Transcription
I'm sure everybody heard about uh everyone's heard, I think, Lorenz, right? And she's famous for, I guess, doxing the Libs of TikTok, Libs of TikTok account on Twitter. And I guess she, and I don't know what motivated this, but she outed this woman's—we didn't even know that she was a woman—we're just like enjoying Lives of TikTok. Uh, Taylor outed, I guess, her name, her address—crazy. It was so crazy. I don't know, I don't know if she had to then like go into hiding. She's been getting death threats, like, and then you also had um kind of some defamatory stuff said about you from Taylor as well. And I assumed this was all before the Libya, yeah, stuff; that's why I've uh my my, I guess, the second thing you could know me as is just someone that knows a lot about Taylor Lorenz and her antics. And um, for over I I think it's been about three years since I I started sort of dealing with with Taylor.
And you managed um, what's her name, Charlie something? She was like the first big TikTok star, wasn't she? Yeah. So so I had been working with brands and people on Instagram. I moved to I lived in San Diego. I went to San Diego State, dropped out, started a company, um then I worked in a nightclub. I was the the VIP manager, and so I dealt with a lot of the high net worth people and the celebrities and whatnot. And I had run into a friend who was really big in tech, and he's like, "Why are you still down here in San Diego?" Or he's like, "You own influences.com," he's like, "You need to go to LA and go up there and meet all these people." So he gave me somebody's phone number. He's like, "Call this person," and then that person um, Dan Fleischman, introduced me to a bunch of people, and uh, Logan Paul and all these people. So I moved in to essentially what was the dorm of where all these—wasn't a dorm, it was an apartment complex—but the biggest internet stars in the world lived there at the time, which was at that time was like Vine and Instagram. So I'm my god, remember immersed with these people. Where do you advertise too if you're an advertiser on TikTok, right, on Instagram? And these people were getting, I mean, you know, Charlie D'Amelio at the time, I think she was getting like 50 million views on a video, or at least at some point she was. So think about how many people watch the Super Bowl—20 million, maybe 30 million. Holy [ __ ] wow. And she didn't even have to have uh what was it called, a costume malfunction, a wardrobe malfunction? Yeah, right. Yeah, okay. So she's getting her videos are getting 50 million views. Did she want to—and she was so young—was was like 18 or something? Yeah. So then so this is actually winter of 2019. So I'm repping Charlie, her sister Dixie, this kombucha girl, um several members of this thing called the Hype House, where basically one of the one of the uh and I call them kids, but I really need to stop—yeah, bad habit—but probably was a kid, she was 16, but almost everybody else was over 18. Like I think she was the only one that wasn't—her and her sister, I think Christopher was like 17, but anyway. And then this girl Addison Rae, who Addison now hangs out with the Kardashians, she has a movie on Netflix, she has a furniture deal. So at this point when when Charlie's hot and everything's happening, um Taylor Lorenz uh reaches out, which was really weird because I knew Taylor from when she worked at The Atlantic, and she reached out to uh she actually didn't reach out to me, she reached out to Charlie's mom on a DM, which was odd because she had my email, she had my contact information, and all the influencers had like charlie@influences.com on their on all their social. So everybody knew that if you emailed them, probably I was gonna get the email, right? Cause it said my domain influences.com. So she kind of, in my opinion, sneakily went around me, DM's the mom. They're from uh Connecticut as well, so and Taylor's from Greenwich, Connecticut, allegedly, um and so uh which is apparently a very rich town. Yeah. And she decides that she wants to do an article about these TikTok influencers that have been sort of collaborating together in this house called that they sort of named the Hype House. And the interesting thing was that I represented four or five of the influencers that were there. And when she came out to LA, the one kid that was in charge that I didn't manage essentially told my clients, from what I understand, "Don't tell Ari that we're doing this photo shoot with The New York Times. We don't—are here." And then it was really odd, but nobody nobody like it seemed like everybody went ghosted me for a week when that was going down—all my clients that I was doing deals for, working with brands. And so they do this New York Times article, and uh no mention of me that I manage them, but mention of this other kid that he kind of plays it off like he's their manager, but he's not, right? I have I'm doing the actual deals with them and everything. There's there's things in writing that would show that. So the article comes out, and then we're flooded for about a week—we're flooded with emails from, you know, but Murray that produces, you know, MTV stuff, uh The Real World, where HBO Max, Dunkin' Donuts, L'Oreal, Maybelline—all these brands—it was like the world woke up to TikTok and to these new faces. And so and that was when I went in and met with Universal and all this stuff. So it was probably one of the most exciting times of my life. At the same time, I was about to go broke at that point because I had invested so much in the company and these deals that you do with the influencers—it's like you get paid on a net 30, net 16 at 90. So you do the deal and you don't get paid for 60 to 90 days. So it wasn't that I wasn't doing, you know, all the right things, but when you're bootstrapped, that's just how it is. So I was just working, right? But I'm like, "We're right there. I mean, we did it, you know," and and everybody was at a point to to grow and