Ex-Page three girl Leilani Dowding has accused KSI of brainwashing the public with his new Prime Hydration energy drink. Dowding’s comments come after videos emerged showing swarms of people squabbling over the coveted bottles following their release in Aldi superstores across the country.
The wildly successful brand – founded by KSI and fellow YouTube star Logan Paul who have a combined social media following of over 50 million – has been flying off the shelves since its release last year. Originally it was only available at ASDA. However, after recently trashing out a deal with German discount supermarket chain, Aldi, the drinks were stocked in their shops nationwide last week – leading to mass hysteria.
Dowding likened the public reaction to the COVID toilet paper shortage of 2020 while noting the massive influence that social media has on social contagion.
“It shows how easily society can be manipulated to follow a crowd. These influencers told young kids that they should go out and get this energy drink and show it on their Instagrams and their social media,” Dowding told GB News.
“That’s where they’re seeing this, like, social contagion that’s going on in this consumerism hypnosis that they’re under. It’s very scary to me that a young population can be controlled in such a manner.
“I don’t think we need proper scientists behind this because it’s so simple. These aren’t children, these are adults. These are sheep following a social trend. How do we break people free of this mentality?
“This is what’s worrying. I don’t know how we do, because I keep saying to myself, people are going to wake up, they’re going to see what’s happening. And then you see this and you’re like, okay, it happened with toilet roll, it happened with petrol.”
Express Sport has approached KSI and Prime’s representatives for comment. KSI has previously been accused of restricting the availability of his product in order to generate public interest. But the Brit claims that isn’t the company’s intention. “We’re not even trying to do that. We’re making loads of prime daily, the demand is literally too high man,” he tweeted.