The hilarious thing about Ben's chicken dance offer is that it's a valid settlement agreement that could save BAM millions of dollars in legal fees taken directly from the franchise owners, and help stop the bleeding for reputational damage.

In the McDonalds Hot coffee lawsuit, lawyers used the fact that McDonalds refused to settle for $20,000 to cover legal fees and intentionally chose to drag things out against them. Not imagine if McDonalds had the chance to settle at no cost by doing the chicken dance, but simply chose not to.

• The offer undermines the claim that Ben is trying to extort BAM for profit.
• It undermines the claim that Ben is doing this for clicks, as Ben said he'll stop producing content on the subject
• It undermines the claim that they're looking out for the independent franchise owners, because he's wasting their money to tank their brand
• It undermines the claim that Ammon is legitimately scared, because I guess he's not scared enough to perform a simple dance to make the entire problem go away.

If franchise owners ever manage to take Ammon to court, they can point to this as evidence of gross incompetence and mismanagement. Any defense Ammon can come up with will only make his case sound worse.

• Ammon refuses because he genuinely believes he did nothing wrong: Then why not provide the contractually obligated inventory reports and security feeds?
• Ammon refuses because he assumes this is a trap that will be taken as an admission of guilt and used in other lawsuits: So he's admitting that the other lawsuits have merit then.
• Ammon refuses because he assumes the offer isn't sincere: This just further highlights Joshua's hypocrisy after swearing to God to make things right and then going back on his word.

Edit: Back in 2023, FOX was agreed to a $787 million lawsuit with Dominion. Afterward, FOX faced a separate lawsuit from shareholders, who sued the company for allowing things to escalate in the first place. No doubt the shareholders will argue that FOX should have retracted the story and apologized immediately, and use FOX's refusal to apologize early on as grounds for the lawsuit. BAM is privately owned, so they don't have a duty to shareholders. But if the franchise owners find any avenue for a lawsuit, they can use this as further evidence.

Edit 2: For people claiming that BAM doesn't have to take the offer seriously because Ben is trolling, it doesn't have to be one or the other. For instance, here's the story of a judge known for "creative" justice, such as offering a reduced prison sentence for a woman accused of abandoning 35 kittens in the cold if she's willing to spend one night under similar conditions. The defendants always have the option to refuse the offer and accept the full sentence, but the offer is clearly there. See also: Sandy Hook familes agreeing to accept a lesser settlement if Alex Jones agrees to sell "InfoWars" to "The Onion."

Right now, the "strongest" charge against Ben is residential picketing, and Ben needs to beat that charge before he can proceed with his civil case. So what are the odds of this actually sticking?

The main SCOTUS case on this issue is Frisby v. Schulz, involving anti-abortion assholes picketing the home of an abortion doctor. The main justications for the ruling were a) the availability of alternative channels of communication and b) the concept of the "unwilling listener." Neither of those seem to apply to Ben.

IANAL, but by shutting down the sign while it was still being set up, I think the police might have accidentally triggered an exception in the law:

>4) This section does not apply to... (c) general picketing that proceeds through residential neighborhoods or that proceeds past residences.

Unlike with the abortion doctor example, Ben's crew ALWAYS intended to proceed past Johnson's residence, and that's the important distinction. However, police forced their hand prematurely, effectively ending the picket before it started.

We have no idea how long the sign would have stayed up if the police hadn't intervened, and "Attempted picketing" or "conspiracy to commit picketing" aren't actual crimes.

Lots of people compare "Bricks and Minifigs" to MLMs, especially due to the Mormon connection. Mormons are easy prey for those scams because they're very trusting and lack proper bullshit detection. But the same principle apply to LEGO enthusiasts in general?

LEGO can obviously be a great tool for creativity and personal expression and craft, but for the vast majority of users, you're simply following instructions from a manual and trusting that everything will fall into place as long as you follow it perfectly and don't make any mistakes. And you trust these instructions are going to work, because you trust the product. No one tries to make a milennium falcon from scratch on their own.

