Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty are Evil (Geniuses)

Mel Robbins is the evil genius of marketing. For the last few weeks, I've been trying to understand why Mel Robbins is so astoundingly popular. She displaced Joe Rogan as the top show in the world a few months ago, and I wanted to know how that happened. And I sort of got stuck on her free use of one of the most powerful phrases in the English language.

"I love you." And "I love you." "I believe in you." "I love you." "I love you." "I love you, too." "I love you." And "I love you." "I love you." "I love you." "I love you."

Every time I hear her say it, a little part of me dies inside because Mel Robbins has never met you. She has no real relationship with you, and she can't love you because love is more than a vibe. And yet, there's a certain genius as to how she makes her audience believe that she's actually their friend.

"Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so excited that you're here."

Everything that she does in her show is designed to manipulate you to take very specific actions that ultimately have made her immensely wealthy and influential. "I would love it if you would hit the subscribe. That would really make me feel like I'd matter."

In this video, I'm going to explain how Mel Robbins effectively weaponized marketing and psychological techniques to become one of the most popular people on the internet. I'm going to tell you how I think that she is an evil genius who is so good at maximizing parasocial relationships that it gives me this perverse sort of respect for what she has been able to accomplish.

To quote her recent guest and fake former monk and one of the most prolific spiritual huers in the wellness world today, Jay Shetty, "The switch for envy is study. If you're jealous of someone, if you're envious of someone, study them 100%." Yeah, I love that. And that's exactly what I did.

As someone on YouTube who has spent the better part of 2 years studying liars and cheats and charlatans in a universe of grifty social media stars, pseudoscientists, and crooked financial schemers, I'm going to have to lay a few cards on the table about where I'm coming from personally. It's something that Shetty and Robbins have correctly exposed about my own motivations. I am envious of Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty's ability to win the attention economy. I lament the fact that people who deal in exposing lies face an ever uphill battle while influencers who spew spiritual and emotional platitudes find very few barriers to enriching themselves. I am jealous of the attention they get and I'm in awe of the effectiveness of their marketing, just like I would be if I was watching someone fold very intricate origami.

Somehow they have managed to transform every statement out of their mouths into subtle prompts for their audience to work for free to increase their fame. It's manipulative. It's diabolical, and the purest example I've ever come across of evil genius in action. This is a bit of a longer video, but please stay to the end because there are some big payoffs. Whether you just want to know how deep their game actually goes or, I guess, a direct outline of how you can deploy their tactics for yourself to maximize social reach. So, I'm going to take Shetty up on his offer to study them and figure out exactly how they do it.

"I mean, what is it like for you? Because think about the trajectory of your life. You know, 10, 12 years ago, it looked like you, you thought you'd hit rock bottom, and you turned it around, and now you're at the top of the mountain top."

If you're not familiar with their work, Robbins fits squarely into the self-help category and is best known for two books, "The 5-Second Rule" and "Let Them Theory." In "The 5-Second Rule," she argues that when you come up with an urge to do something, you have to start taking an action within 5 seconds of having the thought, or you will be overcome by sluggishness and never get anything accomplished at all. In other words, it's just basically a rehash of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink." And critically, it urges you not to think before you act.

Her second big idea is "Let Them Theory," which she describes in one sentence on her website as: "When you let them do whatever it is that they want to do, it creates more control and emotional peace for you and a better relationship with the people in your life."

Here's her describing it herself: "The next time you feel left out, your friends all go out to brunch together and they don't invite you, let them. Or maybe the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment, let them. Or perhaps your spouse does not want to do the 5K with you. Let them. Let them. Let them. Let them. So let them."

In other words, don't impose your desires on other people's actions so you can focus on yourself. In general, both pieces of advice do have their place, although neither is a law of the universe. Indeed, there are so many carve-outs as to when they usefully apply that if you think too hard about them, they don't actually have much inherent value. For instance, while you might want to act quickly in some cases, there are many instances where careful consideration will prevent you from doing something stupid. And while you might let a friend blow off a lunch date, you certainly don't want them to jump in a car when they're drunk or say, "Let a police state take away your rights." So, yeah, you don't just let them do anything because sometimes you have to take an intervention.

I also bristle a little bit that her idea that "Let Them Theory" is a theory at all. It's more of a hypothesis, if anything. And that casual abuse of terminology elevates it to a level of validation that it doesn't deserve. But I digress.

Aside from being pretty generic pieces of advice, a few months ago, the story broke that Robbins actually stole her idea for her number one bestselling book from a viral poem called, get this, "Let Them" by a lesser-known writer named Cassie Phillips, without giving her any credit whatsoever. I'll read a little portion of it to you now.

