Ari Jacob: TikTok’s First Millionaires: Ari Jacob’s Inside Story | DSH #1470

1h 8m
Discover the untold story behind TikTok’s first millionaires as Ari Jacob shares her incredible journey on the Digital Social Hour podcast with Sean Kelly! 🚀 From representing TikTok superstars like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae to navigating the explosive rise of influencer culture, Ari reveals the secrets behind building a digital empire. 🌟

Get an inside look at how she turned viral talent into mainstream celebrities, the challenges of managing 85 influencers during a social media gold rush, and her battle against defamation in the public eye. 💼✨ This episode is packed with valuable insights into the world of social media, brand deals, and overcoming adversity.

Don’t miss out! Tune in now for an engaging conversation filled with inspiration, lessons learned, and insider secrets. 🎤 Watch now and subscribe for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 📺 Hit that subscribe button and join the conversation today. 🔥

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Intro

00:38 - TikTok’s First Millionaires

05:02 - Code Health

06:04 - Finding Unicorns

08:00 - The Hate Starts

12:07 - The New York Times Article

14:53 - The New York Times Hit Piece

18:52 - You Can't Sue the New York Times

21:00 - UTA and Ari's Business Model

25:05 - Going After Taylor Lorenz and the New York Times

27:18 - Public Figures and Defamation Standards

28:57 - Understanding Litigation Privilege

29:53 - Publication Bias in Media

32:39 - Defamation Filing Deadlines

37:07 - Taylor Lorenz's Emails Before Publication

40:10 - Strategies to Fight Cancel Culture

44:40 - Navigating Cancel Culture Situations

50:13 - Overcoming Cancel Culture Challenges

52:29 - Feeling Isolated During Scandals

56:45 - The New York Times Article Impact on Ari

59:10 - Emotional Effects of Media Criticism

1:02:09 - Welcome to the Big Leagues

1:04:00 - Strategies to Fight Back Against Cancel Culture

1:04:50 - Outro

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GUEST: Ari Jacob

https://www.instagram.com/littlemissjacob/

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on Digital Social Hour are solely those of the individuals appearing on the podcast and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the host, Sean Kelly, or the Digital Social Hour team.

While we encourage open and honest conversations, Sean Kelly is not legally responsible for any statements, claims, or opinions made by guests during the show. Listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions and consult professionals for advice where appropriate.

Content on this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, financial, or professional advice.

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#tiktok #whatisdefamation #reputationmanagement #defamationcaselaw #ariadnajacob

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Transcript

There's a lot of stuff that people don't understand about filing a defamation case and I don't think anybody could really understand it until you're sitting in the lawyer's office.

If you want to find out if you were actually defamed, we can give you a short little checklist.

Okay.

Number one, they had to have said a false statement and it can't be a matter of opinion.

Okay, guys, got Ari Jacob here, the woman behind TikTok's first millionaires.

What a story.

And you've dealt with a lot.

I can't wait to dive into it today.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

This will be fun.

Yeah, and welcome to Vegas, too.

I live here now, so we're both Vegas locals.

Yeah, you escaped LA just like I did.

You were there during the peak of all this TikTok craziness, right?

Yeah, it was insane.

I mean, at the beginning, I was actually, I moved to LA because I was representing Canelo Alvarez, the boxer.

And actually, I'm from Mexico City.

A lot of people don't know that.

I was born in Mexico and I immigrated here legally when I was a little girl.

My dad died and my mom married an American.

And so he adopted me and then I became an American.

So very proud, proud, patriotic person over here.

You have to clarify the legally born.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I was representing Canelo and then I had always been in social media.

Like I ran MySpace campaigns back in the day in San Diego and San Diego State.

Anyway, when TikTok started to blow up, I think that a lot of people didn't even recognize it as a real app.

It used to be musically.

And I think people just thought it was a place where like cringy TikTok dances happen, maybe like for 13-year-olds or something like that.

And when I saw the views that these kids like wearing their little sweatshirts, their little hoodies were getting 10 million views, I'm just thinking, wait till the brands get a hold of this.

Because at the time, everybody was just paying attention to like Instagram and YouTube.

And remember, Instagram didn't always have those vertical videos.

So I thought as this could be the next Disney channel type of thing.

I had just read Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One.

Competition is for losers.

That's what he says.

And he says the winners build monopolies.

And so it kind of gave me this idea of YouTube and Instagram is completely saturated.

And there was people representing the bachelor stars and reality stars.

And it was just oversaturated.

So I'm thinking, here's TikTok.

These people are getting millions of views and nobody's representing them.

Nobody's guiding them.

Nobody's mentoring them.

So why don't I just reach out?

And I ended up signing this one girl.

She was the kombucha girl.

She had this meme where she like drank kombucha and she made a face like.

Ew, and then she was like, oh, it's not so bad.

Anyway, that went super viral.

And then I went to New York because everybody wanted to meet her.

So we took her to Barstool Sports.

And I'm longtime friends with Gary Vee, who I met in like 2009.

And so Gary being sort of like the, you know, digital guru guy, he understood that TikTok was going to be the next big thing.

And somebody in Gary Vee's office was like, there's this girl, Charlie D'Amelio.

And I knew exactly who she was.

But a lot of people, again, like.

adults, especially marketing people, they didn't know really that TikTok was going to blow up the way it did.

And so they teed up a Zoom call with Charlie D'Amelio's parents.

And that's when really things exploded because Charlie D'Amelio was this all-American girl, didn't wear a lot of makeup.

She just seemed like the girl next door.

And she had a good family and she was making dance videos.

And in the beginning of TikTok, and probably still somewhat now, The algorithm worked this way.

If somebody watches a video several times over, the algorithm is going to shoot it to the top of the for you page.

And at the time, there wasn't millions of creators on there.

It was like a TV channel with maybe 30 talents on there.

And because people wanted to learn the dances, they would watch her videos over and over.

And she was the one that knew all the trending videos.

So she went sky high on TikTok.

And then

after I represented her, I signed her sister.

I signed Addison Ray, their friend.

They were all in this thing called the Hype House, which was basically just a collective of these TikTokers where they could collaborate with each other and do dances.

And those people catapulted to mainstream celebrities.

Charlie D'Amillion and her sister Forbes had an article that they made $70 million like in three years.

Holy crap.

And Addison Ray got like a four-picture deal with Netflix.

It just exploded so fast.

So they became full-blown celebrities after that.

And once I found my unicorns, I didn't realize that everybody was going to be.

All right, guys, Sean Kelly here, host of the Digital Social Hour podcast.

