Cameo.

17:47

Finally. We're like, you're all getting the same fucking thing. One

17:49

of my favorite late night

17:51

rabbit holes to fall down on the internet

17:54

is Cameo pricing.

17:57

Oh, yes. Same. I know it's

17:59

so fascinating. be like, how much do you

18:01

think Chris Harrison, the

18:03

disgraced former host of

18:05

the bachelor charges? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:08

And then my guess is always wrong because it's like $500.

18:10

And

18:12

there's weird like Trump world people

18:15

on there who's like prices are shockingly

18:17

high

18:17

and you're like, does someone want a happy

18:20

birthday message from Michael Flynn? Hey,

18:22

it's the mooch. Hey,

18:25

congratulations on your retirement. Okay,

18:28

so folks start talking about their experiences

18:31

in this Facebook group and start figuring out that

18:33

no one's getting what they paid for and also

18:35

very few people are getting refunds. So

18:38

it starts to leak out more broadly, right?

18:40

Folks start commenting on her public posts,

18:43

being like, hey, can you give me a refund? People

18:45

start talking about it more online

18:48

and it gains so much steam

18:52

that a YouTube

18:53

prankster. Oh

18:55

no. No. No.

18:58

No. No. No.

19:01

No. Creates a video to prank Brittany Dawn.

19:03

These were the people that would just like walk up to people in grocery stores and be

19:05

like, and then like scare them. Yeah.

19:08

And it's like, oh, gotcha. It's like, yeah, it's just a human reaction

19:10

to you being a prick and like ruining someone's

19:13

day. Congratulations.

19:14

We are absolutely not going to watch

19:16

this video because I understand what

19:18

your discomfort threshold is. And

19:21

this is like 60 points above

19:23

that. Oh really? It is so uncomfortable.

19:25

Now I kind of want to watch it. I'll

19:27

bring Michael. What's it like? Describe

19:29

it to me

19:30

first. Let me know. Let me know

19:32

what I'm to expect. Okay. So

19:34

the video is absolutely bizarre.

19:37

Okay. Cassidy Campbell is sort of dressed

19:40

up. He's got a costume. It's

19:42

a very weird sort

19:44

of broad caricature

19:46

of this cartoonish idea of

19:49

small town conservative bigots. The

19:52

look is very Tiger King. I'm already

19:54

uncomfortable. Mullet

19:55

baseball hat. Extremely,

19:57

extremely uncomfortable. Handlebar mustache.

20:00

He keeps saying, Murica. Good

20:02

God, okay. Which like hasn't been funny

20:05

or insightful in a solid decade. Yeah,

20:07

if we two 41 year olds

20:10

are telling you that your stick is not funny

20:12

anymore.

20:13

If we're

20:15

over it, wow. Cassidy

20:19

Campbell is at a fitness

20:22

expo where Brittany Dawn has a booth. Okay.

20:25

In this video, he does

20:27

include a pretty lengthy segment

20:29

where he's giving context. He's playing like videos

20:32

front facing videos from people

20:34

on TikTok and Instagram talking about their personal

20:37

experiences and how rough it was. So

20:40

like it is sort

20:43

of signal boosting that stuff,

20:45

but mostly it's just this like

20:48

wild shitty flat caricature

20:52

of a guy going one, two, three Trump. Like,

20:54

okay, he sort of makes his

20:56

way into this fitness expo. He goes up

20:59

to Brittany Dawn's booth. He

21:01

sort of gets her attention and then he absolutely

21:03

just

21:03

starts shouting and unloading

21:05

on her. What? About how

21:08

she stole money from his daughter and

21:10

she just wants her money back, but she won't give the

21:12

money back.

21:12

It is very

21:15

uncomfortable and it has the energy of

21:17

a random dude walking

21:20

up to a lady in a public space

21:22

shouting at her. Also, what's

21:24

the point of the costume if you're just going to walk up to somebody and yell

21:26

at them? Yeah, you could have just straight

21:29

up asked some direct questions. Hi. Without

21:32

doing this weird deep character work. Yeah.

21:34

Yeah,

21:37

this is this is like a tension that I feel like

21:39

we both think about a lot in like doing episodes

21:42

like this, that like whenever there's a female influencer

21:44

who's kind of problematic criticisms

21:47

tip into like rank misogyny

21:50

extremely quickly. Yeah,

21:51

I mean, we'll get into it. There

21:54

is not quite cottage

21:56

industry, but there is definitely like a community

21:58

of people who are just like fuck. this lady.

22:01

Yeah, it becomes anti-fandom really

22:03

quickly where literally anything

22:05

the person does becomes grounds

22:07

to criticize them and like the justified

22:10

critiques or like the scale of the justified

22:12

critiques get buried under all

22:15

this other stuff. Yes.

22:17

It is full bitch eating crackers territory.

22:20

Yeah, that's what I was about to say, but I didn't know if you knew that term because that

22:22

term is problematic. Oh, Michael, if you think I'm not listening

22:25

to your bonus episodes, you're

22:27

crazy. Do you

22:30

want to say what bitch eating crackers is just in case you don't

22:32

know.

