Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste’ on Netflix, A Doc About An Empire Of Touchy-Feely Turned Troublesome

Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste (Netflix) examines the Bay Area startup success, massive market growth, and eventual allegations of misuse, shifting motives, and member malcontent at OneTaste, the sexual wellness company founded by Nicole Daedone that preached the power of “om.” No, not yoga, but “orgasmic meditation.” Was Daedone using TED Talk-style tech sector practices to unlock her followers’ truest sexual selves? Or was her company founded on hucksterism and delusions of sex cult grandeur? By 2018, the FBI was trying to figure that out.

ORGASM INC.: THE STORY OF ONETASTE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

 
The Gist: Nicole Daedone is roaming a stage in her headset, speaking about the market sector her OneTaste Urban Retreat Center has fulfilled. “There’s a pleasure deficit disorder in this country,” she says, a statement that seems to define damaged sexuality as a software bug fixable by Silicon Valley. “What she was selling was an innovation in relating to your sexuality,” Bloomberg journalist Ellen Huet says in Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste. “The Bay Area is a place where people are gonna be attracted to and be open to that kind of idea, and where they, frankly, might have a little extra money to buy courses.” The operation Daedone co-founded in 2001 promoted its unique approach to relationships, leadership, and sexual healing, an approach that boiled down to “OM,” or “orgasmic mediation” – basically, the power of a single finger to stimulate a woman’s clitoris in a specific, Daedone-taught manner – and by 2017 it was raking in millions in class package and membership revenue, with endorsements from Khloe Kardashian and promotion on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Podcast. But were Daedone’s wellness practices legitimate? Or a baseless concoction created by a smooth talker who knew what people wanted to hear?

Huet’s reporting forms the base of the Orgasm Inc narrative. It was her 2018 Bloomberg story “The Dark Side of OneTaste” that put a national spotlight on the company and its principles, and she’s interviewed here along with a handful of former OneTaste members, many of whom describe their inculcation, their being convinced to hand over more and more cash, and their eventual difficulty with escaping Daedone’s orbit. If she wasn’t operating an actual sex cult, many of the ex-members say, she was definitely at the center of a cult of personality. “The type of personal reflection that they encouraged us to do was all about finding your deeper desire,” says former member Audrey Wright, “yet they would do this complicated psychological thing of inserting their desire into you and telling you that it’s yours.”

There’s a ton of footage here that reveals the inner sanctum of OneTaste, from life inside its San Francisco “living center” – lots of people gushing about “OM-ing” and engaging in unbound sexual practices – to pep rally-style seminars, complete with hefty ticket prices, that feel like something crossing sex positivity with the motivational gospel of Anthony Robbins. But when allegations of sexual servitude, predatory behavior, and financial trickery surfaced, Nicole Daedone was suddenly nowhere to be found.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This Orgasm Inc is not to be confused with that other Orgasm Inc., Liz Canner’s 2009 documentary about pharma’s attempts to produce a female Viagra. The chicanery of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos also comes to mind here, who Amanda Seyfried so memorably brought to the screen in Hulu’s The Dropout that she inspired Jennifer Lawrence to drop out of her own Holmes project. And Netflix also features Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, about the rise and fall of hot yoga promotor Bikram Choudhury.   

Performance Worth Watching: Asked by an interviewer if Nicole Daedone is a “con artist,” her ex-husband Don Marries responds in the affirmative. “You got to dissect that word, though. It means ‘confidence.’ It’s like, yeah, she can say things in such an enthusiastic way and have so much knowledge around it that she’s a fantastic salesman. Friend of mine was like ‘Oh, she’s a monster.’ And that was very intriguing. We had done some LSD earlier one day, and she proposed to me. Having your wife be a sex cult leader was like…it was pretty interesting for me.”

Memorable Dialogue: Daedone is seen on tape speaking to an audience during a OneTaste class. “I don’t think that there’s anything of a higher order than having my body feel so good that I emanate a good feeling, and that that good feeling can catch on to you, and that we can begin to pass it on to each other.” Are you catching the Elizabeth Holmes nonspecific assurance vibes? “And when we feel good, strangely enough, we act well. So there’s this way that, it seems to me, all there really is to do is to be happy, so happy that it overflows and I have enough for you, and I want to share it in any way I possibly can with you.”   

Sex and Skin: A woman is brought to release during a public demonstration of “orgasmic meditation.” Blurry shots of naked people abound, of peoples’ sexual organs, of Nicole Daedone herself disrobing and submitting to a public orgasm demo – to be “stroked,” in OneTaste parlance – during an occult-adjacent ritual designed to entice investors. (it’s this footage, most of it apparently from the archives of former OneTaste videographer Chris Kosley, that spurred former members of OneTaste to sue Netflix.) And some of the ex-members interviewed for Orgasm Inc discuss what they describe as sexual violence perpetrated by OneTaste. 

Our Take: There’s so much squishy touch and feel stuff in Nicole Daedone’s core pitch for OneTaste that its nonspecifics beyond catchwords and testimonials seem to align her more with the cold reading of PT Barnum or Bradley Cooper’s grifter in Nightmare Alley than anything resembling a foundational practice of health and sexual wellness. But watching the footage from inside OneTaste, and hearing the experiences of its former members, it’s also possible to understand how individuals could be so easily swayed, how people could willingly submit themselves (and their money) to Daedone’s teachings because they were searching to be seen, to have their inner lives validated, or to simply uncover the elusive source of their own sexual pleasure. 

Things get grim. Former members, most of them interviewed in their bedrooms, speak of feeling forced to perform sex acts, of their doubts about OneTaste practices being gasligted until they submitted to Nicole Daedone’s version of the truth. There are serious allegations of condoned rape. And there is at least one ex-OneTaster whose stated experiences with the company forced her into hiding for fear of reprisal. But on its surface, Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste is the story of one woman’s profound ability to transform peoples’ personal desires into saleable product, to transform their trust and vulnerabilities into revenue and personal gain.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste is another tale of how people’s wish to believe led them into the clutches of a person who was happy to tell them what they wanted to hear. For a fee, of course. And in the balance hangs the personal experience of the vulnerability they surrendered. 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges