Marketing, money and manipulation in the Alternative Media

[Bill Ryan]

I've started this thread in the Personalities in the Alternative Media (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/forumdisplay.php?135-Personalities-in-the-Alternative-Media) section. It may belong elsewhere, but it's really about what various personalities are doing to optimize their monetization.

And it's about 'professional' marketing. Money. Clicks. Quantity. Numbers.

Take a look at this site:


https://pursuingx.com

~~~



PURSUING X was founded to meet the needs of the community of investigators, and truth seekers from all spectrums of life.

We cater to the UFO investigators, researchers, authors and speakers. We represent those seeking consciousness, intelligent extraterrestrial life, and the origins of humanity.

We feel this talented community has not been well represented in social media, merchandise management and on YouTube or Vimeo.

We want YOUR unique voice to be heard. We manage your online life so you can focus on your work.
~~~

Wow.

Here's what happens. I'd not personally go near them with the longest pole I could find. But they represent Richard Dolan and Linda Howe (and promote to other prospects proudly referencing those two of their star clients).

They take 30-35% of all revenue. (That's a BIG cut. A third of everything.)

Either that, or you pay them a set fee with a minimum of $250/month, going up to potentially $'000s, depending on the numbers, the plan, and the package.

In return, like a hamster on a wheel, you have to perform. But they get you the gigs.

Like this:

~~~



The list of things the potential client is invited to review include:


Get more views that can be quantified to get sponsors.
Increase YouTube/Twitch channel, get monetized and get affiliate marketing and/or endorsements.
Increase your social media presence to increase speaking fees and reach.
Expand into a completely different area of [ _____ ]
Increase Patreon subscribers/supporters
Fund a grand project of [ _____ ]
Help to get appearances and interviews booked.

~~~

This is why Richard Dolan is doing so many videos literally all the time now. Almost more than most people can keep up with. It's a mass-production machine. He's exceptionally good (and fluent) at what he does, and I'm one of Richard's greatest fans, as everyone reading this will know.

But something will break. It's not sustainable.

As I wrote here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104824-Bill-Ryan-s-personal-Question-and-Answer-thread.-Pile-it-on.--&p=1256777&viewfull=1#post1256777) on my personal Q-and-A thread — before I even learned of this, only about an hour ago:

~~~



I've never monetized any of my videos, and feel quite some distaste about ever doing so.

I really, really dislike the steadily growing commercial and self-promotional environment within the alternative media. It seems to me to be a bit like the Stockholm Syndrome.

We become more and more like the very system we claim to oppose.
~~~

I'll say that again, in a different way. There's something wrong here, something unhealthy. Maybe something deeply corrosive and personally endangering. One gets the feeling Richard has been captured, as if by a thing with tentacles.

I'm not really joking here. I can almost feel the choke collar round his neck.

Alternative media stars become commodities. JUST like in the mainstream. Once they're signed up, I would LOVE to know what restrictions there are on what they can and cannot do. I'd like to see the terms of the contract.

No way does Pursuing X care with integrity about the quality of the material presented. It's a commercial market for them. Numbers. $$$.

It's Gaia Lite.

One thing I'll predict: livestreams are a mandatory part of the package, because they're a simple, cheap, (but VERY low-quality) way to spread the message far and wide.

Remember, marketing is ONLY ONLY ONLY about numbers. Ever wonder why Linda Howe's livestreams are so similar to Richard Dolan's? They're the same package, a clone unpacked from the same box. They even have the same person, Lori, administering them.

This is NOT a criticism of Richard or Linda. I love them both.

But man, where is this headed? And I do wonder who else has signed up for this.

I'll write more, as more thoughts come to me. But this is Brave New World level unhealthy.

[Hazelfern]

I noticed Richards sudden onslaught but know nothing of Pursuing X. Always suspected Linda had more of a machine to get her material across.

FWIW - not a fan of RD - am of LH.

[Flash]

I have seen the same, up to 50% take for the platfom and media provider, in the spiritual field (the person I know ended up giving it up, but lost his videos in the transit). I have seen it in the corporate training field as well.

Here in Quebec we have an incredible amount of "speakers" on self development, spirituality, name it, all less qualified one from the other, for an 8 millions population - way too much for the market. I am getting tired of it, and I think this will happen to most. And yes, they have to produce, so content and quality are low.

The one who is very good right now in my opinion, in the alternative field, is Dark Journalist - don't I like his X series. Very well researched, well presented, lots of content and a thread of thinking that makes sense.

I do not know if he is in a similar platform, because he produces lots of videos, but he kept quality up as well as content filled.

Not as sure about Linda Moulton Howe, I sometimes find her content a bit weak or repetitive, although I know she is well researched and quite professional.

[Hazelfern]

Daniel does seem untouchable. Beyond reproach. Who would dare.

[OopsWrongPlanet?]

HI Bill,

Thanks so much for bringing this out. It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach, and your stated views concur exactly with mine on the issue. We kind of know somewhere in our intuition what is going on.. it has a certain flavour to it.

Jesus (whoever that was) was right when he said "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.". ie when profit becomes the boss, the truth gradually starts becoming subservient to something else. This is the spirit of our age.

It's funny, I (like many of us, I am sure), felt something off about all these many livestreams, bringing something each week whether or not there were fresh news updates to report, and often with 'superchats' (which it took me a while to realise was a euphemism for paying to get your comment seen prominently). It's all very subtle, and I know that neither Linda nor RIchard D (both of whose work I value), nor several others, mean any harm by it, quite the contrary, but little by little, oh so subtly, the whole thing can start to compromise and dilute truth and become about 'the bottom line'. Before very long we have the whole pantomime: the catch phrases.. 'and we are LIVE', 'and what are we going to eat tonight, Olivia?', the Chocolate and Fluffy show etc etc.

I can't help feeling that something archontic and AI-ish is served by the whole formula. Similarly, with Youtube monetisation how can there NOT become a temptation to keep people listening and clicking at all costs, regardless of the content. From this the over-sensational titles, the claiming that items are brand new when in fact they are years old etc etc.

x

M

[Gemma13]

Often Researchers/Investigators are just that. And are very good at just that. They often don’t have the skill set to make quality productions, let alone have the time or inclination to work out how to function at an optimal level in the media world.

They need help and if they don’t have a friend or family member to help out with the media industry, including the ever evolving tech involved, it makes sense that they would hire/engage/contract out with professionals.

These media professionals are just that. And likewise are very good at just that. I doubt they have much interest in content, just delivery.

If our alternative media is evolving toward competing with, and holding ground with, mainstream media it seems logical that behind the scene professional production crews need to be engaged.

This is why I’m not overly bothered by this new trend as it is a new niche that sort of isn’t any different to “the ‘ol days” when Researchers/Writers had to contract out with a publisher to edit, print and promote their books.

It’s the quality that counts at the end of the day :)

We aren’t going to stop this trend so I do think it could be in the best interests of the community to get on board rather than be any more left behind than it already is. And I’m hopeful that over time we will get to see greater expansion of it where the likes of Dolan evolve into talkback shows – heck I’d rather watch a Dolan talkback show than a celebrity one like Ellen Degeneres etc, (no offence to Degeneres).

And if this is what it will take to get credible researchers into the everyday lives of people – then perhaps so be it.

Another positive angle of looking at this is that the internet “clicks” are how the populace have a voice and indirectly/directly demand the content they want delivered to their media platforms. Yes, we will always have unscrupulous commercial entities moving into the content arena that the populace demand with their clicks, but if our scrupulous people do not saturate the arena our mainstream populace are going to get nothing but rubbish.

[Bill Ryan]

Gemma, wow. :heart:

Apart from acknowledging that specialist researchers are just that, only specialists, I completely disagree with almost everything you say. :)

I'll write more tomorrow (just gone midnight here US time). But for the moment, of course I know that (e.g.) an author needs to have their new book edited, printed, distributed, and marketed. That's what publishers do. Writers can't go about circulating photocopied, stapled bundles of paper to their neighbors on a bicycle. :)

But there's a spectrum here. At one end of the spectrum is Jimmy Church, whose commercialism I find abhorrent and grotesque. (He revels in it, of course. But that matches a certain type of narcissism.)

At the other end might be the 2006-2008 Camelot interviews. We never monetized or advertised a thing, ever. Everything we did was for free. Our personal philosophy was NOT to have it be



"We've got this thing that you want. And we're NOT going to let you have it unless you give us money first."
Instead, we deployed:



"Here's this thing that we think you might want. Take it freely. Then give us something later if that feels the right thing to do."
At our peak, we were getting over $8,000 a month simply in donations. And we were never knocking on the door of conferences demanding to be let in. We were invited.

We never had Facebook or Twitter or Instagram accounts. Just a website and a YouTube channel.

(That's all I still have. I will NOT do anything else. I'd be compromising my own sanity and balance, and I'd be a slave to the demanding monster I'd created, rather than a free, healthy being. That's important to me.)

Back then, we never promoted a thing. We just let it all roll. There was no hustle, no products, no merchandising, no advertising. No monetizing our YouTube videos (despite tens of millions of views).

YouTube onscreen adverts get in the way of serious work. I personally really dislike them. So I'm not going to impose them on anyone else. That's a kind of cycle of abuse.

If what you do is good enough, it all works out. But if one's ambitious, and wants to be a celebrity — and that's different — then just like in the mainstream entertainment factory, anyone can undergo the surgery and image manipulation to be practically genetically altered — certainly as regards one's very soul — and wheeled out to the forefront.

Ever wonder why so many musicians and entertainers take drugs or become alcoholics? The 24/7 pressures to be what someone ELSE wants you to be are extreme and unrelenting. Some people just break.

This will happen in our world, too. It's just a matter of time.

In fact, in some corners of the alt media not too far away from us, it may already have started.

[Franny]

Yuck, I was wondering what was going on with this sudden flood of live-stream videos.

The constant reach for money is very distasteful and distressing to me and many others I'm sure. I know both Linda and Richard need to finance their research and pay the bills but they have entered a new and possibly dark territory with this. I do have a bad feeling about it. It's sad.

I know we all have to have some of the stuff to live in this world but digital marketing has gone beyond nauseous. I wonder where it is leading and just what is behind it, I don't think it is at all positive. I hope they come to reconsider it and find better, healthier ways to stay afloat financially.

As someone that has done web design for years I also have some understanding of digital marketing and find it distasteful in the extreme. I don't tolerate it well :) I don't think we need to become what the mainstream is.

I'm relieved that you, Bill, are able to avoid this. Thank you!

[Innocent Warrior]

Well that wrecks everything. How do we know how genuine people are being if it’s this commercialised? UFOs etc., really? Terrible move.

[Bill Ryan]

Here's more.

From a WHOIS of pursuingx.com (http://pursuingx.com):

Tech Name: Lori Moriarty
Tech Organization: Pursuing X
Tech Street: 1622 West Hemingway Lane
Tech City: Anthem
Tech State/Province: AZ
Tech Postal Code: 85086
Tech Country: US

This is the same 'Lori' who presides over Richard Dolan's and Linda Howe's livestreams.

This 2006 legal document lists some aliases that Lori Moriarty of Anthem, Arizona, went under at the time:


http://azcc.gov/divisions/securities/enforcement/Orders/2006/Feb10-06.pdf

That legal affair resulted in Lori Lee (Spranger) Moriarty and her husband paying a quarter of a million dollars in penalties and compensation to investors in a fraudulent investment scheme, run from their home, called "Vector 90 Debt Purchasing", as documented in this report.


http://azinvestor.gov/News%20Releases-Archive/News_Releases-2006/sept08-06.pdf

Then 2 years later, Lori Moriarty was sentenced to 10 years in prison for various fraud and forgery charges.


https://www.azag.gov/press-release/anthem-woman-given-10-year-prison-term-securities-fraud

Here she is.


https://angel.co/lori-moriarty



https://d1qb2nb5cznatu.cloudfront.net/users/6376409-large?1493473944

A Google reverse image search shows a similar photo on


https://upwork.com/fl/lorimoriarty2
https://upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=youtube%20specialist
https://upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=social%20listening
https://upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=%22picture+editing%22
https://foursquare.com/lorimori_bai16
https://youtube.com/channel/UClIwIT5hcoDzCttP0HHjuuA/videos

[DNA]

HI Bill,

Thanks so much for bringing this out. It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach, and your stated views concur exactly with mine on the issue. We kind of know somewhere in our intuition what is going on.. it has a certain flavour to it.

Jesus (whoever that was) was right when he said "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.". ie when profit becomes the boss, the truth gradually starts becoming subservient to something else. This is the spirit of our age.

I agree with Bill Ryan and OWP makes a wonderful quote here backing Bill up.

I think Bill Ryan has done a wonderful job of leading by example in terms of what someone has to do in order to keep their honest and genuine take on things free from molestation, and that is keep one's overhead low. Live a simple and low cost lifestyle.


Back before Youtube I owned everything Bill Hicks had ever made via Kevin Booth's "Mad Cow Productions".

Kevin was Bill Hicks friend, confidant and collaborator, he kept up a website and sold everything Bill Hicks had done after Bill Hicks death.
I bought a video that contained an interview Hicks had done on an Austin local Cable show, very low budget, same kind of thing Wayne's World was based on.
In the interview the person conducting the interview took offense as Bill Hicks often pointed out how most musicians and comedians were sell outs and this interviewer took Hicks to task on this point demanding an explanation.

Bill Hicks answer was simple and it influenced my opinions on such matters.

Bill Hicks stated that as soon as an artist took money to shill for a commercial product that artist's opinion was forever suspect and tainted because that artist had shown that their opinion was for sale. No longer could that artist be trusted as being genuine and true since we now knew that their opinion was for sale.

This does seem to be the case with such platforms as Gaia, and now this PURSUING X seems to be in the same ballpark.

[Innocent Warrior]

Exactly, DNA. Though, if researchers etc. can make a good coin directly from their supporters then all power to them, but not like this, not this field.

[WalterBosley]

Holy effing crap. Good catch. Do the otherwise smart people who sign with this outfit bother to look into who they're signing with?

[meeradas]

Here she is.
https://angel.co/lori-moriarty



Say what you want - she's obviously smart, in exactly the meaning that the term has [got], nowadays...

[Update: And i hadn't read Walter's comment when i wrote the above]

[Bill Ryan]

Holy effing crap. Good catch. Do the otherwise smart people who sign with this outfit bother to look into who they're signing with?

Maybe, but maybe not. I e-mailed Richard and Linda just to make sure they were aware. And they may well be. They're well able to make their own personal decisions. I stressed I just wanted them to know the info.

Walter, you might let Daniel know. Maybe also Joseph and Catherine. Lori is promoting to everyone on the circuit at the moment. That's how come I caught the word, from someone I know out there who was being solicited. She e-mailed me to warn me.

Lori does her own marketing of herself, too, of course. So my friend was kind enough to alert me based on her own recent experience. (Which she quietly and gently declined. :) )

[ThePythonicCow]

Then 2 years later, Lori Moriarty was sentenced to 10 years in prison for various fraud and forgery charges.

https://azag.gov/press-release/anthe...curities-fraud

I'm getting a report that one of our members from Australia can't see this page. It's a page with a background image for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, with the following press release on it:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anthem Woman Given 10-Year Prison Term for Securities Fraud

(Phoenix, Ariz. – March 5, 2008) Attorney General Terry Goddard announced that Lori Moriarity, formerly known as Lori Lee Spranger, 38, of Anthem, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Andrew G. Klein. He also ordered her to pay $460,000 in restitution and serve seven years of probation after her prison term.

In February, she pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, one count of theft, one count of securities fraud and two counts of forgery.

