Hi Craig, great post, I was waiting for some sort of editorial about the complaints SunLove has been recieving. I was originally hired to set up the Twitter, but i simply could not manage it whilst the owner Darian began to commit PR suicide in public infront of millions of people. I advised him of proper practise but he continued to threaten people with lawsuits and more on both Twitter and Youtube. I had been designing the graphics for both in addition, social bookmarking and the client never paid up! Poor show, surely there should be some sort of authority to shut down, and or prevent this, especially when on western soil in common view. Tut Tut

Ah, interesting! It sounds as if it might not be a PR tactic then and just plain rudeness. Thanks for the insight David, hope you haven’t been affected by the reaction to the company.

Dear Sirs,
This note is to inform you that David Alexander set upi the SUNLOVEBEAUTY account. We never knew about this twitter stuff. He enerated hundreds of contacts that he kept for his own data base. His auto twitters were still sendin out messages about a contest already over. He was fired, and began a smear campain. If you look at some of the followers and the people SUNLOVEBEAUTY follows, they are x rated sites he faked. Just like the fake twitter acccounts that keep starting rumors. He also had the passcodes to all the twittering accounts and Youtube accounts, and all sunlove emails. Today was the most important holiday to the Jewish people. I for One remained in Temple since the previous night. I appologize to anyone he has offended, and I assre you it was NOT DONE BY SUNLOVE. We promote peace and love, and hopefully the lack of skin cancer. And we do not ever, ever use the N word, or tell people to Die. I have emails to Mr Alexander (if that is even his name) expressing all this to him and refusing to pay for such behavior. He felt it was a good way to capture attention. I myself can barely manage an email, I do most of my work old school, I use the phone or face to face. Again, On Yom Kippur I find this appalling.
Thank You
Darian Braun

No worries Darian, thank you for the reply. You do know if someone has hijacked your accounts that you can get in touch with the likes of Twitter and YouTube to have them changed?

Hi Craig,

I am the blogger that made the video and wrote the blog post. Completely agree with everything you have written here. At first I was in two minds about whether or not to make the issue public, as a former PR student I was aware that by doing so I would be fuelling the fire and giving them exposure. The fact of the matter is, within the world of youtube Sunlove have already completely saturated the community already with glowing reviews and earlier in September people on twitter had already been up in arms at their way of dealing with people, namely a very well respected blogger Laura (username Lollipop26)

Basically I felt the fire was already flaming but nobody was willing to address the issue on their blog. This bothered me if I’m honest, lots of people were willing to discuss is on twitter but weren’t willing to formalise their thoughts on the company. Well I was. I did it for two reasons:

Firstly as a person I find it very hard to sit back and see people being treated in a negative way, especially by a company that in my opinion has a responsibility towards them once they have parted with their well-earned cash. My viewer demographic on youtube is largely under 18, and I get messages every week from people stating that after watching certain videos they are going to go out and buy the product. These people are excited, spending their pocket money on products that have been endorsed by youtube ‘guru’s’ Of course, I’m a little fish in the big sea of youtube guru’s, and I haven’t reviewed Sunlove, but others have, to massive exposure. It killed me thinking of these young girls running out and lining the pockets of people who were openly displaying racist and abusive sentiments for all to see online.

Secondly, thanks to the PR world invading youtube and the blogosphere viewers have rightly become very skeptical of us when we review products that we got for free or at industry events. Personally, I have never felt a pressure to be anything but honest to my viewers, but other bloggers have. The great thing about independant beauty bloggers is that people can log onto youtube and hopefully get unbiased reviews of products by people just like them. I felt that watching all the reviews, the product and company was represented in an overwhelmingly positive light, whilst the company was firing off to all and sundry on its twitter page. I wanted to provide people with my experience so that they could make an educated decision. I felt I owed it to my viewers.

Unfortunately people have started to get a little bit crazy, sending hate mail to the people who have favourably reviewed and now I am being blamed for that. I suppose this is youtube after all. What is interesting is that Sunlove have apologised to me, yet seem now to want to use me to help them. They have forwarded private email conversations between themselves and youtubers that should never have fallen into my hands. If I needed more proof that the company was shady, this is it.

