sorry i am still thinking about Y4 and i say this like every other day but daigo really. my fuckin god he deserves the longest most relaxing vacation ever

Ok guys...I’ve just written a really long comment...about Robot Trains... on Reddit. In a discussion on r/FanFiction, regarding small/unpopular fandoms. It’s probably cringe. But I want to share it with you guys. Also, spoilers. It’s pretty much my summary of the entire show. 

It’s probably nothing I haven’t said before. ...I’m just over here laughing, just embracing how much of a lunatic I sound like, trying to convince these redditors that a children’s train show is a horror story. (They’re probably like “...Are you the same weirdo that was talking about the Marfa lights a while back...?”)

Here it is guys: 

“Are you watching season one or season two? Because, season two is COMPLETELY different, and is exactly as babyish as the animation implies.

In the first season, Kay is the leader of Train World, and on the day he tries to open a new intercontinental rail road, Duke literally attempts to murder him (and also declares that he's going to eliminate all the Robot Trains and enslave all the non-robot trains).

A fight ensues between Duke and Kay, and Kay is severely injured, and loses his memory.

Duke gets locked up in isolation in a sort of a medically induced coma for A LONG time.

The fight between Kay and Duke also causes some of the outlying areas to become cut off from their central hub, meaning they can't receive the energy they need to survive. Eventually, they manage to re-establish contact with The Mountain Area (Alf's area) and are surprised to see that he's survived.

It comes to light that he only survived by essentially cannibalizing his friend's engines, which was extremely risky, but preserved them in an unconscious state while giving Alf the energy he needed to maintain the Mountain Area until their rescue.

At one point, Duke regains consciousness, escapes, damages Train World's main energy source and attacks all the Robot Trains. There's one super scary scene where he systematically attacks each of Kay's friends to antagonize him, in the dark, and Kay can hear each of them scream one by one but can't find Duke.

Finally, Duke is subdued and imprisoned again.

THEN (MAJOR SPOILERS)

it comes to light that Duke was innocent THE WHOLE TIME and a computer virus forced him to try to kill HIS BEST FRIEND! Actually...his only friend. And, because Duke was always socially awkward and introverted, he wasn't really close with anyone but Kay. And since Kay had lost his memory, there was no one to defend Duke, and step up and say that it wasn't the sort of thing he would ever do.

So then, they have to go into Duke's consciousness and fight like, a personified version of the computer virus.

After Duke has been cured, there's also an episode where Kay and Duke travel to a parallel universe where Kay had caught the virus instead of Duke. In that universe Kay, alternate universe Kay is still chained up AND HIS ENGINE (established in canon to be equivalent to a vital organ, like his brain) is removed and outside his body.

Also, if you look at that scene closely, Alternate-Universe! Kay is actually DEAD though the episode doesn't draw a lot of attention to that. ...But, with engines that are still living, the red triangle indicator light blinks. And, they do a close up on Kay's engine in that scene, to show that the light is out. So, alternate-universe! Kay was basically executed for his betrayal, and no one in that universe ever found out his behavior was caused by a virus.

Anyhow, later there's a big ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE where the virus generates a bunch of copies of Duke. Initially, Duke winds up taking the blame for one of the first attacks, and gets locked up again (but this time conscious, not in an induced coma).

Then more virus copies show up and run around knocking trains off the tracks (and, it's established in canon that trains cannot survive off the track for very long, because they need a continuous supply of energy).

Then they all manage to evacuate the affected area to an area with an alternate energy source. ALL BUT DUKE

Who is stilled locked up, and witnesses a bunch of copes of HIMSELF going to attack his friends.

Finally, forgotten by everyone except for a dog, he gets free. He goes to the area they've evacuated to (which the zombie clones have also managed to infiltrate) and

(SPOILERS)

Does a self sacrificing maneuver to save everyone! He gets blown to smithereens! And it is like...so much drama and emotion, with Alf shouting "Duuuuuuuuke!!!" Like, in the most sad, pained way.

But then, they do a close up on Duke's engine, and the light is blinking so they realize they can save him! The zombies get defeated and Duke gets rebuilt! :,-D

(And then season two happens and it's an utter travesty)

But ANYHOW apart from the attempted murder, and mind control virus, disembodied organs and ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, nothing dark at all...”

(I know Becky’s not a dog guys, I was just trying to get my point across)

We are all Satoshi Nakamoto, but some of us are more Satoshi than others. The following 10 characters have all been flagged as Bitcoin’s elusive creator on account of similarities with the digital man of mystery. Whether one of these characters is Satoshi himself is a matter for you to decide.

Also read: Facebook Globalcoin: Killer or Multiplier?

