Hi guys, gals, and NB pals! Boy, have I got a story for you.
It all started one afternoon in my AP spanish class.
My teacher and I were watching one of the videos on Collegeboard’s website and working through the practice problem. One of the materials happened to be an interview. It was about water, or something. It wasn’t really about anything at all (it was a very poorly done interview) although they talked about water a lot. Nothing in the video was explicitly incorrect (so far as I could tell, given that I am still learning spanish), but something about it was off. Very off.
Maybe it was the appearance of the man being interviewed. Maybe it was the fact that he had no discernible credentials. Maybe it was the YouTube channel’s weird name. Maybe it was the fact that the interviewee used no scientific language; rather, strange keywords and altogether unnatural phrases. Most likely, all of these little signals combined to create a big red flag. It was eerie.
I decided to look into the video further because of the language. It sounded similar to the language used on a news segment. The segment was covering a company that sold unfiltered water at exorbitant prices with promises of spiritual and physical healing -- the usual sort of fake-science scam. As soon as the video was done, we paused class so I could do just a quick mini-investigation into this company, and their so-called “water-expert”.
Well, from the title you already know the outcome. But as maddening and exploitative as these scams are, I find the whole situation quite funny. So I thought I’d share with you some of the buffoonery I uncovered.
The video that started it all (thanks to Collegeboard) was this. You can go watch it yourself, maybe see if you picked up on any of the weirdness I mentioned, or if you find any other red flags buried in vague explanations. But if you don’t want to have to sit through a scam artist trying to explain how water works, I’ll give you a few examples of the weird vocabulary choices I observed in the video (translated by me).
First of all, the lady doing the interview has the nerve to start the video saying that “water is a lot more important for one's health than y’all probably think”. This isn’t really a red flag, just annoying. Most people know that water is pretty darn important, considering it’s common knowledge that a human can only survive a few days without it!
And so I developed an instant bias against this video for treating the watcher like they’re an idiot. I should mention -- this video was created for native spanish speakers, not for learning!! It only becomes more egregious once you’ve sat through this scammer fumble his way through his groundbreaking, never-before heard “facts” about water. Its so condescending.
Making things all the more ironic, our interviewer stresses the fact that there is so much disinformation out there about water, and so few professionals who (and I’m trying my best to translate in a way that makes sense) really deeply understand this subject. Yikes. That… that is not true. Sure, there is some “disinformation” out there -- there’s disinformation everywhere! But compared to other hot-topics, like vaccines, or politics, or global warming, water is a fairly agreed-upon thing. Most people I have met are not particularly interested in water anyway, beyond making sure that they have access to clean, drinkable stuff for staying hydrated. Beyond that, I could probably just ask my doctor to give me the rundown on how much I need to drink and what it does for my body. That's it. And because I don’t want to go on for too long about every little irritation within this video, I think I can just say: THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT STUDY WATER -- THAT HAVE pHDs AND DEDICATE THEIR LIFE TO STUDYING WATER AND DISTRIBUTING CLEAN WATER AND CLEANING DIRTY WATER AND THE CLOWN IN THIS INTERVIEW IS NOT ONE OF THEM.
As an aside: it is during this intro that we get our first example of strange phrasing. In Spanish, it’s “agua buena”. That translates to “good water”. Not clean water. Not safe water. “Good water”. What does that mean? I guess we’ll find out!
Once we get past the introduction, we meet our interviewee, Juanma Ivañez. Perhaps he is better known for his antics in other countries; he is from Spain. But it is implied that he is a rare “water professional.” They don’t give us any more information about him. He doesn’t seem to have studied anything related to water at this point. It doesn’t inform us about his career, or if he has a degree in environmental studies or anything that could involve water. He’s not a doctor -- of any kind, medical or scientific. But I suppose we’ll just have to take their word for it: he knows what he’s talking about!