22:32

So for those of you who

22:35

are not subscribers to the bonus

22:37

content of if books could kill, bitch

22:40

eating crackers is sort of this shorthand

22:42

for

22:42

like when you hate

22:44

someone so much that them

22:47

just eating crackers elicits

22:49

a negative

22:50

response from you that you start going like, look

22:52

at this bitch eating crackers like, okay.

22:55

And it's almost always women who this happens

22:57

to. Like

22:58

you see the derangement, you see the beginning

23:00

of like, okay, there's like real reasons to criticize this

23:03

person and then very quickly you're like,

23:05

wait a minute, the things that people are criticizing

23:06

her for are like eating

23:08

crackers type stuff.

23:10

So

23:11

this video ends up getting 1.8 million views, which

23:13

is absolutely

23:14

bonkers to me. After

23:17

this happens, Brittany

23:19

Dawn posts an apology

23:22

video a classic of the YouTube

23:24

genre, and it is very

23:27

weird. Okay. And it is very

23:29

wooden. Okay. It has since

23:32

been taken down, but I found

23:34

an alternate upload and

23:37

I think maybe

23:39

you and I should watch the first little bit of that too. Even

23:41

if we end up cutting it out, it's just a

23:44

lot of our little watch parties. I like our little watch

23:46

parties too. Also, I just feel like I'm like, let's

23:48

stretch out today. Yeah. Let's just go for it. Let's

23:50

relax. Let's hang

23:53

out in the living room of our show. Okay. Here

23:56

is the internet archive.

23:59

Archive. dot org youtube link. I

24:01

didn't know that was possible. Oh,

24:03

baby. Welcome.

24:06

Fuck. Yes. OK, this video

24:08

goes out in February of 2019.

24:12

Hey, guys, I'm

24:14

not really sure where to start this

24:16

video. I am scared

24:20

to film this video. There's

24:23

some things on the surface that have come to surface

24:26

that have come to fruition that need to be

24:28

addressed. And so I'm here to do that and

24:30

I'm here to put everything to rest once

24:32

and for all. I

24:35

apologize to anyone who feels like they got scammed

24:37

from me, and I genuinely promise that my intentions

24:40

from the start were pure. I

24:42

wanted to help and impact as many women as I

24:44

could, because I feel like this is why I was given this

24:46

incredible platform. When you're given

24:49

an opportunity like this, you would be stupid

24:51

not to take it and run with it. And unfortunately,

24:53

I ran too fast for one person. These

24:56

claims are coming from years ago after I

24:58

got launched into a business that took off so

25:00

fast that I didn't know how to mentally handle

25:03

it. I did what I needed to do

25:05

to the best of my ability. I didn't

25:07

know what I was signing up for simply because

25:09

being an influencer and running a fitness

25:11

influencer business was not really

25:13

a thing back then. Therefore,

25:15

I didn't have much guidance.

25:18

Tell me about your reactions to this so far.

25:21

Yeah, so I guess it's a little wooden. She's reading

25:23

off of her phone and kind of pausing

25:26

to look at the camera every now and again. Hmm. Maybe

25:29

this is like bad of me, but like I

25:31

am in my head comparing her to like all

25:34

of the other

25:35

influencers and like all of the

25:37

other scammy bullshit. Yeah, this is obviously

25:39

indefensible behavior, but it's it's

25:41

like on a grading on a curve. This

25:44

is not like that bad. Yeah. I find

25:47

it difficult to get worked up about this. Yeah, I

25:49

can understand that. And I felt that way at this

25:51

point in the research as well. OK. And

25:53

then my feelings changed.

25:55

OK. She talks

25:57

about getting. death

26:00

threats after the Cassidy

26:02

Campbell video. She talks about getting

26:05

harassment. She talks about all kinds of stuff.

26:07

She's

26:09

pretty widely known at this point to be a fairly

26:11

unreliable narrator or at least an untrusted

26:14

narrator. So she's talking

26:16

about this stuff and people are

26:18

already like

26:20

not thrilled with her. So to have

26:22

this kind of statement where she's reading off of her phone

26:24

where this is a side note and a real

26:26

pet peeve, her dryer is on in the

26:29

background. Dude, I was wondering what that sound was.

26:31

I thought it was her pit bull. Yeah, like a

26:33

pair of overalls or a button or

26:35

something. It's like clickity, clickity, click. The

26:37

other thing to know about this video is that

26:40

she monetized it. It

26:43

had ads, she included affiliate

26:45

links and people were like,

26:47

why are you making money off of your

26:49

apology

26:50

for scamming people out of money?

26:53

So it's like not, again, like I'm

26:55

not gonna make a federal case out of it, but I get

26:57

why it left a bad taste in folks' mouths,

26:59

right? That fair, understandable.

27:01

It's not good, it's not that bad, but

27:03

it's definitely not good. Within

27:04

just a few days of that on February

27:07

13th, the Britney

27:10

Dawn backlash becomes a story

27:13

in national news media and

27:15

Britney Dawn goes on Good Morning

27:17

America. Yeah, I have this link in my right

27:19

hand bar. Yeah, you

27:20

sure do. Yeah, it's like suggesting this to me now.