Vili Lehdonvirta

Pros: The Finnish professor is one of the first people to be suggested as Satoshi, in a 2011 New Yorker article. Due to the lack of fevered speculation at the time, which has tainted subsequent attempts to uncover Satoshi, Vili Lehdonvirta’s dox feels purer than the rest. That doesn’t make it any more correct though.

Cons: When questioned by the New Yorker’s writer, the 31-year-old Helsinki Institute for Information Technology researcher explained that he had no cryptography knowledge and his C++ programming was rudimentary.

Fun fact: Vili Lehdonvirta is now an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute who has written about Bitcoin, most recently in an article titled “Bitcoin isn’t a currency – and unless it becomes one it could be worthless.”

Vili Lehdonvirta

Paul Le Roux

Pros: If Le Roux created Bitcoin, Satoshi is the 21st century’s biggest bad-ass. Encrypted software creation, drug smuggling, pharmaceuticals, gun running, nation building, you name it, Le Roux had a finger in it – and building Bitcoin would have been well within his grasp and megalomaniacal ambition.

Cons: When Satoshi was studiously refining Bitcoin in 2009, Le Roux was already dabbling in drug smuggling gun running and empire building. It seems unlikely that these opposing pursuits would have been compatible. Also, Satoshi always came across as humble in his writings. Le Roux was a power-tripping douchebag who insisted on being called “Boss.”

Fun fact: Le Roux’s online pharmaceutical system circa 2006 is described in “The Mastermind” as follows: “Take one out and another simply slotted into place. The network kept humming on.” Remind you of anything?

Paul Le Roux

Gavin Andresen

Pros: Gavin Andresen is the Bitcoin developer Satoshi handed the reins to upon his departure in 2010. If the two were one and the same, this would be a pretty effective way for Satoshi to check out without ever actually leaving the building. Moreover, according to one stylometry study, Andresen’s writing more closely resembles Satoshi’s than any other candidate.

Cons: In 2016, Andresen became the first of many bitcoiners to be hoodwinked by Craig Wright, after venturing that Wright’s Satoshi claim checked out. Either Andresen was super gullible or he was playing 4D chess to put further distance between himself and his pseudonym.

Fun fact: Gavin Andresen created the first bitcoin faucet in 2010. It dispensed 5 BTC to anyone who visited the site and completed a captcha.

Gavin Andresen

Hal Finney

Pros: As the first respondent to Satoshi’s mailing list post announcing Bitcoin, and the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, Hal Finney epitomizes Bitcoin more than any other known person. Finney saw the long-term potential for Bitcoin just like Satoshi, and could eloquently elucidate a world in which it reigned supreme. Just to add to the body of evidence, Gavin Andresen isn’t the only person whose writing style echoes Satoshi’s: writing analysis experts Juola & Associates claim that Nakamoto’s and Finney’s writings bear the closest resemblance.

Cons: For Satoshi to have essentially conversed with himself and transacted with himself in dealing with Finney doesn’t make sense for a character who went to such lengths to conceal his identity. He would have surely known that Finney would get doxed as him at some point, and thus it seems illogical for Satoshi to have left such an obvious trail of breadcrumbs.

Fun fact: Hal Finney lived two blocks away from Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, giving rise to theories that the former took his nom de plume from the latter. As one redditor postulated: “Hal and his cypherpunk counterparts intended for this old friendly retired man whose house had been foreclosed by banksters to be the symbolic figure behind the financial renaissance on behalf of all the victims of the modern financial system.”

Hal Finney

Nick Szabo

Pros: Stylometry seems to be an imprecise art given the number of people who have been identified as Satoshi by their writings. Nick Szabo is the third such candidate on this list, but there are way more compelling reasons why he’s likely to be Satoshi, such as the fact that the computer scientist’s “bit gold” is the closest forerunner to Bitcoin. Nick Szabo is more qualified than anyone on this list to have built Bitcoin.

In 2008, Szabo commented in his blog that he was planning to create a live version of bit gold; that this should have manifested, a few months later, as Bitcoin seems credible. Szabo’s excellent blogposts circa 2008 have all the hallmarks of Satoshi. Phrases such as “unforgeable costliness” and shout outs to Hal Finney place Szabo extremely close to Bitcoin’s nucleus.

Cons: Szabo has consistently denied being Satoshi, debunking one such instance in 2014 by writing: “I’m afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I’m used to it.”

Fun fact: Satoshi’s telling decision not to cite Szabo’s work on bit gold in the Bitcoin whitepaper may be the most compelling evidence of all.