We learned from Chrys's interview that she had no plans to own a franchise coming in and thought the idea was crazy, but the company basically groomed her into it and convinced her they could make it work. All she had to do was pay for the parts (from exclusive vendors) and the instructions, effectively treating it like another LEGO project, and that outweighed any sense of self-doubt she might have had.

People have pointed out that franchise owners really aren't getting much from the arrangement. BAM doesn't even provide a steady supply chain, and doesn't have any performance accountability for the owners at all. They only thing BAM offered was the instruction manual, and maybe the a small group of LEGO enthusiasts managed to convince themselves that this was the only thing they actually needed.

Why is BAM doing this?

When BAM threatened Bryan and u/Chrysdelight, they were essentially playing a chicken game.

>The name "chicken" has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive toward each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a "chicken"

In a chicken game, you can either be a hawk or a dove. The cost of a collision from both sides being hawks is far more than than the potential gains. The only way to win is by intimidating the other player into being a dove.

>One tactic in the game is for one party to signal their intentions convincingly before the game begins. For example, if one party were to ostentatiously disable their steering wheel just before the match, the other party would be compelled to swerve.

There are lots of companies that are willing to settle even when they're wrong to avoid a costly lawsuit, and that just invites more people to file bullshit lawsuits against them in the future. BAM is doing the reverse, convincing everyone that they're willing to do things "the hard way" so that no one ever tries to pressure them into doing the right thing.

BAM has two other tactics for rigging the game: If they win, then the one-sided contract says the other party has to pay their legal fees. If they lose, then they use their Legally Mine tactics to hide their assets behind shell companies.

The role of Reckless Ben

If everyone is a hawk, then you have constant self-destructive conflict. If everyone is a dove, then you are easily exploited. Hence, the ideal strategy is a mix of both.

Ben is a super chill dove who always prefers the peaceful option, which is why he was incredibly open and forthcoming when confronted by the police. It's why he spent so much time trying to represent himself as the everyman. But he also knows how to be a reckless Hawk when the situation requires it.

BAM's typical MO is to drag things out, and drain the other parties resources. Ben is a content producer who flipped the script on them, as dragging things out makes it easier for Ben to monetize the situation. Ben could have lawyered up immediately to limit police abuse, but then the content wouldn't have gone viral and there wouldn't be public pressure for change.

Ben offers BAM a way out

BAM was already operating at a loss and simply does not have the resources to go to trial. But even if they had infinite resources, their case and credibility would be completely destroyed in front of a jury, opening themselves up to future lawsuits. Ammon can't even keep his story straight with amateur youtubers throwing softball questions, good luck keeping his story straight in front of a high-powered lawyer.

BAM knew their TRO would never hold up in court, which is why they were happy to cooperate with Ben's lawyers to change the terms. I doubt that BAM has any strategy for winning over a jury. Their strategy was to convince Ben to back down before they did, but now they know that Ben is never going to do that.

And this brings us all to the rubber chickens and the challenge to do the chicken dance. Once again, Ben is giving them the chance to do things the "easy" way. Being called out as the chicken is the losing move, but sometimes the losing move is also the smarter one.

Is the chicken dance actually a trap?

One of Ben's favorite plays is using BAM's own tactics against them. BAM hides behind their franchises, so Ben creates franchises of his own. BAM tricks people into signing one-sided contracts, so Ben does the own thing to Amanda. BAM forced Bryan into

Some people are wondering if Ben is letting BAM off to easily with the chicken dance challenge, but this mirrors the exact same offer Josh Johnson made in part 1, when he asked Bryan to send an apology video. In that case, Josh immediately broke his word, and tried to lure Ben into trespassing again. Moreover, Bryan speculated that this was meant as a legal trap, so that BAM could use the apology as an admission of guilt.

If Ammon does the chicken dance, it would be karmic justice for Ben to break his word. But if Ben keeps his word, he achieves a moral victory, by reminding people that he's doing the opposite of what BAM did when they forced Bryan in the exact same situation.

