Stunning video evidence of Scientology's use of social media to smear its critics
One of the things Leah Remini has done so effectively in her lawsuit against the Church of Scientology is detail how the organization uses a network of social media accounts to smear her and others who dare to speak up about the church’s abuses.
But even in Leah’s court documents, it’s only assumed that Scientology recruits an army of volunteers to run those accounts and to post smears relentlessly against her.
Now, we have actual video evidence showing Scientology doing just that.
Alex Barnes-Ross sent us a video made by his former friend and fellow London Scientology staffer, Charlie Wakley, giving a “masterclass” in how his volunteers should create and populate accounts at TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube in order to spread hate against Leah and others.
You can watch along as he explains how to do it!
It’s amazing evidence of what we have always assumed was going on.
Watch the video, and then read Alex’s comments about it.
Ahh, Charlie.
This is funny on so many levels. First, the social media strategy in itself is exactly the same as the one I first developed back when I was on staff. Although we didn’t have TikTok then, the concept was the same: Create multiple accounts, post frequently, and swarm social media with Scientology content. For us, it was Twitter, and I remember setting up ‘Find My Stress,’ ‘Dianetics London,’ and several other accounts to post LRH quotes, photos of staff, and success stories. And now here we are over 10 years later and Charlie is still using the plan I created. Cute.
Secondly, we now know who’s behind the STAND League London account. It has only posted a handful of videos since it was created, and I suspect this is due to OSA demanding full control over these types of accounts, but it was eye opening to see just how active my former Org is in the Fair Game campaigns against us critics.
But perhaps most amusing of all is the little details that will probably be missed by most. At the very beginning, you can see a glimpse of his recent text conversations and the first one says “was there not a document [..] being a cult”
When he opens up YouTube, you can clearly see ‘Alex’ and ‘Joy Villa’ as recent searches… and then of course, when he searches for STAND League Scientology, it produces one of my videos and a bunch of content produced by ex-Scientologists. I don’t think Charlie realizes that YouTube search results are personalized based on your own watch history.
We now also know that Charlie is recommending staff members use AI to write captions and edit videos. Lazy.
But perhaps the best part was when he tries to upgrade his Opus Clips account and his card gets declined for insufficient funds. You’ve got to laugh.
Well, thanks for putting a smile on my face, Charlie. You may now think of me as an enemy, but I still consider you a friend and I will be there for you when you wake up.
— Alex Barnes-Ross
Mark Bunker on Scientology’s new moves in Clearwater!
The HowdyCon agenda!
The first wave of tickets have now officially sold out, but don’t worry, more will be released soon. In the meantime, we are excited to announce the agenda for this year’s event. The full list of talks is on view at the convention website!
HowdyCon will be taking place at multiple venues throughout New London, CT and in order to minimize potential interference from Scientology, the details will be shared exclusively with those who have purchased a ticket.
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I’ll bet Scientologists just LOVE the metrics given from posting online. “This video has 30k views.” That means literally nothing. All that means is that the video was scrolled onto a phone via a feed and then it started playing for approximately one second 30k times, not that anyone watched it to the end, or even liked anything about it. Not to mention, those view counts are likely inflated somewhat by the Scientologists themselves. Edited to add, there are 2 billion Tik-Tok users worldwide, 30K views is laughably small numbers.
You see this a lot on Social Media now, the emphasis has been moved from likes and dislikes, to views. As if that means anything at all. If you post something online, and it gets 30k views, but no likes, dislikes or interaction, all it means it that 30k people ignored your video while scrolling. This move to emphasize views over whether anyone actually interacts with your video is to give those people who don’t get much interaction a taste of what it feels like to be popular online so they keep coming back. Again, if your video gets 30k views, but no one interacts with it, all it means is you got ignored 30 thousand times.
It’s important to keep in mind, that if you’re scrolling social media and a video comes up and auto plays, that counts as a “view”. On Tik-Tok specifically, if the video plays for literally one second, it counts as a view.
Getting 30k “views” on a video you posted means objectively nothing. Hell, I’ve made dumb jokes online that got something like 255k views. If there’s no engagement with the video itself, the number is meaningless, and of course, there’s likely zero actual engagement with these video clips outside of the very few Scientologists told to interact with it.
That’s got to be why certain Scientologists are so hardcore in trying these online pushes even when they’re being told not to, they see the boon of fake statistics they can flood Miscavige’s office with. I’m sure Miscavige’s eyes became saucers when tales of 30k views on videos reaches his tiny ears.
Sure, you can flood Tik-Tok with clips about Scientology and the fact they pop up on people’s phones means they will autoplay for the second or so that counts as a view, but all that’s going to happen is the public is going to keep scrolling and ignore what they just saw while meaningless numbers are created around it.
Not that it matters, if Miscavige falls for the “look how many views we’re getting” spiel from one of these low level try-hards, he’ll be grabbing those fake numbers and shoving them into the rich members faces quick sharp. “Look at our reach with our video clips online! We’re winning the war for the hearts and minds online!”
Meanwhile, crickets in all the Orgs as usual.
Here’s one more point to give some perspective of how low the numbers are for 30k of views. Tik-tok video views per day, that’s a video being watched for at least one second, there’s over 1 billion a day. These views numbers are so infinitesimally small, it’s not even worth bragging about. That video with 30k views didn’t get all those views in one day, it took time to accumulate, meaning the actual daily total of views is far, far less than 30k, on a platform that has over 1 billion views per day.
These numbers Wakley is pushing has all the weight and wow factor as belly button lint. But again, it’s information they can push at their unenlightened members and if you don’t know what I wrote above, you’re going to buy into the bullshit.
Also, Mark Bunker is a very funny dude.
Being a Scientologist sounds like a lot of work. Phew. Spend money on this program, do this extra job each day oh geez. All for no money. And trust me, you will be watched to ensure you are doing it every damn day. All work and no no play. That is what Scientology is and always has been.