Nick Szabo

Bram Cohen

Pros: Born in 1975, the same year Satoshi cites as his DOB, Bram Cohen was playing with “bits” long before Bitcoin. The Bittorrent creator once ran a Usenet site called Bitconjurer.org, where he conversed with the creator of Hashcash, which inspired Bitcoin. Cohen’s prolific blogposts also slowed to a crawl when Satoshi began work on Bitcoin, and he had similar interests to Satoshi, writing about hiding one’s identity online in 2009, and weighing in on digital signatures around the same time. Cohen’s interest in recreational mathematics also makes him a credible Satoshi.

Cons: Cohen’s current project is a “green” cryptocurrency called Chia that he claims to be the “antithesis” of Bitcoin and PoW. It’s hard to imagine Cohen dismissing his former life’s work in this manner.

Fun fact: Cohen has tweeted about Satoshi 10 times over the years, but has never outright denied being him.

Bram Cohen

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto

Pros: Aside from sharing the same name as Bitcoin’s creator, there is virtually no reason why Dorian Nakamoto should be Satoshi, except for having lived a few blocks away from the other probable Satoshi, Hal Finney. If anything, though, this would make it more likely that Hal was Satoshi, and borrowed his fellow denizen’s name.

Cons: Dorian may have become the face of Satoshi, but he is certainly not the brain.

Fun fact: Such is his celebrity, Dorian Nakamoto has been booked to appear at blockchain conferences.

Dorian Nakamoto

Craig Wright

Pros: Wright really, really, wants to be Satoshi, and has been larping as him since 2016. You can probably recall feeling the same way about one of your superheroes, wishing you could fall asleep and wake up in their body. In your defense, you were six at the time. Wright is a 48-year-old man.

There is some evidence that Wright was lurking in the shadows not long after Bitcoin got off the ground, but all that proves is that Faketoshi is a chancer who’s built a career out of riding in the slipstream of brighter stars.

Cons: Craig and cons go together like moonshine and mason jars. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but Jameson Lopp’s lengthy takedown of the man who would be Satoshi is a fine jumping off point.

Fun fact: Wright applied to the Australian Defence Force Academy to train as a pilot in 1987 but was rejected.

Craig Wright

Dave Kleiman

Pros: Kleiman has been alleged to be a part of the Satoshi Nakamoto group along with fellow Satoshi claimants Craig Wright and Phil Wilson. The latter two have zero credible proof of building Bitcoin, while Kleiman died in 2013. An avid cryptographer, Kleiman was a member of the mailing list where Satoshi first announced Bitcoin on Oct 31, 2008. He also worked for S-doc, an encryption-focused software company that was developing an “unalterable, encrypted audit log system.”

Cons: Any documents associating Kleiman with Bitcoin come courtesy of Craig Wright, and thus are almost certainly fake. As a result there is an absence of credible evidence to suggest that Kleiman created Bitcoin. The fact that Wright has been circling Kleiman’s family like a vulture in a bid to claim his share of an alleged 1 million BTC trust is the strongest evidence that Kleiman created Bitcoin – and Wright didn’t. Had any other member of the cryptography mailing list died first, Wright would have surely set his sights on them instead, as part of a long con to extract millions of dollars through legal chicanery.

Sad fact: Dave Kleiman died in abject poverty and squalor. “His body was found decomposing and surrounded by empty alcohol bottles and a loaded handgun … a bullet hole was found in his mattress, though no spent shell casings were found on the scene.”

Dave Kleiman

An Enduring Mystery That May Never Be Solved

There are many others who’ve been named as Satoshi, including Elon Musk, white supremacist James Bowery and, slightly more credibly, a trio of researchers – Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry. These, along with other suspects, are unlikely to have had a hand in the creation of Bitcoin however. For anyone interested in trying to crack the case, Satoshi’s writings, amounting to 80,000 words, can be viewed at the Nakamoto Studies Institute. Be prepared to tumble down a rabbit hole of late night Google searches and stylometry only to emerge no closer to the truth.

Most people who are hung up on the enigma of who Satoshi is or was would concede that it would be best for Bitcoin if his identity was never discovered. And yet they cannot resist searching for, to quote Albert Einstein, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”

Who do you think is the likeliest candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry.