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gonna want a unicorn and that's where i got into a little bit of trouble

yeah you grew fast 85 clients right yeah once they found out that i had charlie everybody wanted to be signed by me and i was proud of it and i wanted everybody to know that we had charlie so my company was called influences.com the influencers had like charlie at influences.com on their instagram page

so what's different about that is like, for example, let's say you represent a big town agency represents Brad Pitt.

A brand can't just like go on Brad Pitt's Instagram and email Brad Pitt if you want to work with him.

But in this scenario, I mean, Duncan Donuts was emailing Charlie at Influences.

And guess who was getting those emails?

So I was getting a flood of Fortune 500 leads.

And my pipeline was in the millions of dollars.

It was incredible.

It was one of those moments as an entrepreneur because I'd been, I mean, I dropped out of college to start a business.

At that time, I'm like, I finally made it, you know,

it felt so good.

And I knew what I was doing.

I had worked in digital agencies and I had worked at search engine optimization.

Like I was selling SEO.

And so, and I always wanted to be a creator, but my only inspiration was Gary Vee.

He's the one that was like, I believe in you.

But at the time, people didn't get it.

Like, if you were on MySpace, your parents were like, you're wasting your time why are you on this

and i think i saw that in a lot of the tick tockers where their parents were like why are you doing this tick tock thing it's a waste of time 100 yeah same with video games oh totally parents told us not to play video games and now kids are making millions playing video games exactly let your kids use ai please because that will be the next thing yeah schools are banning that which is terrible in my opinion yeah like you're not going to stop ai No, you have to join it.

Yep.

Okay.

So now we get into, I guess, should we start with the haters that started coming from this?

Sure.

And then get into the lawsuit stuff.

Yes.

You start crushing it.

You get big clients.

Is that when the hate starts?

When you start signing these big names?

Yes.

Cause it was so exciting at first that I didn't really see it coming.

And I had my head down.

I was pretty busy making sure that all these emails were getting answered.

Excuse me, answered, because sometimes like,

The brands would email you and if you didn't get back to them right away, they're like, oh, sorry, we already like hired another creator.

because they were just literally, I think, spamming the emails on these TikTokers because they didn't know who they were.

Brand managers knew who people from The Bachelor were.

They understood like the Instagram campaigns or the YouTube campaigns, but they weren't really sure how to work with TikTokers yet.

So let me lay up the background here.

The pandemic started.

So what happened in Hollywood?

Nothing, right?

Everything got shut down.

There was no touring in Hollywood for music.

There was no TV shows on.

Remember like Jimmy Kimmel, all those things got shut down, no movies.

So the talent agents got really hungry and they were getting laid off by, I think one of the big talent agencies laid off like 100 agents.

So the only people that were able to make money were these TikTokers, Instagram people, and people were at home just scrolling.

So it was a complete gold rush at that time.

And I happened to be like sitting smack dab in it.

People talk about how cutthroat Hollywood is.

I mean, I watched Entourage back in the day.

It really is like that, maybe 10 times worse.

That's when some whispers that something negative was coming.

But in my mind, I'm doing everything above board.

The creators are signed to agreements.

I think I was taking between 10 and 20%, depending how big they were.

Because if they're really small, maybe they're getting $500 deals.

Like you're not going to make anything on 10%.

And they weren't like signed to 10-year contracts.

I think it was like one or two-year contracts.

Yeah, which I feel like 10%, pretty standard.

So I don't see, we'll dive into, I guess, what the actual issue was.

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Yeah, I wasn't really expecting anything.

And all of a sudden, I started hearing that Taylor Lorenz, this journalist that had been at the New York Times that was reporting on digital culture, technology.

content creators.

I don't even think that was like a term really.

Maybe it just started.

Yeah, influencers was kind of a term.

New York Times let her do what she wanted in that space because she was the one that knew the most about it and had been reporting on like Team 10 and Logan Paul and all those people that kind of started that trend.

And I had actually represented people from Team 10.

I lived at 1600 Vine, which was kind of like the dorm room for all these huge creators.

I lived right next door to Logan Paul and Amanda Cerny and King Batch and they would make little skits there, but those people were huge on Instagram.

And so TikTok came along.

Taylor kind of knew what was going on.

But I didn't, again, I wasn't expecting anything.

But all of a sudden, we get a email from Taylor.

She's saying, we have all these allegations about you, had all these questions.

And she's like, we're publishing in 24 hours.

And luckily, I had some really good people around me with experience.

Like I hadn't hired a PR team or anything like that.

And My friend Matt Shoup was like, don't answer her directly, like get your lawyer involved.

And so I'm I'm basically pulling an all-nighter with my attorney because she's asking all these questions.

And I'm telling the attorney, well, let's just give her all the contracts.

Like this is, you know, she's wrong about this, saying that, oh, it's alleged that you didn't pay somebody on time or all this stuff.

And I'm like, no, no, we did.

Like, we have the paperwork.

And my attorney's like, well, it's not that easy, Ari, because let's just say that we tell her that XYZ Fortune 500 brand paid late.

And that's why the influencer didn't get paid until the brand paid.

Well, you signed an NDA with the brand and if you go and tell their business that they paid late, now huge Fortune 500 brand can sue you.

So I'm like up between a rock and a hard place.

And

he answers all the questions thoroughly.

I'm still thinking, there's no way the New York Times can trash me because none of this stuff is true.

So anyway, I go to bed and I'm like, thinking, okay, it's the New York Times.

Like, they can't write lies just like blatantly.

I'm thinking this is going to blow over.

So I wake up the next day and I start getting text messages.

Hey, are you okay?

Hey, it's not that bad.

I mean, you could change your name.

And I'm like,

okay.

So I read the story and 50% of it is

lies, like flat out lies.

And then 50% is twisting the truth a little bit to make something sound.

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Thank you.

Bad that wasn't actually bad.

And

it was pretty devastating because my whole career, I had just been like a connector.

I'd been positive.

You know, I met your, some of your staff earlier.

They're like, oh, you're so nice.

I mean, that is my personality.

But all of a sudden, it felt like, oh my gosh, I'm the wicked witch of the West.

And it was a mixture of feeling heartbroken because I really cared about these people I represented.

And so I'm thinking, did they talk bad about me?

I just felt kind of like I'd gotten broken up with by 85 boyfriends on the same day, you know, people I mentored and cared about.

And then on the other side, I'm like,

what does the New York Times and Taylor Lorenz have against me?

Like, I couldn't figure it out.

I was a little bit like started, you know, I think after it hit, I'm like putting together like the red threads, you know, the yarn on the wall.

Like, why are they attacking me?

I just didn't understand it.

And so later I come to find out that Taylor Lorenz actually had a huge conflict of interest.

She was represented by my competitors, which was a behemoth talent agency called United Talent Agency, UTA.

And then my big clients, a lot of them signed to UTA once they left, you know, once my business was basically destroyed overnight.

