Hi everyone, thanks for being here and thanks Mark for this amazing event.
I've had incredible two days, I guess we'll just get started.
Yeah, so we met Tuesday night I think and we just spent an hour trying to get to know
each other and our mutual interests and we both started talking about authenticity on
the web and what's real and what isn't and how do you know that?
A lot of what I do as a data scientist is look at information online, how it spreads
and how I can sort of quantify signals from different social media so I'm always very
interested in what's real and what's not and what should be counted for.
And then I had this really weird experience a month ago I was put on Instagram's featured
user list and I started getting these crazy follows like every 30 seconds and I'm feeling
oh people love me and then feeling oh these are machines and so being really kind of confused
by that and having no idea of whether someone appreciates your work or is it just a machine
or a marketer talking to you.
So we decided to sort of see if we could tell a story about this and we came up with this.
Wake up now.
So for the work that I do I track a lot of bots on Twitter and I look at accounts that
I think might be automated and I follow them because I want to see what kind of stuff they
post.
So this is kind of one account that looks really fishy.
It's a super young guy called Lil God Sodom G. He has 259,000 followers on Twitter and
he's following all these crazy amount of people and he's posting all this stuff.
He doesn't really seem fake but then he had this in his bio obviously a thing that triggered
scam to me.
It says I have a money team that anyone 18 plus can join just by investing $100 to make
$600.
We've all seen this so many times it's the cousin in Ethiopia or it's the thing you just
need to put in a little bit of money and then you're all set for life.
So I obviously didn't click on the link because there's obviously a link there but what I
did is what one would naturally do is go to Google and search this wake up now was in
the kind of scammy looking thing.
And so Google autocomplete sort of completes the following things, right?
Wake up now selling, wake up now scam, stock, sign up success, right?
So people are obviously searching for this scheme and trying to understand is it successful,
is it a scam, etc.
This is how the results look like on the first page of Google search.
So again, wake up now scam, pyramid scheme, my experience, right?
Is it a scam?
So all these people and all these videos appear so it kind of seemed like it's something and
going into one of the videos it all becomes very confusing because you have these young
folks putting up these long videos and the title is wake up now scam but then they're
vouching for the program and they're saying how it's actually not a scam and it's the
real deal and you make money and they're really sort of, it's real people very authentically
sort of vouching for this program.
So we kept looking at all these videos and then we came upon Ethan who's like claims
to be but who knows a scam buster.
Sorry, I don't know if there's audio that I have to turn on.
Let's get back to the beginning.
So we got to Ethan Vanderbilt as one of the people talking about whether it's a scam.
First the whole world is asleep, everyone you know, everyone you see, everyone you talk
to, only a few are awake and they're living in total complete amazement.
Learn the secret that will change the way you see the world.
I mean you could look at him for a long time, right, in fact we loved him so much we bought
him some followers.
We tried to talk to him but he only got back to us like late last night on Twitter and
by then the story had gotten even more complex so you can go and find Ethan Vanderbilt's
videos if you want to.
And so what is Wake Up Now?
Why do some people live their lives in black and white while others seem to live in vibrant
color?
Why are some people in a state of total amazement?
Well part of it is knowing a secret, a secret that changes how people see the world.
This video is your invitation to Wake Up Now.
So this is on their website, this is kind of the video that you first see when you go
to wakeupnow.com and if you click on the executive team, or who they are, this is what you get
to the executive team, right?
To give you a sense for how the website looks, it could be any generic kind of weird website
that you have no clue what it is and if it's real, what the product is, but that's how
it looks like.
And what we found really fascinating is while we have, there's the facade of the company
on their website and this really clean video, when you search for it online, this is what
you see.
This is Google Images.
This is the search for Wake Up Now and Google Images, right?
Really kind of messy and all these crazy inverted pyramids or pyramids.
And so digging a little deeper.
This is how it works, guys.
You can all make a lot of money.
So what we did, a bunch of digging into what this means and what this type of company is
and we found phrases and terms that kind of kept coming back, like mid-level marketing
MLM.
Network marketing is kind of using your friends to sell content like Tupperware used to be,
so you kind of find friends and sell them the stuff, you obviously get a cut.
And independent business owner, right?
It's almost like a franchise that you set up.
You get your friends or other people to join you and the more you get, the sort of more
status you are in this network and the more obviously money you get.
And you pay a monthly fee and it's basically some kind of software subscription service.