According to court documents, between 2004 and 2006, Lori Moriarity engaged in a fraud scheme in which she sold securities for a purported debt collection company called “Vector 90.” Arizona law requires that securities of this type be registered and businesses of this type be licensed. Lori Moriarity failed to inform investors that Vector 90 was not licensed and that the securities were not registered. She guaranteed returns of 35 percent, providing investors with timetables of when the investments and profits were to be repaid. She and her husband, Michael, then used most of the money invested in Vector 90 to pay for living expenses for themselves and their four children.

In September 2006, the Arizona Corporation Commission issued a permanent cease and desist order to Lori and Michael Moriarity regarding Vector 90. The order included restitution of $225,000, a fine of $50,000 and a promise from defendants that they would not exercise control over any entity that sells securities until the restitution and fine were paid in full. The restitution and fine remain unpaid. After receiving the cease and desist order, Lori Moriarty continued to obtain money from investors in other purported debt-collection businesses, and she and her husband also used most of that money for living expenses.

In January, Michael Moriarity pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud. In February, he was sentenced by Klein to six months in jail and four years probation. He was also ordered to pay $437,060 in restitution, along with Lori Moriarty.

Court records further show that, while Lori Moriarty was on release pending trial in the securities fraud case, she was employed in the office of a small Phoenix business. The records show that she stole over $25,000 from that company by forging about 30 checks on the company’s bank account and depositing the proceeds into accounts she controlled.

The convictions in these cases are the result of investigations conducted by the Securities Division of the Arizona Corporation Commission.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[OopsWrongPlanet?]

According to the PursuingX website, Grant Cameron is also among her clients.
If anyone is in touch with him maybe worth alerting him also.

x

M

[Apulu]

Wow this is really relevant for me right now. I hope this isn't too long.

I have a background of being involved in the music industry, and my main focus in terms of what I do, 'career' wise is currently on music.

A long story short: I was once the drummer in a Scottish Indie-Pop band. We had a fair bit of 'success' for a while. We had a manager, we were singed to a record label, and got to tour in Europe, America, Australia and Japan. We were in the British charts, did videos, all of that. I left just after we recorded our second album, feeling heavily compromised, personally and professionally.

Here lies one of the most important parts of what I feel I was compromised by, in that whole experience: we signed a contract which said that if the record company wanted us to do something, which was marketing related, or pretty much anything that furthered the bands profile, and we didn't want to do it, and we refused, they could take us to court for breach of contract. They could probably sue us for loss of earnings as well, but I can't remember specifically.

15 years on I can't tell you how nuts I think that is. That's COMPLETELY nuts! I would NEVER sign away my freedom in that way, ever again. But, the VAST majority of artists you hear on the radio, or in the charts, have signed just such a contract. Our record label was (and still is I think) 'independent', but still seemed to operate pretty much the same way as any major label would operate. Independent in those terms, to me, just means they weren't part of a larger company that they operated under, and whose rules they would have to follow. They were independently messed up.

I think it's very tempting, going into something like that to think things "I'm different; I'm a principled person, I know what I will and won't do, I trust these people and they won't make me do things I don't want to do. I won't be compromised" etc, etc. What I realise now, very clearly, is that I, and everyone who signs such a contract, makes a HUGE compromise the moment they put pen to paper.

So, I guess I would be interested in knowing what kind of contracts PursuingX are getting people to sign.

Bill, I think you're absolutely right: one of the major reasons there is so much drug and alcohol abuse in the music industry is that people feel compromised and out of control of what they're doing. I see that often the most revered artists are the most sensitive ones. That's how they're able to create the art that they create. And it also means that they're sensitive to everything that's happening around them; the vibes and intentions of people, and the direction their lives seem to be going. So, no wonder, when these people find out that the people who seemed to make their career happen, and who they thought had their back, actually don't. They perhaps don't care much about them at all, and are only interested in themselves, money and their own ambition. Not only that, but the sensitive artist is now legally obliged to do their bidding!

I also see that many of these artists are seen as victims of a horrible industry that takes advantage of people's talent and which has nothing to do with nourishing positive creativity etc. Sure, that's often true, but, I have to ask; who put those people into that situation in the first place? They put themselves there! And they got burned. Pure and simple. I feel strongly that what caused them to put themselves there in the first place was their own ego. That's hard to imagine in some cases; I'm talking about the artists who seem super sensitive and super cool and who make music that seems to have a huge positive influence on people. Them too I'm afraid. Yep. Nobody goes into that world completely blind. I've seen it first hand, from my own experience, and I can't imagine the people I'm talking about are much different.

The desire, in my own case, to be successful, financially secure, to have my talent and the music I was making appreciated for what I thought it was, all of that, was huge. I had a huge desire for that, and therefore a huge ambition. Oops. All of those things on their own, or even all together, might not add up to anything sinister. But, if the ambition of success in those terms becomes the goal, rather than the ambition to just create and share REAL art (and it's REALLY tempting to come at it from that angle), then you're asking for big trouble. What is real art? To me it's the creative force of the universe itself, channelled into 'something'. And it applies to everything we do, artist or not. That's another story!

Here's another reason why there's so much drug and alcohol abuse in the music industry: to be revered for what you do is an immense challenge for the ego. IMMENSE! The further you go with it, the harder it gets. You walk a terribly fine line. The temptation is to believe the hype. The moment you do, you're feeding your ego, and it can be a terribly destructive process, especially for highly sensitive people.

People want to revere people. It feels good to put trust and admiration on someone else, and revere them for doing something and achieving something that we might want desperately to achieve ourselves. And it can be terribly tempting to accept that reverence. It's all hype, because all of that is our own imagination, and has nothing to do with who's being revered.

I think the only positive thing you can send out to the people you revere is gratitude. And the only positive thing you can send back, as a person who is revered, is gratitude. You never know what the positive effect is that you might be having, but you're grateful that it seems to be having that effect. And if you're really smart, you realise that it's nice to be involved with this positive effect, but it actually has nothing to do with you. NOTHING!

I'm in a position now where I'm about to release some music on my own, and I'm really not sure how to approach it, now or longer term. I've thought about putting it online and saying that people can pay whatever they want for it, but I'm not sure. I see authors who I think are off the scale in terms of positive human potential, and they charge rather a lot for their books. It seems like they are supported pretty well to do what they do, but it also seems that they absolutely do not do any pushy marketing, and the ones I'm most drawn to tend not to be in the public eye at all.

I eventually want help to in some way market my music, organise tours, record etc. Or, to put it another way, have it placed in a place where people can hear it. I'm not sure I've got the inclination or the motivation to do all that myself. I suppose that might change, but it's hard to imagine. And I want to be supported, financially, to do that, because it takes up a huge amount of my time to present my music in a way that I would want.

Anyway, ramble over. Time will tell what I end up doing, and how I do it. I feel all I can do for now (and perhaps for ever) is be hyper vigilant of my motivations for doing things, and hyper vigilant of other people's motivations for wanting me to do things. And hopefully I turn my attention away from where it's all going, and trust that the universe takes care of that, and me, in the process.

[Pam]

In my estimation this set up is just begging for corruption. It would take a person of the highest moral quality to resist distorting information to keep the wheel spinning. On second thought, I would question the motive and integrity of anyone who jumped on this. I do understand that full time researchers need revenue to live, I respect and endorse that, but this is just inviting a huge challenge to the moral fiber of anyone. Greed is a sneaky, cunning little beast that can hide itself under all kinds of denial.

[Valerie Villars]

The first thing I thought while reading this thread, before I saw DNA's and other's posts on the subject was "Look what they did to Rock n Roll."

[Madeira]

Bill, I think you're absolutely right: one of the major reasons there is so much drug and alcohol abuse in the music industry is that people feel compromised and out of control of what they're doing. I see that often the most revered artists are the most sensitive ones. That's how they're able to create the art that they create. And it also means that they're sensitive to everything that's happening around them; the vibes and intentions of people, and the direction their lives seem to be going. So, no wonder, when these people find out that the people who seemed to make their career happen, and who they thought had their back, actually don't. They perhaps don't care much about them at all, and are only interested in themselves, money and their own ambition. Not only that, but the sensitive artist is now legally obliged to do their bidding!





:thumbsup:

If I could dedicate 25 hours a day to my "hobby/passion" (let's call it like that for the moment until we find a better wording, did not wanted to use "work") I would be happy, sadly, none of us can, hence the mere fact to delegate stuff to seconds and looks like in this case ( as well as many others in all the industries) your "helper/assistant" will end in being "your boss" and YOU will have to cover their $$$.

We are all aware that, well, money is a necessity, still I rather come out with fewer but better quality stuff by myself than bombard all the media platforms with less quality stuff because technically I am obligated to it.

Peace!

[Flash]

People want to revere people. It feels good to put trust and admiration on someone else, and revere them for doing something and achieving something that we might want desperately to achieve ourselves. And it can be terribly tempting to accept that reverence. It's all hype, because all of that is our own imagination, and has nothing to do with who's being revered.

I think the only positive thing you can send out to the people you revere is gratitude. And the only positive thing you can send back, as a person who is revered, is gratitude. You never know what the positive effect is that you might be having, but you're grateful that it seems to be having that effect. And if you're really smart, you realise that it's nice to be involved with this positive effect, but it actually has nothing to do with you. NOTHING!

I'm in a position now where I'm about to release some music on my own, .

Wow, what great insights!! You touch down!! Great understanding.

I am now very eager to hear you music.

[Flash]

Holy effing crap. Good catch. Do the otherwise smart people who sign with this outfit bother to look into who they're signing with?

No people don't, they either do not have time or are plain good people.

I have been fooled a few years ago by someone whom I worked for free for 3 months, thinking he would develop a very good software and give me share of his company(agreement signed) to learn, last week, that he misrepresented himself as a founder of a very successful company who had been sold later on for 35 millions.

His credibility was without reproach right - well, I learned he had been a high level employee, but nothing else, certainly not the founder.

I do not know what to do with this. His reputation is good, everybody believes him, and me I am miss nobody in comparison. How do you warn people?

Those jerks are smart and talented. They make their living by fooling others. They eat our loosh, in these case our work and talents, in a very 3D manner. Can you imagine what exist higher up?

[Apulu]

People want to revere people. It feels good to put trust and admiration on someone else, and revere them for doing something and achieving something that we might want desperately to achieve ourselves. And it can be terribly tempting to accept that reverence. It's all hype, because all of that is our own imagination, and has nothing to do with who's being revered.

I think the only positive thing you can send out to the people you revere is gratitude. And the only positive thing you can send back, as a person who is revered, is gratitude. You never know what the positive effect is that you might be having, but you're grateful that it seems to be having that effect. And if you're really smart, you realise that it's nice to be involved with this positive effect, but it actually has nothing to do with you. NOTHING!

I'm in a position now where I'm about to release some music on my own, .

Wow, what great insights!! You touch down!! Great understanding.

I am now very eager to hear you music.

Thanks a lot Flash - I may well post something here when the current recording is finished (early next year I'm expecting...). I guess I need to do that in such a way that it's not marketing! :)

[Gemma13]

Ooh yeah that sure looks nasty - an unscrupulous producer right there. Thanks for the updates Bill. :thumbsup:
Guess my "glass is half full" optimism will have to wait a while longer until more scrupulous people hit the circuit to help out the good guys.

[petra]

I'm with you Bill. It's like a big stupid joke, but it's not a joke, because it's happening.

I've just got through season 2 of the comedy TV series "Silicon Valley" and a lot of that show seems to be reminiscent of things you're talking about. It's like they're all playing a money game, and only one guy knows the rules (the asshole guy lol)

[Kristin]

Richard Dolan asked me to post this here:


Please consider posting this to your thread, if you don't mind.

In an age of instant outrage over the next transgressions by some new public figure, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that at some point, people would find outrage in the fact that a marketing specialist has established relationships with a number of researchers in the UFO field. I read through the various posts on this matter and was struck by the moral indignation it seemed to stir.

As I mentioned before, Lori was completely upfront with Tracey and me about her past. I don't know how engaged or sheltered most other people are in this world, but in my world I have had friendships with many men and women who have done serious prison time. Partly because I was raised in a law enforcement family. Partly because for many years I helped people with disabilities find work (many of them were incarcerated for all kinds of reasons). Partly because if you want to find good contractors for all kinds of projects, you are going to encounter people who have been in prison. Many of those individuals have become good friends of mine.

Throughout my life, I have made it a personal practice to deal with individuals for who they are, for how they behave, for their honesty, and other qualities that I can observe. Generally speaking, I do not judge someone based on their past. That's a dangerous road to go down once you start. Most people have a past that includes things they are not proud of. Providing that a person grows and learns from their past, why should we persecute and shame them for it? Think about how awful it must be for anyone who has done prison time. Yes, they did something wrong. That is why we have a penal system; to punish legal transgressions. In our society, this is how people "pay" for their crimes. My question is, once you have paid for your crime, is it fair that you keep paying for the rest of your life? Is there never a time when it's over? I've known so many ex-offenders who can't get work for exactly this reason. Do I need to point out the obvious, that not everyone in our prison-happy society deserves to be in there?

As for the marketing part, I simply have to wonder: how much free time do people have that they think they need to make this into the latest outrage? Have folks lost all sense of proportion? I wonder if people realize how extremely difficult it is to do the things that I or other researchers do, and still survive? Anyone who has known me on a personal level knows how I have struggled financially. There were times over the years when I genuinely thought I might declare bankruptcy -- all while managing a family and raising small children. It was hard. Through it all, I never left the field, even though at times I was tempted to do so by obtaining some other form of employment/income.

Lori hasn't solved all my financial issues. But I believe the marketing has been successful in raising my profile enough that maybe things will get better in the future. So I -- like so many other people in this field -- can perhaps one day crawl out of debt. It's distasteful to have to go through this with the public, but I am doing it to remind others that this is the real world, not somebody's utopian fantasy about how things ought to be.

A word on the "perils" of producing so much content. First thing is that nobody tells me how I get my message out to the world. Not Lori, not any of my followers, no one. I make my own decisions. While I work hard to produce worthwhile content and information to the world, I do not feel like a "hamster on a wheel." But I do feel extremely engaged and happy to be doing so much.

Nor does Lori take "30 or 35%" of my commercial income. No idea how people think such numbers are accurate. She does get a percentage of certain streams of online revenue, as she should. And that is a private business decision that is nobody else's concern. In fact, Tracey and I have often remarked to ourselves that Lori deserves much more than what we can ever pay her, since it's not a high enough amount to justify the amount of work she puts in.

Lori provides what I have needed for a long time: someone who is extremely dedicated and hard working to the max. Of course she is trying to make money! How is that wrong?

Some people like what I have to say and write; others don't. I would only hope that they like or dislike what I do based on my research and message. Not on their perceptions of how they interpret the personal morality of people I choose to associate with.

Tracey and I are thankful every day we have someone like Lori working for us. She is an amazing human being, and a good and decent person. In an age of public smearing and shaming, I will not passively stand by while someone I respect and care about has it happen to them.

Richard Dolan

[Bill Ryan]

I very much appreciate Richard's lengthy, articulate, measured and honest reply. His integrity shines through, as it always does.

He is the highest quality human being. In this field, he's the best we've got. And he's a leader, an example, and a teacher. He's well aware of his responsibilities.

But I stand by every word I have written on this thread.

[WalterBosley]

I appreciate Richard Dolan's response to the concerns. I'm sure he understands why we would be. When I see Pursuing X do something egregious, I'll consider my opinion at that time. Presently they are simply representing folks and Bill has put the word out about their past. For now we must rely on the person's character and whether past crimes and punishment have left the proper impact on her judgment. The idea of our system is that we first give the benefit of the doubt after the person has served their debt to society. For the time being, I have a book to work on and must return my energy to that, following the energy I spent on the Corey Goode trademark issue.

[Flash]

Well, to Richard Dolan: we are not at the outrage stage here, making business with specialists in their fields is in fact intelligent, and needed. No one succeeds entirely alone.

