Everything is fake: Someone slid into my DMs and asked me to have the CEO of Crowds on Demand on the podcast. So I did what any self respecting pothead would do — I went down the rabbit hole.
Crowds on Demand is a real company. Where you can buy a crowd of paid activists for $39.99 per person. Need a protest outside your competitor’s headquarters? Done. Need a packed political rally? Done. Need a fake grassroots movement with hired actors as leaders? Also done.
The person who reached out to me? Kristin M. Davis — the Manhattan Madam — who is now a PR consultant rebranding scandal-ridden public figures for a living.
He claims he wants to blow the whistle on the fake protest industry. But he won’t name his clients. He won’t name his sources. And his company still sells the exact same service he’s supposedly exposing.
Here’s my take — when you’re whistleblowing you’re supposed to do it for the better of society, not for the better of your bank account.
I broke it all down this week on Thoughts Off The Stem. And at the end of the episode I’m asking you directly — should I have him on the show? Because I genuinely don’t think I’ll get an honest conversation out of him.
Drop your answer in the comments.
View Full Episode Transcript
Everything is Fake: Your Reality is for Sale
Thoughts Off The Stem | Cannabis Infused Comedy
0:01
What do a Manhattan Madam and a UCLA graduate have in common?
Is it a conspiracy to use a little black book to blackmail prominent public figures?
Or, you know, is it a flashy night out in Hollywood where the champagne flows and somebody rides their nose through a gauntlet of desk moguls, only to wake up the next morning shocked that they’re next to an unresponsive lady of the night?
0:27
Not exactly, but it is as ick inducing as what I just mentioned.
Welcome to thoughts off the STEM.
I’m Justin Peroni.
I hope that life’s being good to you because today we’re talking about more craziness.
That’s right, more craziness.
So she is the CEO of APR firm for companies and people that want to rebrand themselves.
0:48
He is the CEO of APR firm that hires actors to join protests for wealthy clients.
The company is Crowds on Demand where you can buy a crowd of like minded activists at the economical price of 3999 per activist.
1:09
What are we talking about here man?
Even the happiest place on Earth loses a little bit of its luster when you have to insert yourself in the crowds.
Crowds on demand.
Really, there’s a few things that we should have on demand.
What we should have on demand is things like movies, TV, food, maybe emergency services, healthcare.
1:33
You see what I’m saying here?
And maybe just maybe, you know, on demand, a stiff drink or a joint at the end of the day to get you through or calm down all the craziness that you have to go through throughout the week, right?
And there’s a couple things that we don’t need on demand.
1:51
We don’t need crowds.
We don’t need lines and we don’t need, you know, fake warriors for social causes.
That’s right.
The person that I’m talking about that reached out to me is Kristin Davis.
She’s the CEO of think right PR Kristin Davis.
2:07
Let me just tell you a little bit about her.
OK?
Kristin Davis.
Kristin Davis, previously known as the Manhattan Madam, is a former Madam who is known for running a high end prostitution ring in New York City which claimed to have offered its services to several Hope high profile clients in including Eliot Spitzer, Alex Rodriguez, and David Beckham.
2:28
After her conviction for prostitution related activities, Davis ran a protest campaign for the Governor of New York in 2010 and was poised to run for the New York City Comptroller in 2013 before being arrested and later convicted for distributing drugs.
2:45
Now obviously all the facts aren’t black and white, but here’s the thing.
You’re reaching out to me to talk to your client or partner or whatever, right?
But like, your dealings are nefarious and by his own admission his business is is not what it seems like.
3:04
It is.
Exactly the problem in my opinion with how society is right.
Like everything is fake, dude.
Everything that we see, we hear is manufactured.
And this guy is basically like, yeah, that’s what I do.
3:19
I manufacture everything.
I manufacture.
Protests or protest the thing that we should be manufacturing.
I don’t think so.
I think the protest should be organic, should be filled with people that actually have a, you know, a stake in, in, in what’s going on, what they’re protesting.
3:41
I don’t think we should sign people up based on some billionaire saying, hey, pay some people, write some scripts, send them out there so I look better or so that company looks bad because that’s what he focuses on.