So it was planned.

I mean, I believe it was for sure.

And she had just gotten a book deal from UTA.

You know, I don't know.

Like, maybe it was just like a little bit of like, hey, you don't like her.

And maybe she was a bit jealous because I was also kind of like right smack dab in this world that I think she wanted to be in.

Like she didn't hang out with the creators for the most part.

They were,

I think I was like a big sister to them or like a mama bear.

Like, you know, it's kind of like Chris Jenner meets Scooter Braun meets Gary Vee.

That's kind of what I was my vision, what I wanted to be.

And that pretty much went away overnight.

And I had a pipeline of millions of dollars in deals that just disappeared.

Like a docu sign contract that had been sent to me and then it canceled the docu sign.

I've never seen a hip piece so successful because you lost all your clients, right?

You know, there was like, I want to say there was like maybe 10 that were like, you know, we would stay.

But at that point, I'm like, first of all, I wasn't in a headspace to continue running my business.

Like I didn't think I was, but also I didn't want to be a burden on these people that I thought would be successful.

You know what I'm saying?

Like

I didn't want them just to have this loyalty for me.

And then the brands aren't calling me because, you know, the brand, some people at the brands were like, we love you, Ari, but we can't be associated with this.

Like you have to figure out a way to fight back.

And I'm like, okay, how do I do that?

So

I go to see

litigation attorney, so different than my contract attorney that was helping me communicate with Taylor.

And I basically go and sit in the office and they're like,

great attorney, but he's like, you can't sue the New York Times.

And I'm like, well, what do you mean?

You can't.

Oh, well, you got screwed here completely, but they haven't lost a defamation case since the 1960s.

Wow.

And even if you were a bazillionaire,

which I was was not, at that point, you know, I had a big pipeline, but the money wasn't necessarily in the bank.

So they said, your really only option here is maybe we can sue UTA for like tortuous interference because they interfered with your contracts if there was really like an organized thing.

But I'm like, how can the New York Times just get away with this?

And

that was a lesson in like, don't let anybody tell you what you can't do.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So you still wanted to go after them, even though you said that, basically.

New York Times.

Well, I wanted to go after everyone.

When you get defamed or canceled

and you're innocent or you feel like it's unfair, you want to go after everyone, right?

In my mind, I'm like, I wanted to go after some of the TikTokers that, by the way, they weren't kids.

They were like 23 years old.

So they knew better.

But I wanted to go after some of those people that were quoted in the article and that lied.

I wanted to go after UTA because I'm like, this was definitely an inside job.

They wanted not just the influencers, but I had big-time agreements with big Fortune 500 brands where they were like, we'll pay you half a million dollars to spread out all this money across all the TikTokers that you think we should spend it on and also get paid for the creative and all that.

But Taylor and the New York Times, I remember one of the executives that I had spoken to who said, we believe in you internally, but you got to fight against this.

She was like, you got to go after Taylor Lorenz because it seems like she's done this a lot in the past to other people.

And the New York Times, shame on them, you know, because they are kind of considered one of the most prominent news organizations in the world.

I used to think so, but my opinion has changed over time.

Right.

And when they had covered one of the stories about the TikTok houses, because I had three TikTok houses, I had rented these basically mansions.

And they did a positive story about the influencers.

In my opinion, that's kind of how she got in with them.

She like, she got their contact info because I said I teed up like a positive story about my houses.

They got a little bit of clout, which at the time, remember, you had to have, in order to get a blue check mark on Instagram, you had to have all this press.

And also on Twitter.

And that was like the holy grail for these TikTokers because a lot of them.

were verified on TikTok, but they weren't verified on Instagram.

Oh, yeah, I remember those days.

Which is crazy now because I think it's harder to get verified verified on TikTok than it is now.

Oh, when I got verified on IG, there's a video of me like dancing in a restaurant.

Like, it was a big deal back then.

It was a huge deal.

And so, I think that Taylor Lorenz dangled a little blue check carrot to the creators, and that's how she got in with them.

And then, all of a sudden, when she wanted to write the negative piece, she all of a sudden had all those contacts.

And, you know, the influencers, they saw her as like, she can get me more pressed.

She can make me more famous, that kind of thing.

I decided I'm going to go after the New York Times because you have to kind of pick a horse.

Like you can't just be like, I'm mad at everyone.

And I didn't have the money or the focus to go after everyone.

I ended up, I did end up suing UTA.

But, you know, it's just so difficult because when you have to work with these people, I mean, I figured if I want to work in entertainment, like I'm going to probably run into UTA.

I don't really want to have them as a major enemy in my life.

That's a good point because there's only three big agencies.

I don't think it was like the whole company.

I think there was like a few people at the company that got greedy and they're like, hey, this girl has all the influencers.

And to be honest with you, if I would have been smart, I was a little stubborn.

So when I first

encountered UTA, they wanted to be the agents for one of my creators.

And I said, that's fine.

You guys take 10%.

I'll take 10%.

I'll be like the manager.

You guys be the agent.

But there's not the same rules with TikTokers doing brand deals as there is with like actors and like the guilds and all that kind of thing.

So So you don't, I think there's a distinction between a manager and an agent where an agent has to have a talent agency license.

They, there's a manager can't like negotiate a deal.

It was just different when it comes to digital creators.

And I did have a talent agency license.

In fact, I went and got it just in case I needed it.

UTA was like, okay, yeah, you could be the manager.

We'll be the agents, but you know, all those emails you were getting from like Dunkin' Donuts and all those leads you're getting.

We don't want you to touch that.

We don't want you to call them back.

We don't want, basically, they don't want me to have any of the relationships with the brands.

And I said, well, no, those are incoming leads.

Like you guys want to be order takers?

No, you guys go out and be sharks, your agents, your talent agents.

You want to go get her a deal with Dunkin' Donuts, then go call your contact at Dunkin' Donuts and get her the deal and we'll split it 50-50.

Well, they didn't want that.

They said, no, we want every deal that comes in the pipeline.

on their email and we'll split it 50-50.

Now, that's where my stubbornness, because in my mind, I'm like, that's not fair.

I sign these creators.

I can negotiate the deals just fine and keep the 20%.

Do you get what I'm saying?

No, why do I have to pay you 10% for doing nothing?

I'm siding more with you on this.

I could see where they're coming from because they want the leads so they can do future deals with them.

And, well, not just that.

They wanted to get these like overarching deals with L'Oreal or whatever company, right?

To where they can, they get that half a million dollar deal so they can spread out the money across their people or whatever.

So maybe had I just played along, played good little Hollywood person that just, I think what happened is I just was too stubborn.

I didn't understand that this is just the way it works in Hollywood.

If you want to play with these big dogs, then you better get in line and don't try to do something different.