The other important part is it's always, it can't just be this, supposedly this pyramid
scheme where there has to be some product and here there are discounts, right?
So you have access to all these discounts and travel places and there's tax, there's
a ton of stuff.
It took us a while to sort of figure out, you know, what is the product, what are they
selling and eventually we...
So one of the videos that we saw about people, there are a ton of videos of people on YouTube
explaining what this is.
Right.
Sorry.
What's the secret to ranking up and wake up now?
Easy.
Just get three.
Get your three.
Get your three people.
That's all it takes.
Get your three.
Get your three.
The secret is get your three.
Get your three.
So the more people you get, the more money you make and you're not making any money until
you get three.
And when you get three, you're making a little bit.
Obviously, you're not making as much as you're paying yet, but the more you get, the more
people you get, the more opportunity you have.
It's just getting people.
So we still don't know if this is a scam.
So what do you do if you're a journalist?
Well, you call the company, right?
So how do you call the company?
Because there's no real number for the guys, right?
So we called...
For answers to common questions, you can visit our wiki at OneWiki.com.
That's W-U-N-W-I-K-I.com.
So we went through this and then the way we found them is they teach a class at University
of Utah in finance school, Kirby Cochran.
We know a lot more about Kirby Cochran at this point, but he teaches a class and the
way we found their actual phone numbers was on their syllabus for the class, which is
taught by the executives of the company.
I have to say at this point, and I've done a lot of work on storytelling with data.
I never have the courage to pick up the phone and call the people that I'm observing, whereas
that would be Nina's first thing that she would do.
And I was shocked.
Nina, wait, why would they want to talk to you?
Just cold calling a person.
And it was amazing.
And I said to him, I said, well, everybody talks pretty much.
If you give them a chance, everyone will say something.
So we got Chad.
We got Chad on the phone.
Chad Jardine is the chief marketing officer, the chief recruiting officer, and he basically
told us that the scam videos are promotional videos.
What was he saying?
Basically that they're...
So he was calling it supposedly link bait, that if people put the right words, they get
the traffic to the website.
So just like we found the videos while searching for scam, they post scam in the title so they
get the traffic and then they convert them to followers, suppose it...
But we had discovered that this company is actually moving.
And I mean, it's only worth 0.02 cents a share on the stock exchange, however, it's a startup
and it seems to be moving.
And we were really curious also about the picture of the three guys in Utah, really
straight laced, and the social media being generated that there was quite a contrast.
So this is, for example, when you search on Google Trends, you see people searching for
a wake up now, you see an incredible surge over the past year.
So they're doing something and there's something clearly happening.
There are more people searching for it, more people seeing it, and possibly more people
engaging in it.
And that was our main question.
And we asked Chad, and he was really surprised we called, it's like, how'd you get my number?
And we were on the phone with him for half an hour.
We're not going to play the audio, but...
Yeah, he's too boring.
It's a bit boring.
So what he says, he said, it's effectively that social media is out of their control.
They have these formal, what do they call, income disclosure statements where it's very
clear that you don't make money until you have a certain amount, and these are the percentages,
the distributions, blah, blah.
But he says they mandate people to link to that, but nobody, it's not linked to anywhere.
And effectively what you see in social media that's supposedly out of their control, this
is how it looks like.
This is sort of a typical Instagram user of Wake Up Now.
I'll take you through a few of these.
Yeah.
So it's like, gobs of money.
And there are many, many thousands of these, more, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.
So after figuring out a little bit about the company, we looked at each other and sort
of like, why do we care about this?
And our view, we're really wondering, is this the only way for young people to make money
these days?
Because it seemed to be lots of young, urban youth going after Wake Up Now and trying to
become their own business people.
And so in that sense, from a social perspective, maybe we were onto something, but who knows?
And so that's where I can rely on Gila to map the hashtags and to see, well, how much
activity is really happening.
Yeah.
And I think the other thing is when it's such a complex scheme that it was, usually with
these things, you can know, oh, we know what it is, but with this, it was really hard to
understand.
It seemed like real people, like really passionate about these things.
It seems like it was everywhere, but was it working?
How many people were actually doing this?
So we tried to look at the data from Instagram that was generated to see what we might learn
from it.
So this is taking Instagram data from 37,000 users.
It represents 57,000 likes.