Kai Sedgwick

Kai's been playing with words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $12. It's long gone. He's previously written white papers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Cory Stout of Woodies, a brand that sells wood sunglasses.Cory is a very active redditor - /u/sigmaschmooz - and he'll be in the comments to answer your questionsSome stats:Product: Wood sunglasses.Revenue/mo: $250,000Started: August 2012Location: Venice, CAFounders: 1Employees: 1Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?I’m Cory Stout, Captain of Woodies. I started a wood sunglasses brand when I was 28 years old.Our main product is walnut wood sunglasses that I sell for $25 on Amazon and Woodies.com I hired one employee (my dear mother) and she’s won Employee of the Year for 3 years in a row ;)In 2018, I topped 3.5 million in revenue and somehow ended the year with less money than when I started! I bought a Bentley to celebrate…What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I studied Economics at the University of Florida but the real education was scalping football tickets outside of the stadium. I really learned my lessons on those streets...For example, there were a lot of characters I learned to deal with. The ticket street hustlers are really really sharp dudes. They would always ask to see my tickets, and make me offers on them.They would always lie about what they were holding, or what they were selling for. I had people steal my tickets, I had people try to muscle me off popular corners. The best thing about this experience was all the times I was told no.I would stand there for hours shouting ‘who needs tickets??’ and people would narrow their eyes at me and keep on walking. I learned that eventually, you’ll almost always find your customer. On the days when demand was high, I would return to my dorm room with 5 thousand in cash when I started the day with 500.I would buy student tickets all week, buy the upgrade sticker so anybody could use them, and sell them for mega profit on gameday. I made tons of money, I lost tons of money too (when it rained unexpectedly), I made friends and that’s what led to my next step.One of those tickets friends I made turned out to be my best friend. He went to China to study International Business and I went out to visit him a year later. I spent 6 weeks there and I go to see first hand how the world’s products are made.Some photos from my trip to China:Watch bandsI came up with the idea for an interchangeable watch brand, TIKKR, and I used my ticket money to get the ball rolling.To validate this idea, Mike flew from China with a bag full of watches. I was living in Austin at the time and we went to a party brunch to try to sell some watches. I gave one watch to each of the bartenders for free, then we waited.It wasn’t 15 minutes until we had a line of people offering to buy watches from us. We didn’t take their cash, but we drank free all afternoon long and had a hell of a time.I ordered 1,500 watches for $3 each and I set the price at $65. I barely sold any at $65, but I convinced Groupon to pick them up and offer a deal.A $65 watch for $32. I sold a couple hundred, I ordered more, I sold a couple hundred I ordered more. Then I sold a couple thousand in one day! Too bad the supplier was super late with the shipment and I had thousands of upset customers at Christmas time. TIKKR ended up folding leaving me back at square one with only about $15,000 to show for it all.Then I was back to China and this time I came back with the idea for wood sunglasses. Wood sunglasses were just coming on to the scene, We always had the first look at products coming out of China because we were always watching the markets in Guangzhou.We would see a cool looking belt show up at the markets, then a month later we’d see somebody on Kickstarter making 200k. Wood sunglasses seemed awesome so I tried to jump on them early. The same Groupon rep still wanted to work with me, and I was able to sell 8,000 glasses in a week with a launch on Groupon. On a side note, that Groupon rep worked out a deal for himself that he got to invest in Woodies before the deal ran. I took the deal (what choice did I have) and I was able to buy him out a couple years later)By the way, I’ve written a couple posts on reddit about how I got started if you want to check them out...Buying and Selling in China: The New American Dream (2015)Every tool I use for my business (2017) A lot of these have changedI also did the Shopify Masters PodcastTake us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.I just went to China and found three suppliers on Alibaba. I toured each factory and chose the one I felt the best about.Price wasn’t the most important consideration. It really came down to a comfort level with the supplier. The rep that I would work with closely spoke great English, they presented themselves well, they showed me their equipment and let me tour the factory while they were in production.PRO TIP: If you visit a Chinese factory, ask politely to the use the bathroom. They will have to oblige, and if you find a really messy, disgusting bathroom, then it’s definitely a red flag.Granted, there are a lot of disgusting bathrooms all over China. But these factories have millions of dollars worth of machinery, if they can’t put together a decent bathroom for their workers, then they are probably corner-cutters.They had a whole wall of every sunglasses shape you could imagine, it didn’t take a lot of designing on my end.Describe the process of launching the business.From there, I noticed that a lot of people were getting rich on Kickstarter, so I decided to launch a project to add new styles to Woodies. They were actually all the same style, but I wanted to add 7 new colors to the collection. I really just needed an excuse to launch a Kickstarter campaignI set my sights high and decided I wanted to hire Kendall Jenner for the video shoot. It started out as a joke really.My friend was kind of daring me to find out what her rate was. I just called her management, and next thing you know I’m