Now, in July 2018, Davis was contacted by the special counsel, Robert Mueller in connection with his investigation of Russian interference.
3:59
So not only was this lady, like, the head of hookers, OK, she was also nailed for distributing drugs.
Now, I don’t totally know what that means.
She says that she was just, you know, helping her friend find some drugs.
But do you really need to go to the street for that?
I’m just saying it’s a little bit nefarious, man.
4:17
OK.
And then in 2016, she, oh, so that was, sorry, I misspoke there.
That was just the end of the sentence after she she was investigated for the Russian interference in 2016 during the US president presidential election campaign.
Now, Davis did end up serving four months in Rikers Island for her involvement in the Spitzer scandal.
4:39
I don’t if you don’t know who Eliot Spitzer is, he had a really big prostitution scandal back in 2010.
It really kind of screwed things up for him.
Now, I do have to mention this because like as much as I’m kind of shitting on her and and you know, get like, I don’t know how you expect me to trust somebody like that.
4:54
I don’t know how you expect me to engage with somebody.
And again, and I’m all for second chances, but it just seems odd that your background is deception.
Your background is criminal and you want me to give a platform to somebody that is trying to influence social commentary or influence the optics of politicians, businesses, industries, product launches, whatever there?
5:31
It’s a very deceitful situation.
So you would think that as somebody like the guy that ran this company, you’d think you’d reach out to somebody that’s not in that kind of position where they kind of have to, you know, work around the fact that, yeah, I did some illegal shit first.
5:49
Like that’s going to come back to haunt you.
That follows you.
But I guess at the same time, it also makes sense because if you’re if you’re capable of running a high end business like that and do it illegally for a long time.
I mean, you’re you’re good.
6:06
You’re good at spinning things, aren’t you?
More than one, if you know what I’m trying, OK.
But yeah, no, I don’t know how they expected me to take them seriously.
I do have to mention, though, that she has done some good.
She actually, Kristin Davis actually is the founder of Hope House.
6:24
Hope House, OK, which helps women in need or women that have suffered, you know, domestic violence, anything, anything really, if they’ve been a part of human trafficking, which again, is another thing, like she didn’t get convicted of human trafficking.
6:39
But if you’re the head of the hookers, are you not essentially human trafficking?
Like, what are we talking about here?
Everything here is just all kinds of red flags, you know what I’m saying?
So she reached out to me to have this guy, Adam Swart, who is the head of crowds on demand.
6:59
Again, a thing that we don’t really need on demand.
Do we need a crowd on demand?
I get it, you want to watch a movie right now, but you want a large crowd right now.
That already seems shady.
Like anyway, she she wanted me to talk about the mechanics or with him, wanted me to talk with him about the mechanics of how crowds are mobilized, funded and and coordinated.
7:24
Is that really a thing that we should be talking about?
Shouldn’t we talk about the grass roots movement or the, the, the actual subject of the protest?
Shouldn’t that be the defining moment or the defining thing that is the reason for it and how to get those people together?
7:44
Because realistically, it’s a short conversation.
You’re going to tell me, hey, I pay people and I write scripts for people to go to protest and, and I make my client look good and I make the other guy look bad.
That’s really what you do, right?
And then you want to talk about why targeting specific, specific decision makers and, and, and concrete demands is often more effective than national protest spectacles.
8:11
You’re creating spectacles, you’re paying people to become a spectacle.
If you look up the stuff that’s the like the job applications, the, the, the jobs, the current available jobs on their website, the, it reads like a casting call.
8:27
It’s not like, Hey, are you good at, you know, petitioning or are you good at, at organizing?
No, no, it’s hey, are you 7 feet tall, £300?
Because we need an intimidating person to be at this, at this crowd.
If you’re not that we don’t need you, don’t apply.
8:42
Like, what are we talking about here, dude?
What is going on?
The other thing she wanted to sort of have him discuss was after organizing advocacy campaigns across the political spectrum, he focused on separating effective civic engagement from performative outrage.
9:02
This sounds like a lot of hokey, pokey dude.
