Russell Brand lauds magical amulet keeping him safe from WiFi

Comedian-turned-“right-wing Christian influencer” Russell Brand has discovered a new stream of income: hawking enchanted objects. Brand appeared in a recent TikTok ad for Aires Tech, claiming “airports are places full of WiFi and all sorts of evil energies,” and so everyone needs a “magical amulet from Aires Tech” to keep you safe from “all sorts of signals out there.” The amulet, or the “Lifetune Flex,” sells for $239.99 on their website. The gold encasing and green center make it look like something that belongs around Doctor Strange’s neck: very majestic, very wizardly.

Criticism, understandably, abounds. “They are gutter-slime,” a video essayist tweeted, grouping Russell Brand with Jordan Peterson. “They” are “willing to take advantage of frightened, foolish people to make a quick buck, and should never be taken seriously by anybody, ever.”

Aires Tech’s standard response to the mocking is: “Our products are backed by twenty-five clinical studies, nine peer-reviewed articles and twenty-two patents!” Aires Tech’s website links to a YouTube video with 37,000 views, where a neuroscientist demonstrates the effects of electronics on the brain, “both with and without Aires microprocessors in place.” The tab “our technology” on Aires Tech’s website includes peer reviews and other various forms of research.

After over-strict Covid mandates helped to undermine trust in public health, and with the rising popularity of RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” — centered upon cleaning up the CDC, NIH, FDA, and US Department of Agriculture which have, he claims, “become sock puppets for the industries that they’re supposed to regulate” — Brand appears keen to capitalize on mystical forces as a form of healing.

Either he is a delusional Don Quixote type, or he is intentionally grifting and preying upon those frightened by the modern world… Cockburn is not sure how he can be both. It didn’t help that Brand started the ad with, “Hello, I’m just back from Narnia where I had a holiday — Mr. Tumnus, Aslan, all those guys.” It also doesn’t help that Brand has recently faced multiple accusations of sexual assault — which he denies.

Cockburn was able to track down a few studies that may back up some of these “conspiratorial” concerns, like this one from the National Library of Medicine which suggests that “men who keep cell phones in their trouser pockets have significantly lower sperm counts.”

“WiFi causes oxidative stress, sperm/testicular damage, neuropsychiatric effects including EEG changes, apoptosis, cellular DNA damage, endocrine changes, and calcium overload,” another NIH abstract states. However, the National Cancer Institute claims the energy from cell phones “is too low to damage DNA.”

Whether our technological world is damaging our health or not, it’s unclear how a magical amulet from Narnia will help.