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

also annette o'toole was in smallville! her LAW & ORDER ep with her husband (michael mckean) is one of the best

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629340/

Ugggggh, those tweets are so triggering. It took me way too long (I mean, not that long but still way too long) to realize a friend of mine was trying to recruit me for some crazy cult shit she was (and presumably still is) a part of. It's so violating to realize that someone's seeming interest in and regard for you really has nothing at all to do with you.

i'm sorry! that's horrible.

I search online every so often for a friend who got involved in the LaRouche org/cult when she went to college but after the mid-00s, nada.

A friend of mine who took a red pill recently and has become a “successful” alt-right leaning meme cartoonist tried to recruit me into a pyramid scheme cult once.

i should've bumped this thread a few years ago for superstar machine, who apparently have never been mentioned

am i misremembering? i thought superstar machine and nxivm were the same thing? or had the same people?

holy shit are they

the REALLY dark connection is that (and i need to run down the details again) nxivm was connected to a really sketchy 'media criticism' organization called Knife of Aristotle, which as rebranded itself as The Knife Media. it purports to be a 'de-spin' analysis site that... just puts percentages on everything, without explanation, telling you how slanted and leftist the msm is

xp honestly i don't know!

superstar machine seems pretty distinct to me from what i can tell unless they share members https://jezebel.com/inside-superstar-machine-which-ex-members-say-is-a-cul-1775494367

several of my coworkers at organic avenue were so totally seduced by superstar machine that they're still in it, eight years later

ok whew. i think maybe some of the early bloggy coverage of nxivm mentioned them together. or my memory is crap!

I swear we talked about superstar machine but on a different thread

ah, here:
hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

Superstar Machine is a helluva band name tbh

I swear we talked about superstar machine but on a different thread

― mh, Tuesday, April 24, 2018 11:03 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was thinking this too! thank you for find it, search was NOT helpful

er finding*

you gotta put the search term in quotes, man!

apparently we also talked about it on the princess superstar thread

lol

i've been real bad at using the internet today

haha Brad don't apologize on every thread you bump today about being bad at internet :D

"He's not bad at internet, he's BRAD at internet"

https://i.giphy.com/media/111ebonMs90YLu/200.gif

lol

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

also

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/oregon-life-coach-sues-former-gawker-property-jezebel-for-defamation/%3Famp%3D1

https://s1.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/V9nptRSCQ19mSQla1Ul33g--/YXBwaWQ9eW15O3c9NjQwO3E9NzU7c209MQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en/homerun/feed_manager_auto_publish_494/87103861f4f768de719b34f525019a96

Allison Mack released on $5 million bond.

Just started in on the The Gateway podcast about the Teal Swan cult. fucking hell...

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/08/205915/the-gateway-teal-swan-youtube-cult-jennings-brown
https://medium.com/@bescofield/the-gucci-guru-inside-teal-swans-posh-cult-36168edaf62f

The details in the first article linked aren't especially damning. The details in the second one, which appear to quote her directly, make her out as a doozy of a cult leader / con artist. If she isn't that, she's a psychotic or so self-deluded as to be the near equivalent.

She has hundreds of videos online. Mostly plagiarized from Osho/self-empowerment but this manifestation is wired into social media and YouTube celebrity. As troubling as Bentinho Massaro techbro cult in Sedona.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8477080/miguel-meditation-interview

How long have you been a meditation devotee?

I started meditation around the creative process of Wildheart [his 2015 album] after I'd read that The Beatles were doing transcendental meditation during the creation of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

What does each session involve?

It is a six-phase guided meditation narrated by Vishen Lakhiani that traverses consciousness, gratitude, forgiveness, three-year aspirations, visualization of one's perfect day, etc. The amount of people varies from city to city. The most so far was about 30 people. And the meditation lasts about 20 mins.

ohhh miguel

one of my l*ndm*rk friends i mentioned upthread has done very well for himself after he turned alt-right and began to monetize bigotry and misogyny.

noooo miguel

oh jesus

omar i'm sorry :/

pretty harrowing listening:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/current-affairs-information/uncover/

This thread is so great. I have been following it for years, and love the info I get on these creeps. It educates and entertains to a high degree. Keep up the good work, people.

Namaste, Beelz.

this morning i remembered when alain de botton said he couldn't do the dishes cause he was thinkin too hard pic.twitter.com/sK1ngxwFCq

— Léa Antigny (@leaantigny) February 17, 2019

lolllllllllllll

More NXIVM news: Allison Mack Admits to Keeping a ‘Slave,’ Pleads Guilty to Racketeering Charges in NXIVM Case.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/nxivm-cult-allison-mack-pleads-guilty-racketeering-charges-819278/?fbclid=IwAR1ifg7Z99zSgM8zuoubtpsMkhYhbgcBBu7RZBaWdYL_W-Dq5FzQHpfOJio

Keith Raniere found guilty.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/keith-raniere-nxivm-trial-guilty-all-counts-849967/?fbclid=IwAR1etJJISP28Hdprc2AvxtXVOs1plNcedVqTLhuo2DXJ62LBePWGsv39AsQ

http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

https://sports.yahoo.com/us-open-2019-self-help-214107798.html

Flushing Meadows is all but empty, the fans that bayed for Bianca Andreescu's demise in the second set have long departed and, in the players' lounge in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the US Open champion is at ease and very much excited.

Andreescu is excited not because she's still revelling in winning her first grand slam title, though that is unquestionably also the case. Instead the 19-year-old is abuzz because she is sat around a table with a group of reporters and has just been asked if she has recommendations for self-help books.

"Where's my phone?!" she enthusiastically shouts. "I have all the books I've read on my phone."

After that extremely modern statement, Andreescu is handed her phone and frantically scrolls through her reading list in search of a book she cannot remember the name of.

"Code of the Extraordinary Mind!" Andreescu exclaims after locating the title of the 2016 work by Vishen Lakhiani.

no fuckin way lmao

malarkey? or effective way?

https://www.documentjournal.com/2019/11/the-radical-feminist-sex-worker-who-photographed-her-clients-at-their-most-grotesque/

On a mission to make photos, Tolui ended up working at the Lusty Lady longer than she thought she would, never asking management for permission to do what she loved. “I didn’t tell them because I didn’t want them to say no. That would have given them something to manipulate me about,” Toloui says.

According to Toloui, everyone in management had to attend Erhard Seminars Training (est), a two-weekend, 60-hour self-help course offered in the 1970s and early ‘80s, which has since been reinvented as the Landmark Forum. Popularized in books like Fight Club and parodied in films like Magnolia, est and the Forum have their proponents and detractors alike.

Toloui is of the latter group. She explains, “They would break you down then build you back up again with all of these ideas about how to manipulate others and how to get your way and succeed in life. Everyone who worked in management had to go through that training so they used that bullshit on us to manipulate the dancers. It was really infuriating. This is a big part of why the dancers rebelled and unionized.”

Tony Robbins has been accused of sexual assault.

*faints dead away*

https://onezero.medium.com/inside-the-social-media-cult-that-convinces-young-people-to-give-up-everything-f3878fbec632

a lot going on there: a self-conscious "cult" with woke/hipster overtones that also maybe is a real cult

definitely a real cult

Well, that was a lot to take in.