It sounds like it’s the same thing.
Like, so basically the way that he operated OK was that whoever his client would be would pay him a certain amount of money and he would manufacture a crowd or a business to support what the high paying customer wanted.
9:25
Now, if you’re trying to be transparent in all of this, you would think that you would have a list of of your clients available or you would be OK with discussing what their needs were, what how you met them and what you did.
But no, no, he’s essentially keeping a madam’s little black book of people that have paid to protest and he’s lining his pockets for this.
9:48
This is a, this is, is, is a big part of what I’ve been talking about a lot recently.
It’s all about how the media, how people use the media, and how people use information to trick and deceive the public, sometimes political people into getting what they want out of them, right?
10:12
It sounds really bad like to me, I don’t know.
So I deep dove this and I looked into it.
I read some articles, I watched some news clips because apparently he’s been on all the news, right?
And he only gives you PR answers like, well, I can’t give you my, you know, when he gets asked about his customers, I can’t give you my customers.
10:30
But you are saying that you’re trying to turn a new leaf.
You’re not trying to do it the way that you did it because this company has been around since 2012, I believe.
And they started off petitioning people to say, Hey, I can make you look good.
I can make, I can get you attention.
I could do this.
You just pay me and I’ll send some people there to make sure that you look like you’re, you know, your popularity is through the roof and we’ll get you some attention.
10:54
Like it’s paid for.
It’s like, it’s like social media and buying subscribers and views and all that fun stuff.
Like it’s, it’s just, it’s just live action.
It’s a live action version of that.
This guy’s basically set up his own Hollywood studio for protesting it.
11:09
It it sits in, I think a very like it’s very close to that, you know, ethical and moral.
It’s not they say they work in the Gray area.
I say they’re just about falling off the Cliff.
That was the Gray area.
11:25
You know what I’m saying?
It’s this is not the way that we should be operating in society.
This is not how we should be doing the things that that we want these, this is not how we should accomplish progress.
I don’t think so.
Adam Swart, who is the CEO of Crowds on Demand.
11:41
This is basically what Crowds on Demand is.
Crowds on Demand was founded by Adam Swart, a former journalist for AOL’s Patch Network.
The company initially gained attention for offering celebrity the celebrity experience.
I’m doing air quotes services such as fake paparazzi and hired fans primarily in Los Angeles.
12:01
And over time, its offerings expanded to include organized protests, political demonstrations and publicity stunts involving paid actors posing as members of the public.
Now that’s a problem if you’re, I like if you have a product launch or something like that, I feel like this is a beneficial service because you want to get, you know, attention.
12:21
And I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with marketing a product and using actors to promote that product in real time or as live action, you know what I’m saying?
But I do think that if you’re protesting or you’re trying to get political bills passed or political things changed and you know, you’re trying to organize these things, I don’t think that you should have to pay people to go and do it.
12:51
You know what?
I’m, does that not seem shady to you?
Because that seems like the most shady to me.
That seems like a really big problem.
And I know that everybody that that in history, it’s always been done.
But now that it’s like it’s kind of out there and people are approaching others to sort of say like, Hey, we could do this for you.
13:10
And, and we’re starting to lose sight of what real progress is because nothing is real, dude.
I’ve like, everything’s a lie.
Everything is fake.
I basically assume at this point that anything that I watch or read is bullshit and I deep dive everything because I have to make sure that whatever I’m reading is and what I’m taking in is like, I’ve I got to find that middle ground because the middle ground is where the answers lie.
13:36
The middle ground doesn’t, doesn’t lie on the left or right side of these things.
It’s somewhere in the middle because everybody’s skewing everything for their favor, which is, in my opinion, horrible.
OK, if you’re trying to sell a product, product, if you’re trying to get attention to like social media, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing.
13:54
Everything is a facade now.
It used to be the movies, TV, you know, and, and entertainment was a facade, but we knew that we bought into it.
But now everything is from from politics to, to, to, you know, a new business startup.
It’s insane, man.
14:13
It’s absolutely, I don’t know, it seems to me that it’s very we have to watch out for this as a society, we have to watch out and determine whether or not what is being fed to us is the right thing.
