oh, Mann...

Friendship is based around. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Right Opinion, the home [ __ ] with too much free time. And as people, it's hard sometimes to find the inspiration, isn't it? A large majority of us want to wake up at the start of the day with a clear sense of purpose on tackling what's ahead. Some people just want stability. Some people want enjoyment. Some people [music] want more. However, it's easy to lose that sense of direction when faced with hurdles that may seem insurmountable. We want to write our own story. We want to be the people that overcome those hurdles, whatever they may be. Yet, sometimes we can't do it on our own. Sometimes it pays for some reassurance, some positivity, someone to help us write our stories. Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren't. Let me define the terms really quickly.

>> Inspirational content has really garnered a stranglehold on YouTube, particularly in times where negativity can consume us. Positive videos with clear moral optimistic messages can serve as real escapism that doesn't cost us anything. Whether that's an individual talking directly to us about overcoming these struggles or short films [music] that serve as parallels to our lives. It's sometimes important to remember that amongst the headlines and conflict, there are still virtues in the world worth giving a damn about, and that there are people fighting for [music] them, even if those videos are as simple as tutorials and favors for others.

Okay, so today I'm going to show you how to tie a tie. Couple quick hints for you. Um, when you're picking out a tie, you want to pick out a tie that has some sort of color that m that picks up something in your shirt. It's just an added classy little touch. Okay, >> those videos with that optimistic message, no matter how simple, can fill viewers with some kind of warmth and comfort in a world that simultaneously feels fiery and frigid as of late. But an inconvenient truth continues to loom. Where there's some emotional response, there's always something to be sold. James Arthur Ray, the author of the book Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want, is here to help us realize that we do have full control of our financial futures and to tell us what steps we can take instead of waiting for someone else. James, thank you so much for being here. Now, what do you think is the main factor preventing us from achieving our economic harmony?

This has been a fact of life for as long as we can remember. But we sit here now on the precipice of a corporate invasion which hands on content farms blurring the lines between what's actually real and what isn't. It's become repetitive to even talk about the number of finance-oriented collectives role-playing as actual creators, and is likely even more pervasive than we perceive it. I don't need to go into scientific detail to explain why creators that imitate what public sentiment is for clout is bad [music], as I've said it before. But the short of it is that these people don't actually have any beliefs and no motive to challenge prevailing wisdom, which is also something we desperately need in these times.

At the same time, there is still the hope that bad actors can be weeded out when people recognize that deception. Creators who have been unmasked as not following their own principles are some of the most combustible, with people deserting them as soon as their own practices come to light. Nobody expects anyone to be perfect or to have a clean record. But as my video on Haley Welch demonstrated, the line between genuine creator and hamster-powered content machine overseen by self-serving gargoyles is a fine one. If you want to tell a real story, you better have one yourself. Today's subject claims to have heart and soul in both. A creator by the name of Darmman from Darmman Studios.

Hey Darmman fam, welcome to our first ever Christmas [music] special. Darmman Studios is a channel founded by the namesake creator to share many of the positive vibes that I just mentioned. Although he is seldom the main focus of his stories, he has repeatedly stated that he wishes to use his channel to tell stories personal to him. Starting off as an entrepreneur after a string of business ventures that we'll talk about in due course, he was one of the many individuals part of the late 2010s influx to a more corporate and family-friendly YouTube.

>> Wait, hold up. I don't get it. So, we had no chance of winning.

>> Nope. And that's because you guys cheated. And as you know, cheaters never get ahead in the end.

Despite being the face of the channel, he scarcely makes appearances in his videos and doesn't seem to play a large creative role in the output currently, though he has in the past and plans to in the future. Historically, Darmman's videos have focused on short scenes punctuated by moral compass and message for the viewers. Most of the videos focus on acted-out social scenarios. They often concern subjects like bullying, cheating, revenge, instant regret, all that jazz. You know, the sort of PSAs that they would show you growing up. That's basically what these videos are.

>> Have you checked Hulu?

>> Yeah. Nothing. Nothing on Amazon either.

>> Check the Darmman app out. Maybe post a new video.

>> Darmman has an app. Yeah, it just came out. There it is. Cool. Um, how about Evil Babysitter mistreats kid?

>> Its merit? Well, that notion we mentioned at the start that when something's agreeable enough, we tend to look past its flaws. With Darmman's [music] videos focusing on having such a clearly laid-out moral message that everyone and their mothers wants to share it on their Facebook. You go into the real world and you'd probably have to work pretty hard to find someone who enjoys Darmman's videos. But despite being founded in 2018, in the last 7 years, the channel has accrued over 25 million subscribers, making his channel one of the most subscribed on the platform and rendering Darmman as this sort of legendary YouTube figure who seems simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at all.

So, sure enough, the last video I ever ended up I ever planned on posting was the one that went viral. And that video went on to get over 200 million views. And you know, the question that keeps me up at night is, what if I decided to give up one video before? With his success though came the story from Darmman's own mouth. This was a man who came from the brink of failure in 2014. Lacking purpose and wondering where he would go. Yet eventually, after staring down his failings and bowing to change, he restarted his tale, creating his channel with the goal of helping people and seemingly doing just that. With the past 5 years transforming his public profile from just another Silicon Valley figure to an inspirational media mogul for all. Yet, although he's been heralded by many in his industry, his relationship with those online and many of his collaborators has been shrouded in mystery and even controversy with questions surrounding the messages of his uploads, his business practice, and the narrative that he has spun around his own life in telling his own story, leading some to ask where the truth behind Darmman's success really lies. My friends, it's time to end this year with a dissection of Darm Man.

And then he says, "Thanks, Dave. Now I know that scamming is wrong." And then they all hug and people clap. Cue the inspirational outro music. We tell people to subscribe or they're going to hell. The money prints itself. Basically, easy as pie. And how is that a believable message? The man just stole $4 million from vulnerable old people. Yeah, but they had it coming. How an alter need not explain himself, my friend. The meaning will come through when the vision comes to publication. And why exactly should I trust you after what happened to Trollcoin? Remember, I'm currently hiding out in the Achafallayia Basin. I'm on the FBI's 10 probably should be stopped soonish list.

See, that is the genius of it. When the officers who are pursuing you stumble across this video on their homepage, they'll realize that all you need is a bit of love and affection. And how does any of that happen? How are we even going to guarantee that they will see this? Well, we'll probably need to set up a studio. Lots of things will need to be done there. I'm sure that's not exactly a cakewalk. We could use ODU. What? ODU? You know, the one that Troll always joins our car spontaneously and says, "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about."

>> ODU? ODU? Yeah, of course. And what exactly is that? Troll, please don't. Although I've told you about the utility of ODU's project application and the accessibility of ODU's website builder, those are just fragments of what ODU has to offer. Like many people, if you're trying to run your own business, you might need accounting to manage cost and expenditure or recruitment to find and hire the right people or forums to answer people's burning questions about your mission. Or what's that thing when people who watch your stuff, they write things to you and send it in the mail? Fan mail. Or fan mail. ODU's 45 apps cover all of these and more. And with a fully integrated system centralized to one place, all apps can communicate seamlessly with each other on a single platform. I know that we've all been very busy lately. And if you're busy, I don't know, hiding out in the say at Basin. ODU's automated applications allow you to reduce manual and repetitive tasks to take some of that work burden off your own Atlas-like shoulders.

But 45 apps, how much could that cost? Is he paying you commission? Well, if you didn't know yet, the first app is completely free for life with unlimited hosting and support. But if you want access to all the apps, a subscription starts at €19.90 per user per month. As the owners of Dur Mang, I'm sure you'll be looking to create something that can be turned into its own powerhouse machine of content creation as soon as possible.

>> Well, when you put it like that, I might just have to consider it.

>> How do you know where I am? See you soon,

>> mate. I don't think it's the police that you need to be worried about. Oh, yeah. Well, what's the worst some liy dal limey could do? Anyhow, other jack pro anyone. ODU. ODU.

God, it was this massive dark cloud that was just hanging over my head. And my biggest fear was just, any minute I'm going to get exposed and people who are going to find out that I wasn't really this baller guy who could maintain this lifestyle. A lot of Darm Man's self-told story starts at 30. There's a reason for this, and one that I'm not necessarily bringing up to attack him, but is relevant all the same.

>> Hello everybody.

>> It's the late 2000s in California. As you'd expect, there's a lot going on. But somewhere in there, a man by the name of Da rolls into the West Coast with big plans. Although still in his mid-20s, he owned a real estate company, an exotic car rental agency, and served as the director of the largest taxi company in Oakland, a company founded by his parents. His work in that role was to modernize the company's image and perhaps distance it from the lawsuit-stricken relationship it had previously held with the city it was serving, though I'm not sure how that turned out. Although mostly lost to the sands of time, reports suggest that he lived a life of luxury and one that he very much openly flaunted to the media. To the slightly cynical observer, those sorts of businesses scream silver spoon. And maybe they were. But in an article by the East Bay Times, Dar would attest [music] to how he has founded multiple successful companies to fund his own tuition and that actually his parents were shocked when they found this out. Critics of the time didn't really believe the story and thought that he was mostly still mooching off his parents' money.

Have the actual subject of this conflict would probably be the real litmus test as to his true capabilities.

>> For the third straight day, thousands marched in California protesting the election night passage of Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage.

>> Hopefully, it'll carry on into the future and this thing will get repealed.

Softening scans on social issues was an inevitability in somewhere like California. And although no progressive matter went through unchallenged, the trends told a story that any business person would be crazy not to jump on. With one of the most relevant being that relating to marijuana.

>> Here in Arcada, population 17,000. Officials estimate there are close to 1,000 homes with some form of indoor marijuana cultivation.

California was at the forefront of marijuana decriminalization and legalization for medical use. Although it would be nearly another decade before it was legalized in the states, citizens were becoming less hostile to its presence in their lives, with dispensaries being set up throughout. Man was not overly familiar with marijuana when a tenant of his disclosed his [music] status as someone who grew medical cannabis. But shortly after hearing about this, he decided to do some research, recognizing its popularity and opportunity. Well, as is the case with budding industries, there's always a way to optimize their [music] processes, and Dar believed that he had cracked it. Heading up a system that would combine the weed growing process with the horticultural practice of hydroponics, which cultivated plants with nutrient-infused water instead of soil. In 2008, man would team up with investment banker Derek Peterson to launch the company iiggrow. Later [music] we would attempt to uproot the marijuana industry in every sense of the word. It was natural that when a young upstart entered a business full of old dogs that he would face resistance, [music] even in a forward-thinking trade. However, reports from this time state that he devoted himself to a rigorous media campaign that would result in articles all the way up to CNN and redefine his image as the gun entrepreneur, running the Walmart of weed and comparing himself to business revolutionaries like Levi Strauss and Samuel Brennan, who themselves took advantage of the California Gold Rush to push their products. Together, man and pet would launch multiple offshoots from werow, including an apparatus supplier and the University of Cannabis, which would train aspiring weed farmers. Man would also make political inroads with local council representatives, providing lucrative donations and likely being influential in the city's decision to provide the growing trade with more legislative support. At the start of 2011, Manipedon would make the cover of magazine Mother Jones with a story documenting their rise in the industry and providing some free promotion for their projects. Around the same time, he would feature in the National Geographic documentary Green Rush, which once again harped on parallels between California's past glory and this new wave of financial interest. Needless [music] to say, the weed was in his sales.

>> Derek Peterson and Dar Man met with investment bankers in 2011 to raise money for their cannabis startup and tried to take the private company public.

>> So, the point of getting everybody in the same room today, you know, we're trying to determine whether IPO makes the most sense or we're trying to determine whether reverse merger makes the most sense.

Man, being the media-savvy individual, would not just use his profiles to flaunt his business but take it one step further as he would orchestrate a TV series based around his and Peterson's foray into marijuana enterprise called Empire. A website would be set up and trailers would be posted. However, this series would never come to fruition as in March of 2011, the company would fall apart in fiery fashion with Peterson accusing man of running a quote hydrop-ponzi scheme amongst a flurry of other allegations, filing multiple lawsuits against man related to unpaid debts.

I felt lied to and betrayed. We had so much opportunity. So disappointment was an overwhelming feeling.

>> 26-year-old unborn.

>> I acted in good faith and a handshake, and I regret putting so much faith into Derek and so much trust.

Man would file his own suits alleging breach of contract, fraudulent behavior amongst many other matters himself. And eventually, after a brief legal battle, they would settle this with man [music] being issued 200,000 new shares in Petson's startup company Growop Technology. Man would try to keep we grow as a viable company throughout this turbulence, even franchising out a new branch in 2012. However, as soon as he resolved the lawsuit with his former business partner, he came into contact with a much more formidable opponent: the Oakland City Council. They accused him of a litany of financial crimes, with an NBC article documenting a pattern of corruption from the businessman and his collaborators. With man showering many of the council members with gifts and trips to Vegas to keep them on his family's side, it appeared that man was just another Silicon Valley vulture attempting to create his own monopoly at the cost of everyone else, all while pocketing other people's money. In the end, man pled no contest to the charges and was sentenced to 5 years probation with a five-figure fine. It seemed like his daring attempt to cultivate his empire had cost him more than the empire would have ever been worth, sending him back to square one in the business world. But where one door closes, another opens. At least for people like Darm Man.

>> How do I take it to the next level? How do I take it to the next level?

>> And so I constantly felt this pressure to outdo myself. And I almost felt like the followers expected it. I needed to do it for them. And so I created this alter ego that it was just became like an unsustainable lifestyle very, very quickly. But I didn't know where that would end. I didn't know how to stop that.

Although Lush Life would continue to be the subject of the internet showbiz audiences, including his year-long relationship with celebrity attorney Lily Galichi, Darmman's reputation was badly damaged. His relationship with Lily ended with her wishing him the best before shifting her tone significantly and accusing him of being a massive fraud at the start of the new year, creating this manufactured reality for her to live and lying about the nature of his following. Gossip sites around this time would state that he had lied about his relevancy and would subsequently delete his account Jetet Life after losing around 80% of his followers, assumably bots. This fallout seems to have mostly ended his social media presence then, and reports of Darmman would slow to accrue. If there's one part of this story that was true, it's that in 2014, Darmman didn't have any clear direction, apart from flexing. Nevertheless, it was clear that from his shares in other businesses to the support from his reasonably well-off parents, there was little doubt that he would be back on his feet soon enough. And come 2015, while he was still in the process of licking his wounds, another idea hit the Darmman forehead.