But the chicken dance would also be an admission of guilt. And while Ben might drop his lawsuit against BAM, Bryan and Chrys are under no obligation to do the same. But if BAM doesn't do the chicken dance, they're also proving their refusal to cooperate.

Conclusion

BAM wants to portray Ben as a stereotypical youtube prankster. But whereas a prankster seeks creates conflict out of nothing, Ben is doing the opposite. BAM created the conflict, Ben is simply trying to end it.

BAM wants to argue that "the easy way or the hard way" was an act of extortion. Dore already admitted this was bullshit behind closed dores. Again, extortion is where you're the one creating the conflict out of nothing, and that's entirely on BAM.

There are lots of businesses that fail because they didn't keep up with the times. Kodak invented the digital camera, but they failed to capitalize on the market. Blockbuster turned down the chance to buy Netflix. Sears failed to adapt to online commerce.

BAM has an easy way out of this by admitting wrong and stepping down. But they're not going to do that, because their entire business model is based on being scammers and bullies, and they don't know how to change course and actually live as honest people.

As The BBQ Counselor points out, BAM is basically broke. One of the main issue is that BAM currently owes $1 million in outstanding gift cards. This is money that people have given to corporate to hold onto temporaily until they redeem it at an actual store.

If you redeem a $100 gift card at a BAM store, then you are forcing corporate to reimburse the store for the $100 sale. Yes, $7 of that goes back to corporate, but it's still a net loss of $93.

There are lots of articles out there explaining how Starbucks is effectively a bank now, re-investing the billions of dollars from gift cards. I'm going to assume that BAM is "investing" giftcard money into lawyers. Every giftcard redeemed is less money going to the Dentons.

https://apps.dfi.wi.gov/apps/FranchiseSearch/details.aspx?id=640999&hash=1435531195&search=external&type=GENERAL

The other reason to redeem giftcards now is because you want to do that BEFORE the company runs out of money. Synergy Gift Card company recently went bankrupt and left a lot of customers on the hook. Having the customers use up all their gift cards would effectively be a version of the bank run scene from "It's a wonderful life."

What happens if BAM franchises demand $1 million for gift card reimbursements from corporate and corporate doesn't have the cash? I have no idea. But it would probably put the franchise owners in a much better position to sue the company later on, especially if BAM can't afford to pay for lawyers anymore.

BAM charges 6% in royalties on GROSS REVENUE, not profit, which is already a ridiculous amount when they don't even provide the franchise owners with a supply chain. It's not like McDonalds, where the company charges you a royalty on french fries in exchange in exchange for a consistent and predictable french fry supply.

For BAM, franchise owners are in charge of acquiring their own inventory and are only paying for a brand, but none of that 6% actually goes to advertising. Instead, store owners have to pay an additional 1% on advertising, less than half of which goes towards actual ads, and an additional 3% in local ads from approved vendors.

In 2025, BAM received $816k in advertising fees, but only spent $389k on advertising expenses.

For comparison, they also spent $966k on "Occupancy," and $460k on travel. Ammon and his buddies spend more money on UHAULs and campers than on actually promoting the brand.

https://apps.dfi.wi.gov/apps/FranchiseSearch/details.aspx?id=640999&hash=1435531195&search=external&type=GENERAL

People frequently compare BAM to an MLM, and one common trait of MLM's is how recruits love to cosplay as a "business owners" and "entreprenuers."

The 2023 FDD estimates that the initial investment for a location can be as high as $282,575. Meanwhile, staffing costs for the first three months can be as low as $3,770, or about $5 per hour if you assume 8 hours per day, because the owners are essentially expected to work for free. The 2025 raises staffing costs to $20,000, or about $27 per hour, but now the initial cost can be as high $570,000.

So what exactly are business owners getting in exchange?

• Store owners are on the hook for all risks, costs, and liabilities. Even though they're already paying 6% royalty for the right to use their brand, they also have to give corporate another 1% for advertising fees, in addition to spending 3% on local advertising from approved vendors. Even worse: Of the $815,859 in advertising fees BAM collected in 2025, only spend $388,885 of that on actual advertising. That's under 0.4% of total revenue.
• Store owners can come up with their own LEGO decorations to decorate the store with.