27:23

Britney is sort of briefly quoted on camera

27:26

in the piece and she says, quote,

27:28

I jumped into an industry that had no instruction

27:31

manual. I'm basically going

27:33

through uncharted territory

27:33

and I'm doing the best that I can to

27:36

the best of my ability. I'm using

27:38

this as a tool to learn and to grow as

27:40

a professional and to move forward.

27:43

All of this only sort of

27:45

serves to amplify customers

27:47

really troubling stories, right?

27:50

Someone comes forward in all of this media

27:53

and says that she

27:55

was very thin at the time that

27:57

she started with Britney Dawn.

27:59

when she decided to stop doing the Brittany

28:02

Dawn routine, she was at 80 pounds. Oh,

28:05

wow. Another customer disclosed

28:07

that she had anorexia and was still

28:10

put on a quote unquote personalized plan

28:12

of 1,245 calories, paired

28:18

with high intensity interval training.

28:21

Another person said that

28:23

they weighed around 200 pounds when they were

28:27

doing sort of Brittany Dawn's program and

28:30

that they passed out from

28:33

inadequate nutrition. Oh, yeah. In

28:35

November of that year,

28:37

November of 2019,

28:38

so we're fast forwarding like nine months,

28:41

she announces that the focus

28:44

of her social media presence is changing.

28:48

She says that health and fitness are important

28:50

to her, but that her identity is shifting

28:53

and now her identity is in

28:55

Christ. Okay. Content

28:58

shifts very quickly from

29:01

primarily fitness and weight loss content

29:04

to evangelical content

29:06

that I would say is even

29:09

niche within evangelical spaces. Oh,

29:11

really? There's a real Pentecostal

29:13

sort of tenor to what she's doing. So

29:15

she's like, she's in a tent. She's doing revival

29:18

stuff. She's in her Range Rover filming

29:21

videos on

29:25

her iPhone

29:25

camera. We're going from

29:27

here's how to order a low

29:29

calorie drink at Starbucks

29:32

and like here's the lunges that I'm doing

29:35

to the

29:36

video that I just sent you. She

29:39

is posting this around

29:42

Joe Biden's inauguration. That's

29:44

when this video comes out. That direction,

29:47

okay. So the

29:50

thumbnail is like her looking concerned

29:52

in that like a YouTube thumbnail, like I'm reacting

29:55

to this way. And then

29:57

the big caption in the thumbnail is, this

29:59

is unsettling.

30:02

I don't care if you're red, blue,

30:05

Republican, Democrat. I don't

30:07

care what state you live in. I don't care what color

30:09

state you're the state that you live in is. I don't

30:12

care about any of that. This isn't a video about

30:14

my political stance. This is not a video

30:16

about who I voted for or anything regards

30:18

to that. This is a video about what the Holy Spirit

30:20

is revealing to me and so many others

30:23

in this day and age and things are shifting and they're

30:25

shifting fast. The first thing that I

30:27

found incredibly disturbing yesterday

30:30

was during the inauguration when Lady Gaga

30:32

was

30:32

up there. If you don't already

30:35

know, Lady Gaga is tied

30:37

into witchcraft. I'm going to try to put some

30:39

information here on the screen as I talk,

30:41

sharing this and stating this and to show you guys

30:43

the facts. If you dig even just

30:46

an inch deep, you will find this. It's

30:48

out there. It's not trying to be hidden. She

30:51

has made this known. The performance that she put on

30:53

yesterday was more than disturbing. It

30:55

reminded me of Hunger Games from the get go

30:58

and then on top of that, on top of her whole outfit,

31:00

her whole get up. She was also wearing the

31:03

dove of peace symbol also

31:05

in Hunger Games.

31:06

A little disturbing. Lots

31:08

of red flags going on there. Lady Gaga is

31:10

also tied to Marina Amabrovic. Now,

31:12

if you don't know who she is, Google her

31:14

name. She is a witch. They're both into spirit

31:17

cooking and soul cooking and yesterday

31:19

the slogan for them was

31:21

fight for the soul of our nation. Biden

31:24

said that he is going to reverse any

31:26

and all laws that were made or put

31:28

into place against abortion when

31:30

he gets in the house. He wants to do

31:32

away with gender terms like niece,

31:35

nephew, brother, mother,

31:37

father.

31:37

I'm sorry. What?

31:40

How are people not seeing these red flags? The opening prayer

31:42

in the Senate two weeks ago, I believe

31:45

it was two or three weeks ago in itself was disturbing.

31:48

Not only were they praying to all

31:50

these other gods, but they closed

31:52

that prayer out. That's with a man and

31:55

a woman. I'm sorry. Do you even

31:57

know what a man means? Do you even know what

31:59

a man means? But we live in this culture

32:01

that is so sensitive and so

32:04

easily offended by anything and everything,

32:07

including a prayer now that our government

32:09

who doesn't want to offend anyone is

32:11

now mixing and molding God's

32:13

word for what they want it to be instead

32:15

of submitting to His authority of

32:18

who He is and who He has always been. And

32:20

I just want to say this, if you are offended by anything that I

32:22

say in this video, I really, as a sister

32:24

in Christ, want you to take that offense to the feet

32:26

of Jesus and ask Him, ask the Holy

32:28

Spirit to reveal these things to you, because if you're

32:31

following the same Jesus that I am, He

32:33

will.