I'm Brian, and this is IGN News. Google has announced it will be launching a new subscription service for YouTube users called YouTube Red. This new subscription service will provide ad-free streaming for $9.99 a month, putting it on the same playing field as Netflix's [music] standard HD streaming plan. By 2015, YouTube was in the process of reforming its image under Google's ownership, becoming increasingly oriented towards big brands and monetization. As came with California's relationship with marijuana, this wasn't always without setbacks either. But one man was waiting in the wings to make the most of this culture shift once more. That man was Dharma.

>> Hey guys, I'm here today to show you the power of makeup.

One of the emerging industries in 2010's YouTube was the beauty community. There had always been a presence on the platform, but around this time there was a real push to take these influencers from merely people on your screen to full-blown brands, with many creators using such relationships to boost their public profiles. With this shifting perception came an increase in those who not just followed these creators but idolized them, worshiped them even. Darman knew just as well that where there was desire to be like certain people, there was a market to sell these people a way to be like them. And after he met one of these creators came his next project, a company called Live Glam.

Basically, Live Glam is a website where you can sign up online to become a certified makeup artist. You get to watch heaps of professional makeup artists' videos. I guess kind of like YouTube, except way more in-depth, and you actually get a bunch of bonuses as well. You get tons of discounts and all sorts of stuff. Put more information down in the down bar.

At first, Live Glam was essentially the masterclass but for beauty influencers, which is interesting given that Masterclass itself was launched around this time as well. You would go and experience video lessons on a subscription-based service from the industry's top names such as Dress Your Face, Makeup by Lilit, and Anal Marino. If you've heard any of these people, then I salute you and somewhat fear you, but you'd be completely within your right to question exactly what Darm Man has to do with knowing the beauty industry to the point where he can orchestrate lessons for potential customers. You wouldn't be the only person asking these questions, as reception at the time expressed suspicion as to how helpful this really was in facilitating people's skills, with other [music] people just believing it was an outright scam.

>> But no matter how much you pay for a course, no matter how good the artist is, I [music] don't care if the artist created makeup altogether. It will not make you a good makeup artist.

Eventually, Live Glam would pivot. And in a later video with his future wife and business partner, Laura, Darm would explain the reasoning behind this, though I doubt this was the only reason given what happened [music] next.

>> We all just decided to partner together to create the world's first makeup brush club. The timing was perfect, and the brush club took off. That's when I realized people wanted products a lot more than classes. So, I started thinking about how Laura and I could work on a product together.

By 2017, Live Glam had already moved into selling physical content while offering a pro service to users interested in improving their skills, which featured more of the masterclass-style lessons. One of the people I mentioned earlier, Dress Your Face, found herself in a bit of drama. I'm not going to go through this drama 'cause it's mostly tangential, but her connections to the Live Glam brand were brought up.

>> I will absolutely not trust you if you are a person who offers these types of classes to unsuspecting poor young girls who have basically not built up their street smarts yet. Take advantage of them to try to sell them um a certificate which is completely worthless and a so-called discount at a lot of professional companies who will never give them a discount after they have already paid and gotten this thing.

As you saw a moment ago, fellow creator Gian Nim had made a couple videos on these subscription courses in 2016. However, it wasn't until 2017 where this narrative began to snowball with late commentary creator Here for the Tea, or Sam, releasing a video on LiveBlam, accusing the company of scamming susceptible audiences for their pro course and providing a profile of its founder.

>> Even if this was a legit certificate, I don't understand the skill you'd be showing off unless you can't watching a tutorial as a skill. Skills are learned through hands-on experience and practice in my opinion. But to someone who's young and eager to start their career, I can see how the certificate would be misleading, especially since they use the words "professional makeup classes" on the certificate.

Sam's argument was that when they were working as a course-based company, Live Glam had given its audiences a false impression of the value of the courses available and thus were misleadingly marketed. The truth is that free tutorials were already all over YouTube. So, the conclusion would be that this course is offering something else entirely, which, as far as Sam could see, it [music] wasn't. Further to this, they imply on their website that enrolling in this course will give you access to exclusive discounts and that they can help provide you with all the documentation to enable this. Something that Sam disputes. Something else they do that pisses me off is that they imply that by signing up for their pro package, you'll receive discounts of up to 50% off makeup brands. As a makeup artist myself, I do get discounts on a lot of makeup brands ranging from 30 to 50% off depending on the brand, of course. But you must have credentials such as a diploma from an accredited makeup school along with other documentation or proof that you are a working makeup artist. Not a certificate of enrollment or a certificate of completion of a seminar. A certificate of completion of a seminar is great for your resume and great for continuing makeup education and keeping up with the latest trends, but it is not the same as a diploma or license, which is what you need to be eligible for most professional makeup artist discounts. And companies are becoming stricter in terms of what they will accept in addition to a diploma or license because of BS like this.

This wasn't looking very good for Darmman. It seems that not only are the courses that he was providing online providing very little material value, but it seemed like he was leveraging the fandom of influencers to compensate for it. Now, if you look at the bottom where it says "how to apply," "unlock now with pro membership," and you go to the little information icon, you'll see that all you get with a pro membership is a detailed instructions and the documents necessary to apply, which you can get for free on the [ __ ] internet. It does not guarantee that you will be approved for the discount.

Although this video was hardly comparable to the likes of people who had come for him before, it was apparent that this would be a difficult path to follow now that his background was once again being shone a light on. How would he handle this? I launched the website. We recorded our first class. She had a big social media following. She blasted out this class to her followers, and then boom, just overnight, you know, we started getting a lot of sales in.

>> And to this day, then that turned into the box that you all have too, right? So, give us [music]

In the next few months, and definitely not remotely associated with any of the drama that had come before, Liveland would phase out their Coarbace subscription service. This wouldn't necessarily stop the criticism though for Darm Man and those he surrounded himself with, including his then partner Laura, who herself was accused of buying followers.

>> As you can see, she literally hemorrhages followers every single day, except for that one day out of nowhere where she gained 6,000 followers, which is very odd for someone who's consistently in the negative. This is not a usual pattern for someone of her supposed popularity. She should be growing and showing. So, it is my opinion that she has at one point purchased a shitload of followers and she loses followers when Instagram purges ghost followers, which seems to be right in line with the claims made by Lily about Dar referred to in my previous video.

These seem like complaints that would disappear with time. So, Darmman didn't pay much mind to them at first. However, in December, a much more serious allegation was posited towards him. That being the one of his old friend, Mr. Fraud. I was contacted by one of the members asking whether I'd heard of fraudulent charges associated with Live Glam because there were a bunch of members in this group who were experiencing fraudulent credit card charges, and the only thing they all had in common was that they were all Live Glam subscribers.

Yes, according to many viewers, shortly after they signed up for one of Live Glam's courses or canceled their subscription, the bank would notify them of a suspicious withdrawal. Although these withdrawals didn't necessarily link back directly to Livelam, they seem too chronologically correlated with Darmian man's company to be overlooked. In her video, Sam produces a number of testimonies with corroborating evidence, drawing her own conclusion.

>> So far, there are no updates, but I will continue to check back. In my opinion, this is nothing more than damage control to appease their worried customers because this issue has been going on for well over a year now. I think more and more people are putting two and two together, and that's why there are so many people coming forward.

The list of people who have had this experience goes on in the comment section to the point where Live Glam even put out a statement acknowledging that something was amiss. Live Glam would seemingly concede that there had been a data breach and that they were taking steps to ensure that this would not happen again. Critics like Here for the Tea were not exactly convinced by this, linking back to Man's prior convictions and bringing forward some further allegations about Darmman's industry ties. Though I must emphasize that these were just rumors. Nevertheless, they all told the same story. I don't believe this has ever been made public, and they've done a really good job covering it up all these years. But when Morphe first started out, they needed an investor. And guess who the investor allegedly was? None other than Darmman, which is the reason they've offered their Morpheme monthly subscription service from the very beginning.

Darmman's online presence and narrative still seemed to be in the hands of other people. And although maintaining a low profile given his history seemed preferable, there was also the allure to take back control of that surrounding his life. Given he had spent the last few years building stronger relationships with those in the industry, it felt that maybe there would be a way onto a platform where you could express yourself. So come 2018, he began to formulate a new, more mature relationship with social media.

>> I'm not sure if it's like Live Glam, the company themselves stealing people's information and like making all these fraudulent charges, or if they have somehow gotten hacked or whatever the issue is, it definitely needs to be resolved. I know that they're going to lose a ton of business because of this, and um, rightfully so. Like

>> By this time, anyone who did remember Darmman remembered him as another social media flexer without any substance to his bravangadosio. However, in May 2018, Dar would set up a self-titled YouTube channel with the about page explaining his mission. What is the reformed gentleman going to say about his setbacks and achievements?

Hello, my name is Darmman, and I'm a fearless entrepreneur sharing my stories of success and failure to help inspire others. Currently, I'm the founder and CEO of Live Glam, a cosmetics company that I took from $600 in starting capital to eight figures in annual revenue in less than two years. I think he might die of humbleness, folks. Obviously, this isn't the original about page, as there is reference to his view count, but we can feasibly see that again, this is a man selling his success story when the reality of his life is a little more complicated. But if you look at his videos, you'll see why he's written that kind of bio.

What if Michael Jordan decided to stop playing basketball after he got cut from his high school basketball team?

>> His first video currently available is Before Deciding to Give Up on All Your Goals, Darm Man. Though this has been titled many times, with the earliest one being named "Before You Give Up, Watch This." Either way, the message should be pretty simple.

>> Or what if Elon Musk gave up after he crashed his first rocket?

>> One can dream, duh. One can dream.

We become so terrified of [music] trying and failing in life that so many of us end up living, failing to ever even try. Confucius said that our greatest glory in life is not in never failing, but it's in rising every [music] time we fail. It's your fairly bog-standard inspirational video that might pick the right person up when they need it. Though admittedly, it's not really anything that other motivational speakers haven't said before. Flipping old sayings and providing anecdotes of people who never gave up. If this was what Dar possessed in his wheelhouse, then surely he couldn't build a channel on this alone.

>> If we're not supposed to let success [music] get to our heads, then why do we let failure get to our hearts?

The simple fact was that he couldn't. As a motivational speaker, man was average. You have to remember that the artist spouting inspirational [ __ ] is something that so many people chance the RAM at, that the bar is actually pretty high for breaking through into such an industry. And although he would keep uploading these videos, they wouldn't necessarily make waves. Certainly not at the time when they were released. However, why would Darmman care? In spite of the controversy that Live Glam faced, it was still, by his own word, an overwhelming success. He didn't need YouTube views to validate that, as long as he was able to share his message of inspiration and hope to demonstrate that there was a way forward for people like him who may have lacked purpose at a point. Was this something personal for Darma? Which person matters more? The person who seems like fun or the person who's waiting at home? Well, amongst the rather lukewarm reception to his content, there was a slight trend that man began to take notice of in his videos. One that, as the fearless entrepreneur he was, he had to take notice of.

>> So, what if I actually had actors that showed on screen whatever lesson I'm talking about?

Darmman's early videos revealed an interesting trend. It seemed like the ones with a more situational basis, ones that use actors to portray a story, attracted more views than the others.

>> Go.

>> What am I supposed to do? You with my hands?

The videos where he used his presence the least seemed to be the most successful. This probably wasn't just because he wasn't there, but also because of the simple formula that a lot of media feels more universal when there isn't a person there explaining to us the exact meaning of the media in question. He would continue to self-insert himself in stories. But after repeated tests, the trend of his viewership was abundantly clear. So with this in mind, would he abandon the personal element to take a more backseat role? Or would he double down and try and find a way to make his inclusion part of the channel?

>> Seems like you're not even trying. Seems like you're not [music] even trying. Seems like you're not even trying.

Financial pressure in a relationship is one of the leading causes of depression. [music] Well, each thumbnail still had his face attached to the bottom corner alongside occasional commentary and a regular video reminding people that Darmman does indeed exist. But over this time he decided to follow his algorithmic senses and cater the content to the number of views that he would accrue and move any personal commentary towards the end of the video so people didn't click off too soon. Darm man knew that he would have to at least provide some variety, but was also aware that too much deviation would alienate viewers [music] from the messages that he sought to share. So most of his short stories adopt a stance that seems pretty easy to follow: an individual feels a certain way, they decide to act on those impulsive instincts, and then those feelings are shown to be misguided, prejudiced, and so on. The bottom line is that they tended to lead to a negative outcome for the person who behaved out of line with the moral of the story being that there's always benefit to being loyal, committed, kind, >> [music] >> etc.

There's no greater sacrifice in this world than the sacrifice [music] a mom makes for her child. Whether it's the endless worrying or the unconditional love, the early mornings or the late nights, the constant work or the lack of sleep, no words could ever describe the struggles a mom goes [music] through. I'll break down these tales in a bit more depth soon enough, but although they might seem slightly simplistic [music] to you and I, they were a massive hit with the Facebook generation who had a tendency to share and provide their own personal musings. The aim is speaking to a perception of the world. If you wouldn't want judgment passed against you, then you shouldn't pass judgment of others. The effective aspect of this content is that it will make nearly everyone think, "Wow, I've been in a situation just like this before," even if the situation shares very few similarities. There is also the satisfaction of watching an individual who is often complacent about their beliefs or even their bigotry be put in place by the underdog who shows them what's really important. Videos can feature characters from impoverished backgrounds teaching moral lessons to the rich people of this world on how much richer in character they are by comparison. Given the nature of his past flexing, Darmman seems an interesting person to disseminate [music] this message. But he seems to know that the people want to hear it. With many of these videos acquiring millions of views and comments saying, "Wow, this one really makes you think."

>> Yeah, that's right. Move. It's why I don't like cops. You're worthless and you never really help anyone.

Other videos provide rudimentary ruminations on political issues such as the tension between law enforcement and minorities in the US, with one titled "Before You Judge Cops," [music] watch this. Though this has again been retitled. In that video, a cop is cussed out by a boy's father after he saved the boy's life, with a father coming to regret his choice words.

>> And this cop, he just came right on time and he saved our boy. You literally just missed him.

>> This is why I don't like cops. You're worthless [music] and you never really help anyone.

With Darm Band providing more detailed interpretations for this piece of avant-garde media, potentially lining up a future political bid. There's so many real-life heroes in uniform that put their lives on the [music] line every single day in order to protect us. They put their own families and loved ones second so they can put the lives of total strangers first.