You got to suck up in Hollywood when you're starting out.

Yeah.

And so I think maybe I was a little too big for my britches because, I mean, looking back, I do think it was the right thing to do, but I could have made a lot of money if I just fell in line.

It's interesting.

It's like, how much are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want in Hollywood, right?

Yeah.

You hear these crazy stories, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, and

so sometimes I think when you're looking at a business opportunity, if there's a bigger company and there's a way you can work with them and you're maybe a little more green, then just take the deal.

If it's a good deal and, you know, they're not going to completely have the ability to cut you out entirely.

Maybe it would have been smart smart for me to take that deal but i didn't see what was coming in my mind i'm like why i have them signed to an agreement like i'm doing uta a favor if i give them the 10 so anyway so you go after taylor is ny new york times protecting her are they separating from her like what happens from there there's a lot of stuff that people don't understand about filing a defamation case and I don't think anybody could really understand it until you're sitting in the lawyer's office and they're like, sorry, there's nothing you can do.

If you want to find out if you were actually defamed, I can give you a short little checklist.

Number one, they had to have said a false statement and it can't be a matter of opinion.

She was manipulative, opinion.

She committed fraud.

If it's false, that's defamation.

So if you can prove that they said a false statement about you, and so when I'm looking at the article, the New York Times, I'm going through every line and is this defamatory?

Is this defamatory?

And what I found is like a lot of it was could be considered opinion.

And so the next one is they have to actually say it to the public.

They can't just DM you or say to you in a private room, you know, things they don't like about you.

And you say, well, that's defamatory.

Some a third party has to hear it.

Got it.

The other part is that they have to have caused you actual damages.

So you have to prove that, yes, I lost all my clients, but not not just that.

You have to prove this specific statement in the article caused XYZ person to leave.

And how do you prove that, right?

Do you have to have them in court saying, yeah, we left specifically because of the article said this one line?

But if you can prove the damages in that way,

that's probably the hardest part, right?

That's hard because also,

let's say you've ever done a podcast or you have a social media account, you have a public opinion online, somebody does one article about your business.

Now, all of a sudden, you can be considered a limited public figure.

And why does that matter?

If you're a public figure,

you have a higher standard for defamation.

In 1964, there was a landmark case.

It was the New York Times versus Sullivan.

And in that case, the media,

basically, they were fighting to tell stories about the civil rights movement and all this stuff and

they were getting sued left and right for defamation essentially the laws changed so that the media could report on stories and even if they got something wrong they weren't automatically liable for defamation so if you're a public figure so at the time if you were like a government official or somebody like that and the media was criticizing you They didn't want the media to be able to get sued because then they wouldn't tell those stories.

But nowadays, everybody's basically can be considered a public figure.

And so that's what they were saying I was.

So now not only do you have to prove that they lied, but you have to prove that they knew that they lied before they published a story and went along and did it.

Damn, that's hard.

That's like trying to get into somebody's head unless literally, unless there's an email saying like, we know this is false, but run with it.

How are you going to prove that?

You would have to get access to their text, I'd imagine, to prove that.

I'd see another way, honestly.

It's really difficult.

It's really difficult to prove.

And that's why with the Johnny Depp case, he didn't sue the Washington Post.

He sued Amber Heard.

And, you know, that's why you see this, there was a lot of people following the Justin Baldoni, Lake Lively case, got thrown out.

And I knew it was going to get thrown out because there wasn't.

any type of statement in there that you could consider false and defamatory.

The other thing is we have litigation privilege in the United States.

So if you file a lawsuit against someone, everything that's in that lawsuit can be quoted by a journalist and not considered defamatory, even if it's untrue.

Wow.

That is nuts.

This is all crazy.

Taking notes.

So basically when people were like, oh, just sue the New York Times, that's like saying, just go be a brain surgeon.

Yeah.

Also, this was peak cancel culture.

I feel like when this happened to you, there were so many big cancellations.

And it was before sort of the internet sleuth culture started to happen.

I think Johnny Depp's case really changed the game when it came to.

Yeah, it made her look really bad in that case.

Yeah, she probably regrets ever filing that.

Then Trump was saying fake news everywhere.

Yeah.

And one of the things I learned that I thought was really interesting was that it's valuable to know what side of the aisle a publication is on.

At the time, the New York Times article article came out, and I'm thinking this story is untrue.

You know, I'm an immigrant.

I came here legally from Mexico and I was a little girl.

I worked my butt off to be an entrepreneur.

I bootstrap.

I'm a woman.

I'm a Latina.

Like, you know, all these liberals in Hollywood, they have to at least admit that I'm not just some elite aristocrat or something, you know, white male male.

I feel like they would attack that easier, right?

I'm thinking, okay, maybe, maybe somebody's going to not feel sorry for me, but think like, okay, this isn't right, what happened?

And so one of my friends worked at Univision, which is a Latin-owned media company.

And I said, do you think that they could tell my side of the story?

Because the New York Times lied and this isn't true.

And basically she came back and she tried and she said, yeah.

Univision won't touch this.

It doesn't matter that you're Latina.

Basically, nobody wants to go up against the New York Times.

We like the New York Times.

You know, they're this liberal-leaning company and we are also liberal leaning.

And so, and they have the best fact checkers.

They have the best journalists.

So everybody's just going to consider this gospel.

And so I'm thinking, like, what do I do?

And my friend Matt Shoup, he has a PR company that represents a lot of conservative.

candidates.

Basically, he's like, I can try to get you on Tucker Carlson or like, you know, we can try to get some articles on Fox News, like just as a favor, as a friend.

My friend at Univision was like, don't go on Tucker Carlson, please.

Like, you know, they didn't like Toronto,

yes, like they just hated it became this political thing.

And

so I remember one of my mentors, who I think leans liberal, when I told him the opportunity, he said, You have to go on there because you right now, what are you gonna do?

Write a blog.

I mean, you're gonna be in front of millions of people, and your story isn't really political at all.

You know, like it's right and wrong.

But what I realized was that the media is all black and white, it's red and blue.

So, if a media company from the left comes after you, you might have some allies on the right.

And if the right comes after you, you're going to have allies on the left.

Right.

So you have to kind of align.

And I had friends, you know, if they said, why are you going on Tucker?

It kind of felt like, well, if you're bleeding out on the side of the road and Tucker Carlson comes with bandages and willing to take you to the hospital, are you getting in the car?

Yeah.

But I liked Tucker.

You know, I thought he was fair.

And so it was really cool that I had the opportunity to go on.

I mean, he goes off to the right, too.

He just had a really viral interview with Ted Cruz.

Oh, I saw that.

Abolished him.

So Tucker, I feel like it's a pretty fair reporter, journalist.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I didn't really go on there until, so I filed a lawsuit.