negotiating with her agent.I got them down from 150k to 25k. 25k was just about all the money I had in the world, but I bet it on this idea. At this point, I’m basically the dude from Fyre Festival, walking around pretending like I had enough money to pull this off. I hired a really good photographer, videographer, hair, makeup, extra set hands, cool locations, classic cars, plane tickets, it was SO CRAZY, but somehow I pulled it off.I organized the whole photo/video shoot, I picked Kendall up from her house that morning wearing my captains hat, and we had a full day of driving classic cars, taking pictures on the Malibu beaches, and doing our best to capture the essence of Woodies and the new sunglasses.The Kickstarter project wasn’t a huge success, but it kept me going long enough to start selling on Amazon. I found a new supplier and started making wood sunglasses with plastic frames. They were cheaper to make and sell and the bonus was they didn’t break as often.Warranty issues were a huge headache with the full wood sunglasses (and still are).Wood sunglasses have less tensile strength than plastic. They are better for the environment overall, but a little less durable for the user. I started out with full wood sunglasses, but the return rate was nearly 20%, impossible to really turn a profit without a bunch of 1-star reviews. So I switched to mostly wood temple glasses with a plastic frame. This brought my costs down and my return percentage to about 5%. And now I could enable my customer service to send new sunglasses no questions asked, which resulted in lots of 5-star reviews about our customer service team.Well they took off on Amazon and I dedicated myself to becoming an Amazon expert. I listened to all the podcasts and read all the blog posts I could find. Shoutout EcomCrew I took the basic fundamentals that are out there and I added a couple of my own twists. That was about two years ago. Since then, I’ve just been really diligent about staying in stock major key and managing my PPC spending.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?I have basic knowledge of Facebook ads, email marketing, SEO, etc but Amazon just really really works for me, so I didn’t have the big incentive to build a huge list.Amazon brings me 100 brand new customers everyday for very little acquisition cost. If I tried that on my own, it would take a TON of work and it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as Amazon, so I took the easy road on this one.I wrote this post about Amazon strategy not too long ago, I followed all of my own advice.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Business is doing great today, we almost reached 4 million in sales last year, even though my profit on that was a lot lower than you’d think.Less than 10% of that number actually counts as profit on my books. Before the profit police come commenting all over this thread, I was able to pay myself a decent amount that’s not included in that number, and I also invested in 8 classic cars this year as I get a new venture off the ground, instagram.com/captainsclassics.My ACOS on Amazon hovers around 30% with a monthly spend of about 50k. I have less than 5k email subscribers and I rarely email them, I think people are starting to get bothered by all the automated marketing out there, and that’s actually a big reason they choose to shop on Amazon, just to not subject their inbox to automated email cancer.Side note, I’m getting sued by Luxxottica for a BS trademark infringement. So the entire business is being threatened by them.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Believe in yourself and just keep going no matter what. Of all the friends who started a business at the same time I did, almost all of them are still in business and doing really well. If you just stay in business, you almost can’t help but grow.I read the 4-Hour Workweek many many years ago and it really set my thinking from day one. I just wanted to be really really good at one thing, and that’s what happened with my best selling product. I was able to ‘set’ the market.Once I did that, no one would be able to:Beat my priceOutnumber my reviewsOutspend me on PPC.The distance between me and 2nd place on Amazon got bigger and bigger.I wanted a simple business, I wanted it to be automated, I wanted to be able to run it from anywhere. It took a lot of discipline to turn down ‘good’ deals sometimes.But I decided simplicity was that important to me. It’s only really possible with an Amazon business with FBA. I remember the old days when I had to use a 3PL, 2/7 would not recommend.I don’t sell on Etsy, Ebay, or Wal-Mart (even though they wrote me an unsolicited PO). I don’t sell to retail stores. The one time I broke this rule was trying to expand to Europe on Amazon. I wouldn’t call it a disaster, but it took way more time/energy than it has paid off. I’m closing down those operations currently.I hired my mom as my customer service rep 3 years ago and the business absolutely flourished once she took over. 1. It let me focus on sales and growth 2. She’s so much better at being really really nice than me.What platform/tools do you use for your business?I’ve got a great reddit post which I wrote all about this.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I listen to the EcomCrew podcast pretty regularly.It’s a really straightforward informational podcast, they actually give really good info. They’re both Amazon sellers, so they tend to focus most of their discussion on Amazon.I’ve met Mike out in Hong Kong and he’s a really solid guy.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Pick something that you’re going to enjoy selling/talking about nonstop.You are your biggest marketing tool especially early on. Be prepared to be the face of your company.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?I hired my mom for customer service and that’s about all I need.I probably want to sell Woodies in 2019, any buyers out there?Where can we go to learn more?Woodies.comInstagram.com/WoodiesIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