If someone made a mistake in life and tells you so that you know and yet, their service is great enough to be of help, great. As long as you can trust. But in business, trust is often sadly equated with "can you make money for me" on either side. As long as both sides profit and there is no foul play everything is fine and great friendships can be built.

(I am torn between wanting to believe that people do get better, and my experience in business. But, I personally would have a tendency to be quite watchful, for marketing strategies as well as for revenues management - as I paraphrase Oprah Winfrey, never let the finance to anybody else. I had too many and seen too many trusted becoming not trustworthy.).

Now, for one's presence on the market, however, there is one thing for sure: Over flooding small markets happens often. This has to be taken into account in order to stand for a long time.

To tell the truth, I rather have Richard Dolan and Linda Moulton Howe and their alike flood the market instead of all the low quality we have actually. But... beware, there is a tiredness that can happen quite fast in a small market.

We are many here on Avalon, who have had their own business or have done some public ventures. We have seen pretty much all kind of marketing schemes, leading to successes or failures. To be wise often means to let all windows open and listen, in order to make one's own decision leading to success.

Of course, there is no reasons the good ones would make less revenues that the rotten ones on this market, for this I applaud, get the help needed, in social media AND in marketing.

[Caliban]

I very much appreciate Richard's lengthy, articulate, measured and honest reply. His integrity shines through, as it always does.

He is the highest quality human being. In this field, he's the best we've got. And he's a leader, an example, and a teacher. He's well aware of his responsibilities.

But I stand by every word I have written on this thread.

Richard, in his apologia, talks about the need for criminals to be forgiven and allowed back into society --- My question is, once you have paid for your crime, is it fair that you keep paying for the rest of your life? Is there never a time when it's over?

Sure, help them get a word processing job or a clerical gig -- but do you really want to trust a proven swindler -- and a major financial type swindler at that -- with your most personal work and creations?

I don't have much opinion either way about Dolan, although I do like his beard. I'm just not that interested in the whole ufo game. But his defense sounds rather hollow. I can't imagine I would ever let someone like that handle my business affairs, even on a superficial level--if I had full knowledge of their past. Another thing is --- he's implicitly asking us to trust him and his grasp and presentation of his subjects--yet knowing whom he's involved with, someone historically extremely untrustworthy--doesn't that compromise the logic of our engagement therein ?

[bobme]

I Try to to undestand the feelings of all others here, and everywhere else.
Yet I am confused on the not knowings of manipulations that are happing everywhere now.

I see the need for money, in the currant situation I am in, yet I also see its manipulative state of nessecity.

What is the real purpose of it?

Is it to measure us against one another for bulk of it, or lack of the amount of it?

Pardon me if I am assuming. But the knowledge someone has, is not based on there bank account.

If I could make lots of money for a certain entity, by spraying there word of BS around, I could not.

I would still just be me.

A man of my own dignity, and understanding of why people do it.

And not judge them.

It is not my place any more.

[AriG]

My biggest dream for this game we play is to see an end to the monetary system. Let the cream rise to the top, so to speak.

That said, does anyone believe that Richard Dolan's work has been compromised by his agent? Is he still authentic?

Back in 1983, on a gap year between high school and college, I went to work as a typist for a marketing research firm. Strangely enough, they were Jewish Scientologists and did everything they could to try to convert me.. (another digression). Now keep in mind that this was before PCs. I actually did my work on an IBM Selectric. There was no automation, so I grew to know the material well.

This firm employed survey takers. I was then provided the data to incorporate into what appeared to be a template. Seriously. As I sat with the dictaphone tape (omg, am i old?) transcribing the Owner's take on the research data, it occurred to me that he was not changing anything between clients. The data was different, but the interpretation was the same. Down to the last word. Identical. I was incensed. At only 18 years old, I knew that it seemed immoral to be charging tens of thousands of dollars to clients for a cookie cutter analysis. I really wanted to quit. But then, I was asked to prepare Benchmark statistics for each client. Before the analysis and recommended action and after the implementation of the recommended plan. Lo and behold - each and every client had increased their key metrics substantially. Whether they were looking for customer satisfaction numbers to increase or whether they were looking at gross revenue improvement - the numbers were astounding. There was marked improvement.

So maybe there is something to the tried and true or maybe it was the power of suggestion that prompted these business owners to take action, any action was better than doing nothing. "Energy flows where attention goes".

[Bill Ryan]

@Richard. :heart:

You think Arnold Toynbee would have done livestreams and promoted himself with SuperChats and a members-only website?

My prediction. And this is not a joke, not a poke, and is NOT meant unkindly. I'm the strongest advocate of your work on Project Avalon, and I always have been.

You'll never finish your Volume III.

[Bill Ryan]

@Richard. :heart:

You think Arnold Toynbee would have done livestreams and promoted himself with SuperChats and a members-only website?

My prediction. And this is not a joke, not a poke, and is NOT meant unkindly. I'm the strongest advocate of your work on Project Avalon, and I always have been.

You'll never finish your Volume III.

A very close friend, whom I respect dearly, has just asked me if I might consider deleting my post above.

I'm not going to do that, but I will enlarge to try to explain further.

This is NOT adversarial. Against anyone. Certainly not Richard.

I'm voicing my extensive concerns about the health of our own community.

What is really ironic is that Richard, with his intellect, balance, knowledge of history, and extensive overview of societal changes (and his concern about the future!) should be the one person who can see this.

I'm sincerely concerned he may not be able to, because he's in (or part way in!) the large, sticky fishbowl of commercialism and marketing. It's hard to see if you're inside it.

My close friend was worried that I might offend Richard in some way.

Listen.

I love that man. I sit at his feet. I truly do.

