>> This episode of the Modern Rogue,
brought to you by NordVPN.
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>> Yeah, that's like $3.49 a month!
Plus you get a month free
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But you do have to spell it right.
[cassette clacking]
How much would you love
to have a best-selling book?
>> There's nothing more that I want!
>> What if I told you,
it couldn't be in your name?
>> Do I get to cash the check?
>> What if I also told you
it had to be about banging and sex?
And also you didn't write it.
[Jason laughing]
And also, [Brian laughing]
>> I'm failing to see the upside here Brian.
I got to be honest with you.
>> We've never talked about this,
but I definitely helped to fake
an erotic fiction book
that became a best-seller,
that actually knocked
one of the Fifty Shades of Gray books
off of the top 10.
>> Well see that's just the Lord's work.
[Brian laughing]
[film rustling]
>> But first we need the backstory, right?
>> Yeah, and I will say, [smooth music]
everybody should read the article that's posted
at themodernrogue.com by Zanandi Botes,
and it's filled with a bunch of literary hoaxes.
There's been literary hoaxes
forever and ever and ever,
but the one that made me think of this story
was of a DJ who had an overnight show
on WOR AM in the 1950s.
Jean Shepherd was their name.
And so this is a very unpopular time.
Nobody is really listening,
it's the graveyard shift,
so he starts to polarize his audience by saying,
"Oh, we're fellow night people,
"and those daywalkers,
"they're all boring and slovenly and stupid,
"and obeying all the rules.
"We're the punk rock crowd!"
>> He's building his cult,
and it was kind of counter-cultural.
Lenny Bruce and Jack Kerouac were fans,
and so he was really appealing to that audience.
And that's kind of key
to how you get the groundswell of support
to get something like this moving.
>> Exactly.
So they're looking for some kind of prank.
Him and his listeners.
Just to mess with people,
and somebody suggests the idea of,
let's make up a book that doesn't exist,
let's say it's salacious and filled with
all kinds of erotic shenanigans,
and let's have everybody go to book stores
and ask for it.
>> So one of the listeners suggested a title,
"I, Libertine."
Sounds great, right?
Also created a fake author,
Frederick R. Ewing.
>> There was this whole back story,
and everybody is now armed to go mess with bookstores.
They go in, they ask for it,
book store or news,
at first they're like,
"What the heck is this?"
And then they start acting like,
"Oh yeah, I know that book.
"It's currently out of stock.
"I'm going to get my hands on it."
At some point demand gets big enough
that a science fiction author is like,
"Yeah I'll just write it."
And you can buy that book to this day!
They faked a book to mess with bookstore owners,
now it's a real book.
>> Yeah, it went global.
People all over the world were asking for it!
And you can find it now. [Brian chuckling]
>> Second story.
The year is 1969.
There's a bunch of-- >> Nice.
>> Pulp erotic fiction going around,
[Brian laughing]
and Newsday columnist Mike McGrady
is pretty sure that any novel will sell
if there's just enough sex in it.
So he rounds up a bunch of fellow columnists,
who all gather together to write a book
under the name Penelope Ash,
called Naked Came The Stranger.
Nobody knew what the book was about.
He basically had a framework at the beginning,
and at the end,
and each person had to write a chapter,
they only knew the main character's name,
and she had to have sex with anything that moved.
>> That's just like an improv exercise, basically!
>> Apparently a very successful one,
because they ended up revealing
that the book was a hoax on national television,
as they introduced Penelope Ash,
and out walks this string of columnists,
and they reveal that everything was fake.
Now this was after it was already successful,
or was it successful after the reveal?
>> It became successful,
oh you know what?
I actually don't know what the sales were.
It probably boosted,
probably people got more excited
knowing it was a group thing.
[Jason laughing]
>> No? [projector clacking]
Which brings us to the story of The Diamond Club.
Stop me if you've heard this before.
There's a comedy show on a sleepy tech network
with a very small,
very dedicated audience.