32:35

I

32:36

love that the clip that we just

32:38

watched started with her being

32:40

like, Marina Abramovich

32:42

is a witch. Yeah. And Lady

32:44

Gaga was dressed like the Hunger

32:46

Games. And then it ends with

32:48

her going, people are so offended

32:50

by everything. I know. Like

32:52

an outfit that reminded you of a movie. What's

32:55

happening? Is Hunger Games? That's not even

32:57

like a sacrilegious text.

33:00

That's not like witchcraft. That's just like a sci-fi

33:02

movie. Yeah. There's no occult element

33:04

to it. So I don't know what I don't know

33:07

what her I don't know. I mean, to

33:09

be fair, Lady Gaga's outfit did look a little Hunger

33:11

Games, but like that doesn't like

33:14

mean anything. Also the symbol in

33:16

the Hunger Games was the mocking Jay. Not

33:18

a dove. A dove just only always

33:20

means peace. Yeah. That's like a Christian

33:23

thing. There is so much in this video

33:25

that we can go line by line. We

33:28

can just do this all day. Particularly,

33:30

I wanted

33:31

to dig in with you on Biden

33:34

wants to do away with gendered terms

33:36

like nice. That's actually

33:38

true, but all of the vowels will be replaced

33:40

by exes. Nix feuds. I

33:42

love it. I love it when these deranged

33:45

religious people say stuff about like

33:47

language and like pronouns and stuff that

33:49

just like literally doesn't make sense. They're

33:51

like, say they want to do away with pronouns

33:53

like that in English that would actually make it very

33:55

difficult to communicate. I don't think anyone's actually

33:58

proposing that. Also, just

34:00

like as a, you know, former

34:03

public policy person, when

34:05

she's like, he wants to do away with all these

34:08

names for nieces and wife and

34:10

husband and nephew. My

34:12

brain is trying so hard

34:15

to figure out

34:16

what policy that would be. Yeah, tell

34:18

me the mechanics of that, Brittany. What are the mechanics

34:21

by which someone could ban? How

34:23

do you stop people from saying

34:25

words? I mean, we're so awash

34:27

in this stuff that it is almost campy at this

34:30

point. But like, this is someone

34:32

who's like become unglued from reality

34:35

on some level. And

34:36

she's clearly reading like far

34:38

right Facebook group ass news

34:42

sources that just say shit that it just doesn't

34:45

make any fucking sense. It's like, yeah, the

34:47

Democrats wanna ban all religions.

34:49

And then the weird stuff with the

34:51

symbolism is just like pure

34:53

QAnon. It's pure QAnon, it's

34:55

also pure national treasure.

34:59

Oh, they put the symbol on the dollar bill.

35:02

This is a generation

35:03

that read too much fucking Encyclopedia

35:06

Brown growing up. And we all think this is the

35:08

way to solve crimes. And too much

35:10

Dan Brown. The funny

35:12

thing is I love the Da Vinci

35:14

Code so much because it's just

35:16

openly such fucking garbage. And

35:19

like in a really fun way, like

35:21

I feel like the writer kind of knows

35:23

that it's garbage and it's just like very well

35:26

executed garbage. Listen, I'm

35:28

over here dunking on national treasure

35:31

and I 100% watched National

35:33

Treasure Book of Secrets last week.

35:36

No. So around

35:39

this time that Brittany Dawn is shifting

35:41

her content, she's also shifting what she is

35:43

selling to her followers.

35:45

Okay. And she starts

35:47

selling tickets to religious

35:49

retreats. Okay, that makes sense. Where

35:52

she baptizes attendees. That's

35:54

actually, that's a way better business model.

35:57

The reaction from at least

35:59

the most vocal.

35:59

sort of Christian folks responding to this

36:02

is very negative. Charging

36:05

someone to be baptized, like what are we

36:07

doing? Especially when that

36:09

someone isn't clergy feels

36:11

really wild.

36:13

I mean, sure.

36:15

But also like it's a weird case to

36:17

like all of a sudden be offended at the

36:20

intersection between commerce and Christianity,

36:22

you guys. Someone hasn't

36:24

heard of Joel Osteen. Yeah,

36:27

Britney Dawn is not like even in the

36:29

top 1000

36:29

like

36:32

fucking mega church ass grifters

36:34

doing this shit. So this may

36:36

seem like a hard turn from sort of

36:38

fitness content into Pentecostal

36:42

leaning evangelical content.

36:45

But Christian fitness has

36:48

a surprisingly long history. Oh,

36:50

you are doing context.

36:54

Oh, so the modern roots

36:57

of that connections stretch back to

36:59

the Victorian era. There's

37:01

a book called British Manly

37:04

Exercises, my favorite kind,

37:06

that is published in 1837 and becomes a hit. OK,

37:12

one Scottish medical

37:14

practitioner founded the British Institute

37:16

of Physical Training in 1889. His

37:21

exercise program consisted

37:23

of what he called physical jerks.

37:26

Oh,

37:26

what? Which feels to me like

37:28

how you would describe dancing in

37:31

the Footloose town. So

37:36

all of this evolves into

37:38

a movement called muscular Christianity.