Especially now where everybody is on the phone.
14:30
Nobody goes outside and talks to people anymore.
You watch it all on your phone or you’re out there recording it on your phone and you don’t know.
You just assume, Oh my God, look at all.
That’s another thing a lot of people like.
It’s all built on negativity.
It’s all built on shock and awe and, and, and, and riling up emotion, right?
14:48
So like, what are we talking about here?
I’ve said this a few times, but why are we trying to rile up negative emotion?
Why can’t we just be positive?
Why can’t loving somebody and having a good time, being happy, joking around, smiling, laughing, hanging out with friends?
15:03
Why can’t that be the thing that that that shifts public perception or shifts the mindset?
Why?
Because you need controversy?
Because we’re so ingrained and fed with it that we have to fall that we have no choice but to fall head first into that rabbit hole.
15:19
And then it’s, it’s also specifically designed to, to, to suck you in and pull you down like a succubus.
You know what I’m saying?
It’s I don’t know, it’s bad news.
Now some of the I watched, like I said, I’ve watched a few clips on this and I’ve watched a few clips of this guy talk and he doesn’t really say much of anything.
15:39
And if I were to have him on the podcast, I I have to have a few questions answered.
Not in APR fashion.
I need you to tell me things.
So I watched this one clip with Fox News where he was being asked like who his clients were.
15:55
Now I get you don’t no business wants to give up client information, but if you’re trying to transition from the shady, weird, creepy, you know, pay for play kind of kind of dealing dude, right?
You you want to sort of set the record straight and you’re trying to turn that you’re trying to turn that perception into a whistleblower perception.
16:17
Well, a whistleblower, it isn’t like it doesn’t go out there saying, hey, there’s a bunch of companies out there doing this without receipts, dude, OK, this guy had no receipts.
He’s, he’s basically saying, look, I’m just telling you, I did this for a long time.
My company does this and there’s there’s others that are out there.
16:36
So I’m trying to let you know that this is happening.
Well, tell me who’s doing it.
Nope.
He wouldn’t say he had he would not tell anybody who he has dealt with.
The only thing he would say is that he that he turned down, I think it was like $20 million to go against, to set up a protest or something against the Trump campaign.
16:57
Like, give me a break, man.
But the service now by, you know, news Network since about 2016 has basically been characterized like this as astroturfing.
Dan Schneider, writing for The Atlantic, said there might be some Gray area between offering a small token of appreciation to otherwise voluntary supporters and full blown thousands of dollars to prop up a struggling cause.
17:20
Seems to fit more squarely in the later category.
Schneider also noted that Swart admitted a a revelation that a campaign is paying for supporters is deeply embarrassing and he takes great pains to keep his clients identities a secret.
17:36
So this guy recognizes that what he does, and it’s not like his company stopped doing this.
Like if you’re trying to turn yourself into a whistleblower, like maybe maybe actually pivot to whistleblowing.
Like if you look at Julian Assange, he had to leave or she, I’m not sure anymore.
17:52
But the they, that person, Julian Assange had to leave the country and get out because he was in such danger.
Because he turned around and said, hey, here is the receipts, here is everything that is going wrong.
And on top of that, when you’re whistleblowing, you’re supposed to whistleblow for the better of society, not for the better of your bank account, OK.
18:16
And that’s what this guy is doing.
He’s realized that because of the sketchy nature of his business, he’s had to turn it around because I’m sure that people have like said, you know what, this isn’t cool.
And they’ve stopped sort of doing business.
They had stopped doing business with them in about, I don’t know, 20/15/2016.
18:33
His company was still there.
They were still making money, but there was probably a drop off, right?
And then he decides, hey, what I have to do is I have to turn it around so that people understand that.
No, like, I know what I’m talking about.
So he’s trying to position himself as the regulator of an industry that is nefarious, but he’s still doing the nefarious shit.
18:50
Dude, it’s really bad.
We don’t need we don’t need a crowd on demand.
That’s such a stupid concept to me.