"Just let them. If they want to choose something or someone over you, let them. If they want to go weeks without talking to you, let them. If they are okay with never seeing you, let them. And if they are okay with always putting themselves first, let them." And it goes on like that for a little bit. And here's how it ends: "Let them lose you. You were never theirs because you were always your own. So, let them."

That's her book right there. You don't need to read it now. And this is worse than just simple plagiarism because Robbins didn't just take Cassie's poem without crediting it. She actually attempted to trademark the phrase "Let Them," which ironically would specifically not let anyone else use the words without sending Mel Robbins a cut of the profits. Many commentators, including the delightfully snarky duo at the "If Books Could Kill" podcast, have pointed out the hypocrisy of her intellectual property land grab.

In fact, let me just run a clip from their recent show because they really drive home the point that I'm trying to get to about how she markets her ideas.

"Maybe it was indirect. Maybe it wasn't from the poem itself, but it's very obvious that this is the same idea lifted."

Here is her response when confronted by the New York Post: "When asked about the timeline allocations, Robbins reiterated, 'People can obsess over any detail, but the facts are simple. I've not seen her poem. I have not read her poem, and it was not and will never be the source of inspiration for my book. This is nonsense. I've spent 10 years shining a light on other people's work. So, the allegation that I would steal someone else's work is ridiculous.'"

"As I write in 'Let Them Theory,' you cannot control what people say, do, feel, or choose to make up about you. People can say anything about you at schools, at work, on the internet, and you can't control it. Let them." Oh, she's good. She turned it into marketing for the contest. She [ __ ] turned it into self-promotion. Yes, you can already see the dangers of "Let Them" now. Oh, she's using it to gaslight you about whether she stole the idea itself. Yeah, maybe that's the most succinct example of how Robbins's mind actually works. Absolutely everything is a marketing opportunity. No matter the conversation, no matter how bad it makes her look or the obvious evidence, Robbins always finds a way to turn the conversation back into a call to action to get the audience to spread her gospel.

Take for instance the beginning of a typical Mel Robbins podcast. After a spicy intro with tantalizing clips and then a request to bump up her numbers and subscribe and like, she promises that this show that you're listening to right now, above all of her other shows, is special.

"Let's dive in to today's episode. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and I am absolutely thrilled that you are here. The conversation today is going to be extraordinary. You know, it's always such an honor to spend time with you, to be together with you."

And this is classic priming of the pump. Or maybe it's just Pavlovian conditioning. She is giving you a personal compliment for taking an action that directly benefits her bottom line. And the way she does it is designed to speak to your emotions and not your brain. Lest I need to remind you, you don't actually know her. She is not your friend. And this intimacy journey is just getting started.

"If you're a brand new listener, I also want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I'm thrilled that you're here and I'm thrilled that you hit play on this particular episode because it's going to be extraordinary. It's going to be exactly what you need to hear."

At this point, you're not her friend anymore. You're a family member. And somehow this extremely wide broadcasted show that goes out to millions of people is somehow also specifically tailored to you. Again, this is impossible. That's not how reality works. But the technique is designed to appeal to particularly lonely, gullible, or vulnerable people who are willing to suspend their rationality for the fantasy of being friends with an influential person.

And then there's this part where she starts promising that she actually knows something about you and how that personal knowledge will somehow change your life.

"And because you hit play on this episode, I already know something about you. I know that you're someone who values your time because you're making time to listen to a conversation that will give you greater clarity, purpose, and direction. I also suspect that you're looking for some answers, for a way to make sense of what's going on in your life, and for guidance on how to move forward."

Incidentally, when I listened to her show, she decidedly got me all wrong because I am only here to dissect her tactics. After lovebombing you for like a full 3 minutes, she sets up herself as the answer to your very personal looming questions. She's the friend and guru that you always needed. You're already falling under her spell.

And next comes one of the sneakiest calls to action that I've ever heard. It's something that gets echoed later in the show, just before an ad break where she will tell people to share her podcast with their friends.

"If someone sent you this episode, I want to take a moment and point something out that's really important. You have people in your life who love you and they want you to experience this conversation because they are certain that what you're about to hear will change your life. It'll open you up to bigger possibilities. Just think about that for a second."

Robbins is telling you that sharing her podcast with your friends is an act of love. Never mind that it also is her entire business model. If you listen to her long enough and act within just 5 seconds without thinking, then sharing her story with other people is all about you and not her.

While the marketing goes on throughout the entire hour-long show, just before she introduced her guest, she drops well-known hypnotic prompts that you might be familiar with if you've ever done a guided meditation. For people who are tuned into spiritual lingo, everything in this section is intention-setting catnip.

