Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
I know what you are thinking, “those pain medications are really getting to his head.” Unfortunately I’m not talking about narcotic pain medication in the title. I was going over some (un)conscious marketing blogs today, and I started noticing a theme in the rhetoric of the authors. Almost each and every one of them rants and raves about how everything is “awesome.” When rhetorically analyzing a text, it is important to explore what words the text uses, and how those words contribute directly to the text’s persuasiveness. It didn’t take long for me to build an initial hypothesis about how and why such a flood of “awesome” positivity exists in this subculture: it’s all in the hype. (more…)
Tags: addiction, Awesome, Charlie Gilkey, Conscious Capitalism, drugs, Jonathan Mead, Mark Silver, persuasion, positivity, Project Mojave, Rhetoric, word choice
Posted in Conscious Marketing | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
With everyone and their dog out writing “revolutionary” manifestos, I thought I would throw something together for the social media crowd. It is my hope that social media addicts will save some cash on those spendy membership sites that teach you how to turn twitter into some sort of money tree and instead read my manifesto (also I have oceanfront property in the Mojave desert for sale). Seeing as I’m currently tripping on Percocet as a result of my wisdom teeth getting yanked out, this post could be divinely inspired and I could be enlightened. Or something. (more…)
Tags: authenticity, cultural criticism, Enlightenment, get rich quick, Jonathan Mead, Liberal Communism, social media
Posted in Satire | 6 Comments »
Friday, August 21st, 2009
This post originally began life as an email exchange between a friend and I shortly after the Project Mohave Liberation Manifesto was released on May 15, 2009. Project Mojave is essentially a get rich quick scheme led by Clay Collins of the blog Finance Your Freedom (formerly the Growing Life). The project encourages its subscribers who pay $97 per month to find an expert in a field, create an information product with them such as an ebook and to sell it for $47 on the internet. The manifesto itself was written as a marketing tool for Mohave by Jonathan Mead, a personal development blogger and marketer who writes on IlluminatedMind.net and also as a guest writer on the ubiquitous ZenHabits.net. I have followed Jonathan’s blog, projects, and other social media identities for almost as long as he has been writing. Illuminated Mind began as a spiritually minded blog that explored simple Buddhist-like concepts and was critical of both productivity and personal development. However, over the past year the blog has changed into a guide to “become free” through a variety of “unconventional” methods, much like the ones highlighted later on in this post. (more…)
Tags: Enlightenment, Four Hour Work Week, freedom business, get rich quick, Illuminated Mind, job slavery, Jonathan Mead, liberation manifesto, marketing, personal development, Project Mohave, social emancipation
Posted in Guru Criticism | 38 Comments »