Elon Musk personifies the modern cult-of-personality CEO style. His social media posts are unfiltered, he gets into public scuffles with his critics, and he has a loyal band of followers that defend his every move, often attacking Musk’s detractors. But Musk has nothing on Brandon Truaxe, the founder and CEO — though he likes to say his official title is “worker” — of Deciem, one of the buzziest skin care companies on the planet right now.

The unconventional beauty brand founder’s exploits have been followed rabidly by those both interested in incredibly affordable skin care and those who just love messy gossip. As Deciem’s sub-brand The Ordinary gains popularity for its $9 acids, its founder gains notoriety for his incendiary and even offensive Instagram presence. He’s used the platform to insult fans, cancel partnerships, and even posted a photo of an impoverished-looking New Yorker in front of one of the brand’s stores.

In a video on Deciem’s Instagram on Monday, Truaxe said: “This is the final post of Deciem. … We will shut down all operations until further notice, which will be about two months. Please take me seriously.” The location of the video was tagged as the White House. He went on to say, “Almost everyone at Deciem has been involved in major criminal activity, which includes financial crimes.”

The largely incoherent message was paired with a long, rambling caption in which he called out many in the company’s inner circle, then went on to name hotels, restaurants, other cosmetic companies, “so many porn ‘studios,’” Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tom Ford, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Tim Cooke, and Leonard Lauder, the patriarch of the Estée Lauder company.

View this post on Instagram

Without filters. A revolution is coming. Every one of you who has been laughing aT me will with certainty face criminal prosecution. Estée Lauder Companies Inc. has been the biggest stock promotion. Richard Duntas, Bernard Ass (LVMH), Marica “Tracy” (Bliss, Remedè, Soaper Due Per Shoe), Hyatt (Grand Hyatt, Andaz, er al), Marriott (St. Regis, W, Marriot, et al), So many porn “studios”, nearly all @deciem employees, most of “Hollywood”, Gill Sinclair, India Knight, Caroline Hirons, India Knight, RBC, BMO, Boots, KKR, most of the Lauder family, Estée Lauder Companies Inc., Karim Kanji, Antonio Tadrisi, DF Mc, LVMH, Dia Fooley, Michael Davidson, Hanif, Zark Fatah, Inditex (Zara, Massimo Dutti, etc), H&M, $100 monkey, Too Faced (founders too), TSG, Alshaya, Amanresorts, Erwin Zecha, Oliver Zecha, Steven R Riddle, the Coc and Corcky managers, PRIDE organizers, IT Cosmetics, Nicola L ReadingTons, all of Dishoom, All of Delaunay, David Yurman, Tom Ford, Tim Cooke. McKesson, Rexall, Jamin Asaria, David Jackson, York Heritage and others — sentencing doesn’t begin with any point but sentences like this one do. Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Michael Less, Stephen Spellberg e.T., AON are also included with certainty. ARGO stood for “Ali Roshan GO”. You idiots. Father, please please be safe if you can for the next few hours. I love you all. -Brandon (RIYADH, please be EXTREMELY CAREFUL in the next few hours). Aurora (TSX) : you are finished. Michael Basler, Gordon Wilde, David Trinder, Eric Jacobs, Allan Gerlings, Dalton Pharma SS, Michael OH CON ELLE, Charm IS T A 007, Robert Jones, Cascade, Prince Al Walid, The White Company, Obagi (brand and doctor), Freedom Health, ESHO-isT, Alexandru Serban and baggage, Apotex: Goodbye also. Peace is coming. . It’s clear now. @esteelaudercompanies @richardbranson @realdonaldtrump @gowlingwlg_ca @zuck @musicianjessecook, et. al.

A post shared by THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY (@deciem) on Oct 8, 2018 at 5:41am PDT

This post has been covered and analyzed everywhere from Allure to Buzzfeed, but it’s par for the course for Truaxe, who has given fans reasons to worry about his emotional state before. He posts on the brand’s official Instagram page himself — the rest of the social media team consists of one employee who responds to product usage questions — and has a history of posting confusing and sometimes concerning messages.

Truaxe has not hesitated to attack commenters who question him on the brand’s page. This behavior has led fans and critics to question his mental health and the health of the company, as well as speculate that the social media theatrics are actually just savvy marketing. But what is really going on?

Before we get into the events of this week, here’s a primer: Truaxe founded Deciem in 2013 and launched 10 sub-brands simultaneously — including hair care, supplements, and a men’s grooming line — which is pretty much unheard of in the beauty industry. His company, based in Toronto, also makes its own products, instead of contracting outside manufacturers, which is how most beauty brands work. Deciem employs about 800 people and has more than two dozen stores worldwide. Tagline: “The Abnormal Beauty Company.”