Here's what I wrote to my concerned friend just now.

~~~



It's a slow-motion, corrosive, weakening, cheapening, quality-diluting effect on all our work. As a whole. That's categorically what's happening. Think of that next time you tune into Jimmy Church (and listen to the whole show for every minute of the commercial-riddled 3 hours).

It's a HUGE elephant in the room. It's like an infection in the community. Very few are immune. It's very worrying to me that so few can see it.

That was the reason for the thread. It was never about Lori. I'd have written the same things if Lori had the integrity of a saint. When I started the thread, I never even KNEW about her. It was one of the other moderators that found the legal data.

It's not about her. It's about the meme.

Here's my final (Socratean) question.

If anyone here thinks that Project Avalon should have commercials, a marketing manager, a paid subscription without which members can only access half the information and half the threads, a Facebook page with someone paid to promote it every day (it takes a lot of work to maintain Facebook commercially!), T-shirts for sale....

..... raise your hand.

[Tintin]

Is anyone paying attention? Why are you here? It's a serious question.

All the tools are here for you to "take off". Why don't you, and why can't you? Which part of the BS did you buy in to, to stop you from flowering? It's really not that difficult is it? Really?

Breathe in and breathe outwith. And get on with it.

And take some responsibility for a change.

Would you please do that?

You owe it to YOU to do that.

[Valerie Villars]

Thanks, Tintin. And Bill. Thank God there are those who see and reject.

[Bill Ryan]

Thank God there are those who see and reject.

I know what you mean, but it's not about 'rejection'.

It's about control and balance and awareness.

Let's take social media, for example. There are now hundreds of good articles, books and even research papers on the detrimental effects of something which every marketeer would want us to become MORE dependent on and addicted to.

I'm not against social media. I'm using it now. :)

But it's not using me. That's the difference.

There's a co-dependency with many people on social media. The co-dependency isn't between them and their significant other. It's between them and the internet world.

And marketeers jump on that to exploit it. And exploit US.

We're the source of their income.

You can't blame them. It's what they do. It's like asking a cat not to catch mice. They have to.

It's when corners are cut, that the slippery slope begins. There's nothing wrong with saying: "Here I am. This is what I do. Here's how to connect with me."

The other end of that extreme is when all the manipulation kicks in. And just as Dr Robert Duncan says (re mind control) that the human mind has no firewall, neither does the human mind have a firewall against marketing, commercialism and promotion.

That's why it works. :)

What's being preyed on here, leaned on, slowly, inexorably, is our own human weakness to compete, not miss out on the party out there somewhere, be heard, be admired. We're ALL being slowly roasted here, by a kind of commercial machine. And it's CONSUMING.

If anyone wants to write a book (Walter Bosley! Please jump in!) — they HAVE to disconnect from all that. That's what I was saying to Richard above.

You can't write a 600 page scholarly treatise that's fundamental to an entire research area and ALSO do two livestreams a week every week (plus interviews) AND write articles for a website where paid-up members are waiting for more AND attend conferences AND travel AND upload audios every other day.

One needs focus and disconnection. But a marketeer will never want their 'talent' (the showbusiness term for an attractive human who's a revenue-generating commodity) — and livestreaming IS showbusiness — to disconnect. So it's a conflict, right there.

You reading this — addressing you, the reader, right now :bearhug: — do you maybe start to understand what I'm trying to find a way to say?

[Innocent Warrior]

Richard Dolan has always been the epitome of decency and honour, I’ve listened to him just to hear the way he speaks, I often learn a thing or two about being a better human from him. Seeing Richard’s name on that client list was incredibly disappointing to see, I had him on a pedestal, my mistake, I should know better.

Bill, I’m right with you on this marketing issue, you’re absolutely correct, but Richard is free to make his own choices, that’s where you may be risking offence and perhaps what your dear friend is concerned about. To be clear, I know your intent and tone, I’m just not sure everyone will.

[Bill Ryan]

Richard is free to make his own choices, that’s where you may be risking offence and perhaps what your dear friend is concerned about.

Of course. Everyone is. 100% absolutely not my call. Every person reading this is free to do whatever they wish.

But where I want to take the discussion, I think, is into areas of compulsiveness, addiction, the way social media feeds on human weaknesses and vulnerabilities (often manifesting in the form of needs). And marketeers then feed on those, like hitchhikers on the weakness-exploiting trail.

One of the things that's a REALLY hot button (which I never quite realized on the forum recently until a little too late!) is to home in on things that are addictions.

QAnon is an addiction. That seems to me (and, I have to say, to quite a few others) an obvious fact. But telling people that...? OMG. :facepalm:

You can become their enemy. No matter how it's packaged. It's like saying to someone who's an alcoholic: NOT "Hey, I think you're an addict", but "Wow, don't you have a lot of beer in your fridge?"

That's NOT well-received. It's too close to the bone. The social media/ commercialization thing is in some ways fairly similar.

Tell people they’re addicted to all their social media accounts — AND, because of that, they're being exploited and steered like mice in a maze, and some people among us are exploiting others, too, brother and sister exploiting brother and sister — and one might not be popular.

***

Now it's getting late here, US time. I want to expand this conversation more tomorrow afternoon, if I can. I think it's extremely important. My challenge is to try to explain everything I feel I see very clearly without upsetting anyone. It might not be too easy, because I never want to unfairly or inappropriately upset a soul. Everyone who knows me knows that's true.

If I have done, I do apologize. But I'm still going to tell the truth about what I see, as vividly and articulately as I can. I feel I have a duty to do that.

I have a lot more to say about a number of things. Two themes that will be next up:


Alvin Toffler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler)'s prophetic and important 1970 book Future Shock. He predicted how within a couple of generations we hard-wired humans, with biology essentially unchanged for tens of thousands of years, would rapidly become stressed and overwhelmed by the information overload coming at us, faster and faster and faster, with widespread neuroses and breakdowns as a result.



Edward Bernays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays), the Godfather of modern marketing, manipulation and propaganda. And how the American government deployed sophisticated marketing techniques to feed the egos of the dangerous potential revolutionaries among the counter-culture of the 1970s, to tame and capture them so that they were no longer a threat to the establishment.

[ThePythonicCow]

QAnon is an addiction.
Many things can be addictions ... or not. Alcohol is a well known example. Sex, exercise, reading, eating, computer games, text messaging, crack cocaine, ... each can be addicting. Some of these can also be beneficial, even essential, some less so.

[Spellbound]

Huge Richard Dolan fan here (whom I was turned onto initially from the original Project Camelot run with Bill and Kerry). Initially, when he first started showing Tracey in his clips, I was intrigued (she's a hottie...Go Richard!!). However, I wasn't expecting Tracey to be as front and center in his clips as she's now become. And while I think it's great that Richard is really putting himself out there with his Intelligent Disclosure series and his interviews with other top shelf people within the field (Joseph Farrell, David Paulides coming up, etc), I find it distasteful that he's now behind a paywall. Yes, of course he's free to make his own decisions, but methinks there could be some persuasion or sway held by others here.

Dave - Toronto

[Strat]

Strikes me as a quasi booking agent/SEO's. That site sucks, they shouldn't have launched it yet.

I think I see Bill's concern, they're throwing gasoline on the signal/noise ratio fire that's been building. Being an SEO, money comes first. To do this you need to follow a kinda flow chart; content, which generates traffic, (which targets a) pre-sold audience, then you monetize via many many different avenues, then money is made. Money is the concern here, they don't give a **** about the content so long as it brings traffic.

I often said these kinda topics are probably the easiest to gather a presold audience for a few reasons. This is a problem cause the folks with real info that needs to get out will reach a tiny audience, if any. And the thing is people don't always use logic when choosing who they follow. A scientist would lose a debate with a comedian every time. This genre of research will turn into entertainment. Frankly, I think it already is and some folks don't realize it. But the folks of this website do, and they want to get in now. Kinda like buying stock in Nike before they became big.

Unfortunately I'm not aware of anything that can be done about this and it most likely will get worse.

Sorry if I"m repeating what others have already said, didn't read all the posts.

EDIT: Oh and another tidbit. Bill's 8k per month figure is a result of passion for what you do and having a unique product (in marketing terms), bringing something new to the table.

Think about it; what ufo/alien interviews or documentaries did you see before camelot? That Fox Moon Hoax doc? Not much out there. So now if there's a facebook like platform you can just sign up and start posting and adding to the noise.

I imagine they'll even 'advise' folks what to talk about. They'll phrase it like "what's your forte?" Then you say something like "spirituality." So they type that into SEO tools and see where the market is less saturated and point you in that direction. SO even if you don't know anything about it you can own that niche just cause you're good at SEO. Rinse, repeat.

Thing is they'll have to have a massive amount of content to make any cash. So that means a massive amount of noise. They'll have to hope to sell products to make any real money cause 'infopreneurs' don't make much.

[OopsWrongPlanet?]

Rachel:

Bill, I’m right with you on this marketing issue, you’re absolutely correct, but Richard is free to make his own choices, that’s where you may be risking offence and perhaps what your dear friend is concerned about. To be clear, I know your intent and tone, I’m just not sure everyone will.

and
Bill:

It's a slow-motion, corrosive, weakening, cheapening, quality-diluting effect on all our work. As a whole. That's categorically what's happening. Think of that next time you tune into Jimmy Church (and listen to the whole show for every minute of the commercial-riddled 3 hours).

It's a HUGE elephant in the room. It's like an infection in the community. Very few are immune. It's very worrying to me that so few can see it.

But it's vitally important that folks learn to discern, isn't it? Otherwise everyone gets pulled down that sticky greasy slope? Otherwise everything is for sale. Otherwise everything risks becoming at the service of 'the bottom line'.

I agree that the whole money/commercial thing is an elephant in the room, one which is unfortunately at the core of our 'civilisation', especially in the West, predicated on need and greed. Like all addictive principles, it puts a kind of defensive wall around itself, with the aim that no one can go near it, nor even name it, much less question it.

But IMO it's vital that we DO go near it, that we DO name it. That we give folks the opportunity to see it for what it is.

Thank you Bill, for lancing this boil, and for not backing down over it.

x

M

[Bill Ryan]

QAnon is an addiction.
Many things can be addictions ... or not. Alcohol is a well known example. Sex, exercise, reading, eating, computer games, text messaging, crack cocaine, ... each can be addicting. Some of these can also be beneficial, even essential, some less so.

Yes, of course. I agree 100%. But the point I'm making here, and it needs to be expanded on (and I will, later) is that in all times past, addictions were to all those things that you mention above... with the exception of text messaging and computer games, which are new.

Food, sex, alcohol, cocaine, endorphins when exercising. Those are all real physical things that affect our body chemistry.

Even gambling, when you're physically rolling the dice, or watching the horses race in front of you. The excitement and uncertainty are adrenaline and dopamine hooks.

Now, unreal things are affecting our body chemistry.

The 'unreal' (meaning virtual, digital) world we engage with on the internet is now changing our brains and our habits, and our felt needs and desires. This has never happened before in the history of the human race. Like babies given a bunch of candy (or a few drops of whisky!), we have no defense.

Seeing a wooden billboard advertising a diner or a gas station while you drive down the highway (useful information, often) isn't the same thing as being bombarded with SIGN-UP-HERE-FOR-OUR-FREE-NEWSLETTER popups when trying to find some information online, or hearing DON'T-FORGET-TO-LIKE-AND-SUBSCRIBE each time you watch any YouTube video made by almost anyone at all. (If you ever hear me say that on YouTube, then file a complaint. :) )

Like me, like me, like me. Follow me, follow me, follow me. This has never happened before in all of civilization.

And in the middle of all this, while we're wobbling and staggering around trying somehow to keep our personal balance, the marketeers are working hard to commercialize all this to further capitalize on our vulnerabilities.

I do see a connection with what some people call archontic influence. Not getting too metaphysical here (the wrong thread!), but archontic influence (as defined I think very perceptively by Jay Weidner, who I salute for his work here) is all about fakery.

The ever-so-tempting, alluring, illusion of value and quality, but it's actually all synthetic and unreal.

[Flash]

I WISH RICHARD DOLAN, LINDA MOULTON HOWE, JOSEPH FARREL READ THIS

I gently disagree with you Bill, not on the addictive bottom line of social media and the net/facebook like in general, but truly, on a pure market strategy.

Right now we are flooded with Corey's like stupidity, from all sides, full of people who do not know how to research, how to present, who are in only for the money or the agrandisement feeling (hey, ahah look at my videos, am I not great!).

The market is a tiny one and the good ones like Richard Dolan, Farrel or Moulton Howe have about no more voice.

When I see people I know, on my facebook page promoting Gaia and promoting Corey, I cringe - I do not swear in real life, but there I swear. Same when a presenter I know sells his books and I know he is a thief, because he has stolen me. When I told my friends on facebook who promote him, I also received a lawyer letter the kind of Corey's ways.
I had to withdraw having no money for lawsuit defense.

It make me real angry.

In terms of market strategies, it is better to have the over hand and flood the market with good research, good presenters, honest people, not in only for the money.

The market will get tired no way otherwise, however, our good ones will be at the forefront. The bad ones will find other strategies to keep or enhance their market shares, therefore the good ones have to strategize their marketing prior have to have a plan.

In this stupid money makers world, you have to always keep your creativity working to be at the forefront before the dishonest people.

If the good ones do not do it, they end up not having a voice at all.

And the bad ones are truly very nasty. You have to keep your awareness up at all time.

The problems are double they come when the good ones look at money only, when they are finally sold. Which happens - it did happen to a few good ones sometimes they are not even aware of having been sold up, they defend their selling up with all kinds of mental gymnastic justifying it (thinking of Kerry here). Up to them to keep their integrity up.

the second problems are because the good ones do not plan their long term marketing strategies, forget it, they do not even plan the short terms ones. The bad ones do plan. The good ones have to plan too.

Something has to be done to retake the market shares, this is how people get to be informed correctly.

And it is not with writing books that it will happen (much too slow for today's market - and nobody reads anymore).

[Pam]

Holy effing crap. Good catch. Do the otherwise smart people who sign with this outfit bother to look into who they're signing with?

No people don't, they either do not have time or are plain good people.

I have been fooled a few years ago by someone whom I worked for free for 3 months, thinking he would develop a very good software and give me share of his company(agreement signed) to learn, last week, that he misrepresented himself as a founder of a very successful company who had been sold later on for 35 millions.

His credibility was without reproach right - well, I learned he had been a high level employee, but nothing else, certainly not the founder.

I do not know what to do with this. His reputation is good, everybody believes him, and me I am miss nobody in comparison. How do you warn people?

Those jerks are smart and talented. They make their living by fooling others. They eat our loosh, in these case our work and talents, in a very 3D manner. Can you imagine what exist higher up?

I am sorry for the deception perpetrated against you. Did you wonder why the founder of a company that sold for 35 million would have you working for him for free? How did he explain why he wasn't paying you, if you don't mind me asking?

[Flash]

Holy effing crap. Good catch. Do the otherwise smart people who sign with this outfit bother to look into who they're signing with?

No people don't, they either do not have time or are plain good people.

I have been fooled a few years ago by someone whom I worked for free for 3 months, thinking he would develop a very good software and give me share of his company(agreement signed) to learn, last week, that he misrepresented himself as a founder of a very successful company who had been sold later on for 35 millions.

His credibility was without reproach right - well, I learned he had been a high level employee, but nothing else, certainly not the founder.

I do not know what to do with this. His reputation is good, everybody believes him, and me I am miss nobody in comparison. How do you warn people?

Those jerks are smart and talented. They make their living by fooling others. They eat our loosh, in these case our work and talents, in a very 3D manner. Can you imagine what exist higher up?

I am sorry for the deception perpetrated against you. Did you wonder why the founder of a company that sold for 35 million would have you working for him for free? How did he explain why he wasn't paying you, if you don't mind me asking?

Yes dear, I did wonder. The share agreement was quite standard for start ups, and looked good. Also, I am talented, above most on the market. And a past to show for. Third, I had investors for the guy if he would have been the true thing. He was taken seriously even by very very rich people until they made their research (which took a few months before I got their feedback). Those kind of investors are very subtle, the guy did not even know how much money they had.

[Pam]

After reading the response of Mr. Dolan I realize that I have become unbalanced by my focusing on those that I perceive to be dishonest and that lack integrity. I see that it is unfair to assume almost everyone would buckle under the strain of this type of business arrangement. I do, however believe that many will. I also agree and appreciate that people can change over the course of life experiences and should be given a chance.

[DNA]

I'm going to be honest, I was reviewing this thread here.
Richard Dolan (yes, Richard Dolan) talks about women, sex, and his fear of failure (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?101529-Richard-Dolan--yes-Richard-Dolan--talks-about-women-sex-and-his-fear-of-failure/page4)

From what I'm seeing Richard divorced the woman he had a family and kids with, and then starts sleeping around until he finds this hottie Tracey of whom he is now engaged or married to.

So now, he needs a gig to make more money, a decision probably being influenced by his new girlfriend and or alimony and child support payments to his ex-wife and family.

Now I don't want to seem like I'm judging Richard too hard. Richard looks great for his age and folks would be amazed what a little celebrity can do in so far as making you much more attractive to the opposite sex, even to the point of becoming pursued instead of being the pursuer.

My point is that factors like these play largely into financial decisions. If Richard could have worked things out with his wife and stayed with his initial family things might be very different here.

[Pam]

Richard is free to make his own choices, that’s where you may be risking offence and perhaps what your dear friend is concerned about.

Of course. Everyone is. 100% absolutely not my call. Every person reading this is free to do whatever they wish.

But where I want to take the discussion, I think, is into areas of compulsiveness, addiction, the way social media feeds on human weaknesses and vulnerabilities (often manifesting in the form of needs). And marketeers then feed on those, like hitchhikers on the weakness-exploiting trail.

One of the things that's a REALLY hot button (which I never quite realized on the forum recently until a little too late!) is to home in on things that are addictions.

QAnon is an addiction. That seems to me (and, I have to say, to quite a few others) an obvious fact. But telling people that...? OMG. :facepalm:

You can become their enemy. No matter how it's packaged. It's like saying to someone who's an alcoholic: NOT "Hey, I think you're an addict", but "Wow, don't you have a lot of beer in your fridge?"

That's NOT well-received. It's too close to the bone. The social media/ commercialization thing is in some ways fairly similar.

Tell people they’re addicted to all their social media accounts — AND, because of that, they're being exploited and steered like mice in a maze, and some people among us are exploiting others, too, brother and sister exploiting brother and sister — and one might not be popular.

***

Now it's getting late here, US time. I want to expand this conversation more tomorrow afternoon, if I can. I think it's extremely important. My challenge is to try to explain everything I feel I see very clearly without upsetting anyone. It might not be too easy, because I never want to unfairly or inappropriately upset a soul. Everyone who knows me knows that's true.

If I have done, I do apologize. But I'm still going to tell the truth about what I see, as vividly and articulately as I can. I feel I have a duty to do that.

I have a lot more to say about a number of things. Two themes that will be next up:


Alvin Toffler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler)'s prophetic and important 1970 book Future Shock. He predicted how within a couple of generations we hard-wired humans, with biology essentially unchanged for tens of thousands of years, would rapidly become stressed and overwhelmed by the information overload coming at us, faster and faster and faster, with widespread neuroses and breakdowns as a result.



Edward Bernays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays), the Godfather of modern marketing, manipulation and propaganda. And how the American government deployed sophisticated marketing techniques to feed the egos of the dangerous potential revolutionaries among the counter-culture of the 1970s, to tame and capture them so that they were no longer a threat to the establishment.


I have so much appreciation for this post. Bill, please remember that you do not have the power to upset anyone. Each person chooses how they perceive things, and if someone is offended it is because they choose to be. Personally, when I am offended I know I need to look at myself because I am overly attached to something, whether it is a person, place, thing or an outcome .

[Hervé]

[...]
There's a co-dependency with many people on social media. The co-dependency isn't between them and their significant other. It's between them and the internet world.

And marketeers jump on that to exploit it. And exploit US.

We're the source of their income.

You can't blame them. It's what they do. It's like asking a cat not to catch mice. They have to.
[...]
... and... "they" know it:


[...]
Where there is an audience for conspiracy theories, there’s money to be made. As one Q-skeptic, a YouTuber who goes by the name Unirock, recounted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKSUlfT_MnM)...
[...]
In his interview with Posobiec and in the chat logs with Dreamcatcher, Microchip referred to the book “Q” by the Italian prankster/writer collective Luther Blissett (https://news.artnet.com/opinion/q-anon-hoax-1329983), whom he referred to as “the Italian author guy.

” As a representative of the Wu Ming (Mandarin for “anonymous”) Foundation, an offshoot of the Luther Blissett collective, told (https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2018/08/qanon/#comment-31941) BuzzFeed,

“’Q’ is a disguised, oblique autobiography of the LBP. It is often described as Blissett’s ‘playbook,’ an ‘operations manual’ for cultural disruption.”
[...]
... "they" have known it since Bernays (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056632&viewfull=1#post1056632) (see "A Century of Self" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056663&viewfull=1#post1056663) campaign) because of this pervasive human condition:


QAnon has such a dangerous hold over its followers because it appeals to deeper, spiritual needs. Wu Ming provides incisive commentary:

In certain ways, conspiracy theorists are in the same league as psychics, magicians, astrologists and gurus of pseudo-medicine: all these people work in the field of wonder…In doing this, they exploit human needs, because in our life we do need surprise, wonder, new angles from which looking [sic] at things and thinking we’re different. Conspiracy theorists provide all that, and channel the people’s anxiety on [sic] their lives into the belief in an all-explaining narrative.
From Bernays to Cambridge Analytica and Media Matters with David Brock's well laid plan (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95841-Accurate-And-Effective-Profiling-And-Social-Engineering-From-Big-Data-...-Down-To-An-Individual-Scale-&p=1216553&viewfull=1#post1216553) to bring down the whole of the Alt Media.

[christian]

Kudos to Camelot and Avalon for making it purely on content that was appreciated and spread on a grassroots level. That was a fantastic job. Even with decent quality presentation.

Not everybody is able to do this, though, as Gemma13 said, often investigators are just that and need help with the presentation.

I have a very good friend who helps alternative healers with their websites, with the design and copyediting, so they attract more clients. They have the skills as healers, but not necessarily in communication or webdesign. What my friend does is marketing, it's a paid gig, and it helps the healers to increase their revenue, just as it helps their clients to become healthy. It's a win-win-win situation for everybody; marketing agent, healer and clients.

Marketing is a tool that is not inherently good or bad. It's about how we use it.

It's fair to assume that professional marketing agents in the alternative news arena are here to stay. The best we can do in this situation is to create an awareness of the opportunities and pitfalls and, if one is so inclined, to enter into the business ourselves in an ethical way—and simply outcompete less considerate businesses that will soon frustrate their clients. I do believe there is a way to use marketing tools to spread valuable information, reach a greater audience, solicit genuine support (without obnoxiously begging for it) and keep content free of charge.

Historically, this all just started, so of course we're infants in how to deal with this. There are real dangers, and you're all rightfully pointing them out. But these dangers can be handled without having to reject any type of marketing entirely.

(I find YT ads annoying, btw, but on channels that I like, I often let the whole damn thing run it course and may even click on it, because I know it means revenue for the channel without me having to do much for it.)

[Spellbound]

I'm going to be honest, I was reviewing this thread here.
Richard Dolan (yes, Richard Dolan) talks about women, sex, and his fear of failure (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?101529-Richard-Dolan--yes-Richard-Dolan--talks-about-women-sex-and-his-fear-of-failure/page4)

From what I'm seeing Richard divorced the woman he had a family and kids with, and then starts sleeping around until he finds this hottie Tracey of whom he is now engaged or married to.

So now, he needs a gig to make more money, a decision probably being influenced by his new girlfriend and or alimony and child support payments to his ex-wife and family.

Now I don't want to seem like I'm judging Richard too hard. Richard looks great for his age and folks would be amazed what a little celebrity can do in so far as making you much more attractive to the opposite sex, even to the point of becoming pursued instead of being the pursuer.

My point is that factors like these play largely into financial decisions. If Richard could have worked things out with his wife and stayed with his initial family things might be very different here.

Oh wow.....just listening to this 20 min clip now for the first time (WOW!). Also, I quite agree with your post above, DNA.

Dave - Toronto

[WalterBosley]

I have to say that I find myself not wanting to comment here when I have to read that anyone trying to make money in our community is demonized. I wouldn't be able to put out the number of books that I do (which isn't that many) or research to the extent I'm able if I wasn't making some money on the effort. When you guys pay $15-$20 for one of my books, you get the following: my time in the field, in the library, online, my analysis, my written manuscript/report and hypotheses on what I've found. Yes, the raw info, phenomena, etc out there IS free for anyone to access -- BUT I've spent a LOT more than $15-$20 bringing my investigative analysis to you in a convenient book: in gasoline, airplane tickets, hours of my time in the library or online, plus the hours in analysis and writing. So when I find, for example, my books illegally (and immorally, I may remind the 'light and love' crowd...) posted as a PDF, wiping out half my income for six months because someone who 'respects my work and wants to share it with the world', it pisses me off and I wonder if I shouldn't sign with someone to protect the fruits of my labor, too, especially if they get me a bigger audience willing to show me the respect for my time and effort. I'm not trying to rain on the parade here but consider our perspective as researchers/authors and indie publishers, as is my case. When Pursuing X proves to have been a sham or bad player, then I will join the fray -- but never from the perspective of being critical of any researcher trying to make a decent living doing what he or she loves the most.