David, you might be interested to note (although I’m sure you already know) that you have now been blamed for the abusive messages, Braun claims that at almost 50 years old he does not know how twitter works, although its completely clear to anyone with half a brain cell that the style of writing used by Darian in emails is completely compatible with the style of the twitter posts. He even states who he is in some of them. As far as I am aware all of the tweets (including the ‘fuck off and die’ one) are still up there for public viewing, but I do have screenshots of them.

Lastly I just wanted to add that at no point was I abusive to the company, I simply observed their online interactions and told one of my subscribers that their operation didn’t seem to be too professional. I have updated my blog with a second post including correspondence from the owner. Sorry this has been such a long reply but a lot has been said about me in the last few days, and I feel I have to address this.

http://gemsmaquillage.blogspot.com/2009/09/sunlove.html

Thanks for bringing this to light further.
Gemma

Everyone take note. Darian is a compulsive liar. I often refrain from making such bold and public acusations however the comment above mentioning my actions with Twitter, and keeping personal databases is completely false.

Darian has sent me abusive emails, threatening violence, which I have saved and make available to the authors of this post. Darian “you have nowhere to hide, you have been exposed, so drop the act”. Darian changed all passwords and locked me out the twitter account I created on behalf. I have had no operation of the twitter for 5 weeks now, so any threats and so forth are directly from Darian Braun the owner and operator of Sunlove.biz and twitter.com/sunlovebeauty.

I have very little else to say on the subject except that we need to ratify this appauling business and its lack of PR tact.

You couldnt be more right Gemma. The emails and the twitter posts are a definite match. Look at the vocab etc. Perhaps we should collate all of the emails, tweets, screenshots and any other evidence of bad practice into either this article via Craig or another article. Thanks again.

i just wanted to point out.. if you have X rated followers on twitter.. they are just bots and you cant control that they are following you without clicking unfollow on them. everyone who is on twitter gets these bots. Every few months your followers number drops because twitter cleans it up

Dear Craig,

Sunlove is very unprofessional, and the fact they are saying the Twitter responses is not them, is a complete lie. Also they put my name out on there twitter, which I was a paying customer, so you tell me, is that professional behavior?? No it is not. I also have my personal DM’s between Sunlove and myself, and they did also tell lies about me to other Youtubers,on twitter and yes this I know for a fact. I was also DM by other YT on twitter about the personal DM’s about me.
Bottom line is they are a horrible company!! They have the worst customer service ever. It’s a shame that people with such lack of business and people skills can own a business.
There business will only fail with lack of maturity. Especially for a 50 something year old, who claimed to me, it was his wife’s company.

I have hired David and One3rdNerd many times, and my clients also hire them and Iv never heard of an issue. David has always delivered as promised. He has done nothing but exceed my expectations and my clients as well.

-Chris

I won’t be convinced by them trying to turn things around now and pull the wool over our eyes, its ridiculous and pretty insulting. I’m a 24 year old woman with a functioning mind, I wasn’t born yesterday.

I am in no doubt that the person emailing me (Darian) is the exact same person who used the twitter account and still is in fact. The language, phrasing, exact same spelling mistakes and deluded way of speaking to me all point to it being the same person.

Even if he is telling the truth, and the older tweets are in fact from David (something I don’t believe for one minute) this still means the the harassment I experienced late last week was from Darian, he has in fact accepted this and apologised to me. Now that he is in control of the twitter account surely he would delete those racist comments that he supposedly didn’t write?

Gemma, any tweets, or posts made by myself via that twitter account were before september began. Darian decided not to pay me for my work across the board and changed the passwords. I am happy to be 100% honest about this situation as I have nothing to hide. It seems Darian continues to hide behind lies and has today even made the first line of my addreess public. I shall now be seeking legal action.

Surely Twitter would have records of the IP and location of where those tweets were coming from on specific days. So, if its racist remarks surely Twitter should get involved and make it public where the tweets have been coming from. Shouldnt be too hard to distinguish as I am in the UK, and Darian is in New York ( I have been led to believe)