So it's a period of a few weeks of all these Instagram posts with the following hashtags,
like Wake Up Now, WN, Family, Infinity, Down the Line, like all these words that were occurring
in these messaging.
And what this shows here is sort of co-liking, so you see sort of regions of the graph have
different colors where people who like each other's content, right?
So it kind of gives you a little bit of a sense for the communities.
And we didn't have too much time to study this, but for example, the red area on the
right is more sort of people caring about fashion.
You get lipstick and powder and all these things.
So every region represents sort of a different interest group.
There's a fitness group.
There's the Wake Up Now region.
But when we filtered that down and looked at sort of the main regions of words that keep
occurring in these posts, we got sort of two main clusters of words.
One was sort of the Wake Up Now, WN, Making Money, like all these, these are the hashtags
that were associated with the images, right?
And the other one was sort of more descriptive, right?
So love, motivation, inspiration, it's sort of related to the feelings behind this group
of people.
And when you dive into these graphs, you can kind of see the relationship between the words.
What words, the larger ones appear more times, but then they're also, what we highlighted
here is faith in God, right?
I had a sneaking suspicion that this was really a kind of front for a church because I've
seen a lot of the language from covering evangelical churches over time.
And also, lots of the members of Wake Up Now, let's say, blessed and, well, just religious
terms.
And then the visuals, the aesthetics were like the big hands up.
So, but we didn't really have enough time to adequately determine what is the connection
between any religious organizations and Wake Up Now.
And then, of course, it's based in Utah, so I was thinking Mormon.
Anyway, so this is one of our unanswered questions from this experiment.
More sort of the descriptive words that kept appearing, like positivity, positive thinking,
good vibes, et cetera.
So the other thing, we looked at the language being used with these posts.
We also looked at the users themselves and how they're interconnected.
That's another way when you're trying to understand a community online.
So what this is is a co-follow network, and it shows in yellow, I guess, or lighter nodes
are kind of the more co-followed, so they're more central in the community.
And the smaller ones are kind of less followed from within the community.
All right, so this, just to give you a sense, you can, with these networks, you can dive
in and kind of really get a sense for the different people involved.
And this represents, I think, 5,000 nodes, something like that.
And what we did then, identify a few and try to get in touch with them.
Right, we called a data point, basically, and interviewed.
So person number one, or persona number one, Logan Shippy at Wake Up Wealthy.
This is location in the network, right, kind of medium-sized, medium-to-small-sized node.
So this is a little bit about him, 21, lives in San Clemente, California, wake up now member
since July 2003, and the soundbite on him is, I'm not after a million dollars, I'm after
a billion.
So we found him, actually, through YouTube, he makes these really slick videos to promote
himself as an entrepreneur.
And he told us the videos are the driver of the interest.
So he puts these videos, and then he gets other things in social media, but the videos
are his main thing.
I wanted to show you one of his videos.
Wake up, wake up now, let's go.
S5-50, 2014 with all the friends.
Be in Arizona!
On camera!
Rack them up, wake them up.
Wake up, chicken eat breakfast with us.
Let's go.
Wake up, chicken eat breakfast with us.
What do you think, man?
I think this is the one.
So just to give you a sense, these people sort of set up these teams and he explained this to us how it works.
By the way, I think it was 7 a.m. when we called, he was up and he was...
He sort of publishes his phone number on these pages, it's like, just call me.
So he answers and he talked to us for like half an hour.
And he says, yeah, no, it's not early, it's rise and grind.
He says he's got 70 members in his team, that he went down all the money he's making.
You know, who knows if it's true, but what we really believe, though,
something is inspiring these people and that we feel like we're on to some sort of strange social movement
that's connecting them and giving them some sense of community.
Of course, at the end, he tried to sell us, which was just so charming.
We don't have that here, but yeah.
We're putting this together till the very last second,
but we do have this beautiful audio clip of him trying to sell us to become members.
So I get the last character that we meet was this team and they're in Brooklyn
and really our dream was to, for me, to go and photograph them
and do a little photo story to add in this project that we're doing,
but we didn't have time, but still we have It's Panama Baby in Crown Heights
and his friend Angela, the Key to Money in Queens.
These are photos, selfies they took and sent.
We asked them at the end of the interview, he said,
would you please take a selfie and send it to us.
So we spoke with them yesterday and we got to them through Twitter, your Twitter, right?
You got to Angela and it turns out Angela is the media strategist for It's Panama Baby
and he is a performer in Crown Heights.
