00:00:00.000hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to be talking about
00:00:05.980the bricks and minifigures story but i want to take it in a different direction than a lot of
00:00:12.180people have gone on it i want to talk about the meta discussion around it and the extreme damage
00:00:19.360and i've noticed that the one usually the mormon church and mormons more broadly are good at
00:00:28.120dealing with pr disasters like the the the way that they you know turned the book of mormon into
00:00:34.740like oh yeah yeah spinning that broadway play by matt stone and trey parker into something where
00:00:40.680they would just put good PR outside the theaters and be like hey you enjoyed the play why not try
00:00:46.380the real thing i mean it's great yeah and in one of the other episodes we did even the mormon
00:00:51.780tendency to come off like creepy pod people to outsiders to somehow been able to subvert that
00:00:57.460into like yeah well we're just so wholesome right you know like that's that's why we're coming off
00:01:01.740that way right i mean it is because they're just that wholesome get over i heard there's warm pie
00:01:08.860from my my cultural background think they come off like creepy pod people i don't remember him
00:01:13.360being that friendly he's obviously one of them yeah and we have a whole episode of you're interested
00:01:18.640on what causes that reaction and i don't think that mormons have this emotional reaction which
00:01:22.580is why they don't realize that they trigger it so hard in other people well not all scotts irish
00:01:28.920people have it i like i don't feel that yeah you don't have the creepy but it's clearly a common
00:01:34.900enough expression in humans that there's multiple horror series just made out of triggering this
00:01:40.660reaction stan take the drug man prove it to us okay
00:01:43.840open the door it is so much better there's no fear or pain it's beautiful and you
00:01:56.460will be beautiful no problems or worries we want you0.99
00:02:03.380no pain stan we're gonna come in here and i'll show you some fucking pain0.97
00:02:10.380And here I'll put the scenes from the faculty or, you know, children in the court or something. But anyway, in this instance, it has fundamentally, like, and more broadly, so for people who know our channel and our sense, we're generally pretty pro-Mormon.0.97
00:02:24.560We're pro-Mormon for a few reasons. One is, of all of the factions, like religious factions out there, they're one of the most persistently pro-technology. And if people are like, why are they so pro-technology when contrasted with other religious groups?
00:02:41.380it's because if you want to be you know status signal to other you know orthodox christians
00:02:47.820or to other catholics and you go to them and you're like i'm doing it the traditional way
00:02:52.260the way we did things in the 1850s you can look like extra cool if you're a mormon and you go
00:02:58.160like i'm doing things the way we did it in the 1850s the other mormons are gonna like
00:03:02.620you are doing things super wrong then and then you're like no the the 1920s yeah a lot has
00:03:09.740changed since then i i mean 1950s oh we're that different thing but it's still a pretty different
00:03:16.760beast it's basically mormonism evolves even its belief system so rapidly that there isn't the
00:03:25.660desire because like if you go to the uh most of the the most conservative mormons like if you're
00:03:32.900talking about the ones who really try to preserve traditions they're typically the schismatic cultists
00:03:37.400this is like the are flds schismatic i don't remember
00:03:41.160no oh oh you mean from the mainstream church yes no yeah yeah yeah yeah i felt the yes or
00:03:50.520schismatic yeah yes okay so again it makes them very pro-technology two they're a minority
00:03:56.960population and any minority population is useful to partner with if they have something akin to
00:04:03.000Christian values, because you can largely bet on them, at least within federal regulation,
00:04:10.680to promote laws that maintain maximum cultural sovereignty, because they benefit from that
00:04:17.160cultural sovereignty. Although they do try to impose their values on others in the regions
00:04:21.300where they are the majority, which is what we're going to get to in this video. So not just like
00:04:24.700positionally, are they a good group to ally with, but they also have been on a tear in terms of
00:04:31.920good social media i often point out that we went from a mormon stereotype when i was growing up
00:04:38.080of a nerdy guy who knocks on your door and has like a pencil protector and a book of mormon1.00
00:04:46.000like asking to talk to you or something right well you two boys can just fuck right off1.00
00:04:52.000ma'am you heard me take that book of mormon and shove it so far up your righteous asses that you1.00
00:04:58.160choke so soliciting pick fuckers you know this was the stereotype my generation grew up with1.00
00:05:05.900when the word mormon came up in something with your head for today's youth the stereotype0.99
00:05:11.180until maybe this event and i think people are underplaying how big this is was of a hot trad
00:05:18.580wife making muffets or something like that that was the stereotype mormon in people's heads for a0.99
00:05:24.240while and the reason and we'll get into like why people have had such a bafflingly stupid0.98
00:05:30.580response to this it has made me much more wary of long-term alliances with mormon communities0.95
00:05:37.980more generally specifically the response that we have seen to this from mormons because i went
00:05:43.880through like at least a dozen mormon videos at least a dozen mormon reactions and we'll get
00:05:48.140into i'm assuming if you're watching this you're broadly aware of what happened but broad strokes
00:05:53.580a mormon-owned business staffed primarily by mormons blatantly stole an old man's sort of
00:06:01.400inheritance for his son uh two hundred thousand dollars worth of lego figures it's a little more
00:06:05.080complicated than that because and this is something that you should appreciate as someone who's been
00:06:08.400through this process a an old man who had a very very impressive star wars lego collection
00:06:14.640provided it to a bricks and minifigs lego store on consignment this means that ownership was