Well the cats out of the bag! I shot Kennedey, I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, And I am the Big Bad Wolf ! To some degree Yes, and I am happy to admit it. My Mother was the Importer of Grand Marnier, Bombay Gin and In the early 1980’s The Russians shot down a Korean Airliner Jet. The World was anti Russia. And In the States, we were pouring Stoli down the drain. My Mother the sweet soul that she is (not really) Took me on a trip that Included Sweden. There we dined with the King and my mom struck a deal to Import a little cool bottle of Vodka called ABSOLUTE. From then on I was alone, and she took over the world. I graduated and continued my studies atthe college of Insurance.From there 3 out of 3000 aplicants were chosen to go to a little 300 year old institution called Lloyd’s. I was a yank and a Jew, and I had an expense account. Boy did that go over well. No one tells you what or how to do anything. Its a ritual sort of thing. Fuck with the new guy. Well I couldn’t get anything done. Everyone did business over these huge lunch’s Bubble and Squeek etc etc,and the PINTS, we must not forget the PINTS…… Well 5 months later and I was feeling beat, so Myself and my best friend Chris decided to go see an old friend (old sure) Karen. Her father was a wild nightclub mogul named Peter. He owned the Hippodrome and launched Stringfellows. His arms embraced me and he handed me the keys to the kingdom ! A Black membership card. I was in mate ! Well Monday i look down at an underwritter trying to get an appointment, he never looks up turns the page in his diary and says “Two weeks Wed lunch” (I had the expense acct and they knew it) I say in my best John Wayne manner, NAHH, I’ll send a car around for you take you to dinner. Then To MECCA. He thought, Humm I dont have to go home to the mrs cranky? YES, LETS DO THAT.
I was off to the races. Limo,Dinner Champs, Club Blondes. Word got out, the Yank was a cool night out. 3rd In the world fifty five million and up, and the next guy above me was 56 years of age. I was 23. I left Lloyds with 3 letters of reccomendation in under 3 years. Never in the 300 year history of Lloyd’s had that ever happened. I hated it.Insurance sucked. 8 Months in accounting, 6 months in contract wording (insurance contract wording fuck me) 4 months in asset risk assesment, then Lloyds, then I QUIT. What i did not realize at first, is that I had all the tools I needed to build companies. And Thats what I started to do. Moved to LA, Harleys were just starting to kick, within 4 months I owned 2 of the best Harley shops in Southern Calif. Thats were I met all my Famous friends. Then I got bought out. So off i went in search of my next find. Recycling. Built the 3rd largest recycling co in 16 months, and was bought out by a billionaire. Were still friends. Again I searched. The criteria was over 2 to 9 billion in sales, with two major players and I took 4 to 7% of the marekt form them, and would get ….You guessed it BOUGHT OUT. So there i was in the PET FOOD ISLE, all owned by the Mars Brothers. Pal, Pedigree etc etc all the same company. I cut into the shelves of 14 gocery stores and put in fridges and made FRESH pet food. Two months, did it again.Took some time off to learn to play golf, LOVE IT. Saw a weird product, went to the company said I wanted it for the States, they said no but could you get us an endorsment? Who? Gregg Norman (The Shark) prior to Tiger for you little ones. Sure I said. Fuck me, I didnt know who they were talking about, let alone how i was going to get around a million dollar signing fee. Two weeks later it was DONE. And I cant tell you how I did that, but I love Gregg and he’s a goood sport. Then low and behold my Mother, Queen bitch on wheels, Love you Mom, calls and says I HAVE SKIN CANCER…..Long Long silence. We fought through it, and it took alot out of all of us to see this monster turn into a lamb. She was my mom. Well, being her, she said ok,Im better, Im strong again, but fuck Im PALE, “make me somthing”. So I did, a little self tanning towellette. TANTOWEL. PATENT, 72 countries, 62 million sales…….
It belongs to two little boys that were taken from me 10 years ago never to be seen again. I was done. I wanted out. And I gave it a good try. Six years ago, Rosie came and got me, and made me get treatment for my cancer, not skin. I was 160 lbs and near dead. She was the first model in the world to have a real lifelike maniquin in the window. It now stands at the smithsonian museum. She was the face of Revlon and so so many other companies. Her mother got very sick, so she left that world an for six years cared for a dying woman. Her carrer was over. Then her father took Ill, and again 5 more years cared for a dying man. She called me one day, and heard it in my voice, and 7 hours later she was in LA, and she brought me Home. I recovered, and was sitting on Saint Patricks Cathedrial steps not knowing what the hell to do. Four months later my ceation was in the window on the next block on fifth Ave in a little store called SAKS. And then I won the beauty award for breakthrough product of the year. I never went up to get the award, I let Ted do that. I didnt want to be in the spot light anymore. But Rosie kept pushing me into more and more Beauty stuff. I wouldnt know a lip stick that was matte from Gloss. I sure as hell do now. Twelve companies have me on speed dial to create for them. I am back bigger than ever, but I dont like whatI see. So just by sheer chance I meet a girl at aninterview at a magazine, and she says she wants to make a video. Okay go for it. I have