You only have like about a year to file for defamation.

So you got to move fast on defamation.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

And at this point, I have no money.

But I'm like obsessively like tracking everything that Taylor Lorenz is doing because not only did she write the the article in the New York Times, after the New York Times article, I was like, okay, I'm going to do something different.

I'm going to, uh,

I'm going to do a platform for content creators, kind of like what I'm doing now.

But anyway, I was starting to try to see if I could raise capital.

And so one journalist reached out to me from the business of business.

Her name is Christy Smythe.

And she was kind of like, I just want to hear your story.

Like, tell me about your startup.

Tell me about what happened with the TikTokers, but we weren't going to trash Taylor Lorenz or anything like that.

All of a sudden, she calls me and she's like, well, I'm working on the story, but Taylor Lorenz just called my editor, her boss, and ranted that you're a literal abuser that doesn't deserve positive press and to shut this article down.

It's inappropriate to give you a platform.

So she was not only drowning me, she's holding my head underwater.

I mean, why would Taylor Lorenz care about little old me if she hadn't completely lied?

You get what I'm saying?

It's almost like she wanted to make sure I was dead, dead.

So that that kill shot from the New York Times article made sure I went down.

So that really upset me.

I think that's when I was going to just like move forward with my life.

And then when I heard that, I'm like, oh, hell no, you messed with the law, with the wrong Mexican chick, okay?

My feisty will come out.

And so I just obsessed about looking up everything about Taylor Lorenz, anybody that she had wronged.

And I started kind of taking notes.

And it was really like a war room with the red yarn going back and forth: like, who is she connected to?

Who is she smearing?

And anybody that she had done a negative article about, I started reaching out to them.

Like, what, what really happened?

And I started to find all these allies where I'm like, oh, this person wasn't so bad either.

I have to accept that if she wrote these negative things about me, maybe some of these people that I think, oh, I don't know if I want to talk to that person, maybe they're not so bad either.

So, and then I got into this clubhouse room.

Taylor was attacking Mark Andreessen online.

And Mark.

So Mark Andreessen is this tech billionaire that basically invented the internet.

Yeah, 16.

That's a big opponent to go after.

Yeah.

And he's basically funding, he has like the biggest tech fund in Silicon Valley.

And

she had tweeted that Mark Andreessen said retarded in a clubhouse room when they were talking about the Wall Street Bets thing going on.

But actually, Mark Andreessen didn't even speak in that room.

And she was basically being a hall monitor that was like a Karen hall monitor.

Like, hey, someone said a bad word.

You know, this is the same reporter, by the way, that wrote a full article about Mr.

Beast and how he's apparently homophobic because one time he tweeted, my printer's being gay.

Like, she's unhinged.

This is not a person that is well.

And I don't like to speak poorly of people, but I'm just saying like this is somebody that destroys people for no reason, apparently gets like off on these canceling people.

Just, I didn't understand, I don't understand that type of mentality, but these people do exist.

So I'm in the clubhouse room.

I think it was called like.

you know, screw the New York Times and Taylor Lorenz or something, you know, and she kept getting booted off of clubhouse.

Like she hated it because if you block her, I think she couldn't go in the room.

And so this is like a neurotic reporter that's like, everybody's talking about me in in this clubhouse room.

Anyway, she wasn't in there, but Mark Andreessen was in the room.

And I got up on stage and told my story about what had happened to me.

And in that room, afterwards, somebody DM'd me and said, hey, I think I'm an attorney that will take your case.

And I'm like, really?

I mean, I don't have a lot of money, you know, basically nothing at this point.

And I meet with the attorney.

And he takes my case on contingency, which basically means you don't have to pay anything up front.

Wow.

Only if you win.

And remember, the New York Times hasn't lost since 1964, so the chances are slim, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But I had a really good case.

Taylor Lorenz had actually

done some, you know, those emails that she was sending me before the article came out.

So in the article, there was a line that said

something like, quoting another creator, Ari

leaked my nudes and sent them to business partners and people in my house as revenge because I wanted to leave her agency, which was 100% false.

If you want to know the story quickly, the creator,

somebody, another manager DM'd me and was like, or text me and he said, hey, by the way, one of your, the head guy of the drip crib,

there's a...

a telegram group with like 100,000 people in it and it's saying that he sent nudes to a 14 year old girl.

I'm his manager.

So out of professional responsibility, I'm like, can you show me what you're talking about?

Like, and so he screenshotted the thread, the Telegram thread that already hundreds of thousands of people had seen.

And it was just like, you know, it was barely, you couldn't see it.

It wasn't nude photos.

It was like a thumbnail image, like tiny, tiny, but you could see where somebody had posted.

He sent these to a 14-year-old girl or whatever.

So immediately, I screen record that thread with the manager and I send it directly to the guy who was being accused.

And he goes into a text rant.

Oh, my phone got broken into.

My iCloud is leaked and leaked my nudes everywhere.

He leaked his own nudes.

I did nothing.

All I did was basically like an HR thing of like, hey, is this true?

He said, no, it's not.

And then I

let my attorney know and somebody that was in charge of the house is like, hey, heads up.

I heard this was going around.

That's it.

Taylor published in the New York Times, Ari leaked my nudes everywhere, basically.

But prior to that, she had asked my attorney, is it true that Ari blah, blah, blah, leaked these nudes?

And my attorney said, absolutely not.

And so Taylor wrote in the email, nobody is alleging that Ari leaked nudes publicly.

So

the only

line that got through

passed a motion to dismiss.

So

almost four years later, this is after I'm fighting this case for four years, the judge says, okay, the case can go forward on one statement.

And it was that leaked.

And why?

It's because Taylor had emailed me and said, nobody's alleged that Ari leaked nudes publicly.

So now we're only hinging on two words of the whole article and maybe like a comma, leaked my nudes and sent them to business partners.

You get what I'm saying?

Wow.

So it came down to two words.

It's like surgery.

This

is crazy.

And that's why the media is not afraid of it because they can basically say anything that they want they know how to word it but taylor made a mistake wow

so that's what costed them the you ended up settling right yes by the way you don't get any discovery like you don't get to see the emails between taylor and her editor her and the influencers you don't get any of that stuff until the judge says you have a case and you can get discovery.

So now, once you're at that stage, even if you have lawyers on contingency, which was a miracle that I got that, most people won't get that.

And good lawyers, by the way, once you get that, now you have to pay for expert witnesses to prove like financial accountants that would say, well, yeah, she was a TikTok influencer and she would have made $11 million.

You have to pay those people tens of thousands of dollars.

So in order to continue, then depositions, my attorneys wanted to depose Taylor Lorenz so bad.