And at some point the hosts,
in this case one Brian Brushwood,
one Justin Robert Young,
get the idea to fake an erotic fiction novel.
Because here's what happened,
when we released the second Scam School book,
we had a fairly dedicated following.
Everybody was going to hit buy at the exact same moment,
and usually on a digital chart,
that's able to get you up there.
>> Oh yeah. >> That's how you do it.
Unfortunately this is right as the
Fifty Shades of Gray phenomenon was beginning.
And what I couldn't believe,
looking at the top 10 of Apple iBooks was,
there's Fifty Shades Gray,
that makes a lot of sense,
but then there's like two or three covers
of obvious knockoffs of Fifty Shades of Gray!
And I remember my assistant at the time,
John Tilton says,
"Hey, next time you do a Scam School book,
"maybe put a cover that looks
"like Fifty Shades of Gray."
I'm like, "Yeah." [Brian laughing]
And he was like,
"Maybe we just do a knock off
"of Fifty Shades of Gray?"
And then there was this moment,
and I called Justin and he's like,
"What if we had the internet
"do a knock off of Fifty Shades of Gray?"
So we came up with our own fake author,
Patricia Harkins-Bradley,
which is a mash-up of the names
of both of our third grade teachers.
[Jason laughing]
And then we talked,
we spent like four episodes talking to the audience,
coming up with a framework.
You want to write a chapter
for the erotic fiction book,
all you have to do
is go to bitly/TheDiamondClubBook
and that's it.
And then you just jump in,
and the only thing is
the chapter has to start with our main character,
Brianna Young, entering the Diamond Club.
It has to have her having a lot of sex
with any number of characters.
We wanted everything to be overly trendy,
and of its time.
So it takes place in Silicon Valley,
it's about a jilted lover who creates a Facebook
and gets Zuckerberg-ed by her fiance,
and decides to have revenge on him
by going to a sex club called The Diamond Club,
which by the way,
was the name of our hardcore fans.
>> Hardcore. [Brian laughing]
>> And in this case,
have sex with anything that moves.
Again stop me if you've heard this before.
>> Wait, now did you already know
about Naked Came The Stranger?
>> No, no, as a matter of fact,
we had the idea and it was Justin
that did the research and found out
about Naked Came The Stranger."
And it was only reading the Modern Rogue article
that I found out about Jean Shepherd beforehand.
So I didn't know that everything we did
had already been done before.
>> So what happened next?
So we spent a few episodes
sketching out all the names of the characters,
we promised that we're going to write the first chapter,
and the last chapter,
everyone else is just going to write a chapter
about an encounter that happens at the Diamond Club,
and hoo boy,
does the internet write some weird--
[walk-talkie beeping]
>> Was there any effort to make it coherenct?
To make all the chapters tie together?
>> I'm pretty sure the character's name
is spelled the same in all of it.
[Jason laughing]
I wouldn't know,
I still haven't read the thing!
>> So it was really slapdash!
>> Oh my god, incredibly so!
As a matter of fact,
poor John Tilton,
he had to go through and filter out
all of the stuff and he's just like,
"I'm pretty sure this is necrophilia."
[wheezing laughter]
"This one's bestiality!
"Nope, nope, nope!"
>> Wow!
>> Everything else stayed in.
>> Wait, wait.
Are you saying that the internet
exposed the worst creative impulses in people?
>> It gave them an opportunity to see whether or not
they would make it into The Diamond Club!
>> You need to write an extended edition!
With all of the perverse stuff in it!
>> So at this point it's a few weeks in,
and we have the book pretty much filtered together.
We have somebody slap together a cover
that looks very much like Fifty Shades of Gray,
but we realize,
we have a very small but dedicated following,
and if we're going to make it onto the charts,
because the idea is,
if you get in that top 10,
then all of the sudden anybody perusing
is going to see our book right next to all the others,
but we need a little bit of a boost.
So we turned to Reddit,
and we made a pitch video,
because this is a time
when it is a cultural question mark.