00:06:20.580transferred to them per the contract and then the seller would receive the payout when those goods
00:06:26.780were sold problem is that business was sold and then the people who know it wasn't sold sorry
00:06:32.440you're getting your facts wrong already really i was told it was sold no so corporate illegally
00:06:38.320took it over and they confiscated not just from this guy but everything that this other business
00:06:45.280had which is one of the reasons basically we'll get into this later a non-mormon couple made the
00:06:52.140mistake of getting into a business relationship with a mormon company bricks and minifigs
00:06:57.220and the company essentially just stole their franchise and all their assets and then gave0.82
00:07:03.580it to a mormon couple yeah well then there should be a clear-cut case to be like this
00:07:08.100my contract was rendered well yeah but the other person again i don't want to get into the details
00:07:13.940yet putting the broad well i just i'm glad that i brought that up because i think a lot of people
00:07:18.660are under the same impression that i was no this other case is explains i think why because it's
00:07:26.140baffling this is a company that makes 10 million a year they have 300 locations for them to cause
00:07:32.560such a blow up over 200 000 when they were very clearly in the wrong on this and all of their
00:07:37.900paperwork makes it clear they were in the wrong on this which we'll get into
00:07:41.500the baffling decision for somebody who used to run a company you just wouldn't do this we all
00:07:48.100the time gave even when like we're not sure if the customer's in the right or something like that
00:07:53.280generally it's always just like it's not worth it right you know just just make it go away right
00:07:58.320for two hundred thousand dollars this should have been especially when it was pretty clear
00:08:01.740it was their their fault uh just make it go away issue but they didn't and so we need to get into
00:08:07.340why they probably didn't because it's actually almost kind of confusing that they didn't
00:08:11.740the i actually think it has something to do with the store that they took over basically illegally
00:08:18.500and it might implicate if they give back the money to this person that they have to give back the
00:08:24.080money for everything else that they stole well yeah if they're selling legos on consignment and
00:08:29.440they are no longer honoring consignment agreements and just treating it like it's inventory
00:08:34.660no it's not just that so okay i'll explain a little bit more thank you the guy who originally
00:08:44.020owned it and had the stuff listed on consignment at the store uh bricks and minifigs messed up his
00:08:51.020banking information they messed up his banking information so he was unable to pay them normally
00:08:55.500then what they did is he he worked with them in terms of fixing it it took a few months okay
00:09:01.780Right. And they eventually worked it out. And at the end of the period where they worked it out,
00:09:06.320he then paid them the franchising costs for when he hadn't, you know, when they had messed up his
00:09:12.920banking information. Right. And they agreed on the amount that he paid. They worked it out together.
00:09:18.100It was all amicable and things went ahead for a number of months. Then after, I don't know how
00:09:23.920many months after this, it might've been four months after this or something like this,
00:09:26.560corporate just comes in and says, we are forcibly shutting down your location and taking control of
00:09:31.060all the assets in it because of this unpaid franchise thing but he had actually already
00:09:37.000paid the franchise thing and they have that all of this is in writing by the way right they're
00:09:41.920just asserting that well because you change the format you paid it during this period it counts
00:09:47.780as unpaid and we are seizing all of your assets you didn't do it exactly correct and therefore
00:09:53.440dot dot dot somehow we own everything yeah and so then they seized all of not just the stuff
00:10:00.320in consignment all of his inventory oh my gosh oh my gosh that's that seems super easy to settle
00:10:09.520in court like no one's gonna accept that that's well yeah it's really bad but we're seeing why
00:10:17.220they thought they could gotta get away with it and it had to do with the community and this is
00:10:22.120where it gets interesting and why me going over all the mormon influencers covering this has been
00:10:25.520really interesting is this is not something that could have happened in a normal community when
00:10:31.900they're like oh there's some bad mormon members or something like that every incident tied to this
00:10:38.380case whether it's the police harassment of the people trying to handle this the illegal jailing
00:10:44.240of people trying to handle this or the owner thinking that they could get away with this
00:10:49.500basically having the entire town government on their side right and people are like oh this is
00:10:56.680normal small town stuff this is not normal small town stuff okay there is a reason why this is
00:11:03.480going so mega viral and everyone's like i've never seen anything like this in my life this is not
00:11:09.480normal small town stuff there's a note i grew up in small town texas in large part never did i see
00:11:16.400anything remotely like this this is not normal small town behavior in america and the very fact
00:11:23.100that many mormons watch this event and then respond with that's just normal small town collusion
00:11:32.680shows i think a degree of incompatibility with american culture which is not good because other
00:11:39.700americans watch the mormon go up and be like this is just a normal thing to happen in a town
00:11:44.560and they're like it's very hot fuzz what no this isn't a normal thing to happen0.92
00:11:52.240this is an insane thing to happen and when they're like oh well it's just bad
00:11:57.860why are the police protecting a private citizen here
00:12:00.820and a clear bad actor at this point right why is the head of police going up and lying on behalf
00:12:08.840of this guy provably because we can show that he got the dates wrong on the things he was saying