"And I want you to really listen today and take in everything that you're about to learn. Because if you do, time will slow down, your heart will soften, your guard will drop, your mind will expand, and you will know with every cell of your being that what you're hearing today is meant just for you because it is."

There's an ongoing debate as to whether or not hypnosis actually works, but one thing is certain. People absolutely use it intentionally as they develop marketing materials. "Welcome to master hypnotic language patterns in three straightforward steps. Have you ever heard someone use hypnotic language patterns so masterfully that part of you just went, 'Wow, how on earth do you get to be that good?'" The whole idea is to let you drop your defenses and make you more open to suggestion.

While she may argue that she's setting up the stage for you to get the maximum impact out of what she and Jay Shetty are about to tell you, I think that when we're talking about Mel Robbins's success, the actual suggestion is to follow her marketing prompts to help her spread her work through the internet like a virus. At this point, we're only about 4 minutes into the podcast. You haven't actually heard the guest talk, but you have heard how much of a great friend Mel is to you, that she loves you, that she believes in you, and maybe you or your friends should share this around, and it will definitely change your life.

While some people will cringe at all of these prompts, a subset of people will find everything that she is saying extremely convincing. In another episode, she actually lays out how readers have reacted to her love bombing.

"Every single day, listeners from around the world write in and they tell me, 'I love it when you say that.' And there are those of you that freaking hate it. Loathe it. You have a visceral, like, kind of reaction when you hear me say it. So maybe we should talk about love."

Can you guess which of these two groups of people are most likely to spread her message? Who her core followers really are. Indeed, this is a classic move with cults all around the world. The most successful cults, the ones that are able to exert the most control over their followers, often have extremely weird ideologies that are off-putting to outsiders when they first hear them. So, cults design tests that quickly weed out people who aren't easy to sway and kick them out of the group. This way, the core audience is pure and works in unison to reinforce the leader's position.

It's not unlike the same techniques that I've heard about on a classic "This American Life" episode called "Pimp Anthropology," where they interview actual pimps who wanted to turn girls into sex workers for life by challenging them with this simple test. Here's one former pimp describing how the people he learned from selected their girls.

"He would go up and let's say he, he's having a cocktail. She's sitting at the counter next to him, and, um, he would, after a bit of banter and small talk and conversation, he'd say, 'Buy me a drink.' Now, obviously, some girls would automatically say, 'Buy your own drink,' or 'You buy me a drink.' But some women would buy him a drink. That's the little kind of probing stuff that people do. You see, because just do five minutes of just little conversation. Now, all of a sudden, he's seeing that he can exert his will over this woman, that she, in a, not even in a conscious way, is basically giving into his will."

And this whole time, Mel Robbins has been asking you to buy her a drink. If you believe that it's possible for someone who doesn't know you, has never met you, has no connection to you, can actually love you, or be your friend, well then she's hooked you, and you're already on the road into giving into her will. And again, I have to admit, I'm sort of in awe of how well she actually deploys all of her prompts and nudges to turn you into her podcast minion.

On the flip side of lovebombing is the way that she also weaponizes vulnerability, usually her own, but also her guests. At the top of Spotify, she is currently highlighting this conversation titled "Number One Neurosurgeon: How to Manifest Anything You Want and Unlock the Unlimited Power of Your Mind," which, of course, you should not get confused with the number one neuroscientist. After listening to this, your brain will not be the same. Apparently, she deals with a lot of number one neuro-experts.

In that first episode, she talks to Stanford neurosurgeon Jim Dodie about the power of positive thinking, which has been a subject on this channel before. What completely blew my mind was that after her 5-minute intro, Dodie inexplicably breaks into tears.

"Uh, I understand the pain people go through, uh, and very deeply. So, uh, I'm very attuned to that. Uh, I personally cry all the time for the same reason. And I don't..."

All of a sudden, 8 minutes into the podcast, we have two people crying, talking about how their sadness is the motivation for their mission to sell books and appear on extremely successful podcasts and to get very rich along the way. Think about this rationally for a second. Dodie and Robbins have been on the lecture circuit talking about their books for decades. I've done books before and I've done hundreds of interviews promoting my work. And one thing I can tell you for sure is that you know exactly what you're going to say to an interviewer's questions. It's all scripted in your head. You've done it before. You're desensitized to it. And it's even kind of boring. So, the thought that someone immediately breaks into tears telling a story that supposedly hits a vulnerable place is just not honest. It's scripted. It's an act. It's meant to play onto your emotions, not to garner an insight into this person. That's because good propaganda and marketing plays on emotions, not logic. And Mel Robbins knows that.