This is just an example, but a lot of early videos follow this very strict formula. It may seem basic, but in a post-apocalypse YouTube landscape, this was not just great for people who wanted to share this content, but great for the platform as a whole. This was the kind of content that they believed could bring people together. With his channel now up and running throughout 2018, Dar would make a careful but purposeful return to social media with nearly all of his prior content wiped from existence. This would mark a fresh start and one to tell a new story of a man with a renewed outlook on the world, represented by content that came straight from his heart.

What's up everybody? This is Dar.

>> And I'm Laura.

>> And welcome back to our YouTube channel. This is our second video that we've ever done together.

With the main channel mostly reserving itself for his urban fables, he would set up a second channel with his girlfriend that would also serve to build his public profile once more. This content was as formulaic as it came with challenges, Q&As, everything you would learn from your influencer friends. Havadar never shies away from the opportunity to tell people the inspirational story. The one the man who had nothing, building a makeup empire from the ground up.

So back then I was totally broke. I had like zero money and I was running the business for my studio apartment. So in my studio was like like my bed was here, my kitchen was here, my studio was here. Everything was right next to each other.

>> It was really tiny.

With each video, there was a sense that Dar still craved the story that made him sound like that fearless entrepreneur, the self-made man. There was a lot that he felt he had yet to prove and wanted to show the world of the story that he wished to tell, [music] even if it wasn't the full picture. So you see, while his channel was teaching messages about humbleness and honesty, some were likely wondering when Dar was going to be honest about himself. As a creator, you often see yourself in your content. [music] And as surreal as some of his content is, I don't think that's necessarily untrue for Dar. There [music] is a sense that these morality plays are telling people to not follow down the same path that he did. Somewhere in the videos, you can make the argument for personal growth being reflected in the messages. The DA sees himself in many of the protagonists, those who may do wrong even and realize the folly of their ways before reforming and growing as an individual. It's not a bad parallel until you actually compare it to how he presents himself.

Hey, I'm Dar.

>> And I'm Laura.

>> And in addition to being in a relationship, we're also the founders of Live Lamp. Now, the first question I always get is, "How in the world does this guy who has never contoured in his life create a cosmetics brand?"

In an early video that I already mentioned, D says this at the start. What is interesting is that throughout the video, he never really answers the question. He doesn't explain how he ended up working in the makeup industry as someone who had no experience with makeup, likely because that answer would be fairly simple. He saw what he saw in other industries: a gap in a growing market to swoop in and make some money from. And with his main YouTube channel, this vision was taking shape as well.

>> He said he had a daughter.

>> This man's daughter saved your life.

>> The bus will be here any minute to deport you back to Mexico.

The videos were still just as strangely conceived as ever, with plot lines diversifying to retain that modicum of originality, at least the most you can when you're teaching the exact same lesson again [music] and again. Yet, with each story, with each video, Darmman's influence grew. His message of peace and understanding spreading throughout the land. As 2020 came into view, man became more ambitious with the stories he wanted to tell, [music] even making a widely watched biographical video on financial influencer Grant Cardone and his struggle to overcome addiction before building his own empire.

Look at you, Grant. You will never change. Never.

>> Good luck with your business. Going forward, I'm never going to do another drug in my life.

>> Yeah, right. Look, the truth is you are a drug addict. Okay, you're either gonna wind up dead or back here in rehab.

>> It's 5 minutes of people telling him he has to change or that he won't change or that he might change. I don't know. Anyway, he does change.

>> The new Grant had bigger dreams, 10 times bigger. He started writing books, and over time Grant became one of the bestselling [music] authors in the world. Grant started [music] speaking to small crowds. And then those small crowds turned into massive crowds. [music] Grant finally was living the life he dreamed of.

Now, Grant Cardone is as curious a figure as he is somewhat controversial. From his actual takes on money to his ties with the Church of Scientology. I don't really care to dig too much into the nitty-gritty of it, but to boil his story down to man does drugs and is down bad until he stops doing drugs and is successful shows Darmman's philosophy pretty plainly on how he views his own life and how he wants it portrayed to others. He may have been a little bit of a reprobate in the past, made some mistakes, but now he's a changed man, and that's all you need to know. Now, I want to make clear that I don't think anyone needs to tell us everything about themselves, especially when it's just some guy talking over the internet. In fact, I think it's always a good idea to have your personal life separate from any public platform you hold. Star man can tell us as much or as little as he so chooses to. At points over his life, he's chosen both. All the same, if you go around promoting yourself as an independent businessman who built your company from scratch, eventually people would start asking questions when perhaps contradictory information is available. And with Dar's channel growing at breakneck speed, it was inevitable that people were at least going to want to hear from him on his past shenanigans. This all marked a massive opportunity for Dar. It was clear that a lot of people wanted to talk to him about the success he had stumbled upon, allowing him to build his portfolio as a successful businessman. Yet, it also foreshadowed large pitfalls, ones that he'd very much want to avoid. So, he decides that for his next public appearance, he's going to have the jump on the narrative once and for all.

This is Lewis House. He's another one of these keynote influencers with millions of subscribers. I don't know what to call them. He has written some books and is training to compete on the US handball team for the 2028 Olympics. He uses his platform to conduct a load of interviews with other influential figures who can guide you to make good life choices.

Don't think there's anything particularly special, but whatever happened in 2020, his platform would be the one that Darm man would give one of his first public interviews since dropping off the media radar. How would he handle it?

>> So, yeah, I mean, I've always been an entrepreneur and, you know, I've had some successes, but I've had way more failures. Um, and so when I moved to LA, I did have some money, so I was able to, you know, I I had more money than like a lot of people did, but not nearly as to how lavish I was making this lifestyle seem.

>> I mean, there's a lot I'm not going to talk about. We know man's narrative around most of his life, and he doesn't stray from it here. I will say that he is more honest about his failings early on in life, particularly regarding the state of his businesses.

[music]

It's clear he understands now that it's those failures that make you more human. However, when the subject of his run-in with the law comes up, he has a very different story to the one spread through the press.

>> I'm drawing so much attention that somebody in the district attorney's office is like, "Hey, let me look into this guy. You know, let me see if everything checks out." They start going through my paperwork for when I was submitting all of those real estate grant applications. And they started seeing that I was taking shortcuts on that paperwork. It wasn't that I didn't pay anyone or I didn't complete all my all my projects. I did all the work. I paid everyone. I just made it seem like it happened a little bit sooner than it actually did.

>> But that was enough for them to file criminal charges against me.

>> Wow.

>> First of all, there was no actual theft. He made some accounting choices that meant he falsely claimed that he was paying people sooner than he did. When he puts it like that, it sounds a bit like a clerical error, but honestly, hard to see how that sort of move wouldn't be a calculated act of sorts. And he doesn't really explain his motive for why he lied to the council about paying people early. So, we can only assume it was probably not the best of them.

>> This is the first time that I'm going through like negative press. I never dealt with any sort of like, you know, negative reputation or anything like that. It is one of the most difficult things to deal with. If you know, you guys listening have never been with something like that. And now I'm going to spend the next few years fighting this criminal case.

>> So, I fight this criminal case and then ultimately, so that was a second massive failure. Yeah.

>> Um, so I I fight I'm fighting this criminal case and it's about 2 years in or so I ended up winning. All my charges get dropped.

>> Then you have this part a minute later or so, which is very strange because 2 years on from when he was first charged, D man had already been sentenced.

[music]

This could be vague wording that is not really thought about. But it feels like when you're talking about a criminal case being dropped, you need to be a bit more specific in how you explain yourself because for anyone who wants to cross-reference this information, it's appearing less and less clear exactly what even happened. And what's even happening? Did he just say he won? I think we need to dive into this a little further.

All my charges get dropped. But in Alama County, they can refile against you a second time. And especially I was so high-profile, everything they were doing was making headlines. They decide that they decide to file a second time. This is one whole statement [music] to unpack. The case of what one would consider winning an illegal battle is interesting, and you would hear that and assume some form of a quiddle. But for those vaguely familiar with US jurisprudence, you know that pursuing someone after an acquit for the same crime would be a breach of the fifth amendment. If that had happened, I'm pretty sure Man and probably his family would have taken them all the way to the Supreme Court if he had to. Nevertheless, the implication here is that after dropping the charges because man had won them, Alama County decided to refile them because clout. So now I'm like 3 years in fighting this case and, you know, I'm running out of money. I don't have much cuz attorney fees are super expensive. I'm sort of, you know, down to my final dollars. And I go in front of a judge and he says, "Look, if you're willing to accept probation, this isn't like a jail time type of thing. If you accept probation for 5 years, you know, do good for 5 years and then you can go ahead and clean your record after, we can just, you know, get rid of this whole case kind of a thing."

>> Now, the idea of prosecuting someone to make an example of them is certainly not one alien to the courts. However, what man is suggesting is that they dropped the case with the evidence they had because it wasn't enough and then they refiled even though nothing had changed because they were enjoying the coverage. And at this point, Darm man decided to settle.

>> So, I accepted it. I accepted, you know, the criminal charges and I got on probation for 5 years.

>> Now, I don't know American attorney offices particularly well. Maybe they can be quite vindictive, but I also know that there are some forms of checks and balances in place. And if the charges were dropped the first time round, they obviously never went to trial. This second set of charges must have been amended, therefore, or included some new information that influenced them to take it further, otherwise they'd just be [music] wasting their time, too. In this case, it looks like they decreased the number of charges when they had something more specific to pin Darmman on, which is completely normal. Nevertheless, he claims he took the plea deal because he was promised it wouldn't really do anything. And besides, after fighting his innocence for nearly 2 years, he was tired. To hell with clearing his name. In true podcaster style, the gentleman interviewing him doesn't really question any discrepancies, nor even the details as to how and why man made some of the decisions he did. House just sits there and goes, "Wow." As Dar goes deeper and deeper into this labyrinthian story, somehow only seems to confuse itself more and more as he reveals that he recently had the case expunged entirely with the courts telling him how much of a model citizen he had become.

>> Just a couple months ago, actually, I had all my charges removed. So yeah, I no longer record. I know. It was kind of crazy. And they actually talked about how I'm an example of how somebody can turn their life around and sort of go from felon to fortune to good fortune.

>> Yeah. If he had won the case originally and they just refiled it because they were haters, if he took the plea deal because he was fed up and he actually hadn't committed any fraud, what rehabilitation was there to be done? The dude just made some dating errors on a paper. Like a no contest plea isn't admission of guilt. An expungement isn't a declaration of innocence either. And Darmman doesn't seem to present it as that, but still seems to have this air of innocence in his recounting of the situation as it happened.

>> But after my third major failure, that's when I really stopped and realized I'm the common denominator here. I am the one person that is consistent in all three of these massive failures. And unless I'm gonna take that really serious to change the person that I am, then my outcome is never gonna change. D man seems to want this image of reformation, but doesn't want people to know what he was reforming from in the first place, suggesting that the legal proceedings against him were overblown or even unfounded. So in the end, the narrative became one where he was just living too chaotically and lavishly that eventually the money ran out and the debt ran up and he needed a serious reality check to avoid complete financial ruin. This seemed to lay down the gauntlet for the narrative that he would seek to establish in future interviews as well, appearing 3 weeks later with industry personality Ed Millet to share an even more watered down story about how he was just partying too hard.

>> You know, I was living for the moment. And so anytime you're living for the moment, like you feel happy right then and there, but then you go to sleep at night not really loving the person that you are. And it's this emptiness that you feel like I was chasing short-term instantaneous pleasure. So it feels great for that second, but you can't help but feel this hollowing feeling that's growing inside of you. A more presumptive person might wonder whether the stories of writing checks for contractors early and partying like a rockstar may have some form of relationship, but man decides against exploring these details in favor of keeping the story mostly murky but relatively charitable to his past self. These are the only two major interviews he would do throughout the year on YouTube. As co descend on California, along with the many restrictions and his now pregnant wife approaching the third trimester, he locked into the important obligations of attending to his workplace [music] and becoming a pregnancy vlogger. As if we needed any more of them.

>> [snorts]

>> Probably take 15 20 minutes. With new life being brought into the world came renewed life in the Darmman Studios channel, teaching important lessons to one and all such as don't arrest innocent people. Don't steal a parking spot from grandma and don't reject teens from your Tik Tok dance group. That one in particular is very close to Dar's heart as he reminds all his viewers at the end of the upload just what sharing this story will do for the world around you and maybe what the message means to him. Hey Dar man fam, I hope you love that message. Please remember we're not just telling stories, we're changing lives. And when you share my videos, you're helping to change lives, too. When you share a Darmman video, you're improving the planet in real time. It is an unconditional moral good to carry out when you remind people that kindness costs very little. And if we all live like Darmman depicts in his videos, surely the world would be a better place. It's clear that Dar's story is very intertwined with the videos that he's creating. Now, as he said before, the goal is to inspire and lift people up because feeling down is a feeling he knows all too well. I'm going to start putting out inspirational videos to help transform lives the same way that I was able to transform my own. Darmman may not be completely transparent about many aspects of his past and we may not know the full story either. Isn't part of understanding Darmman? Understand that many great people have difficult pasts and they can still grow into who Darmman is today. However, with Darmman's fame came Darmman's infamy. Co left more people than ever in their homes and provided Dar with the opportunity of a lifetime to capitalize on the increased screen time. And oh my, he certainly did. With video views shooting up and new subscribers rushing in in the middle of a pandemic where people were trying to grasp onto what hope they had for a light at the end of the tunnel, maybe there was some emotional gratification that came from watching content where karmic justice was served in emphatic fashion. His following on YouTube was admirable, but his Facebook following was five-fold with the stats seeming to imply a generation of millennials and beyond had latched onto its message in these trying times.

>> So, you see, wearing a mask, it may not be ideal, but it is a small [music] price to pay to keep everyone safe. Wow, I never really thought about it like that. Like all inspirational thought leaders, Darmman finally had the life he had always fronted before. In 2020, [music] he bought a $15 million mansion from Khloe Kardashian. A significant purchase even for a man of his standing. This was more than man had ever expected. [music] But the momentum didn't slow. Dar being an entrepreneur put money back into his project, setting up new studios, hiring more expansive casts, and investing in higher production values. He knew that the best option was always more content. And over the next year, he continued to deliver this. By 2021, his meteoric rise was beginning to catch the attention of other voices. Unfortunately, some of them were not quite so positive.

