British comedian and actor Russell Brand riled internet users with a video ad of him promoting a "magical amulet" that wards off all "evil energies" in the form of "corruptible and corrupting" signals at airports.
The beleaguered media personality, who has been blocked from making money from his YouTube channel, accused of sexual harassment, and recently converted to Christianity, showed off a gadget worn around his neck and said the so-called "Aires Tech" keeps him "safe from all of the various signals out there.”
The video was originally posted to TikTok on September 9 and went viral after Washington Post editor Will Sommer re-shared the clip Monday on X (formerly Twitter), which you can see here.
The ad annoyed social media users because the product, called the Lifetune Flex from Aires Tech, lacked scientific backing for its effectiveness as pointed out by X user @V_ForVanilla, who mocked Brand hawking the device "Whilst he wears a mic on his chest that uses WiFi......"
Others thought the same.
There is no scientific evidence supporting any claim that Wi-Fi signals are harmful.
User @BacklogReviewer did a deep dive into the so-called "magical amulet" and found it was anything but.
The user found that the item Brand held in the ad came from the tech company Airestech as mentioned in the video.
They combed through the alleged research and were inevitably “unconvinced of the science” behind the amulet.
The reviewer found that the touted scientific information was nothing but “a whole metric heap of garbage jargon" from fraudsters preying on vulnerable consumers on the internet.
They summarized the "grift," adding:
“We're left with Russell Brand, shilling a plastic keyring for a company whose scientific justification is the most obvious woo I have ever read, backed by a foundation who cite a mind control expert in their list of publications."
Others weren't buying it either.
@MaximEffort433/X
@scottsantens/X
Last year, YouTube banned Brand from monetization on its platform for violating its “creator responsibility policy.”
The development came after Brand was accused by four women of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013 as part of a joint investigation by the Times of London, The Sunday Times, and Channel 4's Dispatches on September 16, 2023.
Brand denied the allegations, claiming that his relationships "were absolutely always consensual" and stemmed from a time when he was "very, very promiscuous."
@badgalriri/Instagram