Just saying what needs to be kept in mind.

[Spellbound]

Hi Walter,

What gives me reason for pause is that Richard never used to be behind a paywall (it was never about the money)...and now all of a sudden 15 - 20 years later he is.

Dave - Toronto

[Bill Ryan]

Hey, Walter:

No-one (certainly not me :) ) is saying you shouldn't make money as an author to compensate you for the time you spend, the investments you make, and the value you add.

An interesting question, for anyone promoting themselves on social media, is how far one goes, and what ethical (or qualitative) corners one might cut, to do that.

[Bill Ryan]

Hi Walter,

What gives me reason for pause is that Richard never used to be behind a paywall (it was never about the money)...and now all of a sudden 15 - 20 years later he is.

Dave - Toronto

Yes, the paywall thing is interesting.

Here's the Socratean question. I'd like EVERYONE reading this to answer this for themselves.

Should I put half of Avalon behind a paywall — only half! — so that paid-up members will then have access to twice as much content?

If not, why not?

Be reassured: I am NOT going to do this. :)

But Walter: do you think I should? And if you were me, would you?

[WalterBosley]

Oh, absolutely agreed where the lengths and ethics of that pursuit are concerned. I know most people aren't saying we shouldn't make money BUT some indeed do express that. It's just not practical and it's philosophically childish, from my perspective.

But I think we are all, to our various degrees, wondering about the Pursuing X thing for the obvious reasons. As we should. The concern is a) whether our friends and associates signed with them are being taken and b) if they try Goode type shenanigans to control the field. I'm all for keeping the dialogue of concern going on this, but let's see what develops with it.

[WalterBosley]

Hmmm... I would say don't do that to the site/forum, but if there are certain fruits of your research you legitimately see that you need some compensation for, you sell those as products. That's the off the top of my head answer. The paywall thing is, agreed, irritating, but I guess if the product ceases to be books (God forbid!!!) and becomes online audio-visual, I guess they have little choice?

Hi Walter,

What gives me reason for pause is that Richard never used to be behind a paywall (it was never about the money)...and now all of a sudden 15 - 20 years later he is.

Dave - Toronto

Yes, the paywall thing is interesting.

Here's the Socratean question. I'd like EVERYONE reading this to answer this for themselves.

Should I put half of Avalon behind a paywall — only half! — so that paid-up members will then have access to twice as much content?

If not, why not?

Be reassured: I am NOT going to do this. :)

But Walter: do you think I should? And if you were me, would you?

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Yes, I sincerely see your point. i think my reply to Bill's hypothetical covers one aspect of why anyone would feel the need to paywall, ie if the product becomes what's on the site. But that's why I say make the product something separate from the site that's been free all along because you lose faithful fans (rightfully so) .
Hi Walter,

What gives me reason for pause is that Richard never used to be behind a paywall (it was never about the money)...and now all of a sudden 15 - 20 years later he is.

Dave - Toronto

[Spellbound]

Should I put half of Avalon behind a paywall — only half! — so that paid-up members will then have access to twice as much content?

If not, why not?

Hi Bill,

No, I don't think you should put half of Avalon behind a paywall....first and foremost because again, it was never about the money. Avalon was/is about sharing knowledge and information about this crazy messed up world we live in (and well beyond). Another reason I don't think you should do it is because I don't think it would be fair for some of the current members who perhaps could not afford to pay in order to remain a member. There is a "members only" section, not requiring payment, but for which the general public does not have access to without becoming a member.

When one goes for years on the internet, social media, You Tube, and open forum, etc...and then suddenly wants to charge for it...it's kinda like jumping the shark, so to speak. And, once that happens it makes me wonder, what changed??

Dave - Toronto

[WalterBosley]

And that right there is a great point: Some folks simply can't afford to pay for every danged thing out there.

Should I put half of Avalon behind a paywall — only half! — so that paid-up members will then have access to twice as much content?

If not, why not?

Hi Bill,

No, I don't think you should put half of Avalon behind a paywall....first and foremost because again, it was never about the money. Avalon was/is about sharing knowledge and information about this crazy messed up world we live in (and well beyond). Another reason I don't think you should do it is because I don't think it would be fair for some of the current members who perhaps could not afford to pay in order to remain a member. There is a "members only" section, not requiring payment, but for which the general public does not have access to without becoming a member.

When one goes for years on the internet, social media, You Tube, and open forum, etc...and then suddenly wants to charge for it...it's kinda like jumping the shark, so to speak. And, once that happens it makes me wonder, what changed??

Dave - Toronto

[Spellbound]

Hi Walter,

Yes, I quite agree...make it separate. I'm not saying Richard shouldn't sell his books or profit from publishing other peoples books....of course he should (and rightly so). However, I don't think he should suddenly be charging money to interact with his fans (again, what changed to make this happen??).

Dave - Toronto

[Bill Ryan]

I have a lot more to say about a number of things. Two themes that will be next up:


Alvin Toffler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler)'s prophetic and important 1970 book Future Shock. He predicted how within a couple of generations we hard-wired humans, with biology essentially unchanged for tens of thousands of years, would rapidly become stressed and overwhelmed by the information overload coming at us, faster and faster and faster, with widespread neuroses and breakdowns as a result.



Edward Bernays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays), the Godfather of modern marketing, manipulation and propaganda. And how the American government deployed sophisticated marketing techniques to feed the egos of the dangerous potential revolutionaries among the counter-culture of the 1970s, to tame and capture them so that they were no longer a threat to the establishment.



Late here with that promised follow-up: apologies. I definitely want to speak to this, and each of these could warrant its own thread.

To start with, here's Future Shock. Alvin Toffler left us a couple of years ago (he was nearly 88), but he lived to see his own forecast future all too clearly.

That future, he said, would be one of


Not only change, but accelerating change.
Increased inability of people to cope with a steadily-growing avalanche of information (and demands for information).
Increased emotional instability, neurosis, marital breakups, violence, and mental breakdowns.
Increased reliance on the palliatives of food, sex, drugs, and alcohol, to self-medicate the 'future shock'.
Decreased attention span, and the increase of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).
(in some) withdrawal from and reaction against innovation.

We're right there, right now.

I'd LOVE to know if there are any interviews with him in, say, the last 10-15 years of his life. There surely have to be.


http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Alvin%20Toffler%20-%20Future%20Shock.pdf

http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Alvin%20Toffler%20-%20Future%20Shock.pdf

The connection with marketing is that this future is being PUSHED at us. SOLD to us. We're made to be convinced we NEED it.

Even in our little corner of the universe. More and more and MORE interviews. Radio shows. Videos (including many faked 'new' ones, but really old.) Articles. Blogs. Posts. Tweets. Episodes of Cosmic Disclosure. Stunning new documentaries. Stunning new intel from David Wilcock. Conferences all year round.

Where does it stop? When do we reach saturation, and turn off our phones or computers?

But wait: we can't turn off. We're addicted.

So, we just get more stressed.

We have to log in again tomorrow.... we might miss something.

And all the time, we're being bombarded with advertising. Why? Because we're a captive audience. Emphasis on the word CAPTIVE.

'Captive', because there's no real personal freedom here. It's what Dr Bill Deagle in 2006 called the 'Electronic Cage' (a pun on 'Electronic Age').

And in the middle of all this... @Walter, who reads books any more?

[Flash]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWn0pgCqsYs

I was definitely very interested in his writings. It was riveting to me.

[Flash]

You may be somewhat right at times Bill

Here a comment on Linda Moulton Howe video last night

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?102618-Recommended-Linda-Howe-s-weekly-live-broadcasts


sorry Linda


It’s work being done by the city on Sherbrooke st. Freaked me out too when I heard it but I went down and did some snooping and basically they’re lining old sewers between Fort and Guy with a process called trenchless pipe lining. The sound comes from pressure being released from a huge compressor (last night it was on st Mathieu and Sherbrooke)

Here’s a vid about the process (3mins in shows what’s happening that uses air compressors that make the ungodly noise) https://youtu.be/LtZnpEedsg0

And an advisory from the city: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/M_CHANTIER_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/417620_AVIS_EG_SHERBROOKE%20OUEST%201.PDF

Anyway reality is always boring but hopefully it clears things up! Freaky Halloween vibes though I’m glad I got a recording.

https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/9sved8/weird_noises_downtown/


It was only fitting that ‘strange noises’ were heard in the streets of downtown Montreal on Halloween.

Reddit user INDIGO, posted a video to Streamable, claiming the noises sounded like “a mix between a fire alarm, cars screeching, and aliens from a sci-fi movie.” The apparent haunting was recorded on the corner of Guy and Fort Street.

Fortunately, we’re not part of a new Cloverfield movie. It’s actually the sounds of trenchless pipe lining which the City of Montreal sent out an advisory for, a couple days earlier.


Sensible sure, but a Halloween haunting would have been more fitting.

Montreal Redditors had their own theories of what the eerie sounds were all about:http://dailyhive.com/montreal/strange-noises-video-montreal-october-31

It was a really easy search on google to find what happened.

You see, there are actually monumental repairs throughout the city, but more a new highway is being built (the size of the Boston highway few years back) plus a gigantic new bridge, plus tons or repairs.

In fact, truck drivers do not want to get into the city anymore, they lose too much time because of construction, and a city bus driver told me tonight that Montreal was now considered the hardest city to drive through in North America, because of all the repairs.

Add to this the 100 years old whole sewer system that is being changed as well.

So much that some work had to be delayed because of lack of construction companies availability.

It is a nightmare. I live in Montreal and have to drive through.

So yes, all kinds of weird construction or repair sounds in the city.

I hope Linda will correct her statements. It is so easy to research.



Here comes the danger of doing too much, no more time for checking or researching. And having wrong conclusions.

If anyone want to send my post to Linda, you are welcome, I do not have her contact data

[happyuk]

I'd not heard of Alvin Toffler before. Very interesting guy.

An interview from 2007

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.siemens.be/cmc/upload/asap2/Just/Release-1013/Gartners_Interview_With_Author_and_Futurist_Alvin_Toffler.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi1wc-fkrXeAhWCDOwKHQ1tAGQQFjAPegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw0_kXuYUq6q5CTXiEc5Bq3V

[christian]

Should I put half of Avalon behind a paywall — only half! — so that paid-up members will then have access to twice as much content?

In a perfect communist utopia, all property is unpersonal, transitory and voluntarily shared. Each contributes to and takes from the common pool of resources wisely and considerately.

As a human civilization on Earth, we are obviously not there yet. So the fact that Avalon runs entirely on voluntary efforts and donations clearly attests to the development and integrity of everyone involved.

The fact that Avalon keeps running also shows that charging any money is not necessary. It's optional. Maybe you could make more money with this if you have a paywall, it's not certain though. Maybe you would use that money to invest in something that would enable you to increase the audience and therefore your impact. That wouldn't be certain though either, for you might then in the end spread yourself too thinly. Some people might also miss out for lack of resources. Or you might have an even more committed membership, cause the ones who stay really want to be here so much that they pay for it. That might keep out some trolls as well.

Money is a tool, and more money can potentially enable you to do lots of genuinely beautiful things. Many amazing people in the alternative arena sometimes forget this because they have come to hate money and commerce, because they equate it with "the system."

For me, it all boils down to this passage from the Daodejing.


Therefore the good person,
Is the not-good person's teacher.
The not-good person,
Is the good person's capital.
One who does not honor the teacher,
Or spare the capital,
Is greatly confounded though knowledgeable.
This is called the important mystery.

[Bill Ryan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWn0pgCqsYs

I was definitely very interested in his writings. It was riveting to me.

Thanks! I definitely want to hunt down the rest of that interview. :)

In that clip, Toffler is talking about advances in bioengineering in which humans would become increasingly 'nano-mechanical', while still remaining human. He speculates how and where the line would be drawn about when such a chimera organism might not be human any more.

In his even more influential 1980 (1980!) book The Third Wave, he predicted the spread of the internet, e-mail, interactive media, cable television, and cloning.


http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Alvin%20Toffler%20-%20The%20Third%20Wave.pdf

[neutronstar]

Money is a tool, and more money can potentially enable you to do lots of genuinely beautiful things. Many amazing people in the alternative arena sometimes forget this because they have come to hate money and commerce, because they equate it with "the system."


I'll respectfully disagree with that.

Almost everything wrong in this world can be directly or indirectly traced back to money. The only time money can do any good is in the hands of people that care so little about money, that the world could function much better without money, if everyone was like them.

Unfortunately most people are not like that, and they think that there is no other way the world can work without money.

And for my opinion on Bill's topic of the thread. You cannot have free ideas that are privately owned. For those that need further clarification, think the MSN. All marketing has interests that sometimes conflicts with the information.

As for Richard Dolan, he can do whatever he wants, it is none of my business what he does as long as it is not illegal.

I will say this though, I listen to people more closely that aren't making money at this. There will come a time when pressure comes to change the message because of advertisers or others, when you get too big.

[graciousb]

Even Paul Newman's family lost control of their food business due to a shady business manager Newman outsourced business oversight to because he didn't like that end of it. So how risky this all is to people with heretofore relatively decent reputations in the field could be potentially compromised by this person with a criminal background. It's understandable that busy people need to outsource certain mundane and technical tasks, but wow.

[Bill Ryan]

There will come a time when pressure comes to change the message because of advertisers or others, when you get too big.

The problem can be epitomized by the events at the MUFON Symposium last year, 2017.

MUFON sold out by showcasing a number of 'experiencers' with exactly zero evidence to support them. Corey Goode, Andy Basiago, et al. Their veteran researchers and investigators were appalled. Some resigned.

MUFON wanted to go for filled seats, $$$, and cheap popularity. They were ONLY going for the numbers. Exactly what any marketing consultant would have advised.


Go for the largest audience. Give them what they want. Feed candy to the kids.
And if they don't know what they want, then tell them what they want.

The ethical dilemma is that a marketing consultant isn't a PR consultant. The two are entirely different.

A PR consultant is primarily concerned with the reputation and credibility of their client.

A marketing consultant just doesn't care. That's not their concern.

[christian]

You cannot have free ideas that are privately owned.

Avalon is privately owned.

The only free ideas are the ones that a person has privately without interference.

You own your ideas, you take responsibility for them. That's freedom.

[neutronstar]

You cannot have free ideas that are privately owned.

Avalon is privately owned.

The only free ideas are the ones that a person has privately without interference.

You own your ideas, you take responsibility for them. That's freedom.

Yes Avalon is privately owned, but the ideas are only free if Bill (the owner) allows them to be free. Just as any other privately owned whatever. If you want a free media it must be owned by the people, then the message is in the best interest of the owners (the people).

[christian]

First of all, it seems we mean different things when we say free. When I say free, I mean sovereign or self-determined. When you say free, it seems to me you mean costless or available at no cost.


Yes Avalon is privately owned, but the ideas are only free if Bill (the owner) allows them to be free. Just as any other privately owned whatever.

So it's perfectly possible to have privately owned ideas that are free, both as in self-determined and as in costless.


If you want a free media it must be owned by the people, then the message is in the best interest of the owners (the people).

All the best media outlets and journalists that I know—self-determined and sharing their valuable information either at a very low price or even at no cost—are not owned by the people. They are supported by the people, voluntarily, but they are owned by themselves and thus free, including Avalon.

In fact, I can't think of any media outlet that is owned "by the people" as in "by the masses," except for state media. And I don't particularly like state media personally.

I don't think that something collectively owned necessarily produces the best outcome that is in the interest of every owner. Because members of a collective will naturally have some diverging interests.

For example, would you think that if you and I owned a news website, that this website would take a form that is in our best interest? Or would it be more likely that we would disagree over what to put there, how to do it, how to pay for it and so on? Wouldn't it be more in your and my interest if we each had a website for ourselves that we could fill with content as we like? And that if we want to work on it with someone, it would better be someone we choose ourselves, on terms we voluntarily agree on?

Collectivizing ownership is not good per se. It's only good if it's voluntary and flexible, with a true common purpose. Otherwise collectivization leads to inefficiency, this is called the tragedy of the commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons).

...

Sorry for wandering off-topic here. To draw the line back from here to the case of Richard Dolan and PURSUING X, I think we would agree that Richard Dolan did fantastic work when he worked privately, on his own terms, and that his affiliation with PURSUING X is worrying because it might endanger his private autonomy and self-determination.

[Bassplayer1]

Well, as it happens, I'm subscribed to both Richard and Linda's YouTube channels. This is by no means a criticism in any way about either of them. I really appreciate their integrity and their life-long commitment to their work, but its funny because I've recently noticed that when I open up YouTube each day, my feed is dominated by Linda's videos and has been for a little while. I'm sure some of you guys have noticed the same - both recent uploads and back catalogue. Its no exaggeration that I scroll through most of my daily feed and her videos dominate - one-after-the-other - Richard not so much, but he pops up daily too. I guess you could say that Lori is so far, doing her job lol! I assumed Linda was just stepping up the pace. How interesting. Now I know.
I enjoy Linda's uploads but I can't do it everyday. Maybe Lori sold the package to both of them - that she promises their hard work will feature first in the feeds/searches (for a price)?
This isn't good all round. I mean, there's only so many hours in a day and we need to share our attention across everyone's work. And its burn-out for them!! I can't really say anything more than what's already been so well expressed by you guys in the comments before me. But I think we all know, quality will decline. Who can possibly keep up with quality and vetted cutting edge research on a DAILY basis? I'm going to quote the biggest and probably most used saying in the world ever "quality over quantity.'

Sigh …. I really hope this isn't the next stage forward in any kind of agenda we most fear …. the day that people like Richard and Linda (who have in the main, been the solid rock of integrity that we've relied upon in this over saturated world of content) have now been sucked in to the distasteful internet corporate system …. they'll have to censor themselves because the marketing company will be lining up first-and-foremost with YouTube as its about money. I don't know, maybe YouTube won't cull their content if the price is right, but I reckon its only a matter of time when Lori will be making suggestions and steering the narrative in the interest of both parties. Is this the system cleverly knowing how to reel-in the key players?

I hope I haven't come across as being harsh or critical. Thank you for bringing this to our attention Bill xxx

[Bill Ryan]

This isn't good all round.

Right. Someone's made a decision to go all out for quantity. Of everything.

I can no longer keep up. I don't know anyone who can. It's so very, very dumb. Slowly, they'll be losing people.

I no longer look forward to Richard's radio shows. Not because they're no good. But because I'm about a month and a half behind. At some point, I'll stop listening altogether.

It's now work to try to keep up. It's no longer a pleasure. And I don't even have an office job, or a family. If anyone out there can watch several videos every day, it should be me.

Richard, are you reading this? You should. :heart:

Either drop your marketing advisor, or find a PR advisor to keep the balance. Your image is going to suffer.


I can no longer keep up.This is what Alvin Toffler warned us about.

[Joe from the Carolinas]

I’ve got a couple points on the issue of oversaturation, electronic slavery, and cash. This is related to the topic but more based on the underlying foundation itself.

Over-Saturation-

The daily posting insanity is YouTube-wide and across all channels that wish to grow. This is ultimately the responsibility of the channel owner to balance the needs of their viewers, their own needs, and their own goals. 2 billion unique human users per month on the second largest search engine in the world.

Simply put, and I mean this in all sincerity, youtube is broken. 80 million algorithms are tracking every account user’s behavior. Watch a few hoax ufo videos and share them? YouTube catches that, and despite your subscribed channels, YouTube will intentionally NOT notify you of new content if you don’t frequently visit subscribed channels.

Instead, they start pushing you more of what you click on. They know what you share (even using copy and paste from your browser) and track the website addresses upon which you share their videos.

It is all very subtle, over time. Turn off a notification? Might as well unsubscribe from the channel, because that’s huge in youtube. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Comment? They’re all little variables that YouTube uses to push you content.



Electronic Slavery-

So the daily content postings is a response to youtube being broken and over saturated, and, business caught on to this one real fast.

Evan Carmichael grew his channel fast by posting 2-3 minute videos 3 times a day. Flood the battlefield. Click on 1 of his videos, and all of a sudden YouTube realizes it can keep you on their platform longer by giving you more of his videos. He’s consistent. He’s good for YouTube to make money off of ads. And they give him a cut.

But if Evan stops posting videos for a few weeks, youtube backs off. He’s not reliable, so someone else with a million subscribers gets electronically “pushed” more.

Small channels (i.e. those with less than 100,000 subscribers) have to enter that race if they wish to have their content viewed. The reason why is because youtube is broken.

The dirty little secret here is that as long as you don’t break the rules, youtube does not care about the quality of your content. They don’t care whether you use 1 picture and post 4 hours of audio with it, or spend money on a video camera and edit videos on your computers. YouTube doesn’t distinguish between the two. YouTube doesn’t care whether the audio is from 4 years ago.

However, VIEWERS do care. And there are only so many hours in a day- so choices have to be made. I have over 400 videos in my “watch later” queue. And it keeps getting larger. I can’t keep with that either.

There’s also the lifecycle of a video. Generally it is 3 days, unless it is highly active and highly engaging. After 3 days, youtube turns a blind eye. So viewers can’t find it easily, because youtube is busy pushing new content of consistent channels out to non-subscribers.

It is an electronic form of slavery if someone is financially trying to support themselves on the second largest search engine in the world.



Cash from a small channel perspective-

I kept my channel unmonetized from 2013-2017. Then I realized that youtube was still making money off of my content - because once it’s uploaded, they own it. I have rights to it, but it belongs to them. You see, the longer someone stays on YouTube, whether a video is monetized or not, youtube wins because they are still tracking behaviors to keep that person watching youtube for as long as possible.

Then I realized that a number of youtube clone sites were ripping off my unmonetized videos (automatically, using Wordpress themes) and making money off of them using google ads. Takedowns, right? Please. They’re private foreign websites that steal links to YouTube videos and clone the site using their own domain name. No chance for takedowns. Too much trouble.

So I monetized to avoid feeling like I was being robbed of the time it took me to make the video.



Conclusion-

So it is an oversatured market and nobody has that kind of time on their hands. If youtube had a way of balancing quantity and instead rewarding quality, things would be a little easier for everyone- channel owners as well as viewers.

Unfortunately, youtube says one thing but does another consistently on this point. I recently saw on twitter that a channel had become eligible for monetization, but youtube had a backlog of accounts to enable and were unable to assist. Their form letter response when the channel complained? Keep posting content. :dancing:

/rolls eyes

/deep sigh

I don’t think anyone can keep up with technology, and I do believe that burnout is a very real consequence of the platform itself.

I see YouTube as a great free platform to share things with people and to try to make a difference.... I often fantasize about how youtube, advertisers, marketers, and channels would respond if users just stopped visiting the site altogether for a week.

I’ll bet they’d figure out a way to do something about these problems.



:bearhug:

[Bill Ryan]

Joe, many thanks for your thoughtful, detailed and interesting post immediately above (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1258338&viewfull=1#post1258338).

A question for you, if I may: where will social media (in general) be with alternative content in 5 years' time? What's it all going to be like for us all?

Do you see Alvin Toffler's future hitting us hard round the head, where few people can cope any more, and all serious content will be drowned in commercially-promoted noise?

[Bill Ryan]

We've been talking on this thread about the wisdom (or otherwise) of alt media researchers and commenters utilizing various forms of commercially-driven promotion to try to make their voices better heard above the clamor.

And we've looked at Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' forecast of a world in which more and more people would react and withdraw from an ever-increasing wave of information and accelerating change that they'd be powerless to resist.

Here's another component. It's about the role of marketing engineering to shape our entire world (and the way our brains work).

Hervé drew attention to it in his post #52, here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1257394&viewfull=1#post1257394).



... "they" have known it since Bernays (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056632&viewfull=1#post1056632) (see "A Century of Self" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056663&viewfull=1#post1056663) campaign) because of this pervasive human condition:
[ ... ]
From Bernays to Cambridge Analytica and Media Matters with David Brock's well laid plan (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95841-Accurate-And-Effective-Profiling-And-Social-Engineering-From-Big-Data-...-Down-To-An-Individual-Scale-&p=1216553&viewfull=1#post1216553) to bring down the whole of the Alt Media.

Century of The Self was a brilliant (yes, brilliant) 2002 BBC TV documentary series by Adam Curtis on the impact of marketing on our world — and how it's been adopted cleverly and deliberately by those wanting to control and corral us.

The Avalon thread is here.


Century of the Self - amazing documentary - MUST SEE (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?626-Century-of-the-Self-amazing-documentary-MUST-SEE)

In my post #5 there (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?626-Century-of-the-Self-amazing-documentary-MUST-SEE&p=56592&viewfull=1#post56592), back in in 2010, I'd written:

~~~



I'm delighted to see this recommended here.

CENTURY OF THE SELF is the best documentary series I've ever seen. I can't recommend it highly enough.

EVERYONE should see Part 3 : compulsory viewing to understand what happened to us all in the latter part of the twentieth century.

In a couple of very inadequate sentences, it's how the rapidly growing (and threatening) Human Potential Movement of the 1960s and 70s was hijacked by corporate business, and self-aware people were tricked into compromising their new-found sense of personal power and independence by buying products that seemed to reinforce their individuality.

In one brilliant swoop (researched by the CIA-backed Stanford Research Institute), the threat of the Human Potential Movement was emasculated.

We might have changed the world: but instead, we were all duped. Learn from this, folks, and don't get fooled again.

When it was first shown on the BBC in 2002 I was spellbound - and spent a long time trying to find it again. I eventually found it in San Francisco in 2005 where it was shown in a theater as a four hour movie with an intermission. I was indescribably pleased to find it later uploaded to YouTube for all to see.

Watch this episode and emerge profoundly thoughtful - trust me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM

[The Moss Trooper]

Joe, many thanks for your thoughtful, detailed and interesting post immediately above (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1258338&viewfull=1#post1258338).

A question for you, if I may: where will social media (in general) be with alternative content in 5 years' time? What's it all going to be like for us all?

Do you see Alvin Toffler's future hitting us hard round the head, where few people can cope any more, and all serious content will be drowned in commercially-promoted noise?

I can see it all being like a box of Quality Street chocolates, all broken-up and wrapped in shiny foil to tempt. Commercialised and cashed-out.

I'm already witnessing a generation that does not posses the tools to cope with life............ and who can blame them? I struggle myself sometimes at the absurdity of it all, the blatant lies of MSM, the duplicity of those that society deems to trust, the list could go on and on. My son and daughter are both in their mid-twenties and I've had several conversations with them both about what their thoughts are regarding starting families (somewhat selfishly from my pov fearing for those born into this present situation), thankfully they are choosing to spread their wings and head-off to explore different countries and cultures.

I have a couple of guys who wok for me that are in their early twenties, and sometimes, listening to them and their points of view on world-matters leaves me speechless, and they would, and do, defend those points of view violently.

You know, sometimes, and a lot more recently, I really question as to whether I belong here at this time. I really do.

[Carmody]

I'm with you Bill. It's like a big stupid joke, but it's not a joke, because it's happening.

I've just got through season 2 of the comedy TV series "Silicon Valley" and a lot of that show seems to be reminiscent of things you're talking about. It's like they're all playing a money game, and only one guy knows the rules (the asshole guy lol)


"The first rule of any game is to know you're in one." Sandy Lerner, Founder of Cisco Systems

Something Ventured (https://vimeo.com/105745528)

[petra]

"The first rule of any game is to know you're in one." Sandy Lerner, Founder of Cisco Systems



That's not a rule ;-)

The first "rule" should be to determine if the game is fair or not, and then if it's not fair, don't play it.

Rule # 1 - Know the rules (he he)

PS: Season 5 finale blew my mind. No spoilers

[Carmody]

Should I put half of Avalon behind a paywall — only half! — so that paid-up members will then have access to twice as much content?

If not, why not?

Hi Bill,

No, I don't think you should put half of Avalon behind a paywall....first and foremost because again, it was never about the money. Avalon was/is about sharing knowledge and information about this crazy messed up world we live in (and well beyond). Another reason I don't think you should do it is because I don't think it would be fair for some of the current members who perhaps could not afford to pay in order to remain a member. There is a "members only" section, not requiring payment, but for which the general public does not have access to without becoming a member.

When one goes for years on the internet, social media, You Tube, and open forum, etc...and then suddenly wants to charge for it...it's kinda like jumping the shark, so to speak. And, once that happens it makes me wonder, what changed??

Dave - Toronto

What generally happens with the paywall type thing, or new profit generating schemes, is that they go along quite well.

For a short while. The new more complex reality takes time to form and show it's face. The short term expectations have to be extrapolated into the long term and that's generally where things fall down.

For example, this website. Random encounters is likely what most grows it's user base. The problem being that if things look the way I expect them to, we're looking at a forced reduction in random visitors due to web search result manipulations.

Also, the quality of the participants on the forum. Etc.

In this case, some form of re-inclusion into website results, as a form of active participation, is probably the way to increase traffic.

Alex Jones was likely pulled due to such increases, though. His scenario was hitting all the right buttons in the general population, and did not seem to be dying off the way that some might want it to. Artificial induction of a finite limit, seems to be the deal. The wild west aspects are leaving the board.

[Carmody]

We've been talking on this thread about the wisdom (or otherwise) of alt media researchers and commenters utilizing various forms of commercially-driven promotion to try to make their voices better heard above the clamor.

And we've looked at Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' forecast of a world in which more and more people would react and withdraw from an ever-increasing wave of information and accelerating change that they'd be powerless to resist.

Here's another component. It's about the role of marketing engineering to shape our entire world (and the way our brains work).

Hervé drew attention to it in his post #52, here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1257394&viewfull=1#post1257394).



... "they" have known it since Bernays (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056632&viewfull=1#post1056632) (see "A Century of Self" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056663&viewfull=1#post1056663) campaign) because of this pervasive human condition:
[ ... ]
From Bernays to Cambridge Analytica and Media Matters with David Brock's well laid plan (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95841-Accurate-And-Effective-Profiling-And-Social-Engineering-From-Big-Data-...-Down-To-An-Individual-Scale-&p=1216553&viewfull=1#post1216553) to bring down the whole of the Alt Media.

Century of The Self was a brilliant (yes, brilliant) 2002 BBC TV documentary series by Adam Curtis on the impact of marketing on our world — and how it's been adopted cleverly and deliberately by those wanting to control and corral us.

The Avalon thread is here.