37:43

I am taking it that you have not heard of

37:45

muscular Christianity. No, because if I heard

37:47

it, I would assume that that was supposed to be a metaphor. Like

37:49

it's muscular, like the spirit of Christ

37:52

is like making our beliefs more powerful. But they mean like

37:54

literally physical muscles like you're covered in like

37:56

veins and protein.

37:58

Absolutely.

37:59

The idea behind muscular Christianity

38:02

primarily focuses on

38:05

men and masculinity. And the

38:07

idea is that your body is a gift and

38:10

that it needs to be trained to do

38:12

the work of Christ. Things

38:14

like protecting those who are perceived

38:17

as not being able to protect themselves, things

38:19

like missionary work

38:20

and so forth. Senator

38:23

Richard Andrew Meyer outlined six

38:26

criteria for muscular

38:28

Christianity. Abs, lats,

38:31

quads, fraps. Number

38:35

one,

38:36

a man's body is given to him by

38:38

God. Two, to be trained.

38:41

Three, to be brought into subjection.

38:43

What? Four, to

38:45

be used for protection of the

38:48

weak. Five, to

38:50

be used for the quote advancement

38:52

of all righteous causes. And

38:55

six, to be used for

38:58

subduing the earth which God has

39:00

given to the

39:00

children of men. Subduing the earth?

39:03

The anxiety at this point is like, we're

39:05

working in these factories and

39:07

it's making us soft. We used to work the field.

39:10

So this idea of like subduing

39:12

the earth is like, we have to get back to our sort

39:14

of masculine roots of working the land.

39:17

God, it's always the same shit.

39:20

It's the same shit we see now, right? It's like,

39:22

oh, we left the land. We used to be pure. It's

39:24

like all this sort of like Michael Pollan

39:27

stuff authenticity and

39:28

get your yogurt from a dairy farm

39:31

direct from the farmer. It's all the same shit

39:33

forever. The other thing that's all the same

39:35

shit is that muscular

39:37

Christianity also sort of gave way

39:40

to a set of beliefs that are

39:42

with us still today, which

39:44

is the idea that physical

39:46

strength led to strong character

39:49

and strong morals, right? That

39:52

if you are training in the gym, that doesn't

39:54

just mean you're training in the gym. It means

39:56

you have tenacity and a work ethic and

39:58

right? There are all sorts of things. of sort of like character

40:02

compliments that we add on to the

40:04

simple act of going to the gym or not going

40:06

to the gym.

40:06

Right, it's turning us into a metaphor basically.

40:09

So muscular Christianity spread

40:12

through the US

40:14

as well in part

40:16

as a sort of reactionary

40:17

politics, right? Women

40:20

were gaining more social and political rights,

40:22

a wave of immigrants were sort of shifting

40:25

culture and the job market and

40:27

all of that also led to a different

40:30

sense but like linked to the sort

40:32

of English version

40:33

of white masculinity

40:35

in crisis, right? Always. Pusification of

40:37

men, this is like the thing that men have been fucking

40:40

whining about for like 200 years. Straight

40:42

up Tucker Carlson. Yeah, exactly.

40:45

Muscular Christianity is actually how

40:47

we got the YMCA. What,

40:50

the song? No, god Michael.

40:52

I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding,

40:53

I'm kidding. I

40:55

mean it kind of is like this is why

40:58

we have gay men fetishizing and stuff but

41:00

yes.

41:00

The YMCA built its first

41:02

gym facility in 1869 in

41:05

New York and before

41:08

that it really was just a Christian

41:10

association that didn't have nearly

41:12

as much to do with athleticism,

41:13

right? Okay. Muscular

41:15

Christianity continues to sort of influence

41:18

Christian fitness programs today.

41:21

We still have programs like Losing

41:24

to Live, The Daniel Plan, Firm

41:27

Believer, Body for God,

41:29

Holy Fit, Body Temple

41:32

Wellness, and Body Gospel,

41:34

right? Like

41:34

there are tons of these.

41:37

You have a bunch of these in your diet book collection I know

41:39

because you've talked about a couple of them. Do I ever? I don't have

41:41

Firm Believer. That's by far the best

41:43

one.

41:44

All of this also ties into Christian weight loss

41:46

programs. I read a great piece in Christianity

41:49

today about this

41:51

sort of concept of like a fitness driven

41:53

church. They referenced a 1957

41:55

bestseller called Pray Your Way. weight

42:00

away, which argued

42:02

that, quote, if our bodies really

42:05

are to be temples of the Holy Spirit,

42:07

we had best get them down to the size

42:10

God intended. Yeah, God does not

42:12

care what size you are. This is

42:14

dumb as shit. This timeless

42:17

being is like looking

42:20

down and it's like, oh, your body fat's like 8%. It

42:22

should be 5%. Cheryl's put on

42:24

a few. I can't. God. So

42:27

in the tradition of muscular Christianity,

42:31

Brittany Dawn starts her own ministry

42:33

called She Lives Freed. OK.