I mean, those would have been memes for the century.

Because by the way, Taylor Lorenz is the definition of a cry bully.

Do you know what a cry bully is?

Cry bully.

They cry when they get bullied.

Basically, they're like these people that dish it out, but when they get, you know, held accountable or somebody criticizes them, they cry.

Yeah.

And Taylor actually famously went on NBC and cried and said, like, I'm getting bullied and it's so unfair unfair and all this stuff.

When she's like the master bully, he's just crying crocodile tears.

Was that during the United Healthcare stuff?

Oh, no, this is like way before then.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

She got a lot of heat for that one, too.

Well, oh, because she has a crush on Luigi Mangion.

Yeah, she was like, Thank God he, or I don't want to miss quotes.

She might come after me, but yeah, she got a lot of heat for that one.

Right.

I think Taylor Lorenz just tries to put herself in the news anyway.

She got on Tucker Carlson, and that was like a big deal for getting my story out there after i sued so one of the ways i got my story was like the actual complaint right because then it says like all the receipts in there you could like i could actually send that to brands and be like this is what actually happened but that's really expensive to do that

um

you know to file a lawsuit but some of the other ways that i got my case in front of people was that shout out to matt shoup he got me on tucker carlson and that was really interesting because it was like imagine like a year pent up of like i want to say like everything she did, but I have three minutes.

So I watched every episode that I could of Tucker and I wrote down like as much data as I could.

Like if I liked one of the people on there, I would write how long they spoke for, what they talked about, how long Tucker talked.

And I like timed it.

Wow.

So when I finally got to go on there, I had prepped, like, hey, I'm going to talk for X amount of seconds and then I'm going to let him talk and whatever.

And one of the things that I learned was write your story down like you're telling it to a 12 year old, because if you get lost in the weeds, people are not going to pick up on your story.

So I just did like a couple hit points of like, I rep these huge social media stars that were making millions of dollars.

And then Taylor came down with the megaphone of the New York Times and did this to me.

And a lot of people asked, what did she say in the story?

Right.

And another good piece of advice that I got was don't focus so much on the negative stuff.

Like I didn't talk about about the, she said I leaked nude photos because one of the pieces of advice I got was like, imagine you get a Super Bowl commercial and you got 30 seconds.

Are you going to spend that time talking about the negative things about you?

Or she said some false defamatory things.

And this is why I'm standing up for myself.

And this is why it's not right.

And this is why you should join me in standing up.

You get what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

Instead of focusing like, oh, she said this about me.

And then you're just kind of regurgitating like drama that you don't even want associated to yourself.

So I felt like I really got down what I wanted.

And then I, I recorded what I wanted to say and I went to sleep and I would listen to it.

And so when the, when it finally came time for that three minutes I would get with Tucker, you know, partly him talking, partly me talking, I was so nervous.

I had never really spoken publicly.

And this is live television, you know, and I didn't even really see his face.

You could see like an X marked where you're supposed to look.

Halfway through, I think I blacked out, but because I had sort of memorized what I want to say, I like came right back to it and finished.

And I just remember leaving the studio and just like bawling my eyes out because I felt like this like release of like, finally, like I just got to say my piece.

It's the worst thing in the world when you get canceled.

And in my situation, it cost me my business, but some people get canceled way worse, you know, like.

somebody says that you were inappropriate with somebody or whatever.

The point is, if you get canceled, just know that there's a way out of it.

I'm glad that I waited till that moment to say everything what I wanted to say because I was measured.

I had had time to think about it.

I didn't go after these like, you know, young adult teenagers.

My clients were over 18.

They made it seem like I went after TikTokers because, you know, I call them kids, but to me, they were kids.

But the point is, like.

Take a beat because I could have maybe said some things I regret in the moment had I come out and done a YouTube video about everything that happened right away.

That's where a lot of people, their first reaction is to respond immediately, right?

Yeah.

Make an apology video or some type of video.

Right.

And that's when you're reacting too emotionally.

So you can't think rationally.

Exactly.

Another thing that I did that I think other people can use

is I kind of bootstrapped my crisis PR.

So crisis PR in Hollywood costs like 20 grand a month and It doesn't do the same thing.

A lot of those people are not versed with Reddit and Twitter and YouTube.

And now there's LawTube and YouTube lawyers that talk about cases and all this stuff.

And I was well versed in it.

I basically spent the last amount of money I had on crisis PR and they didn't really do anything.

They didn't get any articles on any of this stuff.

And so nobody before, I mean, before Tucker, nobody had really told my side of the story.

So I went on Fiverr.

And I hired an award-winning journalist who had past credits for actually reporting on real stories.

And I hired him for like 300 bucks.

And I said, can you take all my receipts, all my screenshots, all the emails, and write the story in a way that's truthful, but not emotional.

Like don't just, it's not a puff piece.

I just want my side out there.

And

he agreed to put his name on it once he saw like everything that he read.

And we put it on Medium.

So out of all the search engine log sites, I think Medium is the best with SEO.

Fast forward to today,

Google is actually indexing Instagram posts.

So if you optimize your Instagram for search, you're going to see that and what people are talking about.

But at the time, that helped me a lot.

So we had a full article written.

And then I started kind of writing this Twitter wave.

And so.

What I mean by that is anytime something came up about Taylor Lorenz or the New York Times, I would ride that wave in.

You know, I would like attach to the story and be like, hey, this happened to me too.

And this is going on.

So when,

remember when Elon Musk took over Twitter and he was just going completely gangster on like all these different things?

One of the things was that they were attacking him with releasing the location of his private jet.

So all these journalists were getting subs

they were getting banned from Twitter for doxing.

So he's like, anybody that does doxing, you're going to to be suspended from Twitter.

And so all these journalists were like, this is hurting my freedom of speech.

And they were criticizing him, but they had triggered him because I think people were like tracking this plane and his son was on there.

So I'm watching this and people are getting suspended and

passed doxing action.

I'm like, hey, Taylor Lorenz doxed the location of my TikTok house, which I was living in at the time, which was really dangerous if you think about it, because there was like famous content creators living there.

And she actually like put the the location linked to a Zillow.

And so I tweeted, I think it was like either Mark Andreessen or Elon Musk.

I had notifications set up for anybody that hated Taylor.

And so right away I tweeted and then Elon Musk responded and he said, this behavior is unacceptable or something like that.

And then the next day she got suspended from Twitter.

And then

it basically got linked back to me that it was like for a past doxing action.

So she was only out for like a couple of days, but it was like right before Christmas.

And I remember everybody started texting me.

You got an early Christmas present.

Did she reach out to you when that happened?

No, she actually

went on a TikTok live or something and basically acted like a crazy ex-girlfriend and was like, Elon, banned me.

Like, he knows who I am.