>> It's happening. [laughter] Every everyone has reacted to his videos. I've never actually seen a full one, so today's the day.

>> Because of its somewhat stilted nature, Darmman videos became a hotbed for reaction content, either for people who wanted to critique it or laugh at it or do what SS Sniperwolf does. That's my boyfriend. I'll get it.

>> Oh, so now she got a boyfriend.

>> Even if all the videos weren't seeing their praises, the publicity helped man's message reach the masses. And it wasn't long before he felt like a universal presence with online culture gravitating towards him. 2021 would bring a few media pieces, most notably the New York Times, who would describe him as YouTube's moral philosopher and as a serial entrepreneur. The impression being Darm Man just wears a lot of hats. With that said, the critics were becoming a little more vocal. An increasing number of videos that seemed to make fun of the content that he posted onto his channel began to crop up as well. He had two responses to this. The first was making himself part of the YouTube community that he had perhaps seen distanced from. Using his new influence, he began mixing with some more famous faces, eventually encouraging a few of them to appear in his short movies. He'd done this a couple times before with people who had reacted to his videos. But 2021 was the year where man began to appreciate the power of the cameo, working with illustrious YouTube names like Brent Rivera. Jesse looked super cute that night.

>> You think my sister is cute?

>> The Stokes twins.

>> You're not help [screaming]

>> FaZe Rug.

>> So, you think I can make it as a YouTuber?

>> I don't think you can. I know you can. And who knows, maybe one day you'll be a part of the FaZe Clan.

>> The Royalty Family, whoever they are.

>> Well, how'd it go?

>> Horrible. They just laughed at my accent. They didn't even care about my acting.

>> And SS Sniper Wolf again.

>> Sam, you think I don't deal with people hating on me all the time?

>> You do?

>> Of course. It comes with the territory. But what I've learned is that when somebody hates on you, it's usually because they're unhappy with their own lives. [music] And that has nothing to do with you. So don't take it personal.

>> Somebody hand her an Oscar right now.

>> You know, I still don't get why anyone even watches those dumb stories they tell.

>> Well, you know what we say? We're not just telling stories, we're changing lives.

>> [laughter]

>> Oh no, dude. You're even more cringe in person. However, Darmman was aware that not everyone would be won over as easily or necessarily ever believed that he was one of them. Many of the creators he featured were certainly not of a well-regarded clique. So, he decided to use the medium to do what he knew best, to [music] tell a story. In June 2021, he uploaded a video where he caricatures these haters as psychotic nerds who can recognize individual actors from these roles on the street and harass them. For what, I ask? Creating positive, heartwarming content. These two guys just walked up to me and called me cringe.

>> Anyhow, Darmman shows up to Monologue about their importance and provides some reassurance.

>> What am I talking about? You're Darmman. Everyone loves you.

>> Aiden, do you really think that I don't deal with haters, too?

>> You do? But I mean, you're putting out all this positive content. Who could hate on that?

>> A lot of people. Check this out.

He then shows a couple clips of people who hate on his videos that he was just keeping on his phone, I suppose, like any normal creator does.

>> I already hate it. Darm [laughter]

>> Doesn't make any sense. I didn't think it would annoy me so much. Keep changing lives. How dumb. I hate it.

>> That's crazy. Why would he do that?

>> And these are just two examples.

Talking to this actor, Aiden, who is clearly a representation of Darm Man himself, he says he has to focus on the positive and look towards all those who show him love.

>> How do you deal with all this?

>> By focusing on the people that love me, not the ones that hate me. Following this interaction, a postfilm summary details exactly what happened to the Darmman actors versus the Darmman haters.

>> Over time, Aiden's following continues to blow up as he openly talks about real issues facing a lot of young people all over the world. He can't believe [music] it.

>> I just watched that tennis video you did. Worst one of all time. You know, for two guys that seem to hate her videos so much, you certainly seem to watch a lot of them.

>> Uh, yeah. Just so you can see how cringe they are.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Uh, and what you guys say to me that I won't hit 2 million subs? Well, guess what? I just broke 3 million subs.

It seems that Darmman's message is that hating on Darm Man will only bring you misery. That you should join the Darmman fam. He's out here changing lives, sharing the love. There is a cult-like rhetoric to the actual purpose of his content. I think mostly designed with intent to maximize proliferation. But beneath it, there's probably something a little more fragile. A paranoia that he can only prevail if the message is believed. That he's in an ideological battle with those who could rip off that facade at any minute. It was a battle that he was determined to win. [music] But while he was too busy thinking about the attacks from others, he made the mistake of overlooking the enemy within. I literally deal with hundreds of videos and thousands of negative comments that are making fun of me all the time.

>> 2022 came around and nobody's shock, not even PewDiePie, could slow down Darm Man's momentum. This is hypersimplified, hyper dramatized. This kind of stuff does happen, but to the simplicity and degree that it happens in these videos to me is not hyper accurate.

>> Loads of people would provide their thoughts and opinions, but none of them could really dent the Darm Man fam, who felt a unique connection to the messages of man's videos. He would create many new channels to increase accessibility and use his new connections to start a podcast with his friend and fellow motivational speaker J. Shetty, where they would interview famous figures who would talk about their success. Their first guest being Mr. Beast. If it wasn't clear how far Darmman's influence could reach before this, then it was very clear now. He would be nominated for the 2022 Streamy under the category of best scripted series and would even present the sporting award for that year.

>> And a Streamy goes to

>> Jesser. He would expand his operations, accept a keynote speaking role at VidSummit and continue to take interviews where he'd share his wisdom and experience growing up. His company Live Glam, which he had co-owned with his wife for a few years now, was still going strong. To some, his story began to look and sound quite inspiring.

>> And a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs that you could think of, they went through many seasons of failure before they actually achieve great success. So that really inspired me that I thought, okay, maybe this is just the journey that very successful people go through. Eventually that paid off cuz I was able to just sort of level up as a person, but there's so many other people out there that are where I was at 30 years old for me, right? They're struggling with some sort of a hard time. And I wanted to help that person get through tough times. Even if there were some who likely felt that his account was a little too saccharine for the truth, a lot were won over, likely because it made people feel like they could be the next darn man. There's something inherently relatable, especially in the medium of digital content of hearing these stories about how a person went from very little to having the world in their hands through the power of tireless labor, blood, sweat, and tears. So, I remember I felt so defeated one night going to bed because I'd stayed up all night editing a video and like I wasn't getting any views that I told my girlfriend that this is the last video I'm ever going to post and it just doesn't make sense for me to continue this. So, I scheduled it to go live at 6:00 a.m. She tried to talk me out of it, but she realized I was done.

>> So, I scheduled my video to go live at 6:00 a.m. thinking that'll be the last video that I ever post. I went to bed that night and in the morning Laura wakes me up. She's like, "Dar, Dar, wake up." And I'm like, "Oh, what's going on? What's going on?" She's like, "That video, it's going viral." Even since he had started his channel, the story had evolved. This was a nearly hopeless hustle. And to his very last video began to pick up. No mention of the Live Glam empire he had built here. To creators like Darm Man, even the stories needed to be catered to an audience, particularly those who looked up to him as that fearless entrepreneur that he wanted to be perceived as. And what better job to have than the one that Darm man presents as one where you can change countless lives for the better. Not just theirs, but yours. [music] Not just in the world, but on these productions. That was the message he was sharing. No matter how far he had come, he hadn't forgotten his roots. But people around Darmman, a rising tide would lift all the boats. With 2023 about to come into being, man, his business, his story, and his philosophy would finally meet some firm push back from the place it always came from, his own business.

>> Hi, I'm here to see the room that's available. [clears throat] I'm sorry, [music] but I don't take section 8.

>> Now, for those experienced with the Darverse, you'll know that there is a rotating cast of actors, many of whom will play multiple roles over different videos. These videos never gave them the most clout, but it certainly made their faces recognizable to followers of the brand. And therefore, you'd expect someone with as much apparent wealth as Darm Man had now to keep them satisfied. Yet, in February of 2023, reports began to circulate that he was doing anything but that. When a few of actors decide to make their dissatisfaction with him known to the public, where's my whistle? A Tik Tok video would be posted by Darmman actor Colin A. Bordon explaining their reasoning for holding these protests [music] and the many ways that they have felt seriously mistreated by Darmman Studios.

>> Essentially, as an actor at Darmman Studios, I am just a contract player. I have no employment there. I am just sort of called every now and then as are all the other actors and it just is not sustainable. Um, and there are a lot of issues at hand here, but uh, one of the main issues is that not [clears throat] a single actor that works at Darmman Studios can afford rent. Many of these videos have since been removed, but the gist of the issue is that a significant cohort of employees felt that the work that Darmman offered was extremely unstable and not well-paid enough for the exorbitant amount of money that he made off it. With man sitting [music] in his $15 million mansion while many of his workers struggled to pay rent. This is mostly because although Darmman would provide hourly pay, the nature of filming meant that sometimes actors would only be working for an hour and they would have to give up full days of filming to make this happen. So even though these roles are basically zero hour contracts, part-time at best, people would need to have full-time availability to allow this to happen. As Darmman Sha grew to the monumental size it was by 2023, more and more actors start to feel that man could at least share the wealth a little more than he had been. But the studio culture didn't seem very amenable to this.

>> But I think that people should be aware of why we are protesting, why we are out there right now. We've been talking to a lot of actors. Um, it's the same. Everybody feels the same across the board. The trouble is, uh, [snorts] there's a culture at the studio of if you talk, you're out. That meeting was pushed several times, changed on us. Uh, when we finally got to the meeting, we had reiterated that we wanted it to be with Dar. Dar was not there. And we said, well, we are not going to have the meeting until Dar is here. You guys can be here. the head of production, the head of HR. That's great. We'd love for you to be there, too, so everybody's on the same page. But our meeting is with our boss, the person who signs our contracts, Darmian.

>> In essence, they didn't want to take to the streets. They wanted to have a conversation with Dar to iron these problems out. They all wanted a solution, but this simply never happened. Therefore, feeling that their hand had been forced, the only solution was to express [music] their dissatisfaction with a picket. Expressing their upset over this issue alongside others, such as a mural to their friend, which had been removed, and not being issued 1099s. For Darmman, this was the last thing he wanted to happen. The image that he had carefully built up over the last few years was now unraveling in real time. However, with the facts in front of us, was it really anyone's fault but his own? If he wasn't willing to sit down with these people to share some of his signature love, then surely it was his failure to practice what he had constantly preached. Yet, if there's anything we know about Dah, he wasn't going down without a fight. I mean, that really hits the nail on the head. It's I think that he should get bad press for this. you should have to respond, you know, like it sucks that the workers have had to go public in order to motivate Mr. Man to respond, but they have, and I think that we should support them.

>> The backlash was swift, and many creators who had previously reacted to Darmman content piled on to share their criticism of the creator and how this seemed completely antithetical to the messages he was trying to share through his content. It wasn't long before even many non-protesting actors came out either in support of the actors or in some sort of ceasefire so a solution could be worked out.

>> Very sad about the situation that's happening at Darmman. But I'm hopeful that Darmman and the actors that helped him build his brand from the very beginning can sit down and talk about the problems

>> that the actors want now is a conversation. if you're not going to hire me again after years after being a star for so long and when I come back after hiatus and I am uh sharp and doing good work and then to just quietly not respond to me and not hire me again that hurt me deeply.

>> Do I do I feel there should be like an increase in pay? Yes, 100%. 100%. And as I stand in solidarity with all of my protesting OG uh Darmman actors who are protesting for their rights,

>> every time I finished a a video, I would um say essentially like a little bit of a goodbye cuz I never knew when or if I would be coming back. I just never knew. And crew can't pay for rent and Los Angeles is really expensive as we have to get our wardrobe selected. We don't have a wardrobe stylist. Um, we have to sometimes purchase wardrobe if our character requires something that we don't have in our closets.

>> Carl was uh also fed up as well with being pigeonholed as an actor and being typ cast.

>> It's unfair. It's unfair to treat the people who have helped you build such a huge brand with such disrespect.

This was not looking good for Darmman. With a multi-million dollar empire at his feet, he had reasonable firepower to shoot back with, which is what makes the subsequent turn of events rather well confusing. Over the next few days, Darmman makes a series of statements over his social media. Some of these are statements merely put onto his Instagram or YouTube stories, which expired very shortly after posting. Other posts lasted a bit longer, but were also removed. There may be some legal reason for this, but allegedly, the most important evidence was posted on his stories. you know, the part of your social media that is designed to expire after 24 hours. However, fortunately, thanks to a couple creators who cover this as it was all transpiring, these responses were mostly captured. Nevertheless, I have to go into these with a somewhat skeptical outlook because these responses were posted where they were going to receive the least scrutiny. He starts out by saying, "Hey, Darmman fam, recently there's been a lot of misinformation going around, so we thought we'd help clarify a few things. Please see our latest Instagram post for context if you haven't already." Much of Darmman's story is presented in a debunking fashion with the intent to show the claims against him as basically conjured up for drama, rendering this subsequent protest calculated and unjustified. The first truth n they drop on us is that the actors had the audacity to message Dar's [music] team at 3:05 p.m. on a Friday, barely hours before the weekend, ambushing them and all their plans. 2 hours to give a date for a meeting. Insanity. And nobody ever arranges meetings outside work hours or on Sunday. That's the Lord's Day and Monday was MLK [music] day. What would MLK want us to do? I understand that obviously that's a national holiday, but this is not a good starting argument to try and frame these people as unreasonable. If this was an attempt to actually schedule the meeting before January 16th, then I'd understand the complaint. If you can't take 20 minutes to attend to an extra business matter, then that's on you. Yet, through divine intervention, they did actually find the time to respond on MLK day. putting in the effort to say that they would love to meet. They then arranged to meet and here is the first major point of contention. In response from the actor representative, it was stated, quote, "We would appreciate Dar and Reuben's attendance." It was never stated that it was required, nor does Dar typically attend these types of meetings. So, Reuben, the head of our production, and Janessa, the head of human resources, scheduled to attend that meeting. Obviously, the actors have said that they stated they wanted to meet with Dar. However, Dar contests this, showing the email stating that they merely said his presence would be appreciated. The comment is added is that Dar is not one to typically attend these meetings, so it would be unreasonable to expect him to attend. Now, although this is something to account for, what's more interesting here is what isn't shown. [music] I would assume that this isn't the end of communications between these two parties, as at this point in time, they would still need to set up a date to meet. So, why isn't further communication shared? I think this is important because it will allow viewers to see whether the impression was given that Dar would attend. If you set up the expectation for someone to attend, even if you don't explicitly say it and then they don't, it doesn't matter that they say it would merely be appreciated before. You set up that expectation that would obviously annoy people to the point where they might walk out. Yet, this series of messages is skipped over. Even if you think they're irrelevant, they might hold the piece of key information here. They also might have been upset to hear the reason the Dark couldn't join a meeting was because he was skiing in Aspen, something that I'm not sure they found out until after, though.