00:12:12.960by things in pictures they've been able to recreate audio of what really happened during
00:12:18.160the raid right because they had a camera on and that they police knew they had no cause to do
00:12:23.360this why would the police go so far as to arrest a private citizen merely trying to get his property
00:12:30.940back at one point like to get how crazy this is i don't know if you've seen this
00:12:34.320they go to serve this guy his papers and the police chief says this publicly that the guy
00:12:42.840called the police and said he had his gun and he was thinking about shooting them because they were
00:12:48.080outside of his house trying to serve him his papers, which you have to do to start a court
00:12:53.580case. The police then come, take the papers from this guy, say, are these even real? They then call
00:13:01.120up the court system. The court system tells them these are real papers. The police says, oh, well,
00:13:06.980then I guess I'll go serve him the papers. The guy refuses to take the papers from the police
00:13:12.340officer okay and then the police officer what do they do after this they arrest him the guy trying
00:13:19.920to do the normal part of the legal process which is serving him his papers on what grounds it was
00:13:25.840on the grounds that they were not harassment for trying to serve someone their papers for harassment
00:13:29.880you have to serve for if you're unfamiliar in the united states you have to serve someone their
00:13:34.160papers you have to show that they open their the the mail containing the legal stuff or the times
00:13:39.960to start on this stuff it's this it's just such a weird thing of like legal theater it is weird0.87
00:13:46.300and i we should probably ban it in the united states it's a stupid thing to have it's really0.95
00:13:50.100stupid yeah but secondarily and i know it could lead to negative externalities there's probably0.94
00:13:56.560some other way we can do it okay but like this intentionally not taking your papers it should0.99
00:14:00.980be able to show like you're not legally allowed to not take your papers if a court something tries
00:14:06.620to serve them to you and this is a position people could apply to okay or like if you're
00:14:11.740home or something like that you know what i mean but anyway uh and and to get into like and when
00:14:17.720people are like well that doesn't the reason the cops are colluding with the business is very
00:14:22.520clearly because of a mormon church affiliation in addition to that when the cops because in one
00:14:28.700instance very clearly fortunately we have video of this they did not do a rolling stop they stopped
00:14:33.300at a stoplight the cops then pull over the car and immediately say like you know not who's driving
00:14:40.020here you know did you do a stop but they go which one of you it's in the youtuber's name ben
00:14:44.140all the police footage of this and as you can see we didn't even do a rolling stop
00:14:48.840we fully stopped at the stop sign so this is an illegal traffic stop
00:14:53.660so who's ben uh me ben how's utah it's good like it okay and he's like i'm ben and the cop then0.71
00:15:05.840says in like your most typical villain points possible or more like crazy corrupt zombie town
00:15:11.400voice possible how are you liking your time in utah which is clearly code for among the mormons
00:15:19.000right like that he meant he meant it in a very specific way and so then mormons could come to
00:15:25.460me and say well it's not like we or the church could do anything about this and the problem is
00:15:30.200is yeah they absolutely could the mormon church isn't like a protestant denomination where it's
00:15:36.780decentralized and they can't do anything they actively and regularly excommunicate people
00:15:42.140over fairly trivial you could lose your your temple recommends like you could there's yeah
00:15:47.080actually the lds church is uniquely well positioned to basically both kind of economically plus more
00:15:56.040spiritually disempower or freeze out people who are doing naughty things so yeah you can absolutely
00:16:01.820slap people in the wrist and it doesn't even have to be temporary you can just be like look we're0.99
00:16:05.180going to take what your temple recommends until you give this guy his legos and stop being a jerk0.99
00:16:10.220you're really making it'd be easy for the church to handle yeah but the church has decided not to0.97
00:16:16.360handle it and it has a historic pattern of not handling things like this which we'll go over
00:16:20.020which make them a negative externality to other parties actually let's just go straight into this
00:16:26.400are you familiar simone meadows massacre while you give that the mountain meadows massacre just
00:16:33.720let me get text you can give i just have to feed him you can you can you can give the
00:16:39.700are you aware of it yeah it's sad kids get hurt so you should probably say it when i'm not here
00:16:46.360all right so the mountains meadow massacre in 1857 the members of the church of latter-day
00:16:55.040states mormons killed 120 innocent immigrants who were simply trying to they were also appellation
00:17:02.220immigrants so my people who were just trying to migrate to california through mormon territory
00:17:07.180now it is true that brigham young sent them a letter telling them not to do this and it didn't
00:17:12.780reach them in time but after they did it no one was punished for 10 years and only two people were
00:17:21.400ever excommunicated by the church despite a large number of people being involved in this and the
00:17:26.860way that they did it was horrifying they told the settlers okay well then just give us your guns
00:17:31.200and we'll let you through the territory they gave them the guns they separated them into three lines
00:17:36.740of men women and children they shot the men and the women and then they and then
00:17:43.560i should probably say something else there and then with sticks they did something until
00:17:53.620the other group wasn't around anymore and then they tried to blame it all on native americans
00:18:02.180who are only lightly involved in it, the church worked to cover it up within the region. And to
00:18:07.760give you an idea, people maintained main positions of power within the Mormon church after this.