When she cries, it's your friend crying. And so, she offers you a solution to make her feel better. "I would love it if you would hit the subscribe. That would really make me feel like I'd matter."

Which reminds me of this time that I was working on exposing a cult in Arizona for my book, "The Enlightenment Trap." After the followers had read some of my earlier reporting that was published in Playboy, they were appalled that I exposed their leader's manipulative behavior to the public. They confronted me on multiple occasions, telling me how sad I had made their guru, as if his sadness was the worst possible outcome for anything. They'd so fully bought into his message that reality was less important than their guru's emotions.

Emotions are powerful. Indeed, in almost all cases, people listen to emotional cues a lot more seriously than they do rational explanations. This is such a well-known fact that the progenitor of propaganda, Edward Bernays, the guy who literally wrote the book on propaganda in 1928, it was called "Propaganda," he said that effective propagandists can swing the whole mass of a group's emotions by setting up emotional currents that urge these groups of people into a herd mentality.

So, when I was writing the script, I did a whole deep dive onto Bernays's as the father of propaganda. And I, I went too far and I didn't want to make this already long video much longer, but just to give you a summary of his nine key takeaways, all of which that Mel Robbins is like dead center on, here they are.

First, and maybe most important, you have to target your propaganda at whole populations and not tell them what they're really listening to is propaganda. If you make them believe that it's just a neutral message or just normal advice, that is how you capture people's attention. You appeal to authority by bringing in trusted experts. Value emotions over logic. You repeat the same thing over and over again and simplify the message just down to a quick nugget. You want to engineer a false consensus out of a group that may not exist, but you promise people that the group does exist. And then you transmit your message over as many platforms as possible.

Now, for a guy who was writing this a hundred years ago, he's pretty on point and holds up really well. Tell me if you think I should do a video on him, particularly down the line.

There's one more thing that I want to highlight in her conversation with J. Shetty. For those of you who haven't heard of Shetty before, he purports himself to be a former monk, but who has reinvented himself as a business consultant and, of course, a top podcaster. Last year, The Guardian reported how his origin story was so full of holes that at best he was merely the social media manager for the Hari Krishna's out of England briefly after he got out of college. Not really a monk. Nonetheless, his "think like a monk" tick has made him incredibly influential.

Anyway, at one point, Shetty wants to talk about the power of mindset. And he cites some research about people who clean up very dirty hospital rooms and how the ones who feel best about their job experience are the ones who have the most purpose-driven language when they talk about it to themselves. Here he is explaining.

"And this blew my mind. Like, every time I, I think about this, it really makes me emotional because it's so powerful. They said, 'We believe that a clean hospital is integral to the healing journey of a patient. We think that when the hospital is clean, people have more dignity at a time of difficulty. We believe that when the hospital is clean that people's families will spend more time with them. They'll actually surround their bedside because it feels like a clean atmosphere in their time of need.' They said, 'We believe that a clean hospital is part of healing. So, how could we see ourselves as anything else?'"

What I love about that, Mel, is that Amy Vznuski and her team came up with the term called job crafting, which means it's not what you do every day, it's how you feel about what you do every day that changes the experience of it.

Now, this seems like some pretty obvious and inspiring stuff at first glance. It makes sense that someone can elevate their job by creating new layers of meaning with positive affirmations, but I wanted to take a step back and wonder why he's getting emotional recounting a business study. "They really makes me emotional." And then he backs it up by saying that a powerful academic came up with the idea, not him. "Amy Vnuski and her team came up with the term called job crafting." This is an appeal to emotions, an appeal to authority, and an appeal to science all wrapped in one.

So after I heard this bit, I had to ask myself, is it true? So I booted up my library access and tried to track down the original study by the researchers Amy Rnooki and Jane Dutton. And you might be shocked to hear this, but there's not a lot to it. Dutton and Rnooki have gotten a lot of traction in the media talking about their revelations around hospital cleaners. This is true. But I was surprised to learn that none of the statements that Shetty and even the professors talk about actually appear in their published research. Indeed, though they talk about an original series of 29 interviews with hospital cleaners, those interviews are not published anywhere that I have been able to locate. And unlike what Shetty claims, it takes more than just internal affirmations to give someone a positive worldview.

To quote the earliest paper of theirs that I could locate, which talked about the interviews, sort of like from a distance, they say, "If employees interpret the cues they receive at work as affirming, increasing the sense of significance and value of the work, this has implications for the norms of interpersonal treatment," which is to say that their original research sort of said the exact opposite of what Shetty said. Instead of changing their worldview and then changing the world around them, the researchers wrote that getting compliments and encouragement from the people around them helped reinforce their positive impressions of things, which is to say, people are people. This wasn't shocking in the least. Certainly nothing to get choked up over.