>> No feedback was given during the hour-long meeting scheduled. The actor representatives angrily walked out after a few minutes.

>> Darmman's team also contested that their move to written feedback wasn't because they were trying to maintain distance. It was because the first verbal meeting just didn't work out, and that was their idea of a solution to try and move the conversation forward. We then asked any feedback be put in writing and we tend to it as quickly as possible. We never received a response. From there, the protest started. What follows are responses to other claims that were less prevalent throughout the protest, [music] including the 1099 one, something that man clarifies would be done through PayPal. Though this was only introduced for the fiscal year ending in 2023 for anyone earning less than $20,000 with its implementation later being delayed before a 2025 bill reversed the policy entirely. So, I'm not sure if this is entirely honest. It's very hard to really comment on some of these other claims, such as Darm Man not paying his actors, though one of the protesters did post that they had only been paid after a piece of complaints. Most of the remaining points are quite vague. They clearly don't like the details of them. Bar number seven, that does address something that I saw brought up. Truth. At the end of last year, we held an in-person event to create a fan experience to celebrate our second feature film. It was a movie screening with a few hundred people. Tickets ranged from $25 to $100. Merch was not sold. It was given for free. All revenue went towards the expense of the event. No profit was made. We invited some actors to attend and their attendance was optional. This was an issue that I'll talk about in a bit, but basically some actors felt ambushed when they thought they'd been invited to an event only to basically serve as meet and greeters for the fans, signing content and merch without any proper compensation. D man challenges this and says it was an optional event that they didn't take any money from. The final note addresses a claim that they stopped working with actors due to their disabilities, which I think is a reference to a claim made by one of the former actors. They were fired for their medical condition, but they state that this is categorically untrue. This story was also accompanied by a series of now deleted statements that appeared on their Instagram account summarizing their story and provided more details about the agreements that the actors enter.

>> Occasionally, we have stopped working with actors. This is typically due to conduct complaints from fellow actors, complaints from minor actors' parents, complaints from crew members, or an actor displaying unprofessionalism on or offset. We take complaints seriously and try to ensure every person has the best experience possible in working with us. The only point they refer to entirely separately from their story is the case the actors who complain before disappearing. They state a series of reasons for why an actor could be dismissed, though they don't necessarily disclose which reasons the previous actors who were fired from the role may fall under. They were still playing their cards close to their chest. even implying that these people were actors dismissed for their conduct. Was this really going to be enough for people? Well, I suppose it depends on how you define enough. Although this Instagram post would be deleted, Darm Man would publish another response to his YouTube community tab with similar sentiments. Though this is also nowhere to be found as his community tab doesn't exist anymore. The only remaining statements that stand from Dar are a carbon copy posted to his Facebook and one a few days after their initial Instagram release. This one taking more shots of the actors who are protesting the studio stating that they haven't even worked with them in years. This claim is quite easy to fact check for the stated ring leaders at least and it's very clearly not true with credits tying these people up to the end of 2022 or even the start of 2023. Anyhow, this post goes on to emphasize that this is a slither of actors and certainly doesn't represent the overwhelming number of happy actors, likely referring to the surveys he'd previously listed. Surveys that, I will add, had over a thousand responses, which seems unrealistically high, or at least doesn't reflect the proportion of regular actors who are complaining. You know, the ones you should probably listen to more. But I digress. He repeats previous points about not meeting with actors at this stage, that they didn't communicate any issues, that it was not implied that he would be there. We know the drill. He also elaborates saying that because of how some protesters behaved, spreading misinformation about the studio and his family, even he has taken the bold moral stance to not meet with them. Very brave of you, Darinda. He says they do pay their actors. And although he's upset by the misinformation, he's still ready to admit that things can be improved, listing out [music] some improvements that they will be undertaking. I should make it clear that in spite of the criticism, there were people who backed Darmman as well. So, I've only worked for Darmman for a little bit over two years, but my experience with them has always been amazing. Working on set at Darmman Studios is so fun. I've never felt uncomfortable, bullied, unsafe, and truly, I enjoy it so much. Personally, I have had an amazing experience working with Darmman. I love the cast and crew, and I have never had an issue with being paid. As an actor, you book some jobs and you don't book some jobs. And for me going into it, I just thought every opportunity is an amazing opportunity. I love all of my friends at the Darmman Studios, but rallying against Dar for whatever reason wasn't and isn't right [music] for me.

Some of these videos do feel a little coordinated, but they do still count. And although many people don't really seek to necessarily contradict the complaints relating to the situation between the disgruntled actors and Darmman, many also want to highlight their positive experience with the projects that they had worked on. With the most vocal being cast regular and faith-based life coach Katherine Norland, who broke away from many of her colleagues to defend D. I truly hope this is not coming across as insensitive, but maybe it is. I mean, I'm going to offend somebody, right? But I felt like I had to say my side of the story how I feel. We are not locked in there. We don't have to be there. We get the opportunity. We're not under contract. We're not stuck. We can go anywhere else to work if we don't if we don't like it. We have liberty to go out and do any other project for any amount of pay that we can get. And if we don't like the terms, we don't have to take every production they offer us. Now, I'm probably going to get a lot of hate from the protesters or the fans who feel for them, and [music] I do feel for them, but I I can't be a party to the things that they're saying because that's just not true in my experience. So, I cannot stay silent and watch this studio and this beautiful platform that has made a difference for so many people get thrown under the bus and have everyone assuming that we all feel that way. With Darm Man hitting back reasonably hard and rallying some of the cast around him, the protesting actors held a makeshift press conference to respond to Dar's representation of them. While also speaking on the wider evolution of the space they knew, telling story about how a workplace had evolved from a chaotic quote punk rock space with energy and hope to a polished suit driven machine that engendered what they branded as a culture of fear. We were sometimes only contacted for a part the day before the camera rolled. We brought our own wardrobe. We did our own makeup. shot at night when the live glam office was empty. And these guys had evidently never heard of craft service or lunch. But the punk rock atmosphere alongside good people fueled joy and made unprofessional headaches admissible. In short, it was really fun. [laughter] Soon with the help of uh face and brand recognition, the videos began growing in viewership at an exponential rate and a move from Facebook to YouTube as home base solidified DAR's presence as a bonafide content creator with millions of dollars tumbling in from ad revenue. In 2019, the studio was a three-man team operating from an apartment in downtown. By 2022, there were three soundstages in Burbank with upwards of 25 standing sets, a rented home for location work, and an international workforce of 100 employees. Although their own set is [music] scrappy, it's very clear they have a more streamlined narrative that doesn't just start with the conflict, but builds onto the channel's whole existence and shows how they ended up here.

>> But instead, in that time, our scrappy band of misfit producers had turned to a cloistered group of suits. The friends who booked us became a faceless team in the Philippines. Dar popped by the studio for the occasional video cameo, but otherwise worked from home. And the doors between the stage and Reuben's office were literally locked to us. This is where things started to get uncomfortable. Familiar faces from the cast and crew began disappearing. They had a meeting with Reuben would be the explanation. They had at some point asked for something or highlighted an otherwise standardized motion picture operation that was unacceptable by the inexperienced management team. And if a crew member, they were fired. If a cast member, they were never asked back. This was common knowledge amongst the cast and crew and engendered a culture of fear.

>> As the speaker, Bordon is someone who had been at the Darmman Studios for a long time and had witnessed many of these changes taking place. So his recounting felt more sincere and trustworthy than many of man's filtered statements.

>> This is no longer an indie operation. Yet the actor's position has remained the same. The videos with our faces have brought the company tens of millions of subscribers, views, and dollars in revenue, but we have no security in our positions. Shoots are moved or cancelled without recourse. We may go months without an invitation to perform. We sign individual video contracts with the understanding that we are booked for a 5-day shoot at a fairly comfortable hourly rate. Yet, despite having turned down other work or moved important life commitments to perform in the job we love, we may ultimately receive a final schedule for a fraction of that initial offer without compensation for holding.

After providing background and context, he offers more information that serves as a response to Darmman's recollection of events, stating that the fan event left them ambushed and out of pockets. Following an uncomfortable event organized by the company in which the stars of the channel were invited to openly mingle with fans at a premiere for our film, an unpaid work event for which we were not afforded a plus one reimbursement for parking, a proper seat to watch the film, or even a free bottle of water with lacks to non-existent security. It was becoming more and more obvious that change would not come on its own. discussions between actors turned from months of backstage comments and commiseration to earnest meetings towards the end of 2022.

They state that they created a collective that would keep their identities protected and reached out to DAR, acknowledging that they set a clear deadline, but challenging the inference that this would have been an inconvenience to Dar or the company.

>> On Monday, January 16th, yes, this was a holiday, but the office and the shooting crews were all very much at work that day. A fact we knew ahead of time. I replied on Tuesday apologizing that the email was sent to my spam folder and reiterated that we would like to meet with Dar and Reuben uh to be there in attendance. And on a side note, my verbiage has been uh called to point on this uh but my mama raised me right and I was merely being polite. He confirms that he did hedge his wording letter when expressing his desires. However disputes the notion that they had been given the impression that Dar would not be attending, perhaps providing us with an explanation for why Dar did not share any exchanges outside of the request. We were told that he had a scheduling conflict and was at the last minute unable to attend. At no point were we told that Dar does not have these sort of meetings, nor that Dar was unaware of the meeting. We explained that our letter was sent to Dar specifically that we were clear in our request for his presence from the beginning and that while we appreciated the time being made, our convers conversation was supposed to be with Dar. We were asked to explain the purpose of the

meeting and to voice our concerns, but we politely pointedly declined. We explained that we had felt disrespected and left out of the conversation for some time and that our past concerns were possibly not getting through to the studios lead producer. We wanted a meeting with Dar man, the person who signs our contracts, our boss, the name on the channel.

Bordon states that after continuous changes to scheduling around the meeting, they didn't feel comfortable having a meeting without D. But they communicated this very clearly afterwards and wanted to reschedule. However, after waiting a week, they were told that there would be no meeting and that all the concerns would need to be written down, which is what led to this protest. Gordon reaffirms that no matter what the response was from social media, a simple meeting would have solved this all. Yet, Darmman Studios only chose to escalate this matter.

On Tuesday, we returned. So did Dar's bodyguard, but still no DAR. By hour two, our peaceful pro by by hour two of our peaceful protest, the Burbank Police Department arrived. It was evidently easier for the studio to phone the police on a lawful protest than to do the simple kindness of speaking with the men and women who represent this brand. We ended the second day of protesting only to hear that our colleagues Michael Vicaro and Jessica Ruth Bell received emails from the bookings team informing them that they were no longer needed on their episodes and an an evident retaliation against them for exercising their first amendment rights. But the relationship we have cultivated at Darmman Studios over years was severed in one swift motion, seemingly irreconcilable. Why the choice was made to allow things to escalate, to force the pitting of fan against channel and actor against actor instead of just having the conversation, we may never know, but that was the choice of Darmman and his team.

In spite of this, they celebrate that Darmman did meet with actors with promises that would bring about positive change, [music] even with the bittersweet note that this is without them. >> Yesterday, Darmman himself met with a small contingency of actors who have publicly professed their loyalty to the man, the company, and their current practices. Promises were made at that meeting that changes were coming. And this is from the beginning all that we wanted, all that we have asked for. >> The next 15 minutes are dedicated to a Q&A. All questions seem to be answered fairly comprehensively and demonstrate this isn't scripted sincerity. For those who were still following this situation, Darmman's line of attack really didn't work, especially when he essentially did exactly what the actors [music] were asking for in the first place. If he'd stepped up and talked about this, stating there was a misunderstanding in communications, then he may have had a more believable story. He couldn't sell the idea that these were people who wanted to be out on the streets protesting. They were looking for a problem that wasn't there. Their version of events wasn't really incompatible with his, but theirs seemed inherently more reasonable and empathetic with Dar's concession a sign of victory in their minds. So, keep an eye out for us because I guarantee you really great things are coming in the future. We thank the fans for their support and understanding in what has become an all too public discourse. Thank you all for your time and now uh we are happy to answer any questions that you may have.

However, even though it had been barely a week since this happened, most people had already stopped paying attention at all. We stood up for ourselves. You proved our point time and time again. We called you out on your BS because a lot of those responses were BS. And by the way, here's just like a little bit of inside info. Yeah, he did end up having a meeting, not with any of the actors who asked for one, but with the ones who publicly professed their loyalty to him. I'm not calling him a narcissist, but that kind of is a little bit textbook. >> The bottom line was that Darmman's main audience weren't people who were concerned with this. There were people too young, too old, or too far removed from the communities that were at the heart of such a situation. They would probably take Darmman's word if they heard it at face value. This was indicative that he was still twisting the truth slightly, selectively showing receipts that would lend support, but never leaving anything up long enough to actually have it scrutinized. It seemed very much like the darn man people knew from a decade before. And if his press releases didn't convince those interested that this was a man who was out for himself, then everything that happened behind the scenes did.

Some of the younger actors got seasoned assists when they started releasing some of their uh videos telling their stories. I know Jasine definitely did. Briani definitely did. Dylan definitely did. It's just so wrong. Like way to try and smush the little guy. Thank you for proving our point again and again and again. This is why we spoke out. >> Multiple actors claimed that they or their colleagues have been fired, received legal threats, cease and desists, and more from Darmman Studios. It's hard to say whether any of these threats actually represented any legitimate grievance. Given the size of Darmman's companies, these felt like they could easily be slap threats, which is why it's never a good idea to hand these out too freely as a large corporation. There are a couple more serious claims that I haven't managed to talk about in detail because they were on the internet for such a short amount of time. Probably the one that most people have heard about is the claim that Darmman had chased an actor across the set with a knife.