succeed, and it was to me a really happy time. As soon as Taylor gets involved, writes that article, um I just felt like something was off, and I had a publicist even tell me, "Hey, be careful of Taylor; like she's not your friend," about a week or two after the New York Times article comes out. Something is starting to feel weird, and I get an email from most of my clients at that time saying they uh want to leave and they're going to go, and then then they said that they are leaving, and then two days later there's a press release—they're signed to UTA. Damn it. So this is just round one, but listen, I'm sitting there like, "Hey, I still manage Charlie D'Amelio," and there's a lot of you or TikTokers—they're like, "We don't care; we want to go with you." So I sort of pick myself up and I go to uh this conference in Florida, I think it's called Playlist Live, and I have I I bring people that I wanted to sign or that were signed to me, and we had an amazing time. I ran into Taylor Lorenz there, which was weird because she was so sketchy. Wow. It felt to me—and obviously like you can't, you know, have video whatever—but what I I'm a very sort of like empathetic person, and what it felt to me was like she didn't want—she was being so fake, and she wanted to meet my clients because I was there with some really big content creators. And at one point I remember taking a photo of all of them and like being like almost going to ask somebody else to take a picture to add to put me in it with all of them, and she's like, "Oh, I gotta go." Like she did not want to be in a photo with me. How really? And like somebody doesn't act that way if they don't feel like they've done something wrong. Well, I think she knew she was about to do something to me, and I didn't know it, you know, at this point. Uh, Taylor does this, you know, somewhat positive article about everybody in the industry, anybody that had a house, anybody—it's a pretty positive article, and she sort of, you know, sprinkles all the top influencers, all top houses. But as she's doing this, she's also getting all of these people's contact information and their addresses. So she does this article, and she puts a little quote in there where I said something about marketing or whatnot about the house, but I wasn't a public figure. I was just trying to talk about the projects that I was working on, not as me as talent at all. Uh, so she gets all of these people's contact info, and that was amazing. So in June and July, I think is when she started sort of snooping into my life, and I had heard people saying, "Hey, I got a call from Taylor; it didn't sound like she was doing a positive article about you." So then uh August comes around, and Taylor hits me up and she's like, "Hey, I want to do uh can we chat?" And at the time my friend Matt uh who's just like a family friend and uh he he had reached out because he's like, "Hey, do you want to go on on Fox Business? He's like, 'Trump's trying to shut down TikTok, and they want to talk to a TikTok expert.' You know, he's like, 'It'd be kind of fun.' He's like, 'I I mostly focus on politicians and you know a lot of smear stuff, and it's all of it is pretty stressful,' so I thought it would be fun to do this TikTok story with you," and I said, "Sure, I'll I'll go on Stuart Varney in the morning. This sounds kind of fun." So he sets me up, and I'm like doing that, and then right around that time Taylor's reaching out, and I hit up Matt and I'm like, "Hey, does this seem normal to you?" And he's like, "My spidey senses are going off that something is very odd," because he asked me to ask her what um ask her what uh like what's the story about, and she wouldn't tell me, and he's like, "Well, that's weird," you know. So he said so finally I um well I got a call from this talent agency, uh one of the agents there that was purporting to be my friend, and he calls me and he goes, "You should really talk to Taylor, uh, you know," and he's trying to tell me, "She's not going to say anything bad about you. She likes you; she just wants to hear your side of the story." So long story short, she writes a damning article about me—a lengthy, like if you print it out, I think it's four pages—in The New York Times, paper of record, about a subject that nobody knows anything about. So most of the time you're just going to take in what you read about something that you don't know. Uh, and what year was this? Did this come out? August 2020. Okay, wow. So she claims in the article, and by the way, before she publishes, she said she sends us 50 questions, like back and forth—she's not getting what she wants—and my attorney says, "Hey, um so I don't talk to her," but my attorney, my friend was like when he let the attorney talk to her, and uh most people would just say no comment, but I was very—I had conviction that I didn't have anything to hide and that I wasn't guilty of anything—uh and so we offered her, but she wouldn't take the evidence unless she could print it. And so I didn't want her to print my intellectual property like publicly because then I would have no leverage against my competitors, and I was in NDAs with huge brands. So if she's asking me, "Did you pay these people on time?" and XYZ brand didn't pay on time, but I paid as soon as they paid, I can't show that—I can't show the receipts without myself then being in a lawsuit with a huge, huge company. You get what I mean? She backed me against a wall. And so the article said, among many things that were incorrect and completely false, that I leaked nude images of a client for revenge; I was filming the influencers without permission; uh that I raised their rent, uh that I hiked up their rent; that I didn't pay them; um that I was withholding money; uh that I was claiming to manage them when I didn't manage them. And the worst thing that really pissed me off the most was that she made it seem like I didn't know GaryVee. She's like, "This person says that uh Ari was, you know, Ari