To better insult our collective intelligence, they start with a simple question: “What significance does water have for our health besides making us not feel thirsty?” This prompts a long-winded answer (I am not kidding -- this is the direct translation): “Well in water, as many people know, it’s basically because the body is made of 70% water and our blood 83%....”
Mr. “Water Professional” goes on to say, in so many words, that water can actually do “lots of things” (another direct translation) in our bodies, like facilitate the transportation of nutrients (ok, that's a fairly good fact), help our cells get enough oxygen (well yeah, technically, since that's what our blood does and our blood is mostly water), and “lots more” (???). Out of these “lots more”, according to Mr. Water, the most important function is related to the detoxification and purification of an organism.
Now, on the surface, this is all fine. If we ignore the often vague and hand-wavy terminology, this seems like a decent explanation of the general concept of water. But what really caught my eye was the “detoxification and purification” line. These words do have a scientific meaning, sure. But in the context of this interview (remember “good water”), it got me thinking. Now, where have I heard terminology like this used before?
Oh yeah.
So not the most promising then.
THE COMPANY BEHIND THE INTERVIEW
"the burning lamp"
Now we continue through the questions, and answers, and nonsense, ever-graced with vague and weasley language. In response to a question about “the difference between water and nutrients you get from food,” Mr. Water says in a pointed, condescending way: “you know, as people we have to pay really close attention to what we’re putting in our bodies.” Does that imply he knows something that we don’t. That we’re doing something wrong. That we’re actually causing our own problems and we could be perfectly healthy beings if only we just sent money to-- is that too far? Maybe at this point.
I’m not going to continue to summarize the video. I don’t need to write a novel about this. But I was convinced that something fishy was going on when they started to say “quality water”, or “water of quality” describing the type of water people should be drinking - and not in reference to clean drinking water, either. It wasn’t clear what they meant by “water of quality”, so I decided to figure it out myself.
This interview was done by a company by the name of “The Burning Lamp”. Based off of their YouTube description, they talk about “green” things -- the environment, animals, health, sustainability, etc. They have almost 1000 subscribers. Related channels included a few vegan channels and a channel about communicating with animals. Their banner included a facebook url, which I promptly visited. The content on their facebook aligned pretty exactly with the kind of stuff they were posting on their youtube channel. The only new information I found was that they had created an account in 2012 (their youtube channel was 2016). I am 90 percent sure that they are based in Spain, but I refuse to make the facebook account required to view that information. I did however, get another lead: their facebook info included a link to a website -- theburninglamp.tv -- but I only found an error page when I clicked on it. I did a little more digging and googling, but I had reached a dead end on the group behind the video. So I switched to Mr. Water.
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE DISAPPOINTMENT
"who are you again?"
It turns out that Juan Ma Ivañez is apparently better-known than I had initially thought. Merely within the cursed realm of Facebook, I discovered that he is a lawyer, ‘coach”, and consultant in the realm of sustainability. Since the word coach brought to mind the various cult leaders and scam artists who have used that title, I was genuinely surprised to find that he apparently did work in “sustainability”. I looked further.
This was definitely the man. His profile picture perfectly matched the appearance of the Mr. Water from the video.
If you don’t speak spanish and haven’t come to the conclusion that this particular post is insanely strange, I can translate for you:
“Hello!........ Would you like to join a project for social entrepreneurs that intends to release the human being from the chains of conditioning? Do you want to be an agent of change and create a planet more habitable for you and yours? Are you interested in ethical, sustainable and healthy consumership? And to generate a fortune without collateral damages with which to achieve financial liberty?......”
And then they talk about… transcending yourself, I think? I think it means “ego” as in your sense of self? I’m not sure. Moving on to another post...
Here Ivañez is advertising an event with a man named Masauro Emoto. If you haven’t heard of him, Emoto was a pseudoscientist that fabricated experiments in which he claimed that water can respond to human consciousness. As mentioned in the sidebar, he wrote a whole book about this insanity he devised in order to inform us on how water can help us with our health and spirituality.