no clue as to what Youtube was. Barneys, Boots, Haarrods, ETC Yes, There on speed dial. But the worldis changing. I am not sure I like it. What I was really pleased with, were these little sweet kids doing there own Beauty Video, trying to get fans, and basically play dress up. And the older girls are just Big kids at heart. Then there are the sharks. They now that they make money from Google for adsense. And to raise their views and make their weekly money, they take advantage of these little kids. And for what ? They never went to beauty school, or were a fashion editor, No, they just felt powerful in their little world. And they direct traffic eachothers way for profit. I meat with mosty of them. One Vietnamese girl that is popular sais somthing to me in the meeting that just clicked that little switch in my brain and I was off to the races. But not for what you think. No, not for money. For Love. For Rosie. For saving my life. I asked Michelle Phan a question one day on a park bench in New York City. I said “what do you want out of life” ? She looked me dead in the eye and said “I want to buy my mom a house”. I was in, I said okay, we cando that. Her heart was there. So many of these girls have such great hearts. And others, crap jobs, no money, not much of a life of glamor so they fight tooth and nail to keep their little part of their playhouse. And your not invited,and we love her, we hate her. BLAH BLAH BLAH. David Alexander did nothing but a few hours of keyboard work, then set an auto pilot on. If he had worked as hard as he has been for the past two weeks, He would have gotten paid and a new car. He is what I see wrong with all this. Sitting in a room with computer screens never interacting normally anymore. I have yet to hear this kids voice. Im not kidding. I asked for his number, he said install Skype, fuck that, I’ll call you. Im not glued to a computer. Never talked to the man. I would not be surprised if he were 38 and balding. Who knows, the fact is I dont care. The job didnt get done. One miss placed add by a new employee made the rounds at twitter. David was paid to monitor twitter. It was on auto pilot. Or he would have seen the trouble brewing, and we could have fixed it then and there. But he didnt do his job. So when another employeeetook over and asked where the data base was, David replyed it was his. So again Im asking, What am I paying for? Now moving on. We never made those remarks. We didnt have the password to the account. And some of the people we were following were just added porno sites. He wanted us to look bigger than we were. Since we took over we increased a lot. Some emails were sent out of our Youtube acct to Gurus. Again, we didnt do that. Believe me, or dont, I dont care. I do however care to keep 1 person form getting SKIN CANCER. And If I can catch them at an early age, We got a shot. The unit is expensive, and it lasts forever. So if you have a business brain, you could see were not doing this for money. And part of the proceeds go to buy books for The American Indians. They have 47% unemployment and homlessness. I could give them computers, but where are they going to plug them in? And Knowledge is the key to getting out. We took their land, the greenest people on the planet, and look what we’ve done. Forget twitter, and youtube, and bullshit. What happened to kids going outside to play. They all want to be famous, but not all f them are cut out fot it. And the beauty companies are only sending them trinkets here and there, while the big girls get paiid. Well, I decided months ago to invest in the TALENT, not the banner. I believe in some of these kids for hteir future in MY business. You, David, Vicki Caputo,Gem whatever, all of you have been feeding on this crap for your own benefit and self worth. Well you have had your 15 minutes of fame. You want to leave hate comments send them my way. The girls doing videos dont deserve it. They earned their seat at the table. Your 15 minutes are up, hate me dont hate me. But for real, you should thank me. Thats the most recognition your ever going to get. 1 in 5 will get skin cancer, proceeds for kids to read books. And you want to give us a hard time. You need to understand somthing, this is for Rosie, and my Mom, and all those kids trying to scratch out a place in this world. Kids with talent, and no means of showing it. Well, Im on Their side. Anna, Sonia, Sarah, Holly, Mel. Emily, Blair, and the little kids trying to win a contest and dont even have our product. Or The mother thats soooo short of money because she’s raising 4 kids, and this is her way if feeling pretty, so we give her one for free, and Vicki and the rest of the bulldogs get jealous. Seriously, get a life and grow up. Stop hurting people, and do some good in this world. Either way, Im going to burn down your playhouse, and produce better content. But by no means conrol it. I want those girls to do whatever they want to do. And lets cut the crap about them getting paid, They dont, Only person that Asked me for Money was Elle Fowler, and Lots of it. So lets get real people. Anna, Sarah, And Sonia are hosting our next contest. Make a SUNLOVE video, submit it take your shot at being great. $5000.00 first prize trip to NYC ful makeover By Peter Butler (8 covers sports Illustrated swimsuit edition) Desiger one of a kind dress, Broadway show, airfare included. There, go ahead say somthing stupid, dont use your brain and listen. You dont want the money the trip, the cloths, the hair, etc etc etc. No You want to hate. As for your 15 minutes, well. Goood night, and god bless. XOXO