>> But he turns to the security guard. The security guard gives him a real knife and points the knife at me. And I immediately was shocked and paralyzed. Didn't know what to do. I felt so unsafe that there was a knife being pointed at me to do a Tik Tok video. And this is Dar himself. >> The point was that the actor in question was unhappy with a real knife being used. This is the sort of situation for which there may have been a perfectly reasonable explanation. But because Dar took an approach to silence people rather than actually respond to many of their claims, many of them have never been able to be evaluated on the basis of their merits. The most damning evidence that the studios were trying very hard to take these complaints offline was the fact that at least three accounts belonging to former Darmman employees who were critical of the company's practices had been banned entirely by Tik Tok by the end of the month. This suggested that outside of sending legal threats to actors, they had also used their power to threaten platforms who hosted the content that they found objectionable. [music] This wouldn't have been the first time they had turned to the institutes to resolve this given that they had previously called the police to the protest despite it being a legal assembly. More suggested that Darmman had filed copyright strikes against videos unrelated to his work. One promoting the actor's new collective, Good Works, in what seems to be quite a vindictive move to stifle their acting careers. So, the reason my account was banned um was because I got literally nine or 10 copyright claims, false copyright claims. They came from he who shall not be named. >> But what's that got to do with you? >> It was not copywritten material. It was uh it was fair use material and it was mine.

In spite of the fact that many of these people would have their accounts restored, albeit without some of the videos they had previously posted, it was clear that whether by Darm man's own doing or by the doing of those around him, censorship was the best option. And of course, continuing to upload. >> Do you know what little brats like you get? They get spanked. >> What do you think you're doing, >> Mora? This is not what it looks like. >> Cut the act. I saw everything. Now step away from my daughter.

Darmman's Chiao carried on pumping out the content just with a slightly different cast now. The stories remain the same, which seems somewhat ironic given what people knew, but only didn't occur to the target audience. >> Well, she shouldn't be treating us that way. I don't know why you never say anything. You've been here a lot longer than I have. >> Trust me, it's a lot [music] better to stay on her good side. I've seen her fire people for smaller mistakes than you've made. >> So, let her fire me. It's not like she pees us much anyway.

However, as much as he adored the life of an influencer, this drama had given him his annual dose of attention. And outside of his own socials, he mainly retreated from public engagements. His podcast channel, The Dar and J Show, would see its last video in March 2023, and his couple's channel with Laura would go dormant following a 2022 update. There was no doubt that Darm Man wanted to be an online personality. He wanted people to like and admire him. However, it was quite clear that he would gladly drop that if it meant avoiding any amplification of the drama that he found himself in, even if he wanted to be a likable guy with an inspiring story. For some reason, his reputation in each one of his business ventures seemed to meet the same end with allegations of malpractice. Was this the end of Darmman's YouTube whitewash? Well, no. Teenager kidnaps a little dog. Why would she do that? It seems like an awfully odd story. Darm man may have lost the respect of echelons of YouTube's community, but many of them never liked him anyway, especially commentators who felt that he made cringe content. Now, it was just cringe content with questionable ethics. Nevertheless, there were still sways of people who were willing to accept him for who he was. And as the heat died down, he would gingerely begin to test the waters for a return, though one that looked slightly different. Gone were the personal channels in was even more compilation content with the behind-the-scenes channel being replaced by a bonus channel. the extended cuts channel being replaced by Darmman My Shocking Story and new projects cropping up such as Darmman True Crime and Darmman Roblox.

Who's ready for Bachelorette weekend? >> Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. We got the Airbnb for the whole weekend. We got a table at the club. This is going to be the craziest weekend ever. In 2024, he sought to make his business even more detached from any personal involvement, making moves and deals in front of the camera and behind the scenes that would point to a more corporate model, appointing a new president with extensive history in the entertainment industry and signing with media juggernaut Studio 71, collaborating with more mainstream figures like Ludicrous.

>> Hold on. Hold on. Listen to me. You think people didn't laugh at me when I was trying to come up and be a rapper? And what did I do? I just kept working. You got to keep going. You can't let anyone deter you from your dreams. You understand? >> Nobody. >> Okay. I I think I've said it all now. >> We released this video and all of a sudden I get a copyright claim on it and then literally like all of my content underneath it. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. Copyright claims. >> Did any of the criticism matter when Darm Man could have ludicrous? I mean, yes, it did, but not to [music] Dar. If the drama taught him anything, even if he gave a half-ass response that was widely rebuked by the community, the consumers didn't care. The less he spent trying to win people over, the more he could remove himself from the moral compass of a community, and the more he could redefine his story once more.

>> What's up? Mom said you wanted to talk to me or something. Yeah, but first here, take one of these poppies and put them on this tombstone. >> What? >> No. No. Okay, I don't want to. Just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me so that I can go back to playing my game. >> The year is 2025 and Darm Man is still uploading like there's no tomorrow. The content is definitely what one would describe as upload it. However, Darmman is back on media duty, making lots of press appearances and mingling with all sorts of YouTube socialites, living his best life, as one would say. He's constantly being asked how he came up with such thoughtful yet dynamic content. To see these interviewers musing over the messaging of the Darm Man video is always amusing because they're always trying to find a way to describe it that isn't negative but always ends up missing the point because they want to add some form of meaning to these videos. I don't really think Darm Man knows what the big secrets are. And even if he did know any secrets, why on earth would he share them? There's no real wisdom to be imparted. But they use his name. he receives more publicity, more coverage, which builds his reputation.

>> Yeah, I I've watched many of the videos. Um, they're almost like Asop's fables. They're they're scripted and they, you know, you know, like good wins out in the end. One of them was the gold digger who dumps her boyfriend. She doesn't have patience for him while he's building this brand. She feels bad about it five years later when she's kind of down on her luck and realizes that he's moved on. I mean, there's no subtlety to these things. People really do want that feel-good message, I guess. and and where are they most popular? >> At the heart of it was a man who told a story that if you just work hard enough and never give up, your dreams will come true. It's a very warm message that will certainly tug on the heartstrings of certain viewers, but the truth is much more clinical. So, you know, one thing I decided early on that really helped um really helped establish my vision is that the only content that I'm going to create is content that matters, that makes a positive impact in people's lives. So, the saying that we've got at Darmman Studios is we're not just telling stories, we're changing lives.

>> Darmman's content has never brought any great depth to YouTube or Facebook or Tik Tok or wherever it was posted. Darmman did tap into having characters who played everything as simple and straight as they could. It made it easy to understand and thus interact with. Whether that's a like, a share, or a comment. And when he recognized this, he did what a businessman would do and applied one of the most effective YouTube formulas in recent history. When I started Darmman Studios, I had no intention of creating a business. I had no idea that this would turn into a studio that employs over 200 people. And now we have over 125,000 square ft of space.

>> The one formula that Darmman, like many of YouTube's other largest creators, has employed is to spend more to make more. This doesn't always work for channels, as our good friends over at Watcher found out. But for Darm Man, the content is impersonal enough for people not to be attached by any one individual or asset that might change. So, anything can be moved around with relative ease. If there were individuals that people really, really, really cared about, the 2023 protest would have done more damage to Darm Man's following. They didn't. Because Darm Man makes all his content as disposable as it is digestible. And because he's removed himself from the process even more, he doesn't have to worry about the fact that it might receive from individuals who don't appreciate his content. Any heat from a couple years before by now has practically evaporated. He was on Forb's top creator of 2025 only behind Mr. Beast. His studio came to an agreement with Samsung to have a dedicated Darmman channel, and he continued to team up with high-profile media figures, all of which seem to suggest greater plans for the man at the center of this. But YouTubers over here are building real studios. They're creating featurelength content, [music] TV length episodes. They're putting out episodes every single week. They're hiring dozens of people at a time where Hollywood is laying off [music] lots of people.

>> So, what next for Darmman? Hollywood? Well, yes. Apparently, in an article from August, CEO Shan Atkins told reporters they were planning on expanding content in every direction, including ventures into new genres like horror, which I'm certainly interested to see what that would be like. They also talk about content more personalized to each of their audiences, ranging from the mum friendly Facebook videos to the teenagers on Tik Tok. Although they said that many of these ideas would be implemented before the year is out, there hasn't been a great deviation from the content as of right now. They did make another two videos with SS Snipolf, so it's clear they still deeply care about quality.

>> Me and Digital were in LA for a charity event, and we reached out to Jackson to collab, and when he told us what was going on, we wanted to stop by and see how we could help. >> Wow, that's the second person Essa Sniper surprised at their house. >> How old would your daughter be by now? She'd be 27. Why? I'm 27. The videos have slowly been increasing in length, not quite to the length of say one of my videos, but it's clear they're trying to provide more substance to their actual stories, at least on YouTube. There are more actual narratives that possessed character and payoff. These aren't just merely fables anymore, which some people might like, but I don't know. Whether this works in the context of a Darmman video is debatable. Videos of this length are a little harder to share, and the views don't immediately reflect the increased production budget that is probably being sunk into these kinds of videos. As much as I can understand the goal of personalizing the appeal on each platform, I feel that what made the video so consistent in their performance was the close relationship between each of the platforms and I do wonder whether Darmman can make an effective jump into the next territory or if they're approaching their limit when it comes to the reach of their content. Yet maybe it's part of a longerterm strategy at play. Maybe they're warming themselves up to something bigger.

As for Darmman, his connection to the namesake studio is secondary to the presence he wants to [music] build on a separate platform. With the reputation of a media mogul beckoning, he doesn't need to be at the end of each video explaining the moral of the story. As long as he can be at the convention explaining to people exactly how he did it. >> You know, as I finally got to a more successful place in my life, um all I could think about is other people that were going through similar hard times. And so I started creating content simply because I wanted to be a voice of inspiration to help people know that whatever your toughest day is, you can get through that and there's lots of things that you know we should all be hopeful and inspired for.

>> And with that he has again told a new story. Starting from 2014 with practically nothing to his name, Darmman grafted to build not one but two successful empires in business and now stands on the precipice of a new media revolution as one of the most influential creators of our generation. In a way, you could argue that his videos were a self-fulfilling prophecy that a man, when nobody else believed in him, worked hard, turned his life around, and proved the naysayers wrong as he racked up millions of views through sheer belief and hard work. It sounds like his Grant Cardone video. Really, it's the perfect Darm Man video. But that's the problem. [music] It's just a video.

>> All right. Quiet on the set. >> Action. >> It's very easy to make fun of a dumb man upload. >> Didn't I specifically tell you I was handling the finances? >> But it's my job to [music] help the school. It's why I'm here. >> You're here to do what I say. And I'm not going to remind you again. You're here to do what I say. That sounds like something that was said like how many years ago? Like 50, 60 years ago. That is insane.

>> Everything is written in a way that makes it extremely straightforward to Lampoon, especially from the cynical, jaded creator perspective. I think that's what has made it so perpetually entertaining to critics. I know that it feels like I'm setting up his videos for some sort of defense, but I will be doing no such thing. I think he has more than enough defenders. No, my point is that these criticisms actually pale in comparison to the questionable undercurrens of Darm Man's story lines and resolutions.

>> But I doubt anyone would want to go to prom with me. That's where you're wrong. But you see, >> hey, Faith. >> No, Darmian. In interviews and even his own videos, he's often said that the inspiration for his self-titled channel was his own experiences of being at rock bottom and needing inspirational messages. I'm not sure if it's more confusing or illuminating, therefore that Darmman content is implied to be a reflection of Darmman's own philosophy. Because at the core of these videos is a thesis completely detached from the reality of the world and often rooted in their own prejudices. Take Darmman's most watched video, [music] kids make fun of boy with autism. They instantly regret it. One of his rose period offerings clearly. Here we witness a series of baffling [music] events that begin with the said autistic kid, Samuel, arriving at school and spotting who the audience assumes to be his friend.

>> Hey, Kyle. Hey, Kyle. >> Isn't that the autistic kid that just transferred here? >> Are you friends with him or something? >> No. Why' I be friends with a loser like that? >> They act like the autism label is a black mark of sorts. And shortly after, the kid comes over and interrupts their chess game. Telling this kid he knows how to help him escape from a checkmate scenario support that he rejects. Probably because it's his game. >> I can help you get out of it. >> Look, I don't need any help from some autistic kid. All right. >> Now, kudos to whichever staffer set up an actual checkmate here. I hope they had fun with that. Nevertheless, Samuel then reminds him that he was right all along, which inevitably annoys Carl, who's just lost a chess game and therefore has an anti- autism outburst. >> But how? >> I told you that was going to happen. >> Just stop. You're not smart enough to understand how chess works. Now, kid lost.

>> This formula of the autistic kid possessing the knowledge to solve problems everyone in their circle fails to do repeats itself through this mathematics class. in spite of the student from the opposing team forgetting that when you square root a number, it'll give you both a positive and negative value. But there we go. This then escalates at the 3v3 basketball game when Carl again doesn't involve Samuel, even when he's a player down, which is terminal levels of hater behavior. When they lose and he is reminded of his choices, he has another outburst which attracts the attention of a teacher. >> But I'm a nobody. You're just an autistic kid who will never be able to do the things normal kids can. So why don't you just get out of here? Special needs Sam Kyle. >> She reprimands them before the mother comes in and reveals Samuel's relation to Darth Brer over here. >> How could you do that? >> To your own brother? >> Brother. >> Brother. >> I'm so disappointed in you. What is that? My fault he is autistic and has a disability. At this point, the mother demands that Carl include Samuel in all activities from here on out, which Carl eventually agrees to, and suddenly they start winning everything, eventually culminating in the basketball game where Samuel shoots the winning hoop. It teaches us the lesson that we shouldn't ever assume that someone is incapable just because of a label. A necessary message in a way, but is this the way to convey that message?