00:18:13.620So if we look at an individual like William H. Dame, who was the colonel, the commander of the
00:18:19.840Iron Military District, and a high-ranking figure, he gave the final approval for the massacre,
00:18:26.460but was indicted because people wouldn't speak out against him. The entire community stayed silent.
00:18:30.980And he continued as a leadership figure within the church, in the community afterwards.
00:18:37.100And then we also know other figures like John Mee Higby, who was a participant, one of the
00:18:42.800people who did the beatings and everything like that.
00:18:45.680And he held positions in the church for years after this.
00:18:53.140And for wondering why it wasn't even tried until 10 years after the event and the key
00:18:57.780perpetrators maintained positions in the church.
00:18:59.360two of them were eventually excommunicated but only two of them when dozens of them took place
00:19:03.720i mean a hundred over a hundred people were massacred in case you're wondering children
00:19:07.740under seven were not unalived and they were brought into ormond families but other than that
00:19:13.120all the kids so it's important to remember that this behavior of treating people outside the
00:19:21.980community as if their lives welfare oh and they took all the people's property they just stole
00:19:27.740it all and distribute it right treating them like their lives don't matter if they think they can get0.96
00:19:33.660an advantage over them is a historic way that mormons act and is likely the way they would act
00:19:39.740in a society if they ever gained majority control again given that we both see it historically and
00:19:44.860we see it in current behavior that doesn't mean they're not a useful ally right now for our agenda
00:19:49.920but in terms of groups gaining power in a region one of the last groups you ever want to gain power0.83
00:19:57.340is mormons this is something that is reaffirmed every time a mormon says this is normal small
00:20:01.900town behavior or oh these are just individual bad actors and it's irrelevant that they're members of
00:20:07.540the church when the only reason anyone is acting this way is because of the church mormons are
00:20:12.040only a really good ally because they are a minority right now and they have to fight to0.98
00:20:16.960protect the powers of minority traditions you have to protect families from cps have to protect1.00
00:20:21.400But the ways that they act when they have power has historically been pretty monstrous.1.00
00:20:28.200And I think one of the things that this incident is bringing back for people is, oh, yeah, Mormons aren't just like sweet trad wives.1.00
00:20:41.380They're also the type of people who will beat your children to death if they think they can get away with it and steal all your stuff, right?0.98
00:20:48.660They also were the type of people who should genuinely be viewed adversarially if they're ever about to gain majority of control of anything that you're affiliated with.
00:20:59.900And they could make themselves, I mean, Mormonism evolves very quickly, they could make themselves into something not like that.
00:21:06.420And I think a lot of people had the perspective before this event blew up in the way it did that the church had moved on from that mindset, that church members had moved on from that mindset.
00:21:18.660The idea of, okay, well, if we have bad members, we deal with it, right?
00:21:24.860Like presumably that's what the church did now.
00:21:27.760And now we are demonstrably seeing that is not the case.
00:21:31.020And worse, not only is it not the case, but the Mormon influencers who cover this show
00:21:36.640culturally, like the wider Mormon community is nowhere near the place that they need to
00:21:47.400it would hurt the church not at all to just really just say hey we're taking away your
00:21:53.420temple recommends card until you get this guy his money back simplest thing ever it would cause
00:21:58.260literally no damage for them the key reason they're not doing this right the key reason0.91
00:22:04.400they're not getting involved in this is because fundamentally it would be punishing mormons for
00:22:12.100protecting mormons in a way that was immoral and oh see i thought maybe they've had a conversation
00:22:19.500internally and been like if we remove their temple recommends or we do anything to associate
00:22:26.380ourselves with them to comment on this it would imply it would make it out in the open and too
00:22:32.680obvious that this is a mormon thing whereas now there is plausible deniability
00:22:38.200oh there's no plausible deniability no and i think that this is this is something that i think that
00:22:45.180mormons when they're watching this don't get that non-mormons are going through watching this
00:22:50.060when we watch this right and we see the sheer injustice of what's being carried out here0.61
00:22:57.740and and just the wantedness of it the the total lack of like once we dominate a region we treat
00:23:06.420outsiders however we want right the the sheer wantedness of it like it it makes me feel like0.61
00:23:12.920you're you're much better off being a muslim in israel than you are being a non-mormon in one of0.66
00:23:17.020these small mormon towns because apparently the police just don't work for you they they do not0.92
00:23:21.440even care about the pretense of impartiality they don't even care about the pretense that
00:23:27.220they're anything other than that's what it looks like to a non-mormon watching this and if you're0.53
00:23:31.380a mormon and you watch this and your blood is boiling and you're angry at these individuals
00:23:35.580it's really important that you understand that i'd say about 80 percent of the non-mormons
00:23:41.500watching this when their blood is boiling and they're directing that anger in a direction
00:23:47.180it is at mormonism because the whole pattern the whole weirdness of it is clearly created
