Anyone else noticing microplastic shards falling into their Creatine from the blue container?

I'm sorry if I am not at your beck and call 24/7 on Reddit anymore, Srubek... I am working 10-12 hour days right now on a bunch of projects, and I have a one year old son that I have to make time for, so I simply don't have time to sit on Reddit all day. I literally have over 3,600 unread Reddit messages. I just don't have time to even begin to read them anymore. I wish I did, but I just don't right now. Yeah, that sucks. However, the sheer time I dedicated to Reddit over the years is just not something that is sustainable forever. I've helped so many people with all sorts of things on Reddit for over a decade; including you, Srubek. I did it to be nice, and I never asked anything of anyone for it. Some of those people that I helped have even now gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracy, and constantly attack me for made up shit. People's true colors eventually shine through, I guess. I will address your concerns, though.

* Quality control

This is a molding defect in a small number of 46oz jars that was not noticeable, unless you sit there and screw the lid on and off again repeatedly. This might surprise you, but my QA/QC team doesn't sit and screw lids on and off again as part of their process. Now that we know this is a possible defect, they will be on the lookout for it on future runs. However, new issues like this that have never come up before are not something you can completely build processes around to catch ahead of time. We have so many checks and sign-offs in our QA/QC process now, it is insane. Those processes were developed and expanded upon because of new issues like this. We've sold products in these 46oz jars for almost ten years now. This is the first time a molding issue has arisen on them. With our new understanding of the situation, a new QA/QC process will be built for it.

* lack of community engagement, on posts involving serious matters like this

As I said before, I don't have time to even be on Reddit right now. I'm not willfully ignoring people. I just simply am not on Reddit. We are in the middle of a complete site redesign that is taking a lot more time and effort than initially planned. We started in January, and are eight months in now. The end result is going to be one of, if not the best, supplement sites on the internet. However, the process to get there is not just taking up shitloads of my time, but the time of my entire team. Once we are past that project, we are all going to have a lot more breathing room to handle other things. Till then, we are in the thick of it.

* Powders

We have not given up on powders. Our most recent releases magnesiums all came out in powders. However, things actually have to sell for us to continue stocking them. People can say whatever they want on here about it, but if they don't actually buy the powders, we can't keep them. I've held on much much longer to slow selling SKUs than you can imagine. My team has been pleading with me for years to let them roll off slow sellers, and only recently have I given if after looking at all the numbers. We're never going to discontinue something if it is selling. It's only the stuff that just doesn't sell that we have to address.

The fact that we are even still in business right now is a miracle, to be honest. The United States federal government tried to put me in prison for 20 years. I have not openly talked about it at all, but nobody here knows even a small part of what we went through. I haven't told everyone how over 50 armed federal agents raided our facility one morning, and held my entire team at gunpoint. Over FIFTY agents from six federal agencies, some of them pointing guns at my warehouse guys, screaming for them to drop the boxes of printer toner they were carrying. They were at our facility for over 14 hours, with four semi trucks backed up to our docks to seize things. This started a two year long battle that only recently concluded. This battle cost me over $15,000,000 in seized product, legal fees, and forfeitures! Fifteen million dollars... Every morning I had to wake up worried that they were going to freeze my assets and arrest me. Every loud noise I heard outside my house for two years straight had me thinking that was the day they were finally raiding my house. Do you understand how absolutely mentally debilitating constant fear and stress like that is for someone? I had to hire a legal team you wouldn't even believe. At one point I had 20 lawyers. Every day for two fucking years I had to wake up and put a steady face on for my 90 employees. Even so, the stress of it was too much for some of them. I had multiple people quit because of it. Who do you think took on the roles and tasks that were left open? I did. I have been acting marketing director for two and a half years now. I have been acting lab director for almost a year. Throughout this time, I had to be strong and push forward. I have not complained. I have not made posts asking for people's sympathy. I got to fucking work and pushed through it. We pivoted, and released tons of new products. We expanded our operations where we could, and moved away from areas we had to. Throughout that time I have tried to make it as seamless and painless as possible for our customers, while still trying to push forward with my ultimate mission of forcing the industry to take lab testing and quality control seriously. I wanted to tell everyone what was going on the day after it happened. I wanted to update people countless times throughout the whole ordeal. However, I was not allowed to talk about it. I still am not allowed to talk about all of it. My freedom to be open was taken from me. Nobody is more frustrated by that than me. However, the only choice I had was to accept it and move forward. That's what we have done. I have tried to focus on the future, and let go of the past. However, I would be lying if I said it hasn't completely fucked my entire life. You want to know the real shame of it all? Do you know why the government came into our facility that day? You want to know what triggered it all? It was a competitor of ours that I had called out for selling fake products years prior, who got raided themselves for being pieces of shit, who then said lies about us to try and save themselves. So me trying to help this community by doing lab testing and calling out the bad actors is what fucked me in the end. No good deed goes unpunished, and that saying becomes more and more poignant the longer I live.

So yes Srubek, I am not on Reddit as much as I used to be. I am not as engaged as I once was. We have had to pivot in order to survive, which includes not selling some things we used to in the past. We have been forced down paths I never thought we would. I have had to deal with situations I never considered. I have done what was needed to survive, and ensure my 90 employees still have a job. I have a lot of anger around the situation, because all I have ever done is try to help people. All I have ever done is try to make a positive difference in the world and in people's lives. In the end, me being that voice for consumers and calling out bad actors fucked me. If I had just kept my head down and played the game like everyone else, things would be very different. However, that is not me. I can't sit back while I see fraud happening. I can't sit back and watch consumers be taken advantage of by fake or impure supplements. It's just not me. The mission I had on day one is still the mission I live every day. I am just being more strategic about it now. We can only play the hand we are dealt, and I got shit cards on the last few hands. However, I am still in the game. That's what matters.