Earlier this month I wrote about a pattern I had noticed in advertising for dietary supplements: deceptive video presentations that promise to reveal a secret but make you watch the entire video to find out what the secret is. They are full of emotional language, misinformation, and sales gimmicks, and offer little or nothing in the way of scientific evidence. The secret is eventually revealed to be a dietary supplement that they just happen to be selling, at a special price only available if you order now.
I thought I had already said everything I wanted to say about such presentations, but then an email from SavageGrowPlus appeared in my inbox with a link to yet another video, this one selling a product derived from an ancient sacred African penis elongation ritual. At least this one doesn’t force you to watch the whole video; it offers a convenient transcript you can read. I recommend you check it out. It is not scientifically credible, but it has great entertainment value. It won’t inform you, but it will make you laugh. The whole thing is so monumentally silly I just had to share it. It’s hard for me to believe anyone would be persuaded to buy the product, but I guess P.T. Barnum was right about a sucker being born every minute.
It starts “Those dicks are insane!” my wife yelled at me…They were looking at 18 black men with penises 12, 13, and even 18 inches long. “Penises so huge, it would have made God himself envious.” They were visiting an island to observe the African tribe renowned for the largest penises in the world, allegedly due to a secret ritual that “can increase any man’s penis by 48%.” They were told rich Chinese billionaires had been visiting the island and paying big bucks to get longer penises. They don’t identify the island, but they do identify the tribe: the Somba. The website 101 Lost Tribes describes the ritual as an initiation ritual and shows a picture of a man with a very long penis. It is not a secure website, so I won’t link to it. It says the Somba live in Togo and Benin, not on an island. It gives its sources: two blogs and Wikipedia. Wikipedia says the Somba are known for their traditional body scarring rituals and their distinctive house construction style; it does not mention a penis elongation ritual. So right off the bat, the information in the video is highly questionable.
It gets worse. It says you can replicate the secret Somba ritual at home by simply taking a pill that contains all the (no longer secret) ingredients used by the Somba tribesmen. Your penis will grow at least 4 inches in a few weeks. They claim it is clinically proven to work for all men. They say:
This secret ritual comes with a whole bunch of other advantages. It will help you get stronger, longer lasting erections, It will give you firmer, more pronounced body muscles…Will significantly increase your energy levels, turbo boost your sexual confidence and even help you lose those nasty pounds off your belly.
The speaker is Mike Nolan, whose lifelong goal has been to research and find a solution for “the terrible small penis syndrome”. He admits to having a small penis himself and says, “I know how it feels to have your gut frozen every time you take your pants off and she sees your little guy.” And he knows how completely humiliating it can be when other guys accidentally see your penis and react with pity and disgust. He will reveal how a “dangerous blockage” is preventing the penis from growing and he will tell you how to fix it. He will show that having a small penis is not a life sentence.
He says he even contemplated sharing his wife with a tribesman, thinking that once she had been satisfied by a big penis, she would love him more.
He claims that more than 50% of women cheat on their partner because he’s less endowed. (But according to an article in Psychology Today, penis size is not even on the list of reasons for female infidelity.) He claims that women prefer a penis at least 8 inches long, with a circumference of over 5 inches.
The tribe wouldn’t divulge their secrets, but he followed them around and observed what plants they used to prepare a cocktail that was only ready to drink after being buried two feet underground for 24 hours. Back at home, he replicated the cocktail (presumably sans burying) and tested it on 120 volunteers. He discovered that those with penises under four inches had two things in common:
- Their urine was the same color in the morning.
- Their penile tissue had the same skin tone
He discovered the reason: their bodies were unable to assimilate the critical nutrients needed for penile growth. Confusingly, he refers to this as “a blockage” and also as an allergy. A lifetime of nutrient deficiency resulted in a tiny, unnatural penis with a 78% increased chance of developing deadly reproductive system problems. He says you can tell if you are affected if your urine is yellow in the morning. (What color is it supposed to be?)
100% of his study participants reported an increase in penis length of over 3 inches, and also reported that they could sustain an erection for over 30 minutes. In addition, they lost pounds of nasty belly fat and noticed firmer muscles, improved sex drive, increased stamina, and skyrocketing energy levels.
He considered sharing his discovery with Big Pharma, but realized they would only bury it or would take 10 years to study it and would then replace all the natural ingredients with chemical-filled compounds, full of side effects. And the final product would cost an arm and a leg and be at least 10-15 times less effective than the original formula. So he found a company that was FDA approved and GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) certified. They called their product SavageGrowPlus. They say it is a mixture of 14 (elsewhere it says 12) superfoods that will make your penis grow. It is GMO-free and has no side effects. In addition to growing your penis, it will eliminate bad cholesterol, improve sleep, improve digestion, treat type II diabetes, reduce stress and anxiety, make you happier, give you greater mental focus, and boost your memory and brain power.
He is not out to make money (of course he isn’t!), so he offers a special low price with a discount and a money-back guarantee. But don’t wait, because they will soon run out of their current supply and it will take a long time to make more.
Another reason not to wait:
Eventually, Big Pharma will see this. And when this happens, the secret will be fully blown and we’ll be forced to take this website down. I simply don’t have the resources to go head-to-head against the multi-billion-dollar giants and their high-dollar legal teams.
He claims to have made many enemies by posting this video, including vicious male enhancement gurus, snake oil drug manufacturers, and angry porn stars.
The rest of the video is a typical marketing spiel. I don’t think I need to point out all the red flags. This video has all the hallmarks of the deceptive videos I wrote about, including buzzwords like toxins.
Does a small penis mean a higher risk of infidelity? That doesn’t really make sense, since most people choose their sex partners before seeing them naked. And a study in Kenya found that infidelity in wives was more common if their husbands had longer penises.
Are women less likely to orgasm with smaller penises? An old joke gives these instructions for sex: “in, out, repeat if necessary”. But of course, it’s more complicated than that. The depth of the average vagina is around 3-7 inches. If the penis measures 18 inches, most of it will not be able to enter the vagina. And it doesn’t need to. Size doesn’t matter; technique is far more important. Women seldom have orgasms with vaginal penetration alone; some kind of direct or indirect clitoral stimulation is usually required. A penis is not required for a satisfying sex life. The feminist slogan comes to mind: “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. Lesbians don’t have penises but can enjoy a satisfying sex life without them. Women can achieve orgasm through manual or oral stimulation of the clitoris, stimulation of other erogenous zones, sex toys, or even through fantasy and thought alone.
The average penis measures 3.61 inches when flaccid, and 5.17 inches when erect. Penises over 6 inches long are rare. This video claims that anything less than 8 inches is abnormal. A study found that 85% of women were satisfied with the size of their partner’s penis, but only 55% of men were satisfied with their penis size.
Conclusion: the video for SavageGrowPlus is just too silly to take seriously
In my opinion, the idea of a “small penis syndrome” is a typical alternative medicine tactic: invent a nonexistent disease, then offer to cure it. This misleading video is full of misinformation designed to give normal men an inferiority complex and make them feel insecure. I think that’s despicable.
I couldn’t help but wonder why they sent the email to me. Maybe they thought Harriet was a man’s name. Or maybe they thought that as a woman I would want my partner to have a larger penis. They were wrong on both counts. Internet marketing algorithms work in mysterious ways…