And here's what they don't get:

• They don't own the actual location, or even the right to select one, as BAM chooses that for them. Chrys says she has no idea why BAM chose such a shitty location, and the people running BAM have been sued for selling overpriced real estaste to old people people who didn't know any better.
• They don't actually own any of the inventory to sell as they please. BAM controls all the assets, and can seize those assets at any time with zero recourse.
• They don't own any of the decision making, all decisions have to be approved by BAM. They don't even have the right to by their own office supplies or furniture, they have to go to BAM approved vendors.
• They don't own the brand name or the reputation, and they're not entitled to any recourse if BAM fucks the brand over. They are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the name, and they have ZERO say in how that name gets managed. They also don't have any right to territorial exclsuion, as BAM's business model is to expand as much as possible to maximize franchise fees, and force the franchise owners to compete amongst themselves.
• They don't control any of the profits. In addition to royality fees and renewal fees, they also need to pay off $570,000 in debt with 18% annual interest.
• Not only are they expected to work for free, but they don't even get to put their work experience in their resume. The termination agreement says they're not allowed to mention that they managed a store in the past.

In conclusion, francise owners are owners in name only. They take on all the costs and responsibilities, while corporate reaps all of the rewards.

"We define the franchisee attrition rate as the sum of terminations, re-acquisitions by franchisor, non-renewals, and ceased operations, divided by the number of outlest at the start of the year. It is a strong indicator of the strength of the underlying operating model."

1. If you run a BAM franchise, your have a more than one-in-four chance of losing everything you in any given year. As in the case of Chrys, this doesn't mean the store closes down, it simply means that the previous owner is bankrupted behind the scenes, invisible to the public. The termination letter not only prevents the previous owner from warning others, but they're not even allowed to say they owned the store at all, and are expected to leave a blank spot in their resume.

2. A 27% attrition rate doesn't mean that the other the 73% is doing fine. You can survive one year, and then immediately get killed the next. If I say "25% of stroke victims die within a year," that doesn't mean that the other 75% are doing okay.

3. "BJC Live" reports that in the LegallyMine court cases, Dan McNeff's accuse his sons of stealing from the LM to pay for their losses in BAM, because they couldn't make BAM profitable. He also says that franchise owners are complaining to the previous owners of BAM because the current ones aren't providing any support.

4. Despite the high failure rate, and despite their inability to support the store they already have, BAM decides to launch an extremely aggressive expansion campaign. Going from 35 stores in 2018 to 150 stores in 2023 to over 300 stores in 2025, with the eventual goal of hitting 3500 stores. Why scale up a business model that isn't profitable? This is where the MLM comparisons are coming from.

5. The fact that BAM is okay with such a high attrition rate shows they don't give a fuck if the store owners are left destitute, which is why they don't seem to care about tanking their own brand.

6. The typical reason to expand -- benefitting from economies of scale -- doesn't apply here. In fact, you have the opposite. BAM has no actual supply chain, they rely on clueless people willing to pawn their collections at far below market value because they're either desperate or because they don't know what the collections are worth. Eventually, you run out of people willing to sell at a discount. This would be an unsustainable business model even for the stores they have now. Increasing the number of stores by 1200% does not increase the number of available sellers.

7. "BJC Live" also reports that the people behind LM and BAM have been accused of ripping off old people of their retirements by convincing them to "invest" in worthless land at vastly inflated prices. Part of BAM's franchise contract is you have to go through them for a location. One of Chrys's complains is that the Salem store is in a TERRIBLE location and she has no idea why they chose it. I think we can probably connect some dots here...

BAM is trying to discredit u/Chrysdelight/ by arguing she was $200,000 in debt to the company, but LUS posted a video yesterday showing that this is actually normal for the company, as their franchise agreement basically forces them to take on $150-200k worth of loans to the company within the first year at 18% interest. Royalties, by contrast, are only 6%.