>> YOU MADE IT. YOU DID IT. >> [screaming] >> The lack of reality isn't just a source of entertainment for countless individuals, but a core issue in actually relaying these life lessons accurately. Carl's prejudice in involving his brother is initially implied to be some form of denial or insecurity. But by the end of the video, it's played like he genuinely believes his brother is incapable because of his autism. A very difficult angle to sell when they already live together. But the only one that can feasibly work within the solution that they just start winning everything and live happily ever after. It misses the point of a lot of prejudice even in younger people. It often doesn't come from the belief that individuals aren't capable. It comes from the affforementioned notions of denial and insecurity. Certain individuals feel threatened by perceived outsiders with competing or even superior abilities because it can steal attention away from the clique. So, it's easier to other them and make them feel ostracized. [music] A chess game is a great example of this because it implies that Carl would be perfectly happy receiving advice in front of his friends and feeling victorious when his brother has done the work. In real life, many people would resent that because the implication is that they couldn't do it on their own. If you are the narcissistic bully watching this video, the message is that autistic people might make you look stupid. And then we have to talk about the framing that is often overlooked. It's good that the kid turned out to be very capable, but what if he hadn't been? Would that have been reason to exclude him? What happens when he does exactly what everyone else does and hes when he answers a question wrong? He makes a blunder in chess or misses the hoop in basketball. The one statement that should have been included here that isn't is ability shouldn't really matter that much in this environment. Everyone has to start somewhere. And what happens when an autistic person watches this and believes that the reason they may not be popular comes down to how many hoops you can shoot and how many quadratic equations you can solve? [music] You disturb someone's chess game to dial them out to play and see how well it's received. Maybe that's not what you're trying to say, but that's what happens when you put out a script that is barely a few minutes long and doesn't explore the nuances of social dynamics in these environments, especially to an audience who may take these themes more literally.

>> Autism is not a disability. It's just a different ability. >> Now, I'll be the first to say that there are plenty of worse depictions of autistic people in the media. It's a pretty low bar dar man had to clear. Yet, I think that it's about as helpful because through its framing, it fundamentally fails at addressing any cohort of its audience in a way that might actually be transformative to their worldview. And unfortunately, this is a problem endemic to nearly all Darm Man content. So if you can get them to relate to a part of their own life that they've experienced even indirectly, then you can help drive that emotion because they can remember something that they've experienced. And it could even be something that happened during their childhood. It could be something that they saw. It could be something that they heard. But if you can recreate that experience for them, that's what will move them emotionally. One of the most effective ways that Darmman has sold his brand is by making people across countless demographics from children up to old age pensioners believe that the content is for them. Either they see themselves in the characters or they share it to someone else so they can be lectured on how they behave. To cast a net so wide means to cast it very thin as well. And just as the video on autism can be taken apart on the basis that it's simply not reflective of human nature, many of these videos follow the same theme. I like fables. I think there is genuine value in the messages that they can share, especially on a philosophical basis. If Darmman's videos followed the formula of such fables, he'd have ran out of content years ago. The problem is that so much of this is designed to keep the message specific that it loses all its practical value. Many of the videos are undone by the very simple issue of having a perfect character that people will see themselves in or be drawn towards more than any other character. But even in the videos where that may not be the case, there's still a lack of actual message within there that nobody who might actually learn something from this will really listen to. Most of the time, the conflict is between someone good and someone bad, and the script's desperation to make sure people know who's who makes them more caricatures than actual people. If you can relate to anything that the protagonist goes through or actually does, you're made to feel good because the script always validates and justifies their behavior. You see that in the revenge fantasies where a well- behaved underdog finally snaps and decides to torment the people who've wronged them, even if the techniques are morally dubious. You see this in the sadistic parent fantasies where a child lies about something or misbehaves and then their parents take them on a massive ride to teach them a lesson. It could land them in hospital or a military prison or at a faked Darm man meetup. This is not good parenting, but it's a fun thought for a belleaguered parent. A fun video to threaten the critters with.

>> What's all this? >> Well, today's your lucky day because you get to be in charge. >> What are you talking about? >> No more rules for the next 24 hours. For example, kid regrets being in charge of house. The video barely makes the message about the actual power being the problem more just the fact that he ate too much junk food and stayed up late missing the Darmman meetup. The ultimate consequence. >> WWDMD. >> What' you say? >> Oh, it's something I saw on a flyer. It It means, "What would Darmman do?"

>> Throughout the video, the protagonist of this story, a mother who's always right, asks a simple question, "What would Darm Man do?" It's a strange but revealing question to ask in a video where the character basically does nothing in a speculative attempt to teach her son a lesson. Yet, it's a perfect description for the universe that Darmman tries to create. One where the selected protagonist seems to come out on top no matter what actually happens. In a Darmman video, you could honestly do absolutely nothing if someone fights you and somehow it will all turn around by the end. Because of this, the character development antagonistic individuals often experience doesn't really feel particularly authentic or understood, especially when the retribution they face doesn't even seem particularly related to their misdeeds. And on my team, like I said earlier, gay cannot play.

>> When the coach kicks gay athlete off team, lives to regret it. He only regrets it because the athlete ends up scoring against him before being offered a place at UCLA. PE teacher fat shames a student. He lives to regret it. The student only garners the respect of everyone else when he performs at a high level. There's no act or regret in the episode. The coach, in fact, doesn't even apologize for being so derisory and judgmental, completely abandoning his responsibility as a teacher. I wanted to say how proud I am of you. You really gave [music] it everything you had. >> That means a lot. Thank you, coach. But I still don't understand. How did you go from not being able to do a single push-up to 22? Well, a wise man once told me, "You can do anything you want as long as you work hard and believe in yourself." [music]

>> In kids laugh at poor boys backpack, they live to regret it. Instead of accepting that actually Pokémon is an acceptable theme for a backpack, that his clothes are perfectly fine and that they shouldn't be making fun of anyone for their financial troubles. They decide to band together and help this kid by buying him the coolest merch on the block. Darm man merch. >> I got you a little something. Seriously, a new diamond hoodie? What? And here are the Jordans [music] you wanted? >> Really? This is for me? >> I tried my best guessing your size, but if they don't fit, we can always exchange them. >> Also, I got you in a backpack. I was going to wear it, but you needed more than I did. >> I mean, besides this being some Jake Paul level merch plugging, you begin to see what is happening here. Despite Darmman's videos having messages that seem directed at people who may behave out of line, they're fundamentally catered to the indulgences of individuals who might see themselves in the protagonist shoots. A real message designed to actually reach people who may be acting out of blind would show the actual consequences of their effect on the person. These just take advantage of those dreams that people have of acceptance and victory without acknowledging that they don't come easy. And the people who you want to learn from these sort of themes are never going to be the ones to learn. I could have picked hundreds of worse videos, by the way, videos which even the fans disliked. They would all prove the exact same point when you accidentally view some questionable morals through your black and white lens. The messaging falls apart very, very quickly. Such as a wife staging a traumatizing kidnapping on her husband to teach him a lesson about road rage.

>> I told you I'll never drive like that again. I told you. >> Would you mind repeating that for me? >> Huh? What's going on? >> You see, I figured the only way for you to learn your lesson was to show you what could happen. >> The problem is what I said earlier, that a large majority of people, even shitty ones, envision themselves as the positive character in these scenarios. So they're not going to be reached by the message of ignorance because most people don't want to admit their own ignorance. It creates a dichotomy where you think that this is something to share to all the people who've wronged you. But really this is the content that is shared to people exactly like you. And the people who wronged you will think exactly the same thing. Man knows that by appealing to the hazy nostalgia soaked memories or the childhood fantasies, he's giving people exactly what they want, but not what they need.

>> And so I told her, >> "You're fired. >> [laughter] >> By making the protagonist so distinct from the antagonist in their depictions, often to the point of absurdity, Dar denies them the quality that makes them human. He denies the exchanges that would make these messages believable and even reachable. And through a simple moral action, practical consequence dichotomy feeds into fantastical thinking that will seldom realize itself. If Dar actually believed this himself, surely he would be the first to recognize its fallacy. But does he? Even though the stories told on Dar's channel are beyond far-fetched in many ways, they do reflect how Darth regularly tells the story of his own rise, fall, and reemergence. I'm aware that I'm oversimplifying a little, but that's the crux of much of his narrative. He used to live a life of self-indulgent luxury, chasing the adrenaline rush that being loved would bring him. His shyness and lack of respect for the system cost him everything. And since then he has learned the lessons of operating above board and respecting those around him for which he has been generously rewarded. Now the narrative of growth isn't new and if he has genuinely grown as a person he shouldn't lie about it. Nevertheless, I think what is interesting is simultaneously the great change he has undergone and the significant lack of change on show.

Hey David, what are you doing? >> I'm just tying my shoe. >> All right, now say it in your YouTube voice. >> What's up guys? Today I'm going to be breaking the record for tying my shoe in the fastest way possible. Yo, Tobert, what's going on? >> I'm just playing some pickle ball. >> Say it in your YouTube voice. >> Today I'm playing pickle ball with all my friends. >> Matt and Rebecca, what are you guys doing? >> We're going up for pickle ball. >> Say it in your YouTube voice. >> Hey guys, right now we are here at a pickle ball court and we're warming up to play the world's biggest pickle ball game. It's true he doesn't just flaunt his lush life anymore, but he still uses social media very heavily to present a whitewash perspective. Utilizing his platform to show off his network, his output, and his experience. Instead of wanting to be perceived as a man who's living the most luxurious life, he now wants to be perceived as this social media guru, which is obviously his entitlement, but it's just another advertising campaign. He's still trying to sell something. Obviously, it's better to build a social media following by performing good deeds as opposed to bad ones. But I don't think there's really too much difference here, which is also what makes the narrative of transformation rather forced. This is like if finding Jesus was finding YouTube. People regularly credit religion for causing rapid shifts in behavior. I think Darmman views his post 30-year-old life as that massive turning point where he changed everything and turned his life around. But when you look at his actual track record, it's no less free from controversy. It's no less troubled and complicated. If Darm man had really transformed this perspective, then why did he end up in the exact same place he was pretending to be all those years ago?

>> You know what's ironic about this whole thing is so I I spent a lot of my life just giving up on stuff too soon, you know? Um, and I think we live in a society today where everybody wants like fast success and we're constantly inundated by people seeing people living well on social media and we want to get there fast. We want to be that success story. So, I know a lot of like young men especially like suffer from that, right, of like trying to find the quickest pathway to success versus building something um that is sustainable for the long run. Nobody's career is without criticism, and I can empathize that people may judge you more harshly on the basis of your background when you're trying to pull yourself out of a hole. You will find few more fervent advocates for rehabilitative justice than myself. All the same, to sanitize the narrative in a way where you realize you did something wrong, came around, changed your ways, and have since acrewed a pretty flawless record other than working too hard is misleading and cut straight from a Darmman video. If you own your failings before 2014, you have to own your failings after as well. There's a criticism surrounding the makeup brand, the security breaches, the marketing design to take advantage of fans inexperienced with the makeup industry. Then you have the channel, the questionable messages of the content, the undeserving moral gravitas you place on sharing these videos, the integration of merch plugging into the plot lines. When you're targeting an audience with this kind of stuff, especially people who may see themselves in impoverished and vulnerable characters, there's always criticism to be delivered. That all dwarfs in comparison though to the elephant in the room which concerned the treatment of people who had loyally worked for your business for years and how you responded to them when they attempted to open up a dialogue with you. Friction and fallouts in workplaces [music] of this size are inevitable. There's no way that everyone is ever going to be happy. Some people simply won't see a problem. Some people will leave and some people will attempt to fix it. But as present long-standing workers, they wanted a conversation with you.

Hey, Colin. What are you protesting? >> I just wanted to have a conversation with my boss. >> You don't have to agree with their points or even enact the changes that people request. You just have to listen and communicate your reasoning. But that's not what followed. How Darmman attacked and depicted frustrated actors to his followers in the coming weeks was something else. stating that they had crossed the line, so he wasn't open to talking with them, all while issuing legal threats, censoring them online, and leveraging the power of a large company over them in exchange for their silence, relying on loyalist actors to make his points for him. Even if Darmman wasn't carrying this out personally, this was exactly what the actors were talking about when they mentioned a culture of fear. If Darmman felt bad about losing his career prospects, how does he think actors who worked with him for years felt about having their social media attacked by his legal team? These videos were never going to take down your business. They were barely going to make a dent. You had already moved into a $15 million mansion. So, I think you would be all right regardless. But to do exactly what they asked in the end, which was to give a meeting to actors to [music] discuss how to improve conditions, all while still greenlighting a campaign to drive any critics off social media platforms is pretty deplorable just out of how unnecessary it truly was. This is a hundred times worse than just ignoring them.

>> Try and smush the little guy. Thank you for proving our point again and again and again. This is why we spoke out. >> Some people would make the rational assumption that this is pretty against the messaging of many Darmman videos. In a way, I suppose it is. But from Darmman's perspective, [music] this is completely in line with the black and white thinking often demonstrated in these uploads. And the perpendicular relationship between actions and consequences. We may see this as a person not listening to his contractors, but Darm Man can see it as innocent multi-millionaire spreading love is smeared by angry employees. In this story, he's the protagonist. He's the person who needs to keep spreading the love. He's the person who has the moral right of way. And therefore, any consequence that befalls those unhappy individuals who spoke out was just a result of their own actions, no matter how disproportionate. Yet, it's important to remember what those actors said themselves.

>> I don't think this man is evil. I think he's become complacent in a system that needs to be addressed because it is incredibly underdeveloped and it is where our industry is headed. >> Where Darm Man employed the most simplistic misguided aspect of his content, the actors utilized the most respectful ideas found within them. This notion that anyone can be changed with education and experience to then be even faced with the treatment of past months. Darmman wasn't this cartoonish YouTuber. He was just a person too entangled in his own ego and corporate mentality to realize what he was doing wrong. Darm man has constantly portrayed his story [music] as an inverted art where his trajectory is a sign of the lessons he's learned. But really, it's just a messy line that was always headed in the same direction, [music] such as most of our lives. That's not what people want to hear, but isn't it what they need to hear?

I've never been up here. >> This is Michael Lewis. He is the author of biographical non-fiction to the film bust, most notably The Blind Side, Moneyball, and The Big Short, all of which were eventually adapted into award-winning movies. However, he had his start at the end of the 1980s with McLars Poker, an experience-based expose on Wall Street is now often used as a how-to guide by aspiring bastards. Through the eyes of many, he is the prototype of graph-based success, and it would be easy to coddle followers with a narrative that he was day in and day out putting everything on the line. But in a speech at Princeton University, he had some words of wisdom for those graduating. The book I wrote was called Liars Poker. It sold a million copies. I was 28 years old. I had a career, a little fame, a small fortune, and a new life narrative. All of a sudden, people were telling me I was a born writer. This was absurd. Even I could see that there was another more true narrative. with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to the Solomon Brothers Lady? Of of landing inside the best Wall Street firm to write the story of the age of landing in the seat with the best view of the business. Of having parents who didn't disinherent me, but instead sighed and said, "Do it if you must." Of having had that sense of must kindled inside of me by a professor of art history at Princeton. of having been let into Princeton in the first place. My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People real don't like to hear success explained away as luck, especially successful people. As they age and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. It's a stark reminder that amongst all the stories of struggle and overcoming that there is the head start that we take for granted. This doesn't negate the struggle that a person might encounter in their lives, but it does serve as

A healthy antidote to the stories that speak to success in such a two-dimensional fashion. The business of self-help idols online is teeming. But the culture as a whole has oriented itself towards that as well, especially in the YouTube space where relatability is baked into the fabric of people's favorite creators. We want them all to have the story about how they were just like us once. It's inspiring. Sure.