Truaxe is a computer programmer by trade, but he co-founded a high-end line of skincare called Euoko in 2008. One product cost $700, according to an article published in W magazine at the time. He then exited that brand and founded Indeed Labs, another Canadian beauty company. He left that under “angry” conditions and with a non-compete agreement, according to an interview in 2016 with Cosmetics Business. “A combination of passion for bringing credibility to the functional beauty business and the revenge overly due to Indeed Labs led to the formation of Deciem,” he told the publication.

Deciem really took off after the company launched skin care brand the Ordinary in 2016. The line features exceptionally affordable skin care featuring well-studied ingredients that have been used in skin care for decades, like vitamin C, retinol, hyaluronic acid, and others. Most are in simple dropper bottles, and the formulas aren’t fancy; they often smell weird or have gritty textures. But the line took off because the price is cheaper than anything on the market, including products you can find at a drugstore.

A simple glycolic face acid costs less than $9; an equivalent at Sephora or Ulta can cost upward of $20. The Ordinary launched at a time when people were getting interested in and purchasing skin care in a way we haven’t seen in years. The Ordinary’s accessibility contributed to a democratization of sorts. Really effective skin care had previously been in the purview of those who could afford pricey products.

According to Truaxe, the brand has done about $300 million in sales. Beauty conglomerate Estée Lauder has a 28 percent minority share in the company, an association that has given the indie brand credibility but invited scrutiny. Truaxe has always been described as quirky in early interviews, but things started to get weirder at the beginning of 2018 when he started posting very personal and even bizarre messages on the brand’s official Instagram account.

In January, Truaxe officially announced he was taking over the brand’s Instagram page. His first order of business was to pick a fight with another indie brand, Drunk Elephant, by suggesting its marula oil was too expensive. He apologized. After that came a series of pictures of garbage and increasingly more personal posts. He also appeared to be communicating with his team via Instagram. Redditors then discovered Glassdoor reviews suggesting that the company was not a great place to work.

In February, Truaxe took to Instagram to broadcast that the company would no longer be producing Esho, a brand of lip products made in collaboration with a UK plastic surgeon, Dr. Tijion Esho. Truaxe unceremoniously announced this on Instagram, allegedly without alerting Esho himself that it would be happening. (Esho is tagged in this week’s Instagram post as well.) It led to an almost year-long legal battle between the two.

Esho told Vox that he secured trademark and other rights to the Esho brand, as well as payment he was owed, with the help of Deciem’s Nicola Kilner.

Kilner is an important part of the brand story. She joined Deciem early from UK drugstore brand Boots and had been integral to its growth; at one point her title was “co-CEO.” She was largely seen as the calm and moderating force in the company. But Truaxe fired her in February after a confusing string of events that culminated in Truaxe questioning her loyalty to him.

An experienced CFO, Stephen Kaplan, who had only been there about six months, quit around the same time in protest. Kilner was given two years of severance pay. She gave an interview to Elle magazine a few months after her firing, in which she seemed reluctant to say anything negative about Truaxe or Deciem. “Talking to Kilner is a bit like talking to someone rescued from a cult against her will,” wrote Carrie Battan in the article. This summer, Kilner was rehired at the company. (She has not responded to Vox’s request for comment.)

Following the ESHO posts, a Racked investigation, prompted in part by the negative Glassdoor reviews, revealed allegations by several employees of verbal abuse and other misconduct by Truaxe and others in management positions. It was generally acknowledged, including by those working at the company, that the leadership was disorganized, with people changing roles and job titles frequently.

But the brand was growing, opening a rash of new stores (including the one in which the indigent person camped out in front or prompting Truaxe to say, “This person is disrespectful to the beauty of the library; he is disrespectful to the beauty of Fifth Avenue”). During this period, the brand got picked up by Sephora and even got a shout out from Kim Kardashian, who was apparently a fan.

Since these flare ups, Truaxe has been likened to Donald Trump by fans. He picked a fight with Cosmetics Business when it reported on these comparisons. He’s angrily lashed out at fans on social media who have questioned his methods, expressed concern about his increasingly incoherent posts, or called him out for his sometimes brash communication style. He would often highlight retorts to them in Instagram Stories on the brand’s official page, which occasionally led to fans attacking those critics on social media.

“Anyone who insults me, I’ll insult back. Look, if someone drops a bomb on my house I will at least knock and maybe pee on theirs,” he told me in the summer in a previously unpublished conversation, when I asked him about angering his followers by insulting them.

