15 AprEpisode 201 | Bad Vegans, Coercion & Canine Immortality: What sociopaths can teach us about dog training
Annie discusses the docu-series ‘Bad Vegan,’ which is about a restaurateur on her block who was conned out of millions of dollars by a narcissistic sociopath who claimed he could make her dog immortal. The story leads her to think about how genius manipulators use coercion, punishment and classical conditioning in order to get the behaviors they want from their victims. While many of their techniques do not constitute “good” dog training, we can draw parallels between how they create positive associations in others to make themselves appear trustworthy. Can we do the same to build our dogs’ confidence? Also: Should we trust our pets to be good judges of character in potential partners? Annie offers her answer.
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Transcript:
Annie:
So I just watched the Netflix docu-series ‘Bad Vegan,’ which is about the downfall of a restaurant called Pure Food and Wine. And this story, I thought, well, this is a show I have to watch for a couple reasons. One, Pure Food and Wine is on my block. Like it's just around the corner from me. I could get there without crossing a street.
And I never dined there very much or went to its outpost, which was called One Lucky Duck, because it was very expensive. And I always sort of thought one day when I make a lot more money, I will eat here all the time. But then it closed. They specialized in this really interesting and tasty, raw vegan food, like gourmet vegan food, but not just vegan, but uncooked. And the couple times I did go, it was pretty fabulous.
I was also interested cause the story is specifically about the owner Sarma Melngailis. I actually interviewed her and her former business and romantic partner, Matthew Kenney, 15 or so years ago when I was writing about restaurants for the New York Post.
So I wouldn't say I knew her, but I had met her. I'd been there, I'd eaten there. It's around the block. I was pretty much dying to watch it for all these reasons. Sign me up. So totally binge watched this show.
Also, it's a story about I guess you could say a con man, or someone entering a cult leader's world. Although in this case it was just really one person in this cult. Now I should say I really like stories about cult leaders and conmen, I realize. Like in the world of true crime, those are the things I gravitate to. Sometimes there is murder and other kinds of unsavory crimes involved as well. But that is not the stuff that I'm interested in.
I have talked about some of these shows that I've watched in the past and things that I like. I mean, this is why I've talked about, oh gosh, I don't know. The Vow, the Unabomber, Dirty John, I actually interviewed Terra from Dirty John on the show. Even, I talked about the musical and The Music Man, which is the story of a con man.
And I think the reason that I find these kinds of stories interesting is because they're about people who are really good at manipulating behavior to get what they want, money, power, et cetera.
Now I think you don't have to go find sociopaths in order to find people who are experimenting with manipulating people using what they know about punishment and reinforcement. Just look at user interface development, anything where there's AB testing, or programming artificial intelligence. Or look at how advertisers are manipulating our emotions and our behaviors all the time. John Watson, who is considered by most to be the founder of behaviorism.
But the sociopathic cult leaders you see in these shows are particularly good at getting behaviors from people using like the least good dog training methods possible. They're tending to use a lot of coercion, which is kind of the opposite of positive reinforcement. It is technically negative reinforcement.
If what you're doing is saying, Hey, you need to do X, Y or Z behavior or else something bad is gonna happen, or else I'm going to take something away from you. That is coercion and technically speaking, negative reinforcement. Which, as I've talked about before is kind of in a diagonal, if you're thinking about operant conditioning in terms of quadrants positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment. Positive punishment, where you're adding something to the equation in order to discourage a behavior tends to go hand in hand with negative reinforcement.
Although I would say that most conmen that I've been watching shows about, or most cult leaders that I have learned about, do truly use all four quadrants, as trainers sometimes say, especially balanced trainers.
And I truly believe we are all potential victims. I think that these kinds of stories can remind us that behavior, animal behavior in general, can be manipulated and is manipulated. And poor you if you are in the path of a sociopathic narcissist who has figured out how to manipulate you.
So another thing that I thought would be so interesting about watching Bad Vegan, this is before I watched it, was that the villain, her boyfriend then husband, who is obese and unhealthy and very much the opposite of Sarma who is very petite and healthy. He figures out that the reward that he could dangle in front of her to get her to do things was that he could make her dog immortal. And it had something to do with him being some sort of alien being in the body of a man, and that he had the power to also have the dog and Sarma join his, I don't know, Martian world for eternity.
Now, I don't know what his methods to cause dog immortality were, but you know how I was saying that I think we all could be victims to people like this? Probably if someone was gonna try to con me, making a good case that they could make my dog live forever would be appealing to me. So I thought, okay, you know, she and I, if we were talking about what's rewarding, I could see how that could be rewarding to me.
And of course, once he promised it to her, it was then something that he could also take away in order to coerce her behavior. And, very much like in The Vow, he takes a lot of collateral from her. In The Vow, Keith Raniere of the cult NXIVM gets collateral from the women followers by having them send evidence of things that people in their family have done, true or not, and naked pictures of themselves, and holding onto these things that he could use to reinforce or punish behaviors cause he had this thing that they didn't want others to see.
With Sarma, her husband takes all this money from her and gets her to take money from other people and to take money out of her restaurant, and talks about always how he's just shelving the money, just sort of holding it as collateral, as proof of her devotion.