Century of the Self - amazing documentary - MUST SEE (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?626-Century-of-the-Self-amazing-documentary-MUST-SEE)

In my post #5 there (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?626-Century-of-the-Self-amazing-documentary-MUST-SEE&p=56592&viewfull=1#post56592), back in in 2010, I'd written:

~~~



I'm delighted to see this recommended here.

CENTURY OF THE SELF is the best documentary series I've ever seen. I can't recommend it highly enough.

EVERYONE should see Part 3 : compulsory viewing to understand what happened to us all in the latter part of the twentieth century.

In a couple of very inadequate sentences, it's how the rapidly growing (and threatening) Human Potential Movement of the 1960s and 70s was hijacked by corporate business, and self-aware people were tricked into compromising their new-found sense of personal power and independence by buying products that seemed to reinforce their individuality.

In one brilliant swoop (researched by the CIA-backed Stanford Research Institute), the threat of the Human Potential Movement was emasculated.

We might have changed the world: but instead, we were all duped. Learn from this, folks, and don't get fooled again.

When it was first shown on the BBC in 2002 I was spellbound - and spent a long time trying to find it again. I eventually found it in San Francisco in 2005 where it was shown in a theater as a four hour movie with an intermission. I was indescribably pleased to find it later uploaded to YouTube for all to see.

Watch this episode and emerge profoundly thoughtful - trust me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM


Self work is ugly and puts serious dents in the ego.

Manipulation pets the ego in the way that the searching probing entity possesses their given ego based expectations.

Real life has quandaries that damage the ego and it's position in the self.

The path of manipulating searchers is to give them grief but pet the ego in ways that the ego can see around the corner on. Us recalling, of course that the ego straddles the unconscious and subconscious functions -and the conscious mind. So, pain as a path but where the ego can see the coming bit of petting and ego stroking. Something that the conscious mind may note but dismiss. Where the ego did the dismissing, but that is not really openly noticed in the given self.

Human growth requires ego stressing that damages the ego as it exists in us.... and eventually removes it from it's position of primacy. Manipulation does the opposite. When one starts with that as a point, then the way can be seen. The body mind ego thing will always try to find a path with the least stressing and the manipulations will either gently show that easy way out door or window, or blatantly paste it on the front of the paperwork. The body and mind ego package wants lip service to the human growth package - and this is what the manipulators know, and utilize.

The manipulators also work from the ignorance pathways of the average person and just above that in overall intelligence and speed of thought/learning. Aiming for those of higher intelligence is a different game.

https://www.iqtestforfree.net/images/iq_bell_curve.gif

See that range from 100 to 115, just to the right of the center peak? That's where they work, right there.

Smart enough to begin figuring things out, too slow to be ahead of master manipulators, and large enough in overall size and influence to integrate with the masses and make a functional wave and mind state. People rotating in, people rotating out, participants able to communicate with one another, and so on. Movements require that sort of positioned mass.

To grow a movement requires the right soil. That 34% is the right soil. Individualism.... but still with the broad communicable group consciousness effects that the masses live by and through.

It is the manipulation of the hero's story, as outlined by Joseph Campbell. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey)We see it played out in films, every day, all day.

We have to be able to see the whole loop, and that's the ego manipulation angle. To see the pain but to also see the path to winning over it.


Real life has the ego drowning. For real.

Manipulation, in some way--- shows the way out. Monkey based avatars don't work autonomously any other way. Manipulation understands this and must provide in order to hold the spell. In some way or another, it must provide this.. in order to be effective.

The body/ego says, as a monkey, "I need to make it to the water today. Is there a lion in the tall grass? This question and answer must be perfect. Other monkeys may even serve as a warning, in their death. But I must survive. I must make it to the water and back." In other words, in the manipulation, the path may be difficult and fraught with some danger but if the whole path is somehow visible and possible and seen, then the ego may allow. And living examples, like the snake oil seller, who has the shills at hand. Success must be visible.

As an example....I've never dealt with the Corey Goode stuff at all, but if one knows it or looks at it, I expect that it stinks exactly like that pattern.

[Joe from the Carolinas]

Joe, many thanks for your thoughtful, detailed and interesting post immediately above (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1258338&viewfull=1#post1258338).

A question for you, if I may: where will social media (in general) be with alternative content in 5 years' time? What's it all going to be like for us all?

Do you see Alvin Toffler's future hitting us hard round the head, where few people can cope any more, and all serious content will be drowned in commercially-promoted noise?

Thanks Bill! I think social media in 5 years will in general will be a system linked to ones financial, medical, and daily living activities- all linked to ones personal information. Alternative content will be flagged with keywords and de-ranked or altogether removed from search. Social media accounts will be linked to discount programs and therefore food and other purchase choices.

I suspect that mainstream media sources will have funded most alternative media outlets, so available information will be difficult to find. Books will be expensive and rarely read. Video will be the new book.

Indeed I think Alvin Toffler’s future is an inevitability.

[Denise/Dizi]

Thanks for never selling out Bill

[Valerie Villars]

Joe, many thanks for your thoughtful, detailed and interesting post immediately above (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1258338&viewfull=1#post1258338).

A question for you, if I may: where will social media (in general) be with alternative content in 5 years' time? What's it all going to be like for us all?

Do you see Alvin Toffler's future hitting us hard round the head, where few people can cope any more, and all serious content will be drowned in commercially-promoted noise?

Thanks Bill! I think social media in 5 years will in general will be a system linked to ones financial, medical, and daily living activities- all linked to ones personal information. Alternative content will be flagged with keywords and de-ranked or altogether removed from search. Social media accounts will be linked to discount programs and therefore food and other purchase choices.

I suspect that mainstream media sources will have funded most alternative media outlets, so available information will be difficult to find. Books will be expensive and rarely read. Video will be the new book.

Indeed I think Alvin Toffler’s future is an inevitability.

Replace the word book with alternative or otherwise media and you have the general idea of what we are up against.


"Future Shock by Alvin Toffer Chapter 2: The Accelerative Thrust

Knowledge as Fuel

The rate at which man has been storing up useful knowledge about himself and the universe has been spiraling upward for 10,000 years. The rate took a sharp upward leap with the invention of writing, but even so it remained painfully slow over centuries of time. The next great leap forward in knowledge acquisition did not occur until the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century by Gutenberg and others. Prior to 1500, the most optimistic estimates, Europe was producing books at a rate of 1,000 titles per year. That means give or take a bit, that it would take a full century to produce a library of 100,000 titles. By 1950, four and a half centuries later, the rate had accelerated so sharply that Europe was producing 120,000,000 titles a year. What once took a century now took only ten months.By 1960, a single decade later, the rate had made another significant jump, so that a century's work could be completed in seven and a half months. And by the mid-sixties, the output of books on a world scale, Europe included, approached the prodigious figure of 1,000 titles per day.

[Praxis]

I've started this thread in the Personalities in the Alternative Media (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/forumdisplay.php?135-Personalities-in-the-Alternative-Media) section. It may belong elsewhere, but it's really about what various personalities are doing to optimize their monetization.

And it's about 'professional' marketing. Money. Clicks. Quantity. Numbers.



I find it ironic that you are bringing this subject while your very own forum is being monetized by MrGray.

Consistently posting single sentences that point towards his personal website that he then makes money off of(which he has admitted to me is why he posts the way he does).

Now if I want to follow a thread, I am forced to support a person I personally do not wish to support( as he has said holding american citizens without trial is fine in his book). I would link to where he said it, but again it is on his site and I would rather not support people who support clearly unconstitutional things like Guantanamo Bay and holding citizens there for MILITARY TRIBUNALS.

I can not quote him within the avalon quote system because his words do not actually appear on this site.

This degrades the value of this forum. Soon we will all just post links to our personal sites instead of on the site directly.

[Pam]

Joe, many thanks for your thoughtful, detailed and interesting post immediately above (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1258338&viewfull=1#post1258338).

A question for you, if I may: where will social media (in general) be with alternative content in 5 years' time? What's it all going to be like for us all?

Do you see Alvin Toffler's future hitting us hard round the head, where few people can cope any more, and all serious content will be drowned in commercially-promoted noise?

Thanks Bill! I think social media in 5 years will in general will be a system linked to ones financial, medical, and daily living activities- all linked to ones personal information. Alternative content will be flagged with keywords and de-ranked or altogether removed from search. Social media accounts will be linked to discount programs and therefore food and other purchase choices.

I suspect that mainstream media sources will have funded most alternative media outlets, so available information will be difficult to find. Books will be expensive and rarely read. Video will be the new book.

Indeed I think Alvin Toffler’s future is an inevitability.

I suspect you are right here. The one thing I would add is that there will be a "social credit" score.

[Bill Ryan]

From https://twitter.com/RichDolan/status/1067110394039218176

http://projectavalon.net/Richard_Dolan_poster_promotion.gif

[Mike]

Omg, please tell me this is a joke. He must be ****ing kidding.

[Spellbound]

Having a hard time believing Richard is selling out to this extent (but there it is right on front of us).

Dave - Toronto

[Innocent Warrior]

Omg, please tell me this is a joke. He must be ****ing kidding.

Well Bill did ask where all this is headed in the OP, there’s his answer - $24.95 for a poster with shipping. We can buy a book for that much.

[Bill Ryan]

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Barack_Obama_Hope_poster.jpg

[Mike]

Omg, please tell me this is a joke. He must be ****ing kidding.

Well Bill did ask where all this is headed in the OP, there’s his answer - $24:95 for a poster with shipping. We can buy a book for that much.



Posters too? Oy vey...(edit: i intially thought the 'hope' thing was a tshirt, having skimmed the thread while at work. well, posters are just as bad)

It appears we're seeing the end of Dolan the researcher, and the emergence of Dolan the brand.

No one "sells out" overnight. It's sort of akin to David Icke's totalitarian tiptoe concept, where ideas are presented in a slow drip so as to not alarm the public. It's a subtle dance between seller and buyer, where the seller is ever so slowly hemorrhaging his integrity in a feeling out process with a buyer who is ever so slowly hemorrhaging theirs..which ultimately amounts to an unspoken game of ethics "chicken" to see who'll blink first. It becomes an insidious circle of justification between buyer and seller, and eventually what was previously regarded as "selling out" becomes acceptable and even encouraged under the mantra of "there's nothing wrong with trying to make a buck!"

And there is nothing wrong with making a buck, so long as you're not selling your soul to do it. It's easy to dismiss a tshirt or poster as being no big deal, but it never ends there, does it? One novelty begets another and another, and as it slowly becomes acceptable, one becomes a novelty. No one notices it happening initially, because it all moves in a slow trickle. Then, one day, someone starts a thread on a forum like ours titled, what the heck happened to Richard Dolan?..and we all queue up to attempt to figure out exactly where it all went wrong.

Well, it appears to be going wrong now.

[Flash]

From https://twitter.com/RichDolan/status/1067110394039218176

http://projectavalon.net/Richard_Dolan_poster_promotion.gif

He definitely has not studied his market, this is a poor promotional choice in my idea. Gosh, we are much too educated (in terms of aware of over selling) for this kind of gimmick.. and having Obama like design equated with truth and Dolan is yet a poorer choice. Albeit, to his defense, this poster scheme has been widely used for many promotional anything.

Plus, the article you proposed for the Obama poster Bill stipulate that the author of the original poster, who was sued for having used the photograph of another artist, and who was previously pretty anti government, said that Obama really overdid it in terms or being bought off and sold. Which he never believed would happen when he did the poster.


Fairey has said that his decision to create a portrait of Obama stemmed from Fairey's feeling that Obama's "power and sincerity as a speaker would create a positive association with his likeness........

In an interview with Esquire in 2015 Fairey said that Obama had not lived up, "not even close," to his expectations. He continued, "Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he's compromised on that I never would have expected. I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he'd support].............

.As the campaign progressed, many parodies and imitations of Fairey's design appeared. For example, one anti-Obama version replaced the word "hope" with "hype", while parody posters featuring opponents Sarah Palin and John McCain had the word "nope".[15] In January 2009 Paste magazine launched a site allowing users to create their own versions of the poster. More than 10,000 images were uploaded to the site in its first two weeks.[16][17][18]

Mad magazine parodied the "hope" poster with an "Alfred E. Neuman for President!" poster. Alfred was on the poster, and the word "hope" was replaced with "hopeless". Anti-Gaddafi protesters in Chicago, in solidarity with the 2011 Libyan civil war, have co-opted the image. Dynamite Comics released a four-part crossover with Obama and Ash Williams of their Army of Darkness comics and the Evil Dead films. One of the issues covers had a picture of Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell in the films) in the style of the "Hope" poster with the bottom text reading "Hope?".

[Spellbound]

Omg, please tell me this is a joke. He must be ****ing kidding.

Well Bill did ask where all this is headed in the OP, there’s his answer - $24:95 for a poster with shipping. We can buy a book for that much.



Posters too? Oy vey...(edit: i intially thought the 'hope' thing was a tshirt, having skimmed the thread)

It appears we're seeing the end of Dolan the researcher, and the emergence of Dolan the brand.

No one "sells out" overnight. It's sort of akin to David Icke's totalitarian tiptoe concept, where ideas are presented in a slow drip so as to not alarm the public. It's a subtle dance between seller and buyer, where the seller is ever so slowly hemorrhaging his integrity in a feeling out process with a buyer who is ever so slowly hemorrhaging theirs..which ultimately amounts to an unspoken game of ethics "chicken" to see who'll blink first. It becomes an insidious circle of justification between buyer and seller, and eventually what was previously regarded as "selling out" becomes acceptable and even encouraged under the mantra of "there's nothing wrong with trying to make a buck!"

And there is nothing wrong with making a buck, so long as you're not selling your soul to do it. It's easy to dismiss a tshirt as being no big deal, but it never ends there, does it? One novelty begets another and another, and as it slowly becomes acceptable, one becomes a novelty. No one notices it happening initially, because it all moves in a slow trickle. Then, one day, someone starts a thread on a forum like ours titled, what the heck happened to Richard Dolan?..and we all queue up to attempt to figure out exactly where it all went wrong.

Well, it appears to be going wrong now.

I think some (a lot) of this is Tracey.

Dave - Toronto

[Flash]

Omg, please tell me this is a joke. He must be ****ing kidding.

Well Bill did ask where all this is headed in the OP, there’s his answer - $24:95 for a poster with shipping. We can buy a book for that much.



Posters too? Oy vey...

It appears we're seeing the end of Dolan the researcher, and the emergence of Dolan the brand.

No one "sells out" overnight. It's sort of akin to David Icke's totalitarian tiptoe concept, where ideas are presented in a slow drip so as to not alarm the public. It's a subtle dance between seller and buyer, where the seller is ever so slowly hemorrhaging his integrity in a feeling out process with a buyer who is ever so slowly hemorrhaging theirs..which ultimately amounts to an unspoken game of ethics "chicken" to see who'll blink first. It becomes an insidious circle of justification between buyer and seller, and eventually what was previously regarded as "selling out" becomes acceptable and even encouraged under the mantra of "there's nothing wrong with trying to make a buck!"

And there is nothing wrong with making a buck, so long as you're not selling your soul to do it. It's easy to dismiss a tshirt as being no big deal, but it never ends there, does it? One novelty begets another and another, and as it slowly becomes acceptable, one becomes a novelty. No one notices it happening initially, because it all moves in a slow trickle. Then, one day, someone starts a thread on a forum like ours titled, what the heck happened to Richard Dolan?..and we all queue up to attempt to figure out exactly where it all went wrong.

Well, it appears to be going wrong now.

I agree with you 100% Mike but in my eyes, this is worst than that, not only is he slow dripping selling out, but he does not understand his market, the market that could bring him some decent paycheck. This is much worst. And sad , bad advisers all along. And if it is his wife, he will not want to listen to anyone.

This is typical of very bright people who have done lots of research on a product, an idea, anything worth it and who decide to sell their product, ideas, etc. They are bright, they think they know how and should not pay for such advice because yes, it is expensive. So they do it themselves of with cheap marketers and they end up killing their market and often their product too.

I have seen it hundreds of times. You would not imagine how often I was approached by geniuses who had an invention or an idea to promote and-or sell and wanted me to give a hand. But, they would want to keep the control of marketing and sales, would not want to give shares or to pay for the service and would not understand how marketing and sales are sooooooo different from fundamental reseach and ideas, and how expensive it is to have a good market approach. So their stuborness in trying it almost alone or for cheap killed their market.

So sad to see good people going down this way.

( I must say Bill that you have not sold out, but on the marketing side, if you ever wished to be with a larger audience (which you may not have in the past), as you seem to have said in another thread, you could too easily fall in a different but as damaging set of errors. This is what high IQ does. Too sure of one's understanding)

[Flash]

We've been talking on this thread about the wisdom (or otherwise) of alt media researchers and commenters utilizing various forms of commercially-driven promotion to try to make their voices better heard above the clamor.

And we've looked at Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' forecast of a world in which more and more people would react and withdraw from an ever-increasing wave of information and accelerating change that they'd be powerless to resist.

Here's another component. It's about the role of marketing engineering to shape our entire world (and the way our brains work).

Hervé drew attention to it in his post #52, here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1257394&viewfull=1#post1257394).



... "they" have known it since Bernays (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056632&viewfull=1#post1056632) (see "A Century of Self" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?89705-Tavistock-s-Freud-s-Nephew-And-Father-Of-Social-Engineering-Edward-Bernays&p=1056663&viewfull=1#post1056663) campaign) because of this pervasive human condition:
[ ... ]
From Bernays to Cambridge Analytica and Media Matters with David Brock's well laid plan (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95841-Accurate-And-Effective-Profiling-And-Social-Engineering-From-Big-Data-...-Down-To-An-Individual-Scale-&p=1216553&viewfull=1#post1216553) to bring down the whole of the Alt Media.

Century of The Self was a brilliant (yes, brilliant) 2002 BBC TV documentary series by Adam Curtis on the impact of marketing on our world — and how it's been adopted cleverly and deliberately by those wanting to control and corral us.

The Avalon thread is here.


Century of the Self - amazing documentary - MUST SEE (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?626-Century-of-the-Self-amazing-documentary-MUST-SEE)

In my post #5 there (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?626-Century-of-the-Self-amazing-documentary-MUST-SEE&p=56592&viewfull=1#post56592), back in in 2010, I'd written:

~~~



I'm delighted to see this recommended here.

