SLAMBOARD

Here is a concise explanation of what the FTC does, taken from Wikipedia:

The FTC carries out its mission by investigating issues raised by reports from consumers and businesses, pre-merger notification filings, congressional inquiries, or reports in the media. These issues include, for instance, false advertising and other forms of fraud. FTC investigations may pertain to a single company or an entire industry. If the results of the investigation reveal unlawful conduct, the FTC may seek voluntary compliance by the offending business through a consent order, file an administrative complaint, or initiate federal litigation.

Reports from consumers is first in the list of things to which this great big independent government body responds. In the absence of consumer complaints, a misleading online sales pitch can thrive indefinitely. Here is a video tutorial on how to file a complaint with the FTC:

Interestingly, this video recently celebrated its second anniversary an Kimkins is still not in compliance with the current FTC regulations. The FTC has a page of good advice for people shopping for weight loss products and services. Nobody who reads that page carefully will pay for a Kimkins membership but at this point it’s not the careful consumers that we are worried about. If Heidi Diaz had been around in the 1800s, we’d probably be debating whether she had coined the phrase about suckers and their reproductive rates. Kimkins doesn’t comply with the FTC because it simply wouldn’t work. The FTC disapproves of fantastic claims of weight loss and asks instead for typical or average results. Please leave some comments with wording suggestions for the typical results of Kimkins. My suggestion is as follows:

I lost $39.99 in just 3 months!!!

I just saw this on the Daily Mail website…

Almost everything about Jackie Cox mirrors the Kimkins Controversy.

• 500 calorie diet -check.
• Weightloss guru who is discovered to be obese -check.
• Dieters reporting hair loss and other health side effects -check.

There is one very important difference. As far as I know, Jackie Cox has never posted fake pictures of herself or fabricated facts about her own successful long term weight loss. The other difference may be a direct result of that difference. Her diet empire, LighterLife, continues to thrive and Jackie lives the good life in the Bahamas (a popular tax haven with the Brits).

The seven figure sales at Kimkins.com were due in no small part to the favorable coverage in Woman’s World Magazine. This publication has huge circulation, and the print versions will often sit in waiting rooms and salons enjoying months or years of repeated perusal. People seeking to expose the Kimkins fraud did not get very far in trying to convince Woman’s World to make any kind of reversal or apology. We personally received no answers to our questions last year and instead got a cease and desist order. In response to the letter, I made changes to the cover image that I was using to make it arguably transformative. There was no follow up from the magazine. I didn’t send any further correspondence to them. Many, many interested people did.

After a long wait, the magazine has finally apologized in detail, on their website. A print apology is also forthcoming. I thank them for it.

I want to compare and contrast two very different instances of crowdsourcing for you. One is the exposure of the Kimkins fraud. The other is the Anonymous attack on the church of scientology that is being talked about in the papers today.

I am 99.9% certain that there is no overlap in the participants. Anonymous is a shadowy collective that is mostly comprised of technically savvy teenage misanthropes. They are, by their own headcount, legion. I brought up their recent activities to a young man in their demographic this morning and he advised me that they are just looking for attention. He was surprised when I told him that papers of record were discussing their attack on scientology. According to him, the media are giving them what they want.

There has been an element of anonymity in the Kimkins controversy, but some of the most active and effective people are not anonymous. I think the rascally teens that comprise Anonymous might be a bit impressed if they found out about the incredible crowdsourcing effort that found all those Russian Bride Pictures.

Both groups incorporate humor into their activities, although they have serious goals. Sometimes Anonymous behaves badly. Jeannie Baitinger referred to the anti-kimkins people as terrorists on more than one occasion, one of which was on national television.

I have been on the periphery of something that was attacked by Anonymous before and I realized that while they have strength in numbers, their Achilles heel is their inability to have a sustained interest in any one target. In fact, I think they abandon their efforts as soon as the attention that the crave begins to wane. If the people who put in the effort to expose the Kimkins fraud had the same attitude, big things might not have happened.

I have been critical of scientology on a regular basis and I have very little sympathy for their plight now that hundreds of thousands of hackers are trying to bring them down. I won’t shy away from being critical of Anonymous either. They have many interests and activities that are beyond the pale with regard to societal norms. For the most part, Kimkins detractors are the kind of people who represent societal norms.

I have a confession to make. I have a full and rewarding life and I do not obsess about the continuing story of Kimkins and Heidi Diaz. In fact, I do not even lurk on some of the most active venues for news, opinion and speculation related to the woman, her diet and her website. I am in regular contact with a person who does look at the LCF almost everyday. I go to blogs like that of Jimmy Moore to find a sort of best of synopsis of what is going on. Sometimes there several days where the story does not cross my mind. If you are someone who is devoting too much time to tracking the minute details I would suggest that you make some kind of commitment to step away from it.

The only thing that I ever became engrossed in to the point where it was an unhealthy obsession was the Gulf War. I was a college RA and I spent many of my duty nights glued to CNN. When the physical and mental effects manifested themselves, I was shocked and scared to realize how unbalanced my life had been for those weeks. I made up my mind to avoid being sucked in to coverage of an event in that way ever again.