00:23:54.260by a mormon cultural foundation and the bigger problem is is it could be fixed all mormons have
00:23:59.660to do is speak up but i then started thinking about this more broadly and realized this is a
00:24:03.800larger failure of the mormon church because i was thinking about like actually you know there's
00:24:09.440another thing that i'm really surprised the mormon church hasn't banned because the mormon church is
00:24:13.380willing to go out there and ban you know caffeine although they're not caffeine hot drinks like
00:24:18.940coffee actually not even really hot drinks from the words of wisdom they ban gambling why can't
00:24:25.400they ban mlms mlms are a massive problem in the mormon church worse than being a generic massive
00:24:32.760problem there because of the way mlms work fundamentally the way that people even if
00:24:37.600somebody is making money in an mlm at the end of the day they're only making money because they are
00:24:41.840disenfranchising more people downstream of them okay now the prophet the head of the mormon church
00:24:47.780has come out and said that you shouldn't use the rolodexes you have from being a church member or
00:24:55.160church lists and stuff like that as part of your mlm prospecting they could go a lot further than
00:25:01.980that because the core way that an MLM makes money is by basically scamming the people at the bottom
00:25:07.260of the pyramid, right? And the problem is, is the way Mormon social communities work and the reason0.94
00:25:12.860MLM spread quickly within them is because they're very good at converting each other. They're very0.60
00:25:17.120good at trusting each other. They are very low levels of incredulity when it comes to other
00:25:22.080Mormons, as we're seeing play out in this particular instance. So the central church could come in and
00:25:26.980say we don't do this anymore because overall this obviously hurts Mormons the most that we don't ban
00:25:32.700this but also the people who run the MLMs that are doing this are predominantly Mormon and they
00:25:39.580donate a lot to the temple and so it sort of ends up in a if we can milk money out of people and
00:25:46.140this is where I fundamentally changed my thoughts on Mormons when I started thinking about MLMs
00:25:49.500because I used to give the temple an out right when people are like oh look at the temple's
00:25:54.000financial scandals in the past, right? Like they invested a bunch of money in a shopping mall. And
00:25:58.980I'm like, that's the way you're supposed to invest money, you doofus. You know, that's not
00:26:04.980a scandal. That's a normal thing to do. Okay. Yeah. But to not restrict or even advise against
00:26:16.900joining mlms when every sane person knows that they end up impoverishing hundreds of thousands0.52
00:26:24.340of average mormons every year right just so that they can get more donations that's what i was like0.66
00:26:29.360oh this is more machiavellian than i thought right this is more to its core sort of rotten than i0.82
00:26:36.880really thought because and i even looked to see if they'd ever looked at doing that they banned lots
00:26:41.980of other stuff like why can you ban gambling and not mlms oh because gambling institutions aren't
00:26:47.340run by mormons i mean the answer is obvious right do you have thoughts before i go into the the
00:26:52.320details of this particular case no please go ahead one thing i want you to check out simone
00:26:59.060because i'd be very interested to know can you check out the original owners of the store the
00:27:03.200one who basically had the store stolen from them okay if they were mormons too okay okay
00:27:10.440so bricks and minifigs operate franchises the whole dispute stems from a deal made between a
00:27:16.280man called brian manswell and the former franchisee lost gorman brian's father had
00:27:20.560amassed a collection of allegedly 200 000 but he's now in poor health so they were looking to sell
00:27:26.220the owners of the store agreed to a consignment meaning that they would hold all the sets at no
00:27:31.100cost during which time the manswell would still technically own them and they would advertise to
00:27:35.480sell them. We've already explained this. After taking consignment, the franchisees went to B&M
00:27:42.200Corporate and told them that they were considering moving out of the country and inquired on the
00:27:46.220process of selling the store. Corporate responded by forcing them out and illegally taking possession
00:27:51.300of the store. There is an actual video of the owners explicitly mentioning having the consignment
00:27:56.880and the corporate representative responding by saying that they will handle it and take
00:28:01.760responsibility. So they both knew it and represented that they were to handle it, even when later
00:28:06.760they're like, well, we say we don't handle consignment. Yeah, but you signed a thing
00:28:10.420saying you would handle it, so you're responsible for it. B&M installed new owners in the Salem
00:28:15.980store, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. Both of these franchisees and corporates refused to honor
00:28:23.440the consignment agreement, stating that consignments are prohibited by contract and that they have
00:28:27.000no responsibility for an unauthorized agreement entered in between Manswell and the previous
00:28:30.880owners although once again their contract contradicts this as does the actual video
00:28:35.120recording of the employees saying that they will take it on it gets particularly offered at this
00:28:39.520joint because bnm's official stance is that they could only identify 5k worth of legos which
00:28:44.240potentially belong to mansfeld and they supposedly offered to give this over but not reimburse for
00:28:49.920the tens of thousands of missing sets for the part of manswell and reckless ben the youtuber
00:28:54.800who joined forces was manswell to take the case they allege that this isn't true at all and that
00:28:59.600that they are in possession of more sets or at least they were by the time they took over the