Like anyway, a Washington Post columnist mentioned an e-mail he received advertising the company’s celebrity arrival service offer it, which they offered to politicians back in the day.
19:10
He says.
I received an e-mail the other day from Crowds on Demand and LA based company that for for a fee will send a bunch of team members to your event, stuffing the crowd with Confederates to make you look more important.
So this lady who was a Madam, reached out so that she could so that I could have her client, this supposedly UCLA graduate who his his background is in surprise, surprise, his background’s in politics.
19:41
OK, political science media, obviously.
So he understands how to get attention.
He understands how to frame things so that they, they get their point across right.
He’s, he’s got the basis for that.
19:57
And as we all know, it does it like picking a politician is, is picking the, the lesser of two evils.
Like they’re all, they’re all shady in some kind of way, right?
So now he’s supposedly trying to make this pivot to being.
This like white knight for the industry or or this whistleblower for the industry, but he’s not naming names.
20:21
If you’re blowing whistles, you’re naming names.
All he’s doing is repositioning himself.
And essentially, he says, he says that he wants to do this to expose the staged, staged protest industry.
OK.
20:37
The problem with staged protests is, is really in this, it’s in the general public.
I think most people can’t be bothered to protest.
Even if we align with the values of the protests or not.
We just can’t.
We’ve got the prices are too high, life is too expensive.
We don’t have time.
20:53
You know what I’m saying?
And I’m sure that a lot of people would love to make time, but they can’t and they don’t.
And then when they sit back, I think like people like me, I’m included in this too.
We sit back, we look at it, we go, that’s friggin horrible.
We should do something about that, but then we don’t.
That’s on us.
But does that mean that we should move into crowdfunding?
21:14
Is that really what we should be doing?
We should be on demanding crowds now to get it to get like, there’s no, once that protest is done, there’s no actual carry over, right?
They just do that.
They get their change and then that’s it.
21:30
Whether the change is right or wrong too.
Because you could just have a business approach this guy and say, hey, my competitor stock is too high.
I want you to go and affect it by picketing his building and then all of a sudden tank that competitor stock.
Nefarious, the great nefarious.
That’s all I’m saying.
21:45
Dude.
It’s fucked up.
Our society should not be at this point.
We are the most progressive sex portion.
We’re at the most progressive point of our evolution.
And this is still, it’s been going on since the dark ages.
OK with this.
22:01
This needs to be changed.
We need to change this.
We need to stop giving platforms to people like this because ultimately, when you say you want to be a whistleblower, miss, say it again.
You need to drop names, dude.
You can’t just say, oh, well, I know a lot of people do it and I’m not telling you who does it, but I know who do.
22:18
Who dos it?
You can’t do that, man.
This guy, when he was saying he was a, he was creating advocacy groups and staffing them.
The bio says this.
We create advocacy groups and staff them with suitable leadership.
What that really means, OK, is this is the, it’s the, it’s the literal definition of a front group.
22:40
He isn’t finding passionate citizens.
He’s inventing organizations out of thin air, giving them a professional sounding lame name like citizens for X or and hiring actors to pretend to be the staff or the leaders of that of that, that that business.
23:00
Like he’s still doing this dude.
It’s not he hasn’t changed his game plan.
He’s just changed.
He’s just trying to affect public perception again and his own.
It’s, it’s his public perception, like the public perception of him.
23:15
It’s it’s literally a criminals playbook, man.
You, you do your criminal shit and then you in inject yourself into society as a donator or whatever and and all of a sudden you’re kind of protected, right?
Like have we has no, have you, have you, have you, have you seen the mayor of Kingstown?
23:33
It’s basically this.
There’s a whole web, I’m sure around it.
And and there is, if you look all this stuff up, you will find a trail of deceit that goes well into the political spectrum.
You know, so he’s his bio also says he’s shaping mergers and acquisitions.
23:51
Now, normally that would mean like, oh, you’re, you’re being a liaison for companies to grow and build and partner, right.
So he says we shape large public Company Mergers and acquisitions.
Again, what this really means is if a company, if company A wants to buy Company B, Swart might hire people to protest outside company BS headquarters to take their stock price or make them look controversial air quotes again forcing them to accept a deal.