The whole world is saying,
"What is happening?
"This seems to be a really poorly written
"fan-fiction of Twilight,
"but with a bunch of banging!"
Which by the way, spoiler alert,
it's very poorly written erotic fan-fiction
based on 'Twilight'!
>> Have you ever read Twilight?
>> No?
>> Okay, some people would say
that it's poorly written.
>> Right. >> And then you have
Fifty Shades of Gray,
which some people would also say is poorly written.
Very successful, but its ostensibly
something poorly written,
based on something poorly written,,
and then you took something and said,
"Let's have something poorly written,
"it's a copy of a copy of a copy,
"with horrible diminishing returns."
>> Yes.
So we make a pitch video,
because we explained to Reddit,
it was like, "Look,
"it has to be on the paid charts,
"we're going to charge the minimum amount
"that we can, 99 cents,
"but if you are as befuddled
"by the Fifty Shades phenomenon as we are,"
and our goal was not to to punk anyone.
Our goal was to have confused housewives
all across the country think that,
"Well that's okay, I guess?"
So we made our pitch video,
hit the front page of Reddit,
and then when it launched,
here's the part I didn't expect,
people not only kicked in 99 cents for the prank,
but they also started posting
these five star reviews.
>> So your pitch video explained
that this is a hoax?
>> Oh yeah, yeah!
And it depends, man.
Because at the end of the day,
if what you want is banging,
"I accepted his friend request,
"between my alabaster thighs."
>> "Her pinstriped apron was tied very high,
"so it helped push her tits almost out of her top."
>> "I've always wanted to learn to ride,
"and you look like you need a mare to tame."
It definitely delivers. [Jason laughing uproariously]
It's definitely a book with a lot of sex in it!
>> You don't usually watch porn for the stories, right?
>> Right, exactly!
So what I didn't expect,
is everybody going all in,
writing five star reviews saying,
"Hot, steamy action in the vein of E.L. James!
"If you've done Fifty Shades of Gray,
"you're going to love this!"
They go absolutely crazy for it.
This thing hits number three on the iBooks charts.
It actually displaces
one of the Fifty Shades of Gray books,
and I'll be damned,
if you look at that,
it doesn't look like just another one of those.
But here's the part I did not expect.
Are you familiar with the concept of social proof?
>> I can't say that I am.
>> Okay so Robert Chaldini wrote about it
in his book Influence.
It's the reason we have laugh tracks,
it's the reason we trust Yelp reviews.
It's the idea that when everybody else agrees
that something's pretty good,
we tend to go along with it.
>> Bandwagon-ing. >> Yeah, well exactly.
And it's safer that way.
You can understand from an evolutionary standpoint,
why we would do that.
When we launched the book,
if you looked at the "customers also bought" section,
it was very clearly our crowd,
because it's all of my books,
my friend Andrew Maybe's books,
[Jason laughing] it's very clearly a prank.
I come back two weeks later,
this thing is still in the top 10,
only when I scroll down,
customers also bought,
all erotic fiction books.
So clearly it's actually landing
with the intended audience.
The fake Twitter account
that we have for Patricia Harkins-Bradley,
starts getting tweets asking
when the new novel's going to come out,
because they're ready for more
hot, steamy action!
And here's the best part!
There were lots of five star reviews,
which of course are our people.
There's a bunch of one star reviews,
people who feel like they got tricked or punked.
But my favorite is,
we started to see a bunch of 3 star reviews
that pretty much said,
"Oh you know, don't make a lot of sense.
[Brian laughing]
"But it definitely delivers on the sex."
So what was the tipping point?
Did the bottom ever fall out,
or did it just kind of fade away?
>> It eventually faded away,
but it took an astonishingly long time.
There was something about
the mere fact of appearing or actually being successful
that causes you to go on being successful.
And what's funny is,
now when I look at those sales numbers,
I'm just like,
those are the kind of numbers
that if we had actually published it
and hit those numbers,
it would have been a New York Times
legitimate best-seller.
