The controversy surrounding Brian Johnson, widely known as the Liver King, exploded when it was revealed that he was secretly consuming $11,000 of steroids per month. This revelation was a sharp contrast to his "natural" image, as he built an online fitness empire by devouring raw meat and promoting an all-natural lifestyle.
The Rise of the Liver King
Men's wellness influencers have long preached the gospel of consuming more protein to lower body fat and increase muscularity. They promote diets like Paleo, urging dieters to avoid foods unavailable to paleolithic humans, or Keto, discouraging the consumption of carbohydrates, to up someone's “gains”. Although the association between diet, fitness, muscularity, and masculinity is not novel, scholars have noted a peculiar shift in contemporary health and wellness discourse in the digital age.
He began to find success on social media in early 2016 by promoting an all-natural diet comprised primarily of bone broth, uncooked eggs, and raw, unprocessed beef livers, testicles, tongues, and other organs. Johnson, a Texan, studied biochemistry and worked in the pharmaceutical and supplement sectors before his fame as a social media influencer.
Video after video showed a muscled-ridden and sinewy Johnson performing bizarre feats of strength, such as dragging 4x4s, walking underwater with kettlebells, and bench-pressing his wife Liver Queen, all while bellowing the benefits of the diet he followed - which he termed as the “ancestral diet”. In the Netflix documentary, he states that his passion for his body came following the death of his father when he was a toddler. Moreover, he grew up idolising movies such as Rambo and Conan the Barbarian.
What made his tale even more compelling on social media was that his sons Rad and Stryker suffered persistent poor health during their childhoods, and that switching to an organ-heavy diet had cured their ills. Soon, with the help of his wife, Barbara (the Liver Queen), and his two sons - who began to share content as “Liver Boy Rad” and “Stryker the Barbarian” - the Liver King built a full-fledged digital empire and lifestyle brand based on the “ancestral lifestyle.”
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He amassed millions of followers, appeared on podcasts hosted by Logan Paul and others wherein he promoted his ‘ancestral lifestyle’ and his Ancestral Supplements. The documentary reveals that this became a $100 million business.
The Carnivore Diet and Primal Rhetoric
The Carnivore Diet is exactly what its name suggests: an alternative diet based entirely around the consumption of animal flesh. Favorite proteins include internal organs, bone marrow, and uncooked animal flesh and eggs. This diet is unusual but increasingly popular-largely owing to the right-wing voices promoting it through digital avenues. For example, in 2018, psychologist and right-wing influencer Jordan Peterson appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast to promote the Carnivore Diet.
Peterson described how the diet cured him of lifelong ailments and supposedly cured his daughter of medical issues ranging from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis to depression. Joe Rogan also announced to his 11 million-strong audience that he would be adopting an all-meat diet for 30 days, which caused Google searches for the diet to spike. While celebrity influencers like Rogan may introduce unknowing audiences to the carnivore diet, we posit that it is the “alternative”-even “underground”-social media voices who keep the carnivore lifestyle afloat and simultaneously lay the ideological groundwork for online political radicalization around carnivorism.
We propose “primal rhetoric” and “primal rhetorical networks” as tools to dissect the gendered, raced, and politicized implications of carnivore diets. They are necessary analytic lenses to assess how right-wing carnivorism manifests and spreads through social media spaces. Primal rhetoric is, we posit, a rhetorical genre that ties the consumption of nonhuman animals to cisheterosexist and white nationalist ideals. Beyond general health and wellbeing, primal rhetorics outline a broader philosophy and politics centered around the consumption of nonhuman animals and their byproducts.
Consuming more flesh leads to more spiritual, psychological, and physical rewards. Inherently suspicious of modern food systems, primal rhetorics also intertwine conspiratorial beliefs with suspicion of processed foods and industrialized society. Ironically, while deriding the modern condition, primal rhetoric is largely disseminated through digital spaces and applied via modern marketing tools. A “primal rhetorical network,” therefore, refers to the literal and ideological linkages between carnivore diet practitioners and right-wing provocateurs online.
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Although this emphasis on digital platforms unites primal rhetorical networks, practitioners take varied approaches. As a public-facing figure, LK's reliance on tropes of indigeneity and primality might be considered a more mainstream, even “acceptable,” colonial logic. However, as a strictly anonymous figure, REN fashions primal rhetorical appeals that explicitly appeal to “extreme” white nationalist sentiments.