42:36

According to The Guardian, her ministry is a

42:39

501c3 registered nonprofit. As

42:42

part of that, she launches a podcast,

42:45

actually earlier this year in 2023, called

42:47

Chiseled and Called. That's

42:51

not even good, Brittany. She

42:54

starts holding religious retreats. And

42:57

her retreats go for up to $650

42:59

for a weekend retreat,

42:59

which

43:02

is considerably higher than other sort

43:04

of like Christian spiritual retreats, right?

43:08

She also

43:08

has a bunch of merch. She sells

43:10

a set of Bible highlighters. What?

43:13

Why would you need special highlighters?

43:16

That's genius.

43:18

I like her now. I'm sorry. It's

43:21

such a blatant drift. You have to almost

43:23

respect it. Fucking

43:25

Bible highlighters. She's

43:29

just taking like a razor blade

43:31

and scratching off the part where it

43:32

says Sharpie. Yeah. And writing

43:34

like Bible. Can

43:40

I tell you about? No, now

43:42

I'm so giggly. This is good. She

43:48

also sells protein cookies.

43:51

OK. She sells false eyelashes.

43:54

And she sells self tanner. Is

43:56

the bronzer called Looking Dark on the

43:58

Ark?

43:59

That would be pretty good. There

44:02

are also some internet allegations

44:04

that the false eyelashes that she sells

44:07

are just like dropshipped from Alibaba.

44:09

I'm sure. Yes. Well, what did you expect?

44:11

It's not like she's like a like textile

44:14

manufacturer. Like, of course.

44:16

So like part of her appeal

44:19

at these Christian retreats that she holds

44:21

is her backlash. They canceled me

44:23

just like they canceled Jesus. So

44:26

I'm going to send you a quote. A

44:30

number of media outlets attended this

44:32

one retreat. Okay. She

44:35

got asked about like talk to me about

44:37

the fitness scam stuff

44:40

and this was her response

44:43

to that. I just sent it to you. Oh God,

44:45

I was right. Jesus. Okay. She

44:48

says you can't cancel what

44:50

God has called. You can try

44:52

all you want, but the power of the blood

44:54

has already overcome it. That is the truth

44:57

that I walk in every day and a heavenly

44:59

confidence comes with that. You can't

45:02

cancel me.

45:03

She's also selling. Sure. You can't

45:05

cancel me stickers at

45:08

this specific retreat. I don't know people.

45:11

It's like the kind of people that she's preying on.

45:14

It's like

45:15

these far-right evangelical Christians that are

45:17

falling for this shit and part of me just feels like

45:19

that is like a weird little jungle in there where they're all just

45:21

fucking getting grifted. Most like

45:23

right-wing politics is so fucking grift

45:25

adjacent at this point. It's honestly

45:28

so hard for me to feel sympathy

45:31

for people who are like falling for these like by

45:33

fucking gold doubloons that you see

45:35

advertised on Fox News.

45:37

Yeah, of course. She's fucking grifting you. This

45:39

is the whole fucking ideology is a grift.

45:41

Well, we're going to go a little further in that direction

45:43

and then come on back as

45:45

with many of these

45:48

stories. This is all shaped significantly

45:50

by a dedicated group of Internet

45:53

people. This mostly happens

45:56

on Reddit, although you can find Brittany

45:58

Dawn stuff on pretty much

45:59

every platform as of

46:02

like this week. The main

46:04

anti Brittany Dawn subreddit has

46:07

over 40,000 followers and

46:11

is flooded with people who reject

46:13

every single

46:15

thing she does. It is like deep

46:17

bitch eating crackers territory. Right.

46:20

I get really uncomfortable with that. Even when somebody

46:22

deserves it, I get uncomfortable with

46:24

that.

46:24

At one point, Brittany makes

46:26

a video where she talks about a very

46:29

harrowing experience. She's weeping

46:31

while she makes the video. She

46:35

and her husband have come home from

46:37

running errands to find that her

46:40

dog has been hit by a car

46:41

in a hit and run. She

46:45

is a wreck as

46:47

I would be. I would be destroyed. She

46:50

says that she used to be a vet tech, so

46:53

she knows that her dog wouldn't have survived.

46:57

So her husband takes her dog into

46:59

the house away from Brittany and shoots

47:02

the dog. OK. To put it out

47:04

of its misery. Yeah. People have very

47:06

strong reactions to this. I absolutely

47:08

understand why the idea of someone like shooting

47:11

my dog absolutely got me like

47:13

choked up immediately. Yeah.

47:16

Also, I will say there is some

47:18

real urban rural divide stuff

47:21

in the reactions to this. Right. Like

47:23

I talked to my dad about this and he was like, well,

47:26

yeah, man, like if a dog's hurt and you

47:28

can't get it to the vet like you got to shoot

47:30

that dog. So like there's some of

47:32

that. To be clear, that's

47:35

not true for Brittany Dawn. She

47:38

lives in Dallas, Fort Worth, like

47:40

a big ass metro area. Right.

47:42

Like, listen,

47:44

any time you're putting

47:46

a dog down, it's a really,

47:48

really, really hard thing. And

47:51

people engage with that in lots of

47:53

different ways. They have lots of different responses

47:55

to it. I don't need everyone's like

47:58

grieving to look the same.