So I watched the series and thought I would have lots to say about it. But in the end I actually had only two real thoughts, at least thoughts worth sharing. One was about how the guy, whose name is Shane Fox or Anthony Strangis I think is his real name, how he builds trust in the beginning.
Sarma is friends with Alec Baldwin in real life. And in Twitter life, Alec Baldwin became friends with this guy, Shane Fox and they had like funny banter going. And that connection that this guy had with her friend helped her feel good about him long before they actually met. Made her feel like he must be someone who is a trustworthy person because he is palsy walsy with my friend.
And I was listening to a podcast that actually two of the people from The Vow do called Culty, where they interviewed Sarma about the whole thing. And she is talking about that element of how she developed trust in the guy. And all three of the people doing the podcast were kind of like, oh, isn't that interesting as like a technique? And I thought, not really. I mean, that's done all the time.
Actually, also another story that I watched recently also on Netflix, Inventing Anna, also about someone running a con. She dresses in fine clothing, and drops hundred dollars bills like they're nothing, and stays at fancy hotels. And you know, again, these are something someone does in order to encourage people to think that she is trustworthy.
But in smaller ways, we are doing that kind of thing all the time. People wear uniforms in order to help you understand that they are aligned with a brand or a company, or that they are trustworthy, right? Like at the Clinique makeup counters, they all wear white coats, like as if that makes them sort of doctor-like. It must work. They wouldn't do it if it didn't work, to make us feel the feelings we associate with white coats.
Anyway, it doesn't take a lot to see all the things people do to align themselves with people, brands, things, or whatever, that help establish trust. And that's just taking advantage of the fact that people learn by association, just like dogs are always learning by association.
And what's funny, or what struck me as interesting thinking about the dog training aspects of this story, or the dog training aspects of any of these con artists stories, is the way in which people often say dogs don't generalize very well. That's sort of a common refrain, as if explaining a way why a dog who, for example, has been hit by a cane might become of umbrellas or scared of anyone raising their hand as the fault of the dog's inability to note the key differences in the situation and their tendency to overgeneralize. I think it tends to get pegged as some weird canine tendency.
Of course it doesn't even have to be related to something relating to fear. Our client Rudy, a shepherd mix, used to try and herd men on bicycles. And because many of the men on bikes in his neighborhood were food delivery men, he started to eventually try and herd anyone who was carrying a bag that looked like a food delivery bag. And many trainers in the world have said and will say and do say, well, dogs don't generalize very well because they make these kinds of broad associations.
But, man, humans sure make those kinds of associations too. That's what stereotyping is all about. And certainly could lead people to feel warm and fuzzy about someone that actually is just a clever and conniving narcissistic sociopath.
Now, if you are choosing to manipulate your dog's emotions in order to get good behaviors, that is much less evil and nefarious than trying to do that with people in order to pad your pockets. And the good news is it's something you can do with a hot dog or some cheese or any other treat that you can shove in a treat pouch or in your pocket.
And if you need help understanding why it might be a good idea to just tell your dog to be cute and shove a piece of hot dog in her mouth when a child is approaching, rather than asking the dog to do any number of tricks, remember Anna Delvey of the show Inventing Anna and based on the real person Anna Sorokina. AKA Anna Delvey, who went around giving people hundred dollar bills for doing basically nothing for her. The guy bringing her her coffee to the room or her package to the room of her hotel got a hundred dollar bill. The coat check got a hundred dollar bill.
They were doing jobs, sure. But they were doing jobs that they would be doing anyway and would be doing for probably no tip at all. I'm sure they often don't get tipped at all. She was more or less telling them, Hey, be cute, good job. Here's your reward. She wasn't asking them to stay late or write an essay or do back flips. Her criteria was incredibly low. And by having that low criteria, rather than focusing on training specific behaviors from people or having them do specific jobs for her, she was training people to like her and believe in her and believe her BS. And in the end, vouch for her and give her money.
But here's the part of Bad Vegan that, perhaps surprisingly, got to me the most. This is Sarma Melngailis talking about Shane Fox when they first met, and Leon is her dog.
[excerpt plays]
Sarma Melngailis:
He looked like one of those defensive football players, that they're really strong and muscular, but also like, there's extra weight there. So it seemed shallow of me to be judgemental for that. Cause I wanted him to be this big, strong guy that was gonna come in my life. This guy who understood me, who seemed to understand me really well, who seemed to understand, you know, my goals and motivations and fears and frustrations.
And Leon really liked him. I think somehow because Leon really liked him, I thought, okay, well he must be okay. This must be for real.
[excerpt ends]
Annie:
So here's what drives me nuts about this. We cannot expect our dogs to know who is a good person. Now I assume this is a lesson Sarma has learned at this point. But we cannot expect our pets to be good judges of character.
Now this is just my opinion. I don't know if something as subjective as character and a dog's ability to read it is something that could be studied in any kind of lab setting. I'm not a scientist. But I do think that dogs’ worlds are a lot more defined than ours, and the structure of our relationship puts us in a place where we're controlling all the things they want.
I mean, it just seems to me, if someone's a master manipulator that could get you to lose the business, you've devoted your life to, and if someone can get you to do that, plus extort how many millions of dollars, like this woman did, someone who's able to manipulate someone like that? Probably a pretty effective dog trainer.
[music]
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