>> As I understand it,
what you were doing was,
you got your foothold into feeding the genre.
And lots of genres do this.
You find them in sci-fi and fantasy,
and erotica most prominently,
where no they're not the best books,
but they are regular and easily digestible.
It's fast food,
and an author will put three,
four, six, ten,
of them out in a year.
So if you wanted to,
I really think you could have continued that success.
You got the foothold,
you just decided not to maintain it
because you're a horrible liar.
>> Then I'd have to keep on publishing those books.
[pained laughing]
I will say this.
If I was going to attribute one thing,
I think it's the fact that a lot of people
think about what they have to say in the world
when they make their YouTube pages or whatever.
Very few people think about
what the world wants to hear.
In this case we managed to create something
that existed as two things,
and was two answers
to two different groups of people.
There are people are hungry for books
with a lot of banging in it,
but they are also people hungry to punk those people.
And so we were the only product
that came in and was both,
and I think that's what fed the incredible success.
And also to this day,
Justin will go to the mat with anyone
who wants to say that Diamond Club
is a worse book than Fifty Shades of Gray
because you cannot tell the difference of those reviews!
Those reviews are identical! [Jason laughing]
"This is a garbage book with a lot of banging"
or "This is a garbage book with a lot of banging."
>> Well I haven't read Twilight,
I haven't read Fifty Shades of Gray,
haven't read Diamond Club.
>> Well you know we can fix that.
We need an audiobook,
and I do have the original document right here.
[Jason guffawing]
Just let me, give me a moment.
Just let me hear it.
What's this chapter called? [saucy music]
>> "Soviet Sex Toy." [Brian tittering]
>> "It was Australian themed night at the Diamond Club,
"and I have been shopping around for days
"for the perfect outfit.
"I was originally going to dress as a female--"
[Brian wheezing] >> "Crocodile Dundee."
[Brian laughing]
"But when the buff man behind the counter told me
"he had a sexy kangaroo outfit out back,
"I had insisted on going
"out back with him to try it on.
"After a bit of flirting and teasing,
"I managed to convince him to show me
"whatever he had down under.
"'Take me,' I said in my most seductive voice.
"With little hesitation he pulled my tux shirt
"from out of my mini skirt,
"placing one hand on my bare breast,"
And I'm stopping right there.
[Brian laughing uproariously]
I'm done.
>> Oh my god!
Dude, huge thanks to my partner-in-crime,
Justin Robert Young!
Thank you for letting me share this story right here,
and thank you to The Diamond Club,
who wrote this wonderful monstrosity.
Man what a ride that was.
[Jason laughing] [Brian sighing]
Modern Rogue is a scoundrel.
[cassette clacking]
Jason Murphy, tell me one amazing thing
that happened to you today.
>> I had a friend actually reach out to me and go,
"Hey, so is Nord actually easy?
"Like, easy easy?"
>> That was their biggest concern?
They weren't concerned about
its military grade encryption?
Whether or not he was going to be able
to tunnel to other places,
he wanted to know how easy it was?
>> Yeah, and I'm sitting there texting him going,
"You really don't understand how simple it is
"to get that kind of privacy and protection."
And while I'm explaining it to him,
while I'm trying to think of the simplest words
to convey this message,
he said, "Oh so I just click on the country,
"And I'm done?" [Brian laughing]
So while I was trying to explain to him,
he got it set up and got it working.
>> Previously let's say you wanted to watch
some certain program
and you might have hopped on a plane
and gone over to England,
so that you wouldn't be region locked out of it.
Nowadays you can virtually be there.
>> I used to fly to other countries so that
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I don't have to do that anymore,
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We've practiced this,
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You've got this. >> You've got this.
[cassette clacking]
[digital ringing]
>> Why did we have the internet write a book?
>> We have not read the book.
>> And it was all just completely crowdsourced,
and had little cohesion amongst the chapters,
and just delivered on,
[fists slapping] banging!