00:29:03.600store now note he's able to prove that they had more sets because they had the sets for sale in
00:29:09.240their online store after they took it over and he was just able to look at them and be like here
00:29:14.480these are the sets right so they're provably again lying what in short what ensues is a bunch of back
00:29:20.340and forth you have my set slash money and no bnm in no uncertain words threatened him stating that
00:29:27.040the cost of taking them to court would be prohibitively expensive and then he'd ever
00:29:32.480make off the sets and that they intended to drag out the case if he tries so after more nonsense
00:29:38.040they get accused of trespassing they finally take them to small claims court and they sort of tricked
00:29:43.660them into not responding to the claims court and ended up winning two hundred thousand dollars
00:29:47.700then they go to collect the money and they had shut down the store that day to understand how
00:29:52.620severe this was they didn't even tell like children who had their birthday parties at the
00:29:58.320store that it was oh this is clearly to evade i see wow they ended up sitting in the parking lot
00:30:05.320during their birthday after they had rented out and paid them for the spot that that was multiple
00:30:11.600kids birthdays because they just didn't handle this and again we see here complete uncaring for0.83
00:30:18.620non-Mormons. Simone, were you able to find out? Yeah. The only confirmed members of the Church
00:30:24.640of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the corporate owners in Utah, not the original
00:30:30.120franchisees in Salem. Oh, no, no. The new franchisees who took over, I'm pretty sure,
00:30:34.700are confirmed. So when they stole it from the original franchisees, they gave it to a Mormon1.00
00:30:40.520family. Look that up there. Okay. The incoming Utah-affiliated owners of the same franchise1.00
00:30:45.280location joshua johnson and brandon best are described in coverage and videos as mormons
00:30:52.020so a mormon corporate illegally took possession of the store and all its property and gave it to
00:30:57.620a mormon family and people are like what does this have to do with mormonism well they're not
00:31:02.520a family it's joshua johnson and brandon best oh i guess two mormon people okay yes
00:31:09.120allegedly too because as described in in basically like according to the youtube
00:31:15.100coverage and on wikipedia they're mormons but again allegedly so what what happened with them
00:31:23.120and the cops to go over this there was a traffic stop where they alleged that they had heroin in
00:31:28.400the car after a two-hour search showed up nothing they then switched track and start saying that
00:31:33.520they got dilated pupils which by the way is the opposite of when you have heroin they finally gave
00:31:37.900up wait really wouldn't heroin dilate your pupils i think heroin causes constricted pupils or
00:31:45.260i'll go into this in in notes yep i was right here heroin constricts pupils the exact opposite
00:31:51.640of the reason they said they pulled them over okay okay and no we have from their cams because
00:31:57.700it's been leaked that the cops said we have nothing so how do we get them basically just
00:32:02.600seeing outsiders as annoying describing them as annoying there was multiple unfounded traffic
00:32:06.840stops during which the police officer immediately addresses bin in the back seat of the car by his
00:32:12.340name being like we know who you are that's why we're pulling this car over even though there is
00:32:16.560zero reason to do so several police call outs while trying to serve papers to best where the
00:32:21.900and keep in mind in one of these call outs and the chief of police admits this he said he was
00:32:26.660thinking about shooting these people okay and had his gun which i think might even be an illegal0.58
00:32:31.940thing to do i'm i'm not sure but i don't think you can be like i'm thinking about shooting you0.99
00:32:36.460while waving a gun at somebody fuck yeah that's got to be illegal yes this would count as brandishing0.98
00:32:42.160a weapon and a criminal threat so it is absolutely crazy that the chief of police literally is listing0.99
00:32:48.840a criminal threat that this man is making to the chief of police as in his defense of his actions
00:32:57.780in his defense of not arresting the guy who made the criminal threat uh my god the the cops just
00:33:04.900keep coming back every time he does this removing him when he's trying to search papers finally he
00:33:09.080gets arrested on some bogus charges for putting up advertising on a gofundme so that was what they
00:33:13.360this was wild he's like is it illegal to put up a gofundme and they're like it is if you list the
00:33:18.980people's names on the gofundme okay the the problem is is that that would be libel that would not be
00:33:27.500a criminal offense that you could go to jail over and they put him in jail without bail as well so
00:33:33.600he couldn't keep filming because that's what they were afraid of so it's gotten astronomically worse
00:33:38.480because of this and then the police going out they there's video of them going up to him and
00:33:43.000he's just standing there in the video they say that he was acting roughly but he's clearly just
00:33:46.640standing there they grab his arm and dislocate his shoulder no no no no don't don't move like
00:33:56.500that you understand me don't move like that okay yeah this cop pulled my arm so far back it
00:34:02.580dislocated my shoulder he claims it's because i was attempting to make an escape or something
00:34:07.140don't move like that you understand me don't move like that don't move quick everybody just
00:34:11.620this happens because his shoulder is very easy to dislocate apparently it's happened to him a lot
00:34:15.220and so he's very aware of the sensation and what happens and he put up a image of what a stock