24:17
And it’s essentially A protest for hire used as a weapon in corporate warfare.
It’s all deceit and deception.
It’s the same tactics that the dudes in the manosphere use.
It’s the same tactics that you can use in social media to get attention very quickly and move ahead without like you need to have a positive message.
24:35
That’s what I think.
So the other point that he makes it, this is all in his bio.
You can, you can look it up at crowds on demand.com.
I think it is.
Again, I’ll put these in the show notes and I’ll put them on tots420.com in the in the blog that I write for the episode after.
24:53
But when other strategies have failed, this is what his bio says, amplify their message.
Often when other strategies have failed.
The reality is this means when the truth isn’t working, if a project or person is genuinely unpopular, traditional PR which relies on facts fails.
25:13
That’s when you call Swart to manufacture a fake consensus to trick the public or politicians into thinking there’s support where none exists and and effectively refocusing laws, refocusing bills, refocusing industry.
25:30
Both of these people that approached me to have this guy on utilize A deceitful tactic to engage the public.
She relies on her criminal past to create trust as an expert on corruption because she was a Madam.
25:48
It was a whole she was, she was involved in very high, high profile people and Eliot Spitzer being one of them.
He relies on creating truth through a facade of protest using fake crowds consisting of paid actors.
26:06
He’s trying to promote himself as a whistleblower, like I said, but this is not whistleblowing.
This is stepping to the left.
This is a dude, OK, that has recognized that there’s a major issue with the way that he’s being perceived and he needs a hooker or an ex hooker, an ex Madam.
26:28
I don’t know if she was a hooker.
I shouldn’t say that.
Again, this is all my opinion, OK?
And this is what I’ve found on the deep dive, all right, because I have to check into people that request to be on the podcast, but this is the bigger picture, OK?
He’s using a Madam to step to the left because she’s really good at facilitating perspectives, OK?
26:51
And he is also equally as good at interjecting a crowd to facilitate perspective.
We as a society should be worried about the fact that media, social media and all this technology are being primarily used as a negative push to get our opinions to shift.
27:22
We as people, creators, as part of the bigger group, the world and the human race, should be trying harder to put out good information.
Nothing.
27:38
Things that aren’t deceitful, things that if you’re doing entertainment, I get it, be fun, be funny, have a good time, do what you do for entertainment.
But this should not bleed over to the political landscape.
And the more that social media plays a part in this, the more that you know, AI plays a part in this, and the more that there is an advancement of those technologies, it’s just going to get worse and worse to the point where we can’t figure out what the fuck is happening.
28:05
And then people’s brain get mushed out, turn to mush, and the next thing you know, you can’t.
You don’t know what is is real anymore because everything you see is fake, dude.
Now I want to know if you think I should have this person on.
28:22
I don’t think I’ll get a good discussion with them because I think that if I ask who your people are and how you’re and if you’re a whistleblower, why you’re not telling these things then or at least the businesses that you’ve dealt with, right?
I don’t think that I’ll get, I think I’ll get an answer that is very much a scripted PR answer.
28:39
So I don’t see the point of doing this.
But I do think that there are some good things that could come of this.
I just think it should stay away from protest and political.
I don’t think that there should be a hand or a or or a price tag on skewing opinion.
28:57
I know that there is.
I’m not oblivious and I’m not stupid.
I’m just saying that it as a pothead, somebody that likes to smoke weed, dude, I saw through this right away.
I’m not giving you a platform to tell me how how you should be, how, how you can manipulate media.
29:13
You’re going to try and do that on here.
Now.
You can’t really do it on me because I’m good at what I do and I understand people and I don’t really take shit, but there’s you can’t give that that option.
You know what I’m saying?
Those are my thoughts off the stem for this week.
Hope you enjoyed the sesh.
Hope you come back next week with me.
29:28
Justin Baroni.
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Until next time, check out tots420.com and keep your lids low, baby.
Everything is Fake: Your Reality is for Sale is out now — Do we really need paid protesters filling out crowds and swaying public opinion?.
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