Found a photo album of his. Just more rhetoric of “what kind of water do you consume?”
You probably can’t see the board, but he is showing headlines from a variety of sources -- all very negative -- covering various water sellers. One seems to talk about exposing the use of tap water, another talks about a company being shut down. Lets see what this leads to…. Oh. No.
This isn't groovy at all.
So here we’re talking about BPA…. On the left it seems to be discussing plastics -- which makes sense considering BPA is involved in the manufacturing of some plastics. On the right we see AGUA MINERAL (mineral water) bolded inside of a red box. Just beneath that is the word “Bisphenol A”, also referred to as BPA. And underneath that….. Yikes. I do NOT like what is being implied here. Underneath that, we have a list of… negative effects? It lists: hormonal dysfunctions, developmental problems for the (I think) nervous system in children, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, ADHD and hyperactivity in children, and infertility and (illegible) in children.
The rest of the slides are either illegible or seem reasonable, informing the audience about different vitamins and minerals and other factors of nutrition. Maybe you don’t see the problem with the above slide. I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS BEING IMPLIED, BUT ADHD SHOULD NOT BE IN A LIST WITH ALZHEIMERS AND INFERTILITY. Besides, ADHD and hormonal dysfunction have NOTHING to do with not drinking mineral water.
Look. Here's what Mayoclinic had to say:
Exposure to BPA is a concern because of possible health effects of BPA on the brain and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children. It can also affect children's behavior. Additional research suggests a possible link between BPA and increased blood pressure.
However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that BPA is safe at the very low levels that occur in some foods. This assessment is based on review of hundreds of studies. The FDA continues to monitor the research.
Now I understand how concerns about BPA, the chemical, in high concentrations might affect stuff like hormone production in fetuses were stretched and distorted into "bottled water gives your kid ADHD." Gross. Gross, gross, gross. I have ADHD. Being neuro-atypical is not a walk in the park. It's a disability in many ways. But it also shapes who I am. I have hormone problems that I take medicine to control -- not because somethings wrong with me; I would just rather not spiral into depression every month. I am not an accident. I am not some sort of chemical-spill-induced mutant. I was not caused by my mother not drinking your water. Mr. Ivañez, you are a gross person.
Besides - I don't know much, but I think I'll side with Mayoclinic over Mr. Water.
A JUAN OF MANY TRADES
"what is even happening anymore?!"
To be sure my accusations were justified, I visited the website linked in his facebook. I was quite surprised- a few months ago when I first looked into Mr. Water, I received a message telling me that the website was dangerous and I shouldn't proceed. My spanish teacher tried it on her personal computer, got the same message, selected the “ignore alert” button, and was greeted with a second warning message saying that the website had been blocked in this country.
Well, this time the link worked. Most of the pages gave me error messages, but I somehow managed to navigate myself into a landing screen that looked like this:
The caption at the top seems to be an error number followed by the headline: “Protected: ANTI-AGING LIFE”. Underneath, the text says: “This content is protected by a password. To view it, enter your password below.” Interesting. He seems to be an expert in many things: law, water, health, and now “anti-aging life”! Very impressive.
I also discovered through his site that the pictures I highlighted from his facebook page were actually from a presentation he did on “Nutrición natural antienvejecimiento”, that is, “nutrition for natural antiaging”. Okaaaaay.
From his website, I reached his twitter. He had made zero tweets. I refuse to make an account on twitter, so I was not allowed to see any other information. His profile picture matched though!
I found his linkedin profile. I found where he lives (Alicante, Valencian Community, Spain), and some of his jobs. He apparently speaks Spanish fluently, English very well, and Italian sufficiently in a professional setting. All of his past work experience seems to be in sales management, team management, and legal advising. Currently, he works as a “sales manager and team leader” for a company called Generali, and as a “team leader & chief coordinator” at a place called “The People Up”. I’ll link his profile so you can see his degrees and past jobs and stuff. This man just keeps getting weirder!