Given these connections between discourses about animals, meat, dairy, and broader systems of violence, it is unsurprising that US-based polling data suggests that white people, and white men in particular, reported a higher preference for meat-heavy diets than any other demographic. As we will demonstrate, carnivore diet gurus rework negative tropes about indigenous peoples, finding spiritual and nutritional value in reclaiming an “ancestral” or “primitive” style of eating.
All the while, they promote visions of white nationalism and cisheteropatriarchy through their primal rhetorical networks. Critical communication scholarship has become increasingly concerned with the rhetorics of health and wellness. Industries geared toward male vitality and strength through regimented lifestyles (like a carnivore diet) invoke “identity elements” that “position male corporeality”.
The Downfall and Confession
I Ramble About The Liver King Netflix Documentary for 20 minutes
But as is the case with many health influencers, many questioned whether Johnson’s ripped body was the result of his ancestral diet and lifestyle and not steroids. Appearing shirtless in his videos, he would trash theories linking his muscular form to the use of steroids.
He insisted that the nine tenets of the ‘ancestral life’ - sleep, eat, move, shield (avoid excessive exposure to WiFi and electromagnetic fields), connect, cold, sun, fight (embrace physical and mental challenges), and bond - were enough. Health experts also raised concerns about his diet, especially on the issue of consuming raw meat, stating that this practice would increase the risk of high cholesterol, heart disease and digestive issues.
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But Johnson repeatedly denied using steroids or performance-enhancing drugs. He told Mark Bell’s Power Project podcast in 2022: “I don’t touch the stuff. I’ve never done the stuff. It showed that the Liver King was secretly consuming $11,000 of steroids per month.
Within three days, Johnson posted a YouTube video titled “Liver King Confession… I Lied,” admitting that he had been injecting steroids and human growth hormone (HGH). “I never expected this exposure in the public eye, and it’s been tricky as f**k to navigate,” he said, adding that he’s “as sorry as a man could be.” He promised to “be better" moving forward.
Soon after the apology, he retreated from social media. But that wasn’t the end of it; he was slapped with a $25 million lawsuit, accusing him of fraud and deception. In March 2023, the case against Johnson was dropped; his reputation, however, was irreparably damaged.
In the Netflix documentary, Johnson explained that he lied about his steroid use on social media because he believed he was still spreading the message of ancestral living. However, according to interviews in the documentary with Ben Johnson (CEO of a holding company for lifestyle brands) and John Hyland (CEO of a digital marketing company), both men told Netflix that Johnson had also lied to them about using steroids too.
“He told all of us, ‘No.’ It was very much like, ‘No, steroids are not even a question.’ So much so that we’re creating parodies and content,” Hyland said in film.
After the Fall
In the Netflix movie, he reveals that he has also stopped taking performance-enhancing drugs as well as tweaked his diet. No longer does he adhere to a strict carnivore diet and has begun eating fruits and vegetables again. “Vegetables and testicles, I can have all of it,” he says in the movie, while roaming the garden on his ranch. “I was so convinced, all the carnivore stuff, that’s what you need to really kick ass in life. I’m convinced now that I was starving myself.”
He adds, “I guess I want the world to know I was wrong."
The Liver King has now, in a way, come clean: after claiming to go “natty” for 60 days in an Instagram post, he admitted to being back on steroids in late 2023 (although he is still preaching the value of his “nine ancestral tenets”, which include sleep, sun exposure and cold therapy, and which the Netflix documentary claims were made up in conjunction with his marketing agency).
“I think he thought the broader message was more important than the steroids,” says Ben Johnson, former CEO of the Liver King’s holding company, Tip of the Spear, who seems genuinely shocked that his former associate was doing anything untoward. “It’s unfortunate that the messenger has killed the message … when there’s a kernel of truth at the centre of the message, it’s easy to focus on that and ignore the other variables.”
What isn’t quite so easy is looking past the abs and the arms, and finding people who value health and wellbeing over aesthetics and false promises.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2016 | Brian Johnson begins promoting the "ancestral diet" on social media. |
| Early 2020s | Liver King experiences a meteoric rise in popularity. |
| 2022 | Liver King denies steroid use despite widespread speculation. |
| 2022 | A report reveals Liver King was secretly consuming $11,000 of steroids per month. |
| Late 2022 | Liver King admits to steroid use in a YouTube video. |
| March 2023 | The lawsuit against Liver King is dropped. |
| Late 2023 | Liver King admits to being back on steroids after a brief claim of going "natty." |
