Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult

(Paperback)

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A revelatory expose of a prominent San Francisco wellness company endorsed by Tim Ferriss, Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloe Kardashian, and an urgent lesson for the years to come. In the 2010s, a San Francisco company called OneTaste pushed sexuality wellness towards the mainstream, teaching women and men to discover themselves through physical pleasure and mental growth. With a magnetic and visionary leader Nicole Deadone, offices around the world, and tens of thousands of devoted followers, it embodied the 21st century wellness revolution sweeping the globe. But beneath the surface was an unsavoury fact- 'Orgasmic Meditation' had come at a great cost. Employees were pressured to devote their lives to the company, to vie for the founder's attention, to live with and sleep with each other, to empty their bank accounts as they paid for more classes. Many cut ties with their family members, with past friends and loved ones. Several claimed they were abused, forced to perform sexual acts for the sake of increasing OneTaste's business. Wild Love tells the story of OneTaste's phenomenal rise from Bay Area oddity to a worldwide movement, and how it all came crashing down. It reveals how a highly skilled woman evolved 'spiritual' practices for the 21st century, selling to the booming tech culture and a new generation of wellness communities like Goop and social media influencers. It's a story of abuse, power, and control, as OneTaste took a good thing and used it to manipulate, and ultimately con, thousands of people out of millions of dollars.

Author Bio

Ellen Huet is a tech reporter at Bloomberg covering startups, where her investigations have exposed scams and criminal activities throughout the tech industry. Alongside the OneTaste expose, she broke the Juicero scandal, and was the first reporter to expose the toxic culture and reckless spending within WeWork.