Some of these events seem to have affected his relationship with retailers. Sephora carried The Ordinary for a short time online, then it disappeared. Truaxe had suggested that Ulta was going to carry the line, but that has not materialized. Victoria Health, a UK based site (and one of the first to carry The Ordinary) dropped it recently and started stocking a competitor brand, Garden of Wisdom; Truaxe took to Deciem’s Instagram to post unflattering photos of the site’s founder. He publicly announced, via a shared email on the platform, that he would no longer be supplying product to indie beauty e-commerce site Beautylish. (German retailer Douglas recently started stocking Deciem, and the company has over a dozen freestanding stores in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Europe, and South Korea.)

Truaxe has also publicly called out his minority investor, Estée Lauder, a large and powerful company that has always controlled its image very tightly. He’s published emails from Leonard Lauder and other Lauder executives, airing dirty laundry like the fact that the company supposedly wouldn’t allow an artisan who tiles its stores to post her work on social media. (The woman’s family ultimately was upset at Truaxe for that post.) The company is mentioned in this week’s Instagram post as well. In a statement to Vox, a representative for the company wrote: “The Estée Lauder Companies is a minority investor in Deciem, and, as such, we do not control the company’s operations, social media or personnel decisions.”

(There’s so much more. You can read more of my old reporting here, and Elle also has a helpful timeline of events.)

Now we are back to the “financial crimes” Truaxe mentioned this week on Instagram. In the video, he announced that the company would close down. For a while, Deciem’s homepage was a black screen with a small green pi symbol in the center. Individual brand pages, such as for The Ordinary, could still be accessed. As of publication time, the site is up and running.

According to an email leaked to Cosmopolitan UK, Truaxe ordered all the London stores except one to be closed until February 2019, accompanied by a warning that those not following instructions would be “terminated tomorrow.” No one answered phones at any of the London stores, the Miami store, or the Seoul store. (Truaxe and multiple others in the company did not respond to a request for comment.)

At the Amsterdam store, an apologetic woman who spoke English answered and said her boss told her to close the branch for two weeks, “but I don’t know why.” The Nolita store in New York City was open, but others in the city did not answer the phone. Communication obtained by a source close to Deciem suggested that there was confusion behind the scenes and that more of the New York City locations would eventually be opened. The Toronto stores were closed yesterday, per social media reports, but it was Canadian Thanksgiving. The Canadian stores did not answer their phones today.

All over social media and in the Deciem Facebook chat room, customers have reported placing online orders successfully.

This is not the first time Truaxe has alluded to financial wrongdoings at the company. He’s posted increasingly disturbing videos, including one now-deleted post from a hotel in the UK in which he asked for his followers to call the police because he was worried for his safety. He once sent an email to all his employees stating he was “done” with Deciem.

During the summer, I spoke to Truaxe both on the phone and in person in previously unpublished interviews about some of these incidents, especially the insinuations that there were financial “crimes” at the company. He was vague, saying “authorities” were involved. He also suggested that he was served a lawsuit by his former Euoko partner and current Deciem minority stakeholder Pasquale Cusano, who did not respond to calls and emails. Truaxe sounded lucid during the in-person conversation, though he tends to speak quickly and occasionally rambles.

“I found things I don’t like in my company,” Truaxe said at the time. He would not offer more details when pressed. “Unless things are cleaned up, I won’t stay.”

Truaxe’s suggestion on Instagram this week that the company may shut down led to a bit of panic among customers and fans, as it has done on multiple other occasions when his behavior on Instagram has seemed erratic. The CBC, which ran a report on the company in July, spoke to a marketing expert who suggested that it might be a purposeful tactic to get customers to buy products in bulk. If it was premeditated, it’s working, if social media is any indication — though some are calling it a stunt:

this whole Deciem thing must be a next level PR activation stunt. ppl will go mad for the products and sell out the entire stock

— (@thelonelyldnr) October 9, 2018

Truaxe truly seems to run his company by the seat of his pants, and doesn’t really seem to be concerned about who he angers or worries along the way. A blog post about Truaxe’s drama as a CEO on Strategy + Business in July noted, “Chaos is not a business strategy.” But it seems to be working fine for Deciem so far. The company has opened two new factories and several new stores, as well as launched a variety of new products over the last six months. But shutting down stores, which he sporadically seems to have done this week, will cost the company revenue and also possibly cost employees their pay.

The parallels between Brandon Truaxe and Elon Musk are there. Musk’s problematic tweets have opened him up to federal probes and caused him to step down as chairman of Tesla. But the sheer force of his personality and perceived genius are allowing him to stay on as CEO. So far, Deciem is telling a similar story.

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Original Source -> Deciem’s Brandon Truaxe: the world’s most controversial beauty CEO, explained

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