00:34:20.740dislocated shoulder looks like in his video and the police were like see that's a stock photo
00:34:24.500it's like of course he couldn't get a real one you guys had him in jail and wouldn't allow him
00:34:27.940to be x-rayed right like um so and i'll note here we always call out communities when they're not
00:34:35.280dealing with their own right and i do this we did this with the adl and habad was a jewish community
00:34:41.840when we talked about speed running a program we're now doing it even with communities that
00:34:45.820were fairly close with the mormon community because this is astronomically bad the level0.97
00:34:51.320of brutality that we are seeing here in sort of a global stage in like an American town, right?1.00
00:34:58.820And people can be like, oh, like this isn't as bad as like the grape gangs in Britain and stuff
00:35:07.400like that, right? And it's like, no, it's not exactly, but you've got to understand to your
00:35:12.520average American who comes from a non-Mormon culture, it actually kind of looks worse.0.98
00:35:17.220and the reason it looks worse is the sheer audacity with which it's done and the extent
00:35:25.680and and the brazenness of the attempt to cover up which implies to everyone all around like if you
00:35:32.840were living in one of these communities or if these people had power this is the way they treat
00:35:37.400you and what's worse is the way mormon influencers have reacted which is to see this and be like
00:35:42.980either this is normal small town stuff or what can we do about it it's just individual bad actors
00:35:49.900and it's like there are plenty of channels a mormon can use to attempt to address this
00:35:54.780okay so since all of this by the way do you want to say anything
00:35:59.000i hadn't thought about it this way when hearing about the drama like i hadn't thought about it0.64
00:36:05.800of like oh so you want to know what it's like to live in a an lds caliphate a catholic caliphate
00:36:11.620like look at what happens in the hot fuzz version of a catholic town an lds town a baptist town and
00:36:21.360i guess this is kind of interesting and telling yeah and note here they can be like oh i actually
00:36:27.580lived when i was a kid we had a ranch and so i lived in a small texas town for a lot of my life
00:36:36.480and i had encounters with the cops there and everything like that i had encounters with other
00:36:40.360business people there. Let me tell you what, in a small Texas town, nobody is acting like this.
00:36:45.820I don't care if they go to the same church. They're interested in what's right, not what
00:36:50.760church they go to, okay? And if you want to be like, well, what's it like to be an outsider in
00:36:55.260a small Texas town? I'm sure it's horrible there too. Who's an outsider in a small Texas town?
00:36:59.380Leaflet. She always talks about her town glowingly, right? Never had any problems with the locals,
00:37:05.100right and and and so i i want to point out here again this is not normal right thoughts before
00:37:11.580i go further simone yeah i've been in many small random towns in various places in the world where
00:37:19.660people are super chill so yeah this is not normal at all okay so in terms of what's happened
00:37:26.120basically it's all escalating the police have not backed down at all they did a press thing
00:37:32.040saying, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I saw footage from the press conference. Goodness gracious.
00:37:36.100The head of the company, the toy company, they made an announcement basically saying we did
00:37:41.900nothing wrong. I guess I should, again, because we covered this a bit at the beginning, but I want to,
00:37:46.780as business owners, go into this again, okay? This is not a normal thing for a company to do.
00:37:54.440We have had- In the midst of acquiring, buying, or selling a company, what typically happens is
00:38:00.680there are two ways you can buy or sell a company. You can buy all of the company's stocks. It could
00:38:04.600be a stock purchase or like transfer of ownership, or it can be an asset purchase or transfer of
00:38:09.740ownership. And it's almost always assets because people don't want a stock purchase. It involves
00:38:15.620a transfer of liabilities that no one really wants. And so when you do an asset purchase or
00:38:21.500some kind of change of ownership of assets, you also have to make a bunch of assignment agreements.
00:38:26.340When we acquired a business on behalf of investors, the deal was almost lost over lawyers losing their minds over assignment agreements.
00:38:36.280We actually almost lost the deal because we refused to have every single vendor sign an assignment agreement saying, basically, we will transfer our contract from the old corporation to the new corporation that's acquiring the assets.
00:38:54.760so this is just one of those things that like lawyers that get involved are crazy about because
00:39:00.660it can it can kill a business it's really important the ownership of these things matters
00:39:05.760all this stuff is really well documented and this is not something that you just like
00:39:09.320miss it's not something oh like you got lost in the shuffle like i thought i thought these were
00:39:15.240ours like wait wait no what yes but this is the type of thing that like in a nor if it was done
00:39:20.540normally would have been a very long discussion, right? And I mean, it was to the extent that it
00:39:26.140was filmed, right? So we do know that it happened. It's not a very long discussion. It just would
00:39:28.120have been like, you know, we are assigning these consignment contracts and the associated assets
00:39:34.120from business A to business B. It's very simple. Like, okay, great. Now we have, you know,
00:39:40.820these assets that we will sell and we're obligated to sell, to give a certain cut of the profits to
00:39:45.340this person. Like, it's so simple. And this is not something that is missed.