Wow. I’m speechless.

Bravo bravo, but as great an autobiography or imagination you may have Darian, it doesnt change the fact you have alientated yourself from your customers and taken cheap shots by posting my mothers address over the internet, and making childish comments about people entering your contest. You tell people to check comments on the 12th of sept etc, however you have been abusing people for the life of the twitter account.

Darian states he never spoke to me, i gave him skype and my mobile, but he would persist to ring me when it was 3am! Am i going to answer the phone at that time? I would have happily video chatted over Skype had I thought their was suspision about my age, etc.

If only clients knew the true value of this “keyboard work” I and my assistant dedicated a lot of time on this project. I paid out more to my assistant than I recieved from SunLove. One tip in business, if you dont like the price, dont buy the product. Darian as sincere as you have come across in your essay, it makes no difference, you have already digitally flogged yourself publically. Thanks

I feel sorry for this One3rdNerd company. I have just read through both the blog pages and emails, and by the sounds of it they have set up a perfectly good Social Media campaign, only to have it hijacked and destroyed by the client and not receive payment. I read the racist abuse that was posted, and it seems blatantly obvious that it was this Darian fellow who posted it, then blamed it on his Promo team. He has now admitted it was a lie and it was he who was posting the abuse. One3rdNerd have been publicly accused of racism and improper business, only for the client to admit it was himself afterward. I think they would have a good case in court on this basis, aside from the fact they haven’t being paid for a service which they seemingly provided on time and as described. Its one thing for this Darian fellow to admit guilt and explain his reasons, however i feel One3rdNerd deserve a public apology at the very least, as it seems they have undeservedly had their name dragged through the mud.

Hi Jamie, your opinion is that of many people I feel. I have just seen a screenshot on twitter of an email sent from Darian Braun / SunLove to a customer in the UK that appears higher in this comment list by the name of Gemma. Check this link http://bit.ly/3IGRMH

Do you have a site, twitter or skype I could contact you on Jamie? Thanks

David / One3rdNerd Media

what I find odd is that Gemma posted a comment on her youtube video claiming that Sunlove has breeched confidentiality by showing her emails where they talk about paying allthatglitters21 to review their product.

How is it a breech of confientiality for them to forward her emails? Maybe Gemma also breeched confidentiality then too since she published Sunloves emails online for the entire world to see. I think Sunlove does have a case and could sue her for a few different things.

As far as Sunlove telling people they paid allthatglitters for her review they actually CAN tell people about that. They never had an agreement to keep that info confidential.

Also I honestly find it difficult to give Gemma any credibility since she says one thing and does the opposite.
Here on this blog she talks about how she finds it hard to sit back and see people treated in a negative way and how her heart breaks when little girls go run out and buy products gurus review.

So why is Gemma supporting Allthatglitters? Especially after she saw emails proving that allthatglitters has a hollywood agent named Richard Frias and she is paid for mentioning products on youtube but she LIES to all her subscribers and promises she has never once been paid. On top of that she has threataned little girls. Anyone who supports that behaviour loses all credability with me.

Kimmie sounds like shes also being paid to think SunLove have a case against anybody. The company are a joke. See Tweetdeck screenshots at http://one3rdnerd.org/wp-content/themes/thesis_151/images/sunlovereturns.png

Hi Craig, it appears Darian Braun is up to his old tricks again, get in contact if you can Craig, would love a New Years catch up.

@kimmie: It was a breech of confidentiality laws because Gemma’s personal home address (which she provided when she was informed by Sunlove that they would send her a free promo unit) was posted on Twitter. I know of at least two other women who have had this happen to them.