The Goop Lab

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Part of a series on Goop. [View Related Entries]

About

The Goop Lab is a Netflix docuseries about the lifestyle company, Goop, owned by American actress Gwyneth Paltrow. The company, which focuses on retail and publishing, has dealt with a history of controversy due to wellness philosophies and promotions connected with pseudoscience. The series, which releases on January 24th, 2020 will focus various topics such as energy healing and sexuality.

History

On February 4th, 2019, Variety ^[1] reported that a Netflix will be releasing a Goop docu-series by Fall 2019 hosted by the site's editors as well as CCO Elise Loehnen and Paltrow. The show will center around physical and spiritual wellness. Variety^[1] quoted Loehnen in saying, "We were speaking to the platform question, and where our people are. They’re watching Netflix. Some of the more strategic, bigger stories we want to tell require a TV budget. Obviously, there’s no better partner in that.

Later that day, Doctors took to Twitter in response. Dr. Michelle Dickinson^[3] tweeted, "No @netflix please don’t make this! We don’t need to promote alternative health and pseudoscience trends pushed by celebrity endorsements. We have actual medical professionals who use evidence based scientific methods – make a TV show out of that instead!" The tweet gained 160 retweets and 675 likes in four days (shown below, left). Dr. Darren Saunders^[2] also responded tweeting "We need to respond with 'GoopBox'. A version of GoggleBox where scientists and doctors watch Goop and debunk the BS in real-time." The tweet accumulated 21 retweets and 148 likes in four days (shown below, right).

On January 6th, 2019, Netflix released The Goop Lap with Gwyneth Paltrow trailer to YouTube (shown below). The trailer received over 98,200 views, 3,400 dislikes and 900 likes in a day.

That same day, Netflix affiliated Twitter account @seewhatsnext^[4] released a promotional poster of Gwyneth Paltrow standing in a vaginally shaped pick tunnel and the tag line "Reach New Depths" (shown below). The image accumulated over 3,500 likes and 400 retweets in a day.

Reception

On January 6th, 2020, following Netflix's trailer release, Twitter user @AmandaRosenberg^[6] received over 1,500 likes for tweeted, "the most horrifying thing abt this is the word 'lab' which implies some sort of science which goop has NOTHING to do with!! also the boldness of gwynnie coming to us from a vagina -- a place she told us to stick jade eggs!!! this whole show is a danger to our health!!" (shown below, left). Many other viewers shared the sentiment. The number of dislikes awarded to the trailer on YouTube outweighed the likes. That day Twitter^[7] user Kevin C. Klatt, PhD, RD tweeted, "I wanna be more angry about the Goop Lab but @Netflix has, for years, contributed immensely to the massive food & nutrition confusion that exists, often promoting baseless fear and dubiously dangerous therapies" (shown below, right).

The Goop Lab 7 Twitch Streamer Copypasta

On January 6th, 2020, Twitter user @jokosintern^[8] captioned the promotional image with "The Goop Lab is a Netflix show where we follow Gwyneth Paltrow in her journey on creating 7 twitch streamers/youtubers on a laboratory. The show will explore her struggles with the boys and her own personal life. Coming soon on January 24th" (shown below). The tweet garnered over 30 likes in a day.

That day, Twitter ^[5]users began repeatedly posting the declaration. For example, Twitter user @cscoopPOG^[9] and @caprifather^[10] both tweeted the copypasta with edited or alternative promotional images (shown below).