Suppose an already struggling local store loses $100,000 in sales from the controversy. BAM loses $6000 in royalties, which is bad. But since the store now has $100,000 less to pay off towards debt, the debt goes up by that same amount, and BAM gains $18,000 in interest.

In other words, BAM isn't in the business of selling LEGO, they're in the business of pushing predatory loans. For every dollar they lose in a one-time royalty, they gain $3 in ANNUAL interest every year.

LUS's video points out that franchise owners going into debt because they can only purchase from overpriced "approved" vendors who all happened to be Mormon owned companies and extremely overpriced. You aren't allowed to buy your own office supplies or furniture. I wouldn't be surprised if Ammon receives a kickback, but the scary thing is that he doesn't need to. If BAM requires you to pay $10,000 for a $1000 piece of furniture from an "approved" vendor, then they automately make $1800 per year from the annual interest alone.

And this creates a basic conflict of interest: Ammon makes more profit when the franchise owners fail. Instead of finding vendors who offer the best possible deal, Ammon has a financial incentive to find vendors who offer the WORST possible deal.

Eventually the franchise owner runs out of money. BAM confiscates their takes their inventory and store, and then sells it to the next sucker in line. Circle of life. BAM takes advantage of the fact that the business owner is already predisposed to stay silent because they don't want to admit that they "failed." But BAM goes one step further and tries to force them to sign an NDA, to prevent them from warning future franchise owners.

Comparisons to MLMs

The BAM business model has a lot of similarities to MLMs. The business poses as legitimate retail, but the actual money is found in recruitment (franchise contracts). Participants keep falling deeper and deeper into debt, creating a sunk cost fallacy where they assume that someday their hard work will pay off.

However, instead of recruiting people to work under you, you recruit people when you're no longer able to continue (Close up shop, and look for someone else to sell to.). Chrys bought the franchise from a previous owner, and eventually tried to sell it to a future owner. Hence, unlike a standard MLM, there is no exponential growth.

Most people who lose money to an MLM refuse to admit that it's a scam. Emotionally, it's because they don't want to admit that they were wrong. Rationally, they know that the only chance at success is by scamming someone else, and they don't want the system to be called out before they do. Hence, you will see a bunch of owners backing the company line, because they need to be able to sell the franchise to someone else.

The problem with the Salem Store

In theory, the new owners are supposed to take inventory of the store contents as payment towards the debt in the event of a surplus. But Josh and Brandon didn't bother because they know that the debt is so high that the surplus will never happen.

Returning Bryan's collection means admitting they didn't bother to conduct the inventory, which means admitting that the entire game is rigged agains tthe franchise owners. BAM has decided that the only way out is to use Chrys as a scape goat and pretend that the store was empty all along.

What are the options?

Lots of people advocate suing BAM for mismanagement, but BAM is a privately owned company that has no fiduciary duty to shareholders. I seriously doubt that there is anything in the contract that holds the CEO to any sort of performance metric.

It might be possible to sue BAM for fraud based on the above conflict of interest, though incredibly unlikely, when you think of the large number of MLM's which never sufference any consequence. OTOH, I have never heard of an MLM that said you weren't allowed buy your own office supplies.

Ultimately, store owners might have no choice other than to declare bankruptcy.

Earlier today, another Anti-Karen person posted "With the FBI investigating, why wouldn't someone come forward to cut a deal?" This is the most common argument among this crowd, the idea that no one would be able to keep a secret if things actually happened the way that pro-Karen people are claiming.

Meanwhile, the Proctor revelations definitely proves why this excuse is bullshit, because Proctor got away with being an outspoken and unapologetic Nazi for MANY YEARS without anyone saying anything in public. Proctor's superiors openly praised him for his honor and integrity, and people who knew better stood by and kept silent about it. Why didn't anyone come forward?