I mean, you can check him out at Bowery Ballroom at South by Southwest.
I mean, it's kind of a sort of surprising week.
Expected losers, but the guy is, I mean, the guy is, you know,
in some ways a pretty accomplished songwriter and artist.
And so they see themselves as a team and they met at some event
and now they are partners and she's going to help him build his, you know, mega network.
So he does these YouTube videos, she does all the social media
and just to give you a sense, he's a really, really, really good video performer
to give you a sense for some of his videos.
I see people commenting, I see people talking, I see people tweeting,
what are you going to do?
Oh, you still think it's a scam, huh?
You still think it's a scam.
Why is Visa giving us the opportunity to use their brand?
You think they have time for a lawsuit?
I mean, answer that question.
You think Visa has time for a lawsuit?
Yeah, we fell in love with him, I have to say.
So I guess the last bit, which made it all even more confusing for us,
was we went back to look at Logan Shippey's Instagram feed and found this.
Oh, wait, did I, oh, sorry.
There was just, so it's just, trying to understand this movement,
we also stumbled onto all these videos,
all these documentation of people meeting up in physical location.
It almost feels like a social movement.
And to give you a sense, this is one of their empowerment summits.
This is just a tiny clip from that.
Let me play it.
This is the rest of San Marco.
I think we want to play it.
It's like this guy taking us through the summit.
I'm going to jump because we don't have that much time.
This is one of the executives.
So this is one of the executives exactly that was caught in this video,
and we just thought it was really interesting the way he presented it.
He is a multi-millionaire, guys, a multi-millionaire.
Tell them what's the real pyramid.
The real pyramid is corporate America.
You know, the president makes the most, it goes down from there.
That's the pyramid.
So the real, I don't know if you heard that, but yeah.
By the way, his former job along with another CEO was in the real estate market.
So I think, you know, if we had like a really serious investigative reporter on our team,
I think we would have uncovered like massive crimes, or at least that was my fantasy.
Anyway, so at the end, we checked out,
when we went back to Logan Shippey on his Instagram,
found this really heartfelt message from 1908 Living.
He says, hey, Logan, just saw your post about giving away people email.
Please, not interested in the handouts.
Just really interested in some tactics to get where you are at founder seven.
That's your rank.
My email is blah, blah, blah.
I'm in the Army currently overseas with those stateside numbers.
So I started thinking, wow, you know, maybe this is something that young Army guys are doing as a way to make money,
or they think it's maybe their job prospect when they get out.
So then we started to look at 1908 Living.
We asked the question.
Is he a bot?
And we think he is.
So we go back to the beginning where what of the story and what of all these characters are actually real.
And we don't know except for the ones we spoke to.
So that was our collaboration.
Thank you.
Questions, anyone?
I'm just trying to figure out where that is.
You really want to join, right?
I know, I know, right?
Okay, so you pay a monthly fee and you get a software subscription that allows you a few things.
It gives you some coupons, some coupons off like your phone service,
but it also has this tax writing program.
And I think that's truly the way people make money is that they learn how to become independent business owners.
And so everything that they do involving their work with Wake Up Now, they can write off their taxes.
So they go and they have a coffee and they're talking to someone, oh, I'm writing that off.
And they drive from this place to this place, oh, I'm a business operator now.
I can write that off.
They also get AT&T discounts.
There's a whole slew of ways in which it gives you discounts.
And we found complaints.
I mean, we have documents and complaints from the Better Business Bureau.
So we did all of that sort of searching.
But that's basically how it works.
Did you check out AT&T and find out about the major coupons?
So we didn't have time for that.
No, we did.
We thought we had more time we would have.
But one of the people we talked to clearly said, because we asked.
So again, again, we asked these people that we talked to, are you making money?
And they said, no, not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Right.
But that they sold us on the fact that it's still worth it for the discounts that you get.
But we're still like sufficiently enamored with the story that we discovered that April 5th, they're having a regional conference in New York.
And the executives from Utah are coming.
And we expect to see its Panama baby and Angie.
And so we might go check it out.
Exactly.
But we're thinking, I mean, I had something going on April 5th.
I've already canceled it so I can go.
So I mean, I'm on it because one of the first stories I ever did as a photographer was on Mary Kay ladies.
And some of you may have known the makeup ladies.
It's similar.
And I kind of like these subcultures.
So perhaps, yeah.
Thank you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