But this simple expectation allows for chameleons who arrived at YouTube to blend in with their own anecdotes. Not to express themselves, but to sell an identity to an audience who will assume good faith and eat up what is a dollar store American dream. My parents came into this country um gosh what, like 45 years ago. Uh the traditional American dream type story that you hear, you know, like they came uh to this country with $7 in their pocket. I used to say $8. My mom would get mad and she'd be like, "No, why do you say $8? It was $7." Um, and we had to stretch a dollar a long way.

Both Darmman's videos and Darmman himself often speak to that [music] two-dimensional perspective. You can see it in his little venture into biographical true story content. But even when other quote role models turn up and deliver some sort of simplistic monologue, they don't actually tell us the corners that may have been cut, the small benefits that others may not have been able to afford or even be aware of. Darmman on one hand is often appealed to the person he is today to speak to the change he underwent but he also speaks a lot to the past particularly his background when he was down bad how he was so close to having nothing to him was moving back with his parents [music] parents who by his own narrative has struggled with poverty throughout their life who'd arrived America with $7 in their pocket [music] who had to share a cramped space with other families.

"My earliest memories are growing up in an apartment where there was three other families living in a one-bedroom apartment like we didn't have enough like for instance since like plates for everyone to be able to eat at the same time. So I remember waiting around for others to finish their food so I could have a plate to actually get food. Um even though you know we didn't have much um I saw how hard my parents were working cuz they had that hustle mentality. And so my parents [snorts] were both working at the bank. So my dad found out from a friend who was driving a taxi at the time that you can make a decent living driving a taxi. So all day he would work at the bank, all night he would work driving a taxi. He'd literally not sleep or he'd sleep like in the taxi cab to try to get small naps in between. So I just saw how hard they worked. And slow by slow, my dad was eventually able to own his first car. His first car, our family car was a taxi cab. So everywhere I went, uh, I would be driven in a taxi cab."

When you invoke your family like that, you're speaking to persistence, of course, but you're also speaking to the fact that they overcame a struggle inflicted on them that spoke to your struggle as well. But by the time that Darm man had pleaded no contest in his little court case, we know that his family owned their fair share of businesses. We know that they had enough money to make political donations and deal with their own lawsuits, even those from unhappy employees. They were reported as Oakland's largest taxi company by the time man was 12 years of age. Hell, on their own website, it says they were founded in 1982, 2 years before man was even born. And they were hiring drivers from 1986 at the latest. [music] Reports say that his parents built the company from scratch. So, we can assume they didn't just buy it out. So, from this information, we can only assume that Darmman has unbelievable levels of recall from its infancy.

But it also goes deeper than that when you sell a story that is at least omitting certain details when you want to appeal to that present as well, when you want to talk to the positive character. In September 2021, both of Darmman's parents were hit with a nearly $4 million fine for allowing their properties to fall into dangerous states of disrepair, with another statement revealing that most of the tenants at these properties were low-income immigrants, many of whom did not speak English. Maybe those tenants should have respected the hustle more.

"Don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you've had success, you've also had luck. And with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt. And not just to your gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky."

The kind of stories that Darm Man tells are only truly inspiring if you're using your newfound wealth for some sort of perceived benefits. That debt [music] to the unlucky. But by most legal accounts, his parents used it to subject people to the exact same struggle that Darmman speaks to going through. The present struggle of another family is co-opted by Darmman while that family is still suffering. I'm not attacking the dude because I think that what his parents do is necessarily a reflection on him. I don't. He can forge his own path. But I think this kind of evangelization often does speak to the truth that many of YouTube's largest creators won't indulge. The sanitization isn't just of content, but of a personality. An individual who wants not just to be a guy who can make videos like people did when YouTube started. They need their own identity as well, because that of a person who came from a wealthy family with a string of lucha businesses that they were able to use as stepping stones to the big time isn't compelling enough in Dar's own mind. He's probably right to think that, but I posit it's probably worse to admit the privileges that benefited you when talking to people who might not necessarily have them. to people who may think that this is what it takes to make it in the world when they come from places where there's a lot more to lose.

I like to work hard and I'd like the notion of it being rewarded. You know that we miss 100% of the shots we don't take mentality. I'm all about that. But the problem with success stories is they're often the only ones we hear. And in a world of idols who are marketed to inspire and sell their success stories, they're selling themselves above anything else. Darmman's videos speak to the notion that virtues are rewarded. But Darmman's life doesn't really reflect that. It just speaks to the fact that rubbing shoulders with enough people will eventually pay off and that if you enter any space with pre-existing wealth to invest, you often have some form of advantage over those who don't. It doesn't exclude anyone from working their way up the ladder, but it certainly makes the rungs easier for some to hold on to, especially if it's a position where you can knock a few others down. Although Darmman has decided not to merely be a deadbeat son waiting on his inheritance, which is worth something, I suppose, it doesn't change the fact that he was in a position to take risks that many weren't. The ability of Darmman to acrew this large empire wasn't because this was a man who was prepared to fail. It was because this was a man who was allowed to fail. When he finally succeeded, he spoke about everything he did differently this time. But in reality, did he did he repay that good fortune that was granted him?

You are the lucky few. Lucky in your parents, lucky in your country. Lucky that a place like Princeton exists that can take in lucky people, introduce them to other lucky people, and increase their chances of becoming even luckier. Lucky that you live in the on in the richest society the world has ever seen. In a time when no one actually expects you to sacrifice your interest to anything, all of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time, you'll find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may deserve the extra cookie, but you will be happier and you will be better off if you at least pretend that you don't. Or was business just a trial and error formula which would eventually be optimized with the resources available? Success that would be achieved no matter the cost to others. One story works better within the world of Darm Man and the story he sells online, but one story seems more in keeping with what we've come to know. I suggest we wrap that story up now.

"Please give us the pay increase that we deserve."

"Shouldn't you all be in a classroom teaching?"

"Well, that's what we want to do, but we're barely surviving with how little we make."

"And a lot of [music] our paycheck goes towards buying school supplies for our students. We hardly even have enough to buy groceries."

"Look, [music] it is not my fault if you are irresponsible with your money. Okay, I look I I'm sorry. I just don't have time for this right now. Come on, let's go."

Part of the issue in addressing Darmman's reality is finding a story that is actually tangible, one that isn't completely filtered for an audience. Even before 2014, he was constantly trying to sell people an idea of him rather than him. In 2024, he sat down with podcaster Guy Raz for an episode of How I Built This. Reading the description doesn't instill great amounts of hope in you, but when Darmman begins to recount his past and present, unlike other podcasts, it's not just this vague framing of a man who was trying to cut a few corners. Here, there's a lot more admission of guilt and information that contextualizes his actions. At this point, something begins to happen that hasn't really happened before. He starts to make sense.

"So, I decided to take on multiple renovation projects at the same time. And what I didn't expect was how long of a time it would take for the city to issue these grant reimbursements. It turned out the money could take anywhere from 1 or 2 years to come in after all the work was completed and all the money was paid."

Hearing this, you begin to wonder why this isn't what he said before. Why do you need to act like he actually didn't really do anything that wrong and he was just being pursued for love of the game?

"I took on too many projects at once that I couldn't afford. So that's when I made a huge mistake that would come back to haunt me. I decided to take some shortcuts on my grant application. I changed the dates on my paperwork to make it seem like the projects had been completed and contractors had been paid sooner than they were in order to start the reimbursement process."

"Faster."

"Faster. So, I was still running my different businesses, but my focus wasn't fully there. So, that started going downhill. So, I went in front of a judge and the judge said if I agreed to pleading no contest, paying a $40,000 fine and doing probation, I could have my case completely expuned at the end of probation as long as I didn't mess up again and there'd be no jail time. So, given the circumstances, I decided to agree."

Obviously, this doesn't cover the depth of the allegations regarding his behavior back in the day alongside his questionable lobbying practices, but it also begins to make sense of that behavior in a world where he was trying to give himself the upper hand. There are a lot of these conversations which explore his decision-making process throughout the podcast, and you begin to wonder whether you might see some reflection when the topic of his debacle with his cast members inevitably comes up. And yet.

"You know how stressful it is when you start removing yourself from any sort of decisions. But fortunately I had Laura and Ruben, the two people that were there from the very beginning to step up to the plate. Laura took over all of human resources and finance and Reuben took over all of production and operations. But the craziest thing happened. [music] While the first half of 2023 the business really slowed down, the second half of 2023 the studio grew faster than ever."

The start of 2023 was not even notable enough to mention for him. The people who had been a building block of Darmman's fortune empire were not even a chapter in his story. For them, they were cutting off one of their most recognizable roles to try and see change. They were putting everything on the line. For Da, they weren't equal anymore, and he didn't have to hear from them. HR would sort them out. Maybe there's a point about corporate alienation to be made here. How Dar put so much distance between himself and his actors that because they stopped existing to him, their problem stopped mattering to him as well.

However, I think there's one more point about Darmman videos that can be made and it's possibly the one that is the most obvious but also the most objectionable. In Darmman videos, the person who is always in the wrong is always shown in one way or the other that they were [music] wrong. If you reverse engineer this logic, it's the people who lose who are the people who are wrong. When Darmman was wrong, he lost. Now he's winning. He must be right. That old quote that people keep quoting back to him about what's in the dark always comes to light and so on. This constituted the message that Darmman uses to attach people to a video, to his channel, to the man himself. When you control the themes of your content to control your audience, you control how they perceive you. And if they want to hold on to those themes of righteousness, they'll hold on to you tighter, no matter the logical argument that might say otherwise. It's pretty obvious that fables are not really reflective of the world we live in. Slow and steady doesn't always win the race, but at least fables are used to teach us merits and values. Darmman, on the other hand, acts as his own antidote. A lot of people would look at the super massive wealth he's acquired as immorality itself. But even discounting that, his behavior doesn't speak to the growth he claims. A reminder of the story that he hasn't told on his channel. A reminder that Dar man, for all his infinite wisdom, has often been the villain of his own story, regardless of whether he came out on top or not.

"Someone came to me and said, 'Dar, I don't think you're ever going to be able to recover from all these failures that you've had in life, and that's always going to follow you around. So, I think you should change your name.' And I said, 'I I should change my name.' I decided, cuz I was seriously considering it, that not only was I not going to change my name, that I was actually going to build my whole company off of my name. And a few years later, here we are with over 60 billion views."

But Darmman's life has to be a Darmman video, too. It has to be this tale of how he [music] came back from nothing. How he was ready to give up at every point and somehow turned it all around. The bad choices he's made are only necessary to acknowledge when Darmman views it as tangential to the person he's become today. But [music] bad choices are always relevant, and if we don't view them as such at the time, we will continue to make them. Life is just one battle after another, and a lot of the time, the intent of your actions doesn't correlate with the exact outcome. There's a world of checks and balances, but people slip through the net. And on a regular basis, very bad people end up in very powerful positions. They don't have any comic comeuppants that shows that they were wrong all along. And even if they do, they may not necessarily learn anything from it. We've all been the bad guy in a Darmman video at points in our lives, been a victim of our own ignorance, prejudice, vitriol, probably worse. Maybe sometimes we've learned a lesson or been taught something in the moment. But a lot of the time, maturity and perspective are values that don't occur overnight, nor through an individual defining experience. They take time and they take acknowledgement that something is wrong with us. The one thing that Darmman had that many of the characters in his morality plays didn't is time. Did he ever possess that acknowledgement, though?

"I'm sorry I scared you guys, but I just wanted you to see that the message matters more than the messenger."

I don't know. As I don't know, Darm man. Ultimately, the truth lies with him. But the more of the truth he knows, the more he has lied. Not just to his audience, but to the outlet, to the podcasters, maybe even to himself. He knows what we want. A story to tell, one to share, one for people to attach themselves to. One that makes people feel like they could be in his shoes. As long as Darm continues to be successful, people will have that story of a second generation immigrant from a hardworking family who built it up and lost it all. The broke dropout who had to grind back from nothing to build an empire. That shares love and positivity rather than the ruthless entrepreneur who possessed 200,000 shares in a company. Came from a politically influential family of business owners who were wealthy enough to be fined nearly $4 million and remain fluid. [music] Who possess bountiful industry connections that would propel his career forward no matter how he behaved. If people attach themselves to Darmman's videos, it's inevitable that they will attach themselves to Darm Man no matter what the truth is. After all, the story is the same. But what do any of us know? Only time will tell whether Darm Man will receive the storybook ending that he's written for himself or the one that he'd write for his character.

"Please remember, we're not just telling stories, we're changing lives. And when you share my videos, you're helping to change lives, [music] too. I appreciate you, and I'll see you in the next video."

"All right, guys. That was the video. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you found something of value in it. Normally, there is something in there at least. Um, obviously with uh Christmas being around now, hopefully you're having a good break from whatever you're doing, but if you're not, um, I salute you. Hopefully you'll be able to take a breather soon. I want to give big thanks to the editors as always. Credits will be in the description. If you like their work, go check them out. They're all very talented people. [music] I want to give a big thanks to my patrons, Siri, um, for the wonderful $50 support. I really appreciate you. Um, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. Big thanks to Vic Grimes [music] who worked tirelessly on finishing and polishing up this video. I really appreciate it. And a big thanks to whoever does the thumbnail. Um, their credit will be here hopefully very soon, but actually we don't know who's doing it yet, so we'll find that out. Um, and finally, a big thanks to ODU for their third [music] sponsor of the channel. Hopefully, they've received some form of interest from it. And of course, anybody whose art is featured in this video. Thanks again for the contributions over the years. I hope you guys have a good New Year as well. I'm not sure when my next upload will be. Don't worry if it's a bit of a hiatus. Um I will be back, but um you know, there are other things to life as well. But whether it is in a couple months or a little longer, I'm the right opinion. And I will see you in the next one."