That's what it felt like.

I mean, she's so bizarre.

She got reinstated like a couple days later, but

yeah, so I mean, I did those things.

And then I also went on, so there was, I think the Johnny Depp trial was going on at the time.

And so I would go on these LawTube channels where I knew people cared about defamation and injustices.

And I would just super chat like a hundred bucks.

And I'd be like, hey, I was defamed in the New York Times by Taylor Lorenz.

And, you know, when you, when you send a $100 super chat to like a YouTuber,

most of the time they'll read your thing or they'll like get to know you.

And so I built a lot of re, It was kind of like a pay-to-play thing, but at the time, I mean, I'm sorry, but you have to do what you have to do.

It's your name, you're not going to get another one.

And I sure as I wasn't going to change my name just because Taylor Lorenz lied about me in the most prominent newspaper in the world, you know.

I love how scrappy you got.

That's such a smart idea.

I never would have thought of that, but it's such a targeted audience on LawTube.

So, to donate 100 and potentially get some advice or legal work out of it.

Yeah.

Smart move.

The only one that didn't read it was H3H3, Ethan Klein.

And at the time, I think they, because they were in with Taylor and she would, it's weird.

Like, Taylor's in with like TMZ, I think.

And, but she's got connections.

I'll give it to her.

She is good at networking.

Yeah.

And she's friends with like that guy, Hassan.

I forget.

Hassan Abby.

Yeah.

But I think now

H3 doesn't like Taylor Lorenz.

So shout out.

I would go on there and tell the real story about her.

But it's all relationships, right?

Like she had built some early relationships and she was smart about it.

Like in the article, you know, she didn't, like, I was representing Bella Thorne on deals and she didn't trash Bellathorne.

I don't even think she like included her name in there.

I think she said I was renting Bella Thorne's house.

But you know what I'm saying?

Like she was very selective in how she went about trashing me so she didn't trash any of the contacts that she would later care about.

Does she still have the same power as she used to?

Because now I feel like hip pieces aren't as powerful personally.

You know what I mean?

Taylor Lorenz has become somewhat of like a cartoon.

I don't think people on the left or the right like her anymore because she's so outrageous.

Like it almost feels like she goes on Pierce Morgan or whatever, just to say the thing that will get clipped and she'll get criticized for.

I don't know if like her parents didn't hug her as a child.

I just don't really know.

There's a lot of other people like this exist out there.

I mean, it's not just Taylor Lorenz, but when people like Taylor Lorenz become successful by basically trashing other people unfairly, that's when it needs to get called out so that other people don't see it and say, well, she's doing it and it's working for her.

So let me just do it too.

I called out Dylan Dannis when he was attacking Logan Paul's wife.

And I actually ended up like a little clip in the, one on his show because, you know, I stood up for her because I'm just like, come on.

When I know somebody is getting burned unfairly, like it just, it's like, I can't hold it.

It's like that same feeling, like I want to defend them because I got out of this situation, but I I felt really alone.

And to feel alone as a celebrity, a billionaire, I mean, a lot of billionaires, they don't know what to do when they get defamed because it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it.

Most people don't know how to do those scrappy things that I did.

Right.

Yeah, I feel like even if you, if you don't have money, it's even worse though, because then you can't fight it and everyone's going to believe it and you don't have a voice.

Absolutely.

I think that Dave Portnoy style of like getting ahead of it in the beginning is probably the best way.

You know, when he does

emergency press conference,

a measured emergency press conference, I think, is smart because in the past, when you used to get canceled, the crisis PR people would just say, don't draw attention to it.

They call it the Streisand effect.

I don't know what happened with Barbara Streisand, but it was like, she was like, oh, don't look at my house or something like that.

And then everybody looked at her house or looked up her house.

And so they say, like, don't draw attention to it.

But in the world we live in now,

people are going to find it anyway so you might as well scoop the reporter by telling it by coming out on your own platforms and getting ahead of the story hey tayla lorenz is about to lie about me tomorrow in the new york times and i want you guys to know the real story here's the question she's asking here's why it's wrong you get what i'm saying yeah um i think that works if you're independent but i don't know if you followed the shannon sharp case

But he pulled that move you just explained and it didn't really work.

But I think if you're independent, it could.

he was that it's a difference too if you have the truth on your side right that's that's obviously a big factor too yeah i think that if you don't and you did something it's probably better to just own it and apologize um like portnoy with the sex tape video handled it phenomenal yeah like now people are like good like right you own but also portnoy was already a cultural icon when these things happened for somebody that has no name here's the problem and i think people need to think about this when they think about their personal brand and that's basically what you and i you know you do this for a living your clips go completely viral and there's an art to that but it's you know i think that you have to have a personal brand in order to if something bad comes up about you if somebody googles you there's going to be other stuff about you already on the internet people are already going to have it maybe an opinion about you but if you're completely ghost dark on the internet and somebody writes a negative story that negative story story, when they Google your name, it's going to land on the top of Google.

And that's the most infuriating part because

the New York Times has all this credibility.

And because of their status as a New York Times, anything they write with your name on it is probably going to land at the top of Google.

It wasn't until like I told my story and then Fox News put articles.

I mean, now at least there's several articles.

Maybe the New York Times article is six down from the top, but yeah, it's still on the first page.

When it comes to reputation management, you can't just get something off.

You have to push it down with newer articles.

Well, I thought they, because of the lawsuit, I thought they would have taken it down, but

no, crazy.

We did settle the lawsuit, but basically all I got out of it was that I can tell the story.

I'm not going to, I didn't have to pay their legal fees to shut it down.

We're just going to shut this down.

You're not going to make any money.

I'm not going to make any money.

But I'm telling you, like, if I would have continued, it would have been four more years or who knows how long

and not just the fact that i had to prove they defame me think about this they could say well okay let's just say that that they prove that she defamed me they could say well there's no damages because she went on fox news afterwards she ruined her own reputation that's why she can't get any clients was because you know she's obsessed with taylor lorenz They could literally just say, you ruined your own reputation, so we're not going to pay you.

And not only that, they're going to go through every text message you've ever written.

You know, like, I don't know what I said to my parents after the New York Times

unleashed about how I felt about Taylor Lorenz.

I just felt like at some point, you got to let it go.

Like I did get my reputation back.

I got a lot of people in my corner.

Sometimes you have to realize that I don't know if you're religious or people believe in God.

I'm open.

But

there's this prayer that I know now.

And it's like, if it's not for me, God, take it away.

And it hurts sometimes when it it gets taken away, but you have to know that it wasn't for you.

Like, God didn't want it for you.

And about two weeks before the New York Times article came out, I was sitting with Ceno McFarlane.

He's like a famous therapist in Hollywood, has all these famous clients.