claims that that GaryVee mentored her," and the very next sentence, "We called GaryVee, and he said he has no affiliation with Influences," which I guess technically is true, but and they never asked us—company that—like, yeah, that's the the company is different than you as a person. Yeah. So then it was it was pretty devastating. Um, my advisor, the one I told you the the um the executive who's his big time in Hollywood, he calls me the day the article drops, and he's like, "Welcome to the [ __ ] big leagues, Ari." Oh no. What are you talking about? Did you frame it and put it in the back? Did you read it? Oh, I was I was a mess at that time. But he just, you know, he told me, "Nobody writes in our a four-page article about someone like you in The New York Times unless you really mess with their pocketbooks," and he goes, "I know you I know you didn't do any of this stuff, so you have to you got to fight back if you if you got if you if you got it in you to do it." So I spent—what was the worst thing she said of all the things in the art—I think I think the fact that uh well just the the the gist of it was that I was taking advantage of of kids. Now, one of the brands of the houses was called The Kids Next Door, but most of those people, I think only one was 17 and a half—everybody else was 18 to 23. So it made it seem like I was really like manipulated young like teenagers, and that I leaked their nude photos for revenge. I think that might I think that might have been the most—the other thing too was that um they said that I I call or they said I was I got an argument with the with them and that they called the and that the cops were called to the house twice, but we told Taylor—I called the cops to the house twice because the influencers were uh they spray-painted [ __ ] Ari, Ari's a [ __ ] all over the walls. Oh my god. Wow. So you're like you probably had like a deposit down or something, right? It's like, yeah, you have to pay for to have that fixed, man. That's horrible. Yeah, I was just trying to keep the uh I was trying to keep the house brand together, even though there were some outliers that were troublemakers. But I think maybe what happened is once Taylor—think about it—you're 18, 19 years old, a New York Times reporter calls you and goes, "Do you know about the allegations about Ari and like all these things she's doing?" and bubbles believe them. Yeah, you're just like, "Oh, you're a third kid." Yeah, one kid who was 16, he said that she was doing the same thing to him, and when he said that he didn't want to give her any information, he goes, "I like Arya; she's my manager." The next day, she texted him—she was really disappointed in him—a 16-year-old. That's manipulative. Wow. Don't take that tone with me. Why? So so somebody just took a nude photo at the house because right they're like 17, 18, 19, 20 years old. Yeah, no, that's not what happens. So another manager reached out to me and said, "Hey, Ari, your brand, your influences.com is being posted in a a Telegram forum with like, you know, I don't know how many thousands of people in it, um and it's showing like a screen, you know, when you look at your phone and you look at the photos, it's just little squares—the little thumbnails. Yeah, the grids. Yeah. So there's a thumbnails of sort of what looks like some nude photos of this guy Devion, who was the head of one of the houses. It was all boys; it was called The Drip Crib. And The Drip Crib was collaborating with the girls in the valley—these are two houses that I manage—and in the girls in the valley there was a 17-year-old. So I was sort of alarmed, and I'm like, "Well, is you know, are you sure that this is Debbie on—send me whatever it is because I'm not sure you're talking about." So he the manager sends me what, according to him, is already leaked all over Telegram and all over the internet. So I reached out to Devion on text and I said, "Hey, wire newser, essentially, why are your nudes all over the internet?" And I send him exactly the screenshots that the manager sent me, and he goes into this long story about how his uh somebody leaked into his iCloud. This is months before—this is like in May—so before the article is written. So then how is she going to write in the article that I—and by the way, I didn't leak nude instruments—I have I had contracts, NDAs with people who worked for me—like think about it as like a company and the HR. Yeah. And I sent—I said, "What do we do about this because we have we're gonna be held liable. What if he did something to one of the girls, God forbid? And then who are they gonna who are they gonna blame—you guys—yeah, for not for not investigating it, right?" So I wasn't doing anything nefarious, and the way she wrote it, she's like she leaked images of—it's just that word—I think just the word leaked—what does it imply? Like you're just sending it to someone random or you're posting it online or something. Yeah. And I think just by nature, if if the nudes were already leaked all over the internet, how could I leak them? You can't re-leak. Yeah, yeah. So uh sounds like she [ __ ] sucks. Yeah. And and honestly, after that, um somebody pretty prominent in in uh well a big time executive got in touch with me, and he goes, "Listen, what happened to you sucks, but this Taylor has a lot of enemies out there," and he goes, "You might not like them; you might read about them and think that they're scummy, but they might read about you and think you're scummy, and you're not scummy, right?" So I said, "Okay." He goes, "Why don't you just make a little Excel sheet and put together people that have had issues with her?" Would you go research? So I did. I started researching, and I had nothing else to do. I had no job, no company—all my clients left—the brands were like, "We love you, Ari, but like we can't be associated," uh you know a a six-figure deal on DocuSign just canceled—they canceled the DocuSign that day—like the day the article came out.