And I think there's a deeper side tangent here about this original research and possibly academic dishonesty going on because Rnooki and Dutton have built quite successful careers on these fairly small and inconclusive studies. One that is cited in their papers but not actually to be found anywhere. And I reached out to both professors on multiple occasions over the last two weeks asking about whether they thought Shetty presented their work accurately. And neither got back to me. So, I don't know, maybe other journalists can pull on these threads instead of me.

And yeah, I know that was a bit of a digression, but I think it's important to note that grifters, liars, and marketers want to give you the best possible story whether or not there is any ground truth to it. It's perfectly reasonable to listen to a charismatic person talk about something that sounds common sense and figure that they are presenting the whole story exactly as it is and not realize that you're being manipulated along the way. I mean, basically anytime I hear an influencer talk about a scientific paper, I groan internally thinking about what it takes to actually fact-check them. They just present vibes and you think those vibes are facts, and that is why this world is falling apart from a reality standpoint.

To bring this back to where we started with Robbins, she ends her conversations with Shetty thinking about all of the teachers that have helped them in the past and how we should all have gratitude for the people who contributed to our own success. Then she predictably says this.

"You could share this episode, this conversation with people that you care about and tell them how much this conversation made you think of them and realize how much you love them."

The lesson here is that everything Mel Robbins says is a sales pitch for her own show. Her entire presence is an intricate origami construction with every positive thought and emotion perfectly tuned to create concrete calls to action that promote her own brand to the world. And it's effective. And now you know how she does it.

And here is where I want to get back to my initial impetus for putting this report together in the first place. Do I envy Mel Robbins? "The switch for envy is study. If you're jealous of someone, if you're envious of someone, study them." And I know we've had so many conversations where we've both taught each other so much stuff.

One of the most common criticisms I get on this channel in the comments, ones that no doubt are below this video right now as you watch it, is that all I do is tear down people because I'm jealous of their success. They tell me in one way or another that it's harder to create something than it is to tear it down, and that tall poppies are the ones that are most likely to get their heads lopped off. They suggest that I'm motivated by jealousy and I'm using a critique of a popular person to build up my own credibility.

Here's my feeling to that critique: I think Mel Robbins, and for that matter, everyone who trends at the top of the Gritoverse, is doing a disservice to society. Yes, by virtue of being on this platform, I do want people to pay attention to what I have to say. I also want a career where I tell the truth to the world as I see it, which involves making money from advertising revenue and my amazing subscribers on Substack and Patreon who keep my mission viable. So, yeah, there is part of me that is jealous of the fact that people like Robbins and Shetty have captured the attention of huge groups of people who are willing to listen to affirmations and [ __ ] instead of the hard facts of reality where not everything comes down to just what feels right. I want to be in a world where things are right.

What I've learned from Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty and Andrew Huberman and so many other people that I've covered here by studying them is that they are true masters of the parasocial relationship. A relationship where you think you know them when in reality you don't. And having known many of these grifters personally, I can tell you that what they present to the world is very different from how they act. And the content of their message is at best simply pedestrian affirmation and common sense, and at worst manipulative psychological tricks that leave people less resilient in a complex world.

Personally, when I meet someone who is a liar, who promises impossible results and pretends to be my friend when they're only in it for themselves, I do not want to be closer to that person. I want to be as far away as possible. You, however, are able to make up your own mind. If you want to take lessons in griffology, well, there's no better person to dive deeper into than Mel Robbins.

"The learning part and the studying others and allowing others to lead the way and to show you and to truly flip envy into learning from somebody that is worth $100 million."

And that is my report for the day. Thanks so much for watching this video. I've done a ton of related content on the grifters and charlatans all around the world. And I'd love you to check out this video that I did on the grifter behind that supplement company that you've probably seen called Athletic Greens. And as I'd like to remind you, I do have this Substack newsletter where my premium subscribers get early access to my videos and a brand new chat function where you can talk to me directly and suggest like future research subjects. Uh, and I really enjoy what happens on the community there. I'd love to have you on that board because your support is the only thing that keeps this sort of independent journalism alive.

Thanks so much for watching, and until next time, from Pokey Bear LLC in Denver, Colorado. This was Scott Carney Investigates Mel Robbins and J Shetty. Thank you so much for all of my supporters on Patreon and on Substack who make this work possible. The contributions you give keep this sort of independent journalism on the air. And I really just could not do it without you. If you want to get early access to my work and get your name on the honor roll right over there, please sign up at the links down below. From Pokey Bear LLC in Denver, Colorado, this was Scott Carney Investigates.

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