In fact, the coverup of Proctor's behavior is even worse. Most people assume that JOK was killed by accident by 3-4 people, and the rest of the close friends/family were kept in the dark and are lying because they genuinely believe the people involved are innocent. No such excuse applies to Proctor, he's openly bragging about what a piece of shit he is. And the people covering it up weren't simply close friends and family, it was simply generic "back the blue" bullshit.

Given Proctor's outright white supremacy, I'd like to bring up one of the most blatant coverups of all time: The Tulsa Race massacres, where an ENTIRE TOWN of black people was burned down and murdered and then promptly covered up and erased from the history books for DECADES. We're talking 35 square blocks and over 300 victims. That means that THOUSANDS of random people from the street were involved, and none of them came forward later. None of the kids who watched their parents brag about their participation went on to report them after. So the idea that 3-4 people would stay silent about the death of ONE GUY who died by accident isn't far fetched at all.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_sAi_zCG74ha9Dx7c6BG2mSglbZeFKR4

BAM's entire justification for stealing the store from the Gorman's is that the franchise agreement grants the power of "Immediate Termination:"

>You are in material breach and deemed to be in default of this Agreement, and this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice, at our discretion, if any of the following events occur:

Moreover, BAM's court filing last week tries to get out of their dispute process by invoking this passage:

>In other words, termination is an event that occurred automatically, and it is certainly not a “claim,” “dispute,” “suit,” “action,” “controversy,” or “proceeding,” that would require adherence to the dispute resolution process.

I am not a lawyer, but BAM is claiming that the termination "occurred automatically." Except the letter was sent on 11/14/2024 in response to a breach from 2/6/2023 that had already been resolved. It would be correct to say that termination happened ABRUPTLY, but false to say it happened automatically or immediately. The contract seems to only grants discretion for AUTOMATIC terminations that happen immediately following certain events, but not for ABRUPT terminations that happen much later.

Other question from a non-lawyer:

1. How can something be both "automatic" and "at our discretion" at the same time?

2. The terminate says that BAM has the discretion to terminate "this Agreement," which would imply the entire thing, not just selective bits and pieces. That wouldn't just include ownership, but also the arbitration clause and any post-termination penalties. Applying selective termination to the Agreement would also further contradict the word "automatic," as "automatic" implies all or nothing. It seems like the equivalent of accidentally writing a line of code that accidentally deletes the entire code base.

u/NerdyGorman u/Chrysdelight

Instead of simply returning Bryan's property that they were never legally entitled to in the first place, Bricks and Minifigs have decided to spent far more than what they would "lose" on hiring one of the most expensive lawfirms on the planet to go after the person they stole from.

These lawyers are being paid for via franchise royalties, and therefore paid for by the customers. Bricks and Minifigs franchise owners can no longer claim to be independent, that can't claim this was a separate store. They are now directly contributing to the problem.

It's up to them to complain directly to corporate and explain that they and their customers do not want to see their royalties being spent for the sake of stealing from old people.

> Initial Complaint > > Date: 05/29/2025 > > This law firm fraudulently and illegally dissolved my FL based business (LLC) without my request nor permission. The action happened in March of 2025 and by May 29th of 2025 the action has not been reversed although they are aware of their wrongdoing. This has cost my business greatly as we have not been able to operate with a dissolved LLC.

> Business Response > > Date: 06/16/2025 > > Dear Mr. REMOVED, We understand your frustration and sincerely apologize for any disruption this caused. This situation arose due to an unfortunate administrative error in which your LLC, which shares a very similar name to one of our client’s entities, and was mistakenly included in a dissolution request. We manage thousands of entities across the country, and while this is the first time an issue like this has occurred, we take full responsibility for the error.

People are trying to turn on Ben for filing his claims suit against the wrong entity, so here's Ammon doing a far worse version of the same thing.

Ben's mistake is perfectly understandable. His entire point is that the system is rigged against the underdog, which includes making the process incredibly confusing. BAM had the chance to simply point out the error early on, but chose not to.

OTOH, Ammon was trying to present himself as an actual law company. And they dissolved the wrong business with no warning or recourse. So which is worse?