47:59

whatever, but it is kind of

48:02

wild to be in such a big city

48:04

with so many resources and go, no, you just

48:06

got to shoot the dog. I resent the position

48:09

that these influencers put us all in

48:11

because a

48:12

lot of these people have made their personal

48:14

life like the center of their career,

48:16

right? It's like, oh, me and my dog are going to go for a walk

48:18

or like me and my husband have like such a healthy marriage.

48:21

Here's us in the morning drinking coffee. And

48:23

then when something

48:25

happens in their personal life, right?

48:27

Like they get a divorce or their dog dies. It's

48:30

part of their public persona, right?

48:32

Because they've made it part of their public persona. But

48:35

then if you're criticizing somebody for those

48:37

kinds of personal decisions in

48:39

other contexts, you wouldn't do this. You

48:41

just be like, oh, this really isn't any of

48:43

my business. Well, and also like this is

48:46

someone whose fucking dog just died.

48:48

Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I feel

48:50

gross about being like you did it wrong. To

48:52

be honest, I find

48:54

the behavior like something terrible happened

48:56

to me. I'm an emotional wreck. I'm immediately

48:58

going to turn on my phone and talk

49:00

about it for the public and broadcast it on the

49:02

internet. I honestly find that behavior totally

49:05

baffling and like really off putting morally

49:07

like, yeah, I don't get it at all.

49:09

Yeah. But on the other hand, her dog

49:12

died and it seems like whatever

49:14

else you want to say about Brittany Dawn, she, she loved her dog.

49:16

Yeah. It just feels uncomfortable

49:18

to be criticizing somebody

49:21

for like her dog got hit by a car and

49:23

she made a decision in the moment that

49:25

maybe I wouldn't have made. Maybe it was the wrong decision. I

49:27

don't have enough information to really know. The

49:30

whole thing is just messy. It was a weird,

49:32

you know, not the best decision by

49:35

my own sort of assessment,

49:37

but also like, I don't know

49:39

that like a bunch of shitty internet

49:42

comments is helping anybody do

49:44

better with that. Yeah. I

49:46

don't know. I feel, I feel really complicated about it. I

49:49

knew what you meant now. Complicated feelings. Here

49:52

we are. Since this whole story

49:54

sort of broke,

49:55

folks have surfaced other

49:57

sort of issues with Brittany Dawn and

49:59

her. her work and her sort of presence

50:02

in the world and on the internet. One

50:04

of those things is that Brittany and her

50:06

husband Jordan have volunteered

50:09

in the past for the freedom

50:11

shield foundation, which

50:12

is sort of a right wing anti trafficking

50:15

organization. That's like, we're saving Christians

50:18

from bad life circumstances.

50:20

Right.

50:21

Another is that she posted

50:23

a whole sort of series of

50:26

Instagram stories and TikToks about

50:28

meeting an unhoused person named

50:31

James and trying to

50:36

find him to give him money and take

50:38

him in. And the critiques of that

50:40

one were mostly about

50:43

like, wow, you couldn't even just do this

50:44

thing without uploading a video about it.

50:47

As more of these little stories

50:50

come to the surface, they actually draw

50:52

more folks in. Brittany

50:55

announced last year that she

50:56

had two miscarriages.

50:59

Okay. Brittany Dawn has since made

51:01

a number of videos about

51:03

her experience with her miscarriage.

51:05

So

51:07

people initially start with, she's

51:10

just monetizing this again and that

51:12

feels gross.

51:14

And then people start just

51:16

straight up alleging that she is faking

51:18

her miscarriages. Part

51:21

of what happens around the miscarriage stuff is

51:23

like utterly grotesque behavior

51:25

to me. People pull screen grabs

51:28

from her videos where she shows an ultrasound

51:31

and goes like, she's saying she had a miscarriage

51:33

at this time period, but this is clearly

51:36

an

51:36

ultrasound from like this trimester

51:38

and she's saying it was there like whatever people

51:41

are deconstructing all of her videos

51:44

like the goddamn Zapruder film. Yeah.

51:46

Great. So bad. It's really looking at her

51:48

expressions on her face and they're

51:50

like, yeah, that's not one who was

51:52

really grieving would make that face.

51:55

I

51:55

a couple of years ago watched one of the

51:57

terrible like Sandy hook conspiracy.

52:00

theory videos. And this

52:02

is the shit that they said about the parents

52:04

grieving parents. It's like their

52:06

faces wouldn't look like that if their kid had really died.

52:08

Whenever you see somebody doing this,

52:11

huge red flag. Yes.

52:14

So following her

52:17

miscarriages, Brittany Dawn announces

52:19

that she and her husband have become

52:21

foster parents

52:22

to an infant. The

52:25

infant that they foster is black,

52:27

which will become relevant in a bit.

52:30

This riles folks for a few

52:33

reasons. One,

52:34

she makes a lot of videos of her

52:37

with this foster baby. She

52:39

has affiliate links to some of the like

52:41

baby stuff that she has bought,

52:42

all of that kind of stuff. She

52:45

does blur the child's

52:48

face because the US Children's

52:50

Bureau requires that foster parents

52:52

not post pictures of their foster kids. Yes,

52:55

thank fucking God, Jesus Christ. She also reveals

52:57

a bunch of personal details

52:59

about this baby in her videos.

