❀ the cult of: ➥motivational speakers ➥life coaches ➥personal growth gurus ➥new-age charlatans ➥AWESOMENESS FEST

giving her presentation barefoot was a nice touch though.

also how many times can you really take something "to the next level" before you run out of levels?

how earnestly everyone is listening to her on their bean bags laptops at the ready is kinda heartbreaking

i dunno some of them looked bored/skeptical to me.

maybe like 2 of them

binureal beats

― i will see u later. (am0n), Thursday, February 2, 2012 1:00 PM (Yesterday)

whenever you say Mindvalley I think of this

valleys of your mind.. of your mind.. of your mind

Okay I just spent about an hour reading through this thread. Desperately stifling laughter at many points to avoid waking my girlfriend. I've just always been simultaneously amused and confused by the overall appeal of these kind of things, no matter the context. So many striving, ridiculous idiotic shitheads.

Also, having seen the thread title for these past couple of days but not read the thread, learning that Awesomeness Fest was the actual name of the thing did my brain in from the start.

This thread went too fast for me in the past 24 hours but I really like it so anyone wanna sum up w/ the highlights?

bunch of crazy people into SEO

Maybe off topic, but did anyone else's high school bring in motivational speakers? I would guess they did. My high school in Michigan had an loooong assembly with this woman who really did a number on us.

It was a small school - around 200-300 students? - and for a while we'd had a lot of personality conflicts and jealousy and beefs as well as a big burn-out population, and the administration wanted to help.

Over about 4 hours she broke us down and united us. Honestly it was amazing how she made almost every student cry (maybe not "almost every" but a huge majority for sure) and stand up in front of the auditorium and say either a) How sorry they were for being horrible alpha bullies or b) How much they were humans w/ feelings and how the alphas and the losers could be friends.

I did not fall for it (really, not revisionist) b/c I knew that in a week the love would wear off. The other dissenter was a total weasely dick who afterward mocked other students by fake sobbing in their faces.

It was a lot of bullshit but it was a glorious day to see the dick jocks and vicious cool girls and violent burn-outs all openly sob and hug the betas, and I am still kind of in awe of her ability to manipulate people.

sounds p amazing tbh

also kind of off topic but still topical maybe, I dunno if you dudes have seen or been in the facebook or google offices, they kind of give off this vibe

i always hang out in the facebook-google offices because i am mark zuckerbergs

irl he is called the zuck or zuck

nobody has ever seen him irl he has been in a room refreshing his fb page for years

it's pretty sad he's about the be the 4th richest man in america but all he wants is a friend

xxpost yeah our high school had something called the Power Team or something speak to us. really all they did was talk about how powerful their excitement made them and perform feats of physical strength. it was cool

it is just a rumor that people call me the zuck my real friends call me mark or markk

one day someone will

all facebook posts come from inside of me is one thing many people dont know

the 'zuck singularity' is one reason why fb will ipo with a 4 thousand billion market cap

also kind of off topic but still topical maybe, I dunno if you dudes have seen or been in the facebook or google offices, they kind of give off this vibe

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Saturday, February 4, 2012 1:53 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

first thing i said to grady was that it looked like groupon

nah these things have a much more solid business model than groupon

can't keep up w/ this thread but the title of that one vid "your soul is a wave" lol

also kind of off topic but still topical maybe, I dunno if you dudes have seen or been in the facebook or google offices, they kind of give off this vibe

i already posted this upthread but its sort of uncanny how expertly the mindvalley dudes have recreated the like west coast creative office dynamic right down to the look of the woman who work there the whole vibe of it idk, its similar to like the appropriation of marketing seminar jargon and general mgmt speak the veneer of professionalism or w/e kinda casts a sinister light on 'regular' offices but i guess theyre p sinister already, sortof.

cargo cult, they think they will get google and facebook levels of $$

lol cargo cult otm

oh man only tangentially related, but my boss was venting at me the other day about a dude on the marketing side of the business saying something like, "you know how you can pause netflix in one place, like your tv, and then start watching from like your ipad and it restarts where you left off? that really impressed me, we should do things like that in our ipad app!"

I mean, it's like.. instead of actually coming up with ideas or brainstorming you end up with people going "IDEAS!" at each other in a room with the hope that actual business models or wealth will show up. Kind of getting that vibe from these growth gurus

...yeah our high school had something called the Power Team or something speak to us. really all they did was talk about how powerful their excitement made them and perform feats of physical strength.

lol

it's pretty sad he's about the be the 4th richest man in america but all he wants is a friend
― iatee, Saturday, February 4, 2012 1:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh, the ironies! it would take an award-winning screenwriter to fully capture them.

also xpost: there is a jonah lehrer article in recent new yorker about the uselessness of group "brainstorming" for "ideas" unless those ideas are actually subjected to clear and harsh criticism.

I've been in Google's offices and the place looks way more like an academic department than a motivational cult: lots of serious people writing technical stuff on whiteboards, not a lot of self-aggrandisement or woo.

plus the occasional "jump to conclusions" mat

cargo cult, they think they will get google and facebook levels of $$

― mh, Saturday, February 4, 2012 3:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol cargo cult otm

― ⚓ (gr8080), Saturday, February 4, 2012 3:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha!

also xpost: there is a jonah lehrer article in recent new yorker about the uselessness of group "brainstorming" for "ideas" unless those ideas are actually subjected to clear and harsh criticism.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, February 4, 2012 4:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes i v much enjoyed that piece

ohhh goddd the whole world of high school motivational speakers is probably worth a look

there was a dude who came in to our gym, beat all the teachers at once in a volleyball game, then talked about how it was a crying shame there wasn't prayer in schools.

it was just him v. all the teachers??

yes

looooool

there was a dude who came in to our gym, beat all the teachers at once in a volleyball game, then talked about how it was a crying shame there wasn't prayer in schools.

well, that's a non-sequitir.

he prayed to be victorious

tim tebow was a high school motivational speaker?

well tbf he might have tried to say some other very motivating things but that's what i remember

quite a few students clapped, too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1xGJZngN5g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQey-2LP1E4

http://www.jimstovall.com/

um i think i found the vball guy

http://beatbob.com/

good god

well, right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO7ZP3JT5Lc