Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Social Media: Moving Towards A Brave New World?

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts an ordered society where humanity is tamed and controlled through the use of excessive pleasure.   This pleasure comes in the form of unlimited sex, a designer drug named “Soma,” and a caste system that designs people specifically for their social roles, eliminating unhappiness in the work force.  The society as a whole is conditioned to believe in a consistent set of values, primarily designed to keep everyone in line and the system of consumption functioning at a near perfect level of efficiency. Those are not fitting into society are encouraged to enjoy themselves by taking Soma, as its hallucinogenic and anti-depressant effects allow them to snap back into blissful conformity with ease.   In essence, Huxley dreamed of a world where unimportant pleasures distract us from the greater problems at hand, and in the case of the book these problems manifested as the sheer level of control and lack of freedom exerted over all of humanity by the system. (more…)

WARNING: Motivational Speaker Tony Robbins is Launching New Get-Rich-Quick Internet Scam

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Personal Development guru Tony Robbins is known for his infomercials in the 80’s advertising his “Personal Power” motivational audiotapes, as a “life coach to the rich and famous,” and his appearances in movies like Shallow Hal.

Robbins, who has over 1.2 million followers on Twitter, has recently released a couple of videos on his “training blog” interviewing internet marketers Frank Kern and John Reese. What most people watching these videos don’t realize is that they are highly-manipulative advertisements, almost certainly for an upcoming get-rich-quick-on-the-internet product–the field of expertise of both Reese and Kern. (8/30/2009–Confirmed: this is for a $67/month CD, DVD, and manual course called “The New Money Masters.” Also confirmed is that Irwin F. Kern (aka “Frank Kern”) was successfully sued by the FTC in 2003 for $634,222.45 for running an illegal chain marketing scheme on the internet called ”Instant Internet Empires.”) (Update 9/10/2009: From 1:00-1:20 in the first video, a new segment has been spliced in where Robbins mentions the product. This was NOT in the original version for the initial product launch, and no note has been included as to the change, thus attempting to rewrite history. The original videos and comments are still on hidden blog pages not accessible from the main http://tonyrobbinstraining.com, but two new pages have been added with the new, spliced videos. The original comments included many people asking what these videos were about, for there was no mention of a product.)

Creating hype before the launch of an information product is a cutting-edge sales tactic that Frank Kern and John Reese both promote in their products. Here’s how they do it:

(more…)

Youtopia and the Bubble in American Egos

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

bub

What happens when a whole society of people learns to project an image of success and capability that few members of that society actually possess? Let us create for ourselves an imaginary world – we’ll call it Youtopia – and explore what might happen there.

But first, let’s consider why we might want to project such an image. Personal development enthusiasts regularly teach that projecting such an image will actually make us more capable and successful. Fake it ‘til you make it. The technique works because self-image can be a powerful motivator. It changes how we feel about ourselves and how others feel about us as well. We might begin this process being incapable and unsuccessful, but that changes as we begin to project a new image of ourselves.

In a socially mobile society like that of the US, in which individuals craft their own lives for themselves and must regularly recreate their own social worlds as they move from place to place and from one social class to another, the ability to project an image of success and capability can mean the difference between success and failure in almost any endeavor. So let us travel to Youtopia and see what happens when all of us do this? (more…)

Marketing as Freedom: Mead’s Mojave Manifesto

Friday, August 21st, 2009

mo

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…)

Good News: You Can’t Have it All

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

jamesray349-200pxMany personal development gurus posit that you can and should have it all, that every area of your life can be perfected without any need for compromise. Consider this quotation from personal development guru James Arthur Ray’s website:

“You really can enjoy total abundance financially, relationally, mentally, physically and spiritually…” ~James Arthur Ray, Master of Hyperbole

The total abundance James Arthur Ray is really enjoying is an abundance of total bullshit. Not surprisingly, Ray’s tagline is “As seen on Oprah, Larry King, and The Secret,” sources not exactly known for their journalistic integrity.

Nothing real exists in “total abundance.” Not atoms in the Universe (approximately 1080), not the amount of money in circulation, and not even “abundance mentality”–which is sometimes present and sometimes not, no matter how often or intensely you visualize your goals. Perhaps Ray is referring to mathematical abstractions? “You really can enjoy counting a total abundance of integers. The possibilities of multiplication are unlimited!” (more…)

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What is Beyond Growth?

Beyond Growth is a collaborative blogging project focused on critiquing and expanding the personal development field. Noting a lack of critical discourse in personal development, Duff McDuffee and Eric Schiller founded Beyond Growth in the hopes of using it as a platform to foster growth and responsibility. The subjects we plan to critique and explore include critical theory, cults, gurus, lifestyle design, marketing, psychology, rising consciousness and much more.

Contributors

Duff McDuffee
Philosopher

Eric Schiller
Social Critic
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