00:39:48.480yeah for corporate to shut down a franchise and transfer its assets without the franchisee's
00:39:57.180approval when they weren't in clear violation to another party is one that's insane but then two
00:40:05.240when the lawsuit came in like the small two hundred thousand dollar lawsuit and you might
00:40:09.880be like that's a big lawsuit that is not a big lawsuit for a company the size of bricks and
00:40:13.860many figs yeah bricks and many figs it it is literally like it in terms of what i mean i'm
00:40:21.220not going to say it's a rounding error but it's the type of thing i would say over the course of
00:40:25.020the last few years and running our business there have been multiple instances where sometimes you
00:40:28.600just get hit where like it turns out in one of your employees did something wrong fifty thousand
00:40:33.680dollars or something like that you get hit with it you pay it out you always pay it out you never
00:40:39.300sit on that money because the the lawsuit and the reputational damage is just too big right
00:40:45.420the idea that they wouldn't do this they'd be like oh we're just gonna ignore the legal case
00:40:52.720here right like we're or to even let it get to legal right over two hundred thousand dollars
00:40:57.140which is nothing is astonishing and it displays also it's not two hundred thousand dollars that
00:41:04.740they paid for it's two hundred thousand dollars of potential profit that they seized again this
00:41:10.480is what it was valued at this is not what it's being sold for though imagine with inflation is
00:41:15.400probably not just handing them two hundred thousand dollars to make them go away oh i see
00:41:20.580yeah no right just buying it from them as as a corporation oh i see what you're saying yeah
00:41:25.360even waited to sell it on consignment they should just spot it from them yeah no when when people
00:41:30.500start making a stink like this it's generally good to just give them the money and make them
00:41:34.120go away. I see. Yeah. Just buy them off. Yeah. That would have been simpler, but I mean, I think
00:41:37.780also they could have just been like, okay, we will honor your consignment agreement. Like we
00:41:42.020will sell it. Or if you want to take it back, take it back. We won't sell it. I don't care.
00:41:47.300No, but the, of the obvious correct choice is just give them the money, right? Like that is,
00:41:51.520sorry, running businesses, we have had to make this choice around large amounts of money,
00:41:56.720not this large, but like $25,000 or something. We probably have to make it about once a year,
00:42:01.580a decision like this, I'd say on the range between like $25,000 and $50,000. And it sucks,0.97
00:42:07.880but it's just part of doing business. That they wouldn't, or that they had adopted a business0.96
00:42:12.900practice where all throughout corporate, keep in mind, this required both the owners of the shop
00:42:18.820deciding not to do anything about this and corporate deciding not to do anything about this,
00:42:23.260which likely required layers of decision-making in addition to whatever the police were doing,
00:42:28.960required a mindset that i think unfortunately for a lot of people what a lot of people are
00:42:36.500going to take away from this is oh if you do business with a mormon and you create a successful
00:42:42.320store they'll just take that away from you and give it to a mormon family one day this is bad
00:42:48.160too because mormons are have have a really otherwise great professional reputation especially
00:42:54.580lds men who have served on missions because they have basically gone through trial by fire
00:43:00.160with patience persistence friendliness sales skills cold calling like this is an amazing
00:43:06.880yeah like they are disproportionately well represented in the cia like many high level
00:43:13.600good like government roles and stuff because it's like okay these are people who are consistent
00:43:17.880trustworthy honorable values aligned like good and and stuff like this takes that reputation
00:43:25.300and weakens it weakens it significantly because there's this now negative baggage well it inverts0.94
00:43:31.580to an extent it's like oh mormons might make great employees but never trust a mormon in a
00:43:37.660mormon controlled territory if they are in the majority position or or running a business like0.88
00:43:43.380never trust them to do. And if you're like, well, how can you apply this? Again, this is the problem0.85
00:43:48.920with a centralized church because you have a centralized church and the church isn't doing
00:43:53.540anything about this. And you could say that's not the church's role. And it's like the church's role
00:43:59.360is to make the lives of Mormons better, right? To advance the Mormon cause. Yes, it is their role
00:44:07.740to handle negative PR when it comes up, right?
00:44:31.320If it arose because of peculiarities of Mormon culture,
00:44:34.420obviously people are gonna blame it on Mormonism.
00:44:35.920So you could use peculiarities of Mormon culture to address it, except the opposite has happened, right? A denial of responsibility and saying these are individual bad actors. And to that extent, I think one thing that I'm going to, because we've done a number of videos where we called out communities protecting their own bad actors and how that externalizes them as a threat for everyone around them.
00:44:55.640Yeah, I think at this point we've called out Catholics and Jews for this, right?0.86
00:45:09.560Well, yeah, no, but that's different.0.97
00:45:11.640I guess, yeah, the Catholics did attempt to protect.
00:45:14.800But anyway, I want to go and say that as, because now I've realized we've got a number of people who follow the religion recreated Techno-Puritanism.
00:45:22.980So just sort of like as a Malcolm words of wisdom or whatever, like when this techno-puritan central organization is finally set up, the index, when we have all of the tools for setting it up, one of its core roles should be policing the morality of members with ability to excommunicate for demonstrably immoral acts.
00:45:49.460Well, policing bad actors. It's not so much about policing morality as it is policing people who are doing harm in society.
00:45:57.180Yeah, I think that's a better way to do it. It doesn't matter their personal morality, their morality at home or anything like that.
00:46:01.960Only when they externalize harm onto other communities.0.74
00:46:05.320And the higher threat than externalizing harm on other communities is protecting a member of the techno-Puritan community who is externalizing harm on other communities.