Now I have to figure out these jobs, starting with Generali. It seems to be an international insurance company…
It actually seems like a pretty standard company! Take a look for yourself.
“The People Up” is a bit more confusing. It seems to be a company that gives advice/classes/aid/idontevenknows on entrepreneurship and start-ups. They throw around a lot of powerful keywords: they believe education is essential, they are activists for change… through “empowering” people to “change their lives”. I really don't understand this. There is a little bar at the bottom of the homepage listing organizations that sponsor them, I guess. I recognize one that Mr. Water used to work for, and I also saw massive names like UNICEF there? Anyway, their website really confused me so I headed to their Facebook.
The first thing I saw was this kinda sexist paragraph posted with a video I didn’t bother to watch.
“I admire the ability that women possess to multitask; they are multidimensional.
Female leadership, intuition, tenderness, exerts a hidden power over society, like the one that the moon has over the tides.
I offer my tribute to the women who respect and honor their energy and masculine energy, to those women who fight day to day to bring their families forward, to those who throughout all time have been teachers of unconditional love and have spread bread and peace to every corner of the earth.”
I scrolled past some ads for self-improvement classes, strange “motivational” pictures, ads for energy drinks and the like, and other posts featuring words such as “leadership”, “empowerment”, “love”, “nature”, etc. They also talked about “responsible consumership” and “sustainability” and “saving the environment” a lot, which is an interesting sort of balance to strike for your company image.
Saw some other ads about this “revolution” that had “finally arrived” which you could take part in to gain financial freedom. I checked out their events page, saw that they had done some seminars on the aforementioned topics. Overall very positive reviews. Still not any closer to figuring out who the heck these people are.
Their twitter had more weird, vaguely inspirational ads featuring a wide variety of seminars, including one on how to put on makeup? Not sure what that has to do with entrepreneurship or environmentalism but ok. Honestly the best representation of the kind of chaos I uncovered in this company is a screenshot of their youtube playlists:
Just a lot of very different stuff. Digging into their youtube I did find their presentation on that phony water science book. Also stumbled across a guy, who I assume is important within the company, explaining what their mission is. Still confused.
Perhaps my understanding of everything that I have discovered can be summarized with Mr. Ivanez’s brilliant “ABOUT” section on linkedin:
“In love with all that allows us to transcend the human being.”
Because that’s not weird at all, right?
COMING FULL CIRCLE
"sill confused? honestly same."
I’ve saved the best for last. The video that started all this got pretty off the rails… but that was just part one! Turns out there are 5 parts to this interview! I went ahead and skipped to the fifth vid only to realize that the interview had somehow turned to politics and finance. Obviously I was confused from the get-go, but I watched on.
I think he said that we should stop buying bottled water because it is bad for the environment (true), and because we’re just paying to drink low-quality stuff with toxins in it (?) -- as they had discussed before (I guess I should have watched the other interviews). Then he says that we should not drink tap water either, rather buy mineral water. This is his answer to the question, “what about people trying to decide between tap and bottled water?”.
Then this lady (the interviewer) brings up Masaru Emoto again. Ugh. This is his Wikipedia description.
He is a PSEUDO-SCIENTIST whose “research” has been debunked. He made money off of his ridiculous book and ‘kits’ for improving your water I guess. He is a joke.
Now we reach the end of my investigation. I listen to more of the interview videos. Mr. Water continues to spew ignorant, conspiracy theory-esque nonsense. I am tired. Here is a link to a short informal debunking of “Dr.” Emoto -- I selected this one because it is easy to read. There are more scientific deep-dives out there, so please do go educate yourself if you so desire. I am signing off to avoid further brain damage. At any rate, thanks for reading this far into my chaotic investigation into Juanma Ivañez, the self-proclaimed “water expert”.
Love yourselves!
--Mia