53:02

She talks about the baby going through substance

53:05

withdrawals, which is like an extremely

53:08

sensitive disclosure and

53:11

reads to many folks like she's trying to get

53:13

brownie points based on the struggles

53:15

that this

53:16

infant is going through. So she has a baby

53:18

for some short period of time and then is just

53:20

immediately like mining the baby for content.

53:23

That's how folks respond to it.

53:25

And

53:25

foster parents and social workers

53:27

in particular are livid that

53:30

is sort of bucking this fairly widely

53:32

accepted role for foster parents, that they are

53:35

temporary loving homes, but temporary

53:37

homes for kids who are expected to reunite with their

53:40

families. The biggest

53:42

reason that this one blows

53:45

up

53:46

doesn't have anything really to do with

53:48

Brittany. It has everything

53:49

to do with her husband. You

53:52

start to see comments on the

53:54

posts about her foster child

53:57

with people asking how they passed a background

53:59

child. to foster kids. Okay.

54:03

And Brittany responds in the comments,

54:06

quote, my background check came back perfect,

54:08

thank you. I'd be cautious about believing

54:11

everything you see about someone on the internet,

54:13

a gossip forum, and especially manipulative

54:16

news stories. Okay. She

54:19

is talking about her husband, Jordan

54:21

Nelson, who is originally from Kansas

54:23

City, Missouri,

54:25

and is a former police

54:28

officer. Okay. He

54:30

and Brittany got married in September of 2021.

54:34

He is a former police officer

54:36

in part

54:37

because the ACLU filed

54:39

suit against him for excessive

54:42

force against a black man. Oh

54:44

my fucking God. So

54:46

the lawsuit was settled out of court,

54:49

but the dash cam footage was released.

54:52

It very clearly shows a black

54:54

man standing still, his hands in

54:56

the air and fully visible.

54:59

A group of officers sort of tear

55:01

up

55:01

in police cars and

55:04

approach him. So Brittany Dawn's

55:06

husband, Jordan Nelson, is the first officer

55:08

to reach him. And what he does

55:10

is kick his legs out from under him,

55:13

shove him into the sidewalk, and

55:16

four other officers descend on

55:18

him and hold him down. Jesus Christ.

55:21

A few minutes later on that same video,

55:24

he reenacts the whole

55:26

thing to show off to his fellow

55:29

officers. Oh, fuck off, good God. While

55:31

this man is still lying on the sidewalk

55:33

and had yet to receive any medical attention.

55:36

Jesus Christ. It's like the opposite of

55:38

bitching crackers. This is like the most odious

55:40

fucking shit.

55:41

It is absolutely atrocious.

55:44

After all of this happens, Jordan

55:47

Nelson filed for a protective

55:50

order against the dude

55:52

he beat. Oh, God. Absolutely

55:56

deranged behavior

55:57

is what's happening here. That's

56:00

the reason he passed the background check is because

56:02

they settled out of court. So there's no, like

56:04

he wasn't, all a background check would find is if

56:06

he was convicted of something, but he wasn't convicted

56:08

of anything, partly because he was like an agent of the

56:11

state. It's like a huge loophole

56:13

in the system, right? That if somebody uses power to

56:16

subjugate somebody else, that wouldn't show up as a red

56:18

flag.

56:18

And now this fucking couple

56:21

is fostering a black child. Right.

56:24

Like just boy, oh boy, oh boy.

56:26

I can't say enough about how extremely

56:29

reasonable a concern

56:29

this is. Yeah. And

56:32

it leads to quite a bit of talk about how

56:35

much this reflects the brokenness

56:38

of the foster care system and

56:40

hard agree. Right. God, this

56:42

episode was so fun and breezy.

56:43

It was just like a run of the mill,

56:45

like Christian mega church grifter. Remember

56:48

when you were like, I like her. I

56:50

know. And

56:52

now it's just like, oh, it's like all

56:54

of like the worst shit in

56:56

American society. Yeah.

56:58

Yeah. Has she, has she said

57:00

anything about the, the video of her husband? Not that I found just

57:02

the like, don't believe everything you read,

57:05

which is like, okay. God,

57:06

it's such a fucking obvious thing to say, but it's

57:08

like the idea of a Christianity

57:11

that wants you to be thin, but doesn't

57:13

mind you using your power

57:16

as an agent of the state to

57:17

beat somebody up. It's

57:20

just like not a, that's not

57:22

a serious morality.

57:24

Quite a bit of this comes to a head

57:26

in a way that really surprised me. Okay.

57:30

The state of Texas announced in February of last

57:32

year that it was suing Brittany Dawn for $250,000

57:36

to a million dollars in damages for

57:39

quote deceptive trade

57:40

practices. Okay. The

57:42

grounds for the suit are

57:45

specifically that

57:48

Brittany Dawn particularly focused

57:50

on targeting people with eating disorders.

57:52

Oh wow. People who were clearly

57:55

intentionally misled and taken

57:57

in by the frequent. that

58:00

she had a level of expertise that they could trust,

58:02

right? They also alleged

58:04

some other little things that didn't come up

58:06

in the August

58:08

of 2018.