And

I told him I was in over my head with these TikTokers.

A couple of them were like very manipulative and like sociopathic, narcissistic,

but very successful.

And they were kind of some of the more,

they were kind of driving the, they were influential to the other creators.

But I was kind of like at my wit's end with them, like a parent, you know?

And so I said, can I bring them in and you meet with them?

So they go in and they meet with him.

And the next time that I meet with him for my own session, he's like, I think you need to shut down these houses, like the whole business.

I think you need to shut it down.

I can't.

What do you mean?

I'm in like three houses deep.

I've got leases.

And he goes, these people don't respect you.

They don't value what you bring to the table.

And they're going to kind of suck you dry of your energy.

And they're just, they're toxic.

They're going to destroy you.

And he's like, I don't know if you believe in higher power, but I do believe that if you don't shut this down, it's going to be shut down for you.

And not two weeks later, New York Times thing happened.

Wow.

So I really think it wasn't for me, you know?

And

now and after the whole thing happened, now I, I mean, I have an AI-powered digital agency that makes basically clips.

You know, better than anybody, you can't grow on social media without video, consistent video clips.

For plastic surgeons, for small and medium-sized businesses, it's very difficult to produce that level of content on a, you know, daily or every other day basis.

And so that's what I do now.

But I also kind of like in my spare time,

I will find cases where I'm like, this is unfair and this person needs somebody to speak up for them.

And I will do that on Twitter.

I'll do that on my YouTube channel.

I have consulted with people, with very wealthy people on legal cases and things like that, on public reputation and perception.

But for the most part, I do it kind of like for, not for fun, but I feel like a duty to do it because

I also know how to read an article and realize like words that get twisted.

So, for example, in the Justin Baldoni case, the New York Times wrote, he was, uh, did something that made Blake Lively feel uncomfortable.

Okay, I could say something right now, Sean, and it can make you feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, it's subjective.

Does that mean that, like, you deserve to be, you know, the Justin Baldoni deserves to be branded as a sexual predator because he made somebody feel uncomfortable for 30 seconds?

You know what I'm saying?

That's what they wanted everyone to believe.

Exactly.

But I know these words, right?

And they twist things.

One of the things that really hurt my feelings in the article is that I had gotten one of my clients a a Super Bowl commercial, actually two.

And on that Super Bowl commercial call with Gary, Gary Vee was the one that signed them to it

or gave them the opportunity.

On that call, Gary said to the creator, he said, you're great and everything.

And I'm so excited telling the creator, you're great and everything.

We're excited to have you part of the Super Bowl commercial.

But the reason you're getting this opportunity is because of Ari.

And because I get to do a favor for a long time friend who I adore.

And so I just want you to know that we're so excited, but this really is all about Ari and because Ari did this for you.

I mean, like, that was so cool of Gary to say that about me, right?

Well, this creator turned around, she's working with UTA, she turned around and was quoted in the article saying, Ari goes around saying she knows Gary Vee and that he'll help you with your career.

And then it's Teal Lorenz.

We reached out to the New York Times, or we reached out to Vayner Media and they said that Gary is is not

affiliated with influences.

True statement, right?

He's not my business partner.

But when they wrote it like that, it made it sound like I was a name-dropper liar.

And then I roped Gary Vee into it, somebody that I admire and adore.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And

I mean, there's way worse things in the article, like the new thing, but that was what like really hurt my heart because, you know, I'm like thinking, I let Gary down.

Does he think any part of this is true?

But, you know, in the end, the day the article came out, I got a call from another really esteemed mentor of mine who basically ran the television academy and had several Emmys.

And he called me.

The article comes out.

It's terrible.

And I'm like, tail tugged under.

I'm thinking at this point, it's all my fault.

I, I, I ruined everything.

I don't know what I did, but it's all my fault.

He calls me and he's like, welcome to the freaking big leagues, Ari.

I'm like, excuse me, did you read the article?

And he's like, yeah, I read it.

He's like, I know it's not true.

And I know, but like, he's like, Ari, it was just a matter of time.

These people,

you were sitting on a gold mine.

You think they're just going to let you.

This means you made it because they don't waste time.

The New York Times doesn't waste time on some little peon that doesn't matter in the world.

You did something that nobody else had done.

And it really triggered these people because they are greedy and they wanted what you had.

So are you going to roll over and die?

Are you going to stick up for yourself?

Are you going to see this through?

Because at the end of the day, it's either going to be a great story, documentary, whatever you want to call it, whether you win or lose that lawsuit, your story isn't over.

And that was like the trigger where I was like, okay.

If this guy believes in me and he knows what I had been like, yeah, I was so excited to have made it.

He saw the whole story arc.

If he says I can make it through, I will.

So I talked to him before I came on today and he's like still somebody that I just admire so much.

And it's like,

you have to stay with the people that believe in you.

When like somebody, even if you did do something wrong, I really believe this,

you just.

stay around the people that know you that understand that you make everybody makes mistakes i have some accountability i bit off more than i could chew for sure maybe i should have just kept charli demelio and not signed one other person, right?

Maybe I shouldn't have signed, maybe I should have let go of those kids, the TikTokers that were manipulative and not respecting me, right?

Yeah.

So there's some accountability there.

But for everything else, stand up for yourself.

Like yeah, that's the thing that Taylor Lorenz and the New York didn't anticipate was that I had nothing to lose.

And I had the truth on my side.

Truth always wins, right?

I think so.

And I think people are sick of these media injustices.

It's just completely,

it's just not right.

I think we're living in a time where every single person is going to get canceled in some way, shape or form.

Yeah, absolutely.

We're at that point now for sure.

Right.

Whether it's like you're, you got posted in a Facebook group.

Are we dating the same guy?

Right.

And like an ex-girlfriend wrote some lies about you.

And now everybody that goes on a date with you.

Thinks that you're a cheater or you've got crabs or something.

I don't know.

I mean, there's a way to fight that too.

too, right?

And I think that like all the kind of, I know I'm talking about big picture

New York Times and all this stuff, but you can use some of the things that I, some of these tips and tools to get your name back if you're getting smeared, you know, in your workplace, in a dating situation.

It's important to stand up for yourself.

Very important to know.

All right.

I can't believe it's been an hour already.

Thank you so much.

I know this has been fun.

And hopefully I gave some tips that people can actually use.

I pivoted my influences.com is going to be

my old company.

Now, I'm going to help with some of these tips and tools for getting for uncanceling yourself.

And yeah, now I make social media clips for people that for boomers basically who appreciate me.

So, and my business is called Creator Genius.

So, yeah.

We'll link that below and your Instagram as well.

Thanks for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, check her out, guys.

If you need some clips, check out her company.

I'll see you next time.