CENTURY OF THE SELF is the best documentary series I've ever seen. I can't recommend it highly enough.

EVERYONE should see Part 3 : compulsory viewing to understand what happened to us all in the latter part of the twentieth century.

In a couple of very inadequate sentences, it's how the rapidly growing (and threatening) Human Potential Movement of the 1960s and 70s was hijacked by corporate business, and self-aware people were tricked into compromising their new-found sense of personal power and independence by buying products that seemed to reinforce their individuality.

In one brilliant swoop (researched by the CIA-backed Stanford Research Institute), the threat of the Human Potential Movement was emasculated.

We might have changed the world: but instead, we were all duped. Learn from this, folks, and don't get fooled again.

When it was first shown on the BBC in 2002 I was spellbound - and spent a long time trying to find it again. I eventually found it in San Francisco in 2005 where it was shown in a theater as a four hour movie with an intermission. I was indescribably pleased to find it later uploaded to YouTube for all to see.

Watch this episode and emerge profoundly thoughtful - trust me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM


Self work is ugly and puts serious dents in the ego.

Manipulation pets the ego in the way that the searching probing entity possesses their given ego based expectations.

Real life has quandaries that damage the ego and it's position in the self.

The path of manipulating searchers is to give them grief but pet the ego in ways that the ego can see around the corner on. Us recalling, of course that the ego straddles the unconscious and subconscious functions -and the conscious mind. So, pain as a path but where the ego can see the coming bit of petting and ego stroking. Something that the conscious mind may note but dismiss. Where the ego did the dismissing, but that is not really openly noticed in the given self.

Human growth requires ego stressing that damages the ego as it exists in us.... and eventually removes it from it's position of primacy. Manipulation does the opposite. When one starts with that as a point, then the way can be seen. The body mind ego thing will always try to find a path with the least stressing and the manipulations will either gently show that easy way out door or window, or blatantly paste it on the front of the paperwork. The body and mind ego package wants lip service to the human growth package - and this is what the manipulators know, and utilize.

The manipulators also work from the ignorance pathways of the average person and just above that in overall intelligence and speed of thought/learning. Aiming for those of higher intelligence is a different game.

https://www.iqtestforfree.net/images/iq_bell_curve.gif

See that range from 100 to 115, just to the right of the center peak? That's where they work, right there.

Smart enough to begin figuring things out, too slow to be ahead of master manipulators, and large enough in overall size and influence to integrate with the masses and make a functional wave and mind state. People rotating in, people rotating out, participants able to communicate with one another, and so on. Movements require that sort of positioned mass.

To grow a movement requires the right soil. That 34% is the right soil. Individualism.... but still with the broad communicable group consciousness effects that the masses live by and through.

It is the manipulation of the hero's story, as outlined by Joseph Campbell. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey)We see it played out in films, every day, all day.

We have to be able to see the whole loop, and that's the ego manipulation angle. To see the pain but to also see the path to winning over it.


Real life has the ego drowning. For real.

Manipulation, in some way--- shows the way out. Monkey based avatars don't work autonomously any other way. Manipulation understands this and must provide in order to hold the spell. In some way or another, it must provide this.. in order to be effective.

The body/ego says, as a monkey, "I need to make it to the water today. Is there a lion in the tall grass? This question and answer must be perfect. Other monkeys may even serve as a warning, in their death. But I must survive. I must make it to the water and back." In other words, in the manipulation, the path may be difficult and fraught with some danger but if the whole path is somehow visible and possible and seen, then the ego may allow. And living examples, like the snake oil seller, who has the shills at hand. Success must be visible.

As an example....I've never dealt with the Corey Goode stuff at all, but if one knows it or looks at it, I expect that it stinks exactly like that pattern.

These posts are literally brillant and have to be read 2-3 times to get the whole multi-layered gist, in my views.

Thanks Carmody.

We have to realise that most who are interested in the deep UFO and deep alternative realities are in fact in the 14% and 2% of the right hand of the right hand side of the graph. This is a totally different market than the usual 34%, and yes, it is not a market that will drive change, unless it impacts in turn on the 34%. This is exactly why Goode succeeded in the beginning, he tapped in the 34% of intelligent enough to understand something else may exist, but not enough to see his manipulations. However once they start seeing, they will turn elsewhere and chase another hopeful goose. This is not Dolan's market.

Add to this that the 68% in the middle are first and foremost driven by emotions, not by understanding and still less by intuition.

[Mike]

Well said Flash! I'd love to see a great researcher like Dolan get rich! I really would. But not thru gimmicks and novelties. It just cheapens everything. And as a leader in our community, he indirectly makes this process okay for everyone else. He's very influential, and rightfully so, and therefore has a responsibility to do better.

And to Dave's point, it is quite possible that Richard is being influenced in this direction by his wife. I dunno. I hesitate to go too far down that path. All I know is, I once built an altar to Saturn on the advice of a girlfriend. That's not a joke, sad to say. I think about that maybe once a week, and I literally sweat with embarrassment. I keep confessing that to the people around me, the thinking being I'll purge it from my system thru the heat of humiliation. But it doesn't go away...it just continues to haunt me, and frequently emerges to ruin my good mood by tapping me on the shoulder to say things like, dude, you once built an altar to Saturn...just shut up.

Point being...men, we're a sorry lot. We are easily influenced by the women in our lives. It starts out harmlessly, but then one day you find yourself building altars to Saturn and sitting down when you pee. Bill once started a thread where Richard was doing his knight in shining armor bit, declaring loyalty to his wife and so on, and it all felt a bit manufactured to me. I think that may have been a red flag. I have mixed feelings tho. He looks like a man in love to me, pleased to be collaborating with his lovely wife, and I can't help but feel happy for him in that sense. But it's a delicate balance that I don't think he's quite mastered yet (I'm not knockin him, that's a tough one to pull off).

[Bill Ryan]

From Robert Pirsig's classic 1970s masterwork, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:


http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Robert%20Pirsig%20-%20Zen%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Motorcycle%20Maintenance.pdf






It is the little, pathetic attempts at Quality that kill. The plaster false fireplace in the apartment, shaped and waiting to contain a flame that can never exist. Or the hedge in front of the apartment building with a few square feet of grass behind it. A few square feet of grass, after Montana. If they just left out the hedge and grass it would be all right. Now it serves only to draw attention to what has been lost.

[Pam]

Omg, please tell me this is a joke. He must be ****ing kidding.

Well Bill did ask where all this is headed in the OP, there’s his answer - $24:95 for a poster with shipping. We can buy a book for that much.



Posters too? Oy vey...(edit: i intially thought the 'hope' thing was a tshirt, having skimmed the thread while at work. well, posters are just as bad)

It appears we're seeing the end of Dolan the researcher, and the emergence of Dolan the brand.

No one "sells out" overnight. It's sort of akin to David Icke's totalitarian tiptoe concept, where ideas are presented in a slow drip so as to not alarm the public. It's a subtle dance between seller and buyer, where the seller is ever so slowly hemorrhaging his integrity in a feeling out process with a buyer who is ever so slowly hemorrhaging theirs..which ultimately amounts to an unspoken game of ethics "chicken" to see who'll blink first. It becomes an insidious circle of justification between buyer and seller, and eventually what was previously regarded as "selling out" becomes acceptable and even encouraged under the mantra of "there's nothing wrong with trying to make a buck!"

And there is nothing wrong with making a buck, so long as you're not selling your soul to do it. It's easy to dismiss a tshirt or poster as being no big deal, but it never ends there, does it? One novelty begets another and another, and as it slowly becomes acceptable, one becomes a novelty. No one notices it happening initially, because it all moves in a slow trickle. Then, one day, someone starts a thread on a forum like ours titled, what the heck happened to Richard Dolan?..and we all queue up to attempt to figure out exactly where it all went wrong.

Well, it appears to be going wrong now.

So the question is when does someone decide to make some of the information a novelty as well? Just a tiny bit added for drama at first, then more to keep them coming. It's a slippery slope and once compromised the slide down is easier.

[bobme]

The alternitive media seems to me, is mirroring the real mainstream media.

Just a new buisness all the same, a buisness whit no boundries or ethics of anything,but profit.

An example, Two weeks ago I was told by my insurance company< auto, that they had to increase my monthly paymenys by twenty dollars, because I had no credit, what so ever.

I tried to get cheaper quotes from other insurance companies, and they could not find any evidence I existed.

Figure that one out.

[Bill Ryan]

The alternative media seems to me, is mirroring the real mainstream media.



Yes it is. It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.* We're adopting the values and practices of the enemy that surrounds us.

* Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome): a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.

[Innocent Warrior]

The alternative media seems to me, is mirroring the real mainstream media.



Yes it is. It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.* We're adopting the values and practices of the enemy that surrounds us.

* Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome): a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.


It’s an understandable strategy, which means the adaptation will be more readily accepted, as we are seeing now. A few questions that keep swirling around my head..


What is the solution?
How do we tackle this issue without hurting those we want to strengthen?
Have we done this to ourselves by placing too much importance on the messengers and not enough on the message?
Are we ‘fighting a losing battle’ with this issue at this point, is it too far gone?

[Franny]

It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.* We're adopting the values and practices of the enemy that surrounds us.

Things like this remind me of several writers but Don Juan often comes to mind - "They gave us their mind". Don Juan's predator is quite similar to the Demiurge of the Gnostics.

It's interesting to note that he compares us to farm animals for the predator. They gave us their mind and we made farms, now factory CAFOs, concentrated animal feeding operations - another name for hell on earth.

I suspect they also gave us money.


“We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner!

"This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them."

"No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone."

"Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal."

"'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?"

"'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now."

"I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear."

"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat."

― Carlos Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity

[Bill Ryan]

The alternative media seems to me, is mirroring the real mainstream media.

Yes it is. It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.* We're adopting the values and practices of the enemy that surrounds us.
* Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome): a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.


It’s an understandable strategy, which means the adaptation will be more readily accepted, as we are seeing now. A few questions that keep swirling around my head..


What is the solution?
How do we tackle this issue without hurting those we want to strengthen?
Have we done this to ourselves by placing too much importance on the messengers and not enough on the message?
Are we ‘fighting a losing battle’ with this issue at this point, is it too far gone?



Good questions. The main problem is this is (at least on the surface) to some degree a matter of aesthetic values. What offends, what pleases, etc. That's not amenable to logic.

Meaning, a highly intelligent, educated person might really like a piece of art that's a gaudy eyesore. Or cheap, low-quality 'music'. Or feel at home surrounded by inner city graffiti, while having no interest in National Parks and the beautiful wilderness.

One needs Emotional Intelligence, and Spiritual Intelligence (not IQ) to appreciate those. This can't be taught. It's a state of deep mind (or maybe, deep spirit).

It rubs off by example. That's how parents can support their children to appreciate real beauty. But it'll never be a class at school.

Here's what I'd show Richard. I hope he may see it. I'd not say anything at all, apart from: Look at this alternative.

http://projectavalon.net/Richard_Dolan_Stand_for_Truth.jpg

[Flash]

Your approach towards the 14% (see my previous post) is toi British Bill for Americans🤷‍♀️🥴 even educated ones. (Comments without prejudice lol)

I think someone a bit hair disorganised, a nice sweater (not a t-shirt, too geek), and the phrasing less well, less British. Lol

Like: Always the truth, to the best of our or my abilities

Doing more, thinking further

Richard Dolan

Ok, I got this out in a few seconds, usually it takes a few hours of brainstorming with a group of people and then has to be tested on a small sample. My family has sometimes been the group of people brainstorming at family gatherings (For my sister).

[Bill Ryan]

Like:

Always the truth, to the best of our or my abilities
Doing more, thinking further
Richard Dolan


That's very good! :sun:

I agree re the 'British' wordiness. :) I just wrote it out, as well. But I took rather more care over the image.

The quality portrayed there I think is self-evident. No stylistic gimmickry. Richard isn't about gimmicks. (Or, certainly shouldn't be. I'd also suggest it's a good idea to look as little like Obama as possible!)

[Flash]

Like:

Always the truth, to the best of our or my abilities
Doing more, thinking further
Richard Dolan


That's very good! :sun:

I agree re the 'British' wordiness. :) I just wrote it out, as well. But I took rather more care over the image.

The quality portrayed there I think is self-evident. No stylistic gimmickry. Richard isn't about gimmicks. (Or, certainly shouldn't be. I'd also suggest it's a good idea to look as little like Obama as possible!)

you are right, Obama is not the way to go, because it targets the leftists only first, and second because it does not look sincere. If it is for a fun experiment, it has to be mentioned. I would have elected Dolan over Obama in the second round anytime lollllll viewed that way..

the thing is that even my wording may not be appropriate.

A strategy has to be designed towards the section of the population that is the target of one's writings or videos. This includes positioning oneself (taking a position or a place) within a global strategy. Then all the wording goes in the same direction for a good while.

For this, one has to take the time to do it.

And then, on a second ulterior step, you think of increase in reach.

Apart from Goode and Wilcox (who are not good ones), I don't think many real good ones have done it on the market.

I was listening to The Dark Journalist yesterday, he has oustanding research on very complex topics, his videos are so long that you cannot ever get to be on par with his production, no time to listen to it all, yet he has a good group of followers. He has positioned himself within his listeners category.
For a further reach, I would brake down a bit further his videos though.

Then I listen to Jordan Peterson. I am becoming a fan of him, great guy - with his compulsive behaviors, which make him nerdy professor, his straightforwardness, etc. He has positioned himself innerly than outwardly, which shows in every single interviews he does. He does not deviate from it because it is him, the position is complete truth, and it shows everywhere.

For his marketing, the pusblisher does a real great job as well as the Canadian government with its stupid laws and universities with their stupid rules for shutting up professors. By negative advertising, they had him sold millions of books that are now being translated into 40 languages. Jordan did not even expect it, but he took the ball and is running with it.

One think interesting he said was that videos are listened moslty by males, over 70 percent of the time. Astonishing (I must be out of the ordinary). So know that you are reachng males with videos first and foremost, only you do something specific to females.(pretty sure a good part of Goode listeners are women, a feeling, therefore what has he done to reach them)

Anyhow, all this has to be taken into account.

[Innocent Warrior]

The alternative media seems to me, is mirroring the real mainstream media.

Yes it is. It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.* We're adopting the values and practices of the enemy that surrounds us.
* Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome): a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.


It’s an understandable strategy, which means the adaptation will be more readily accepted, as we are seeing now. A few questions that keep swirling around my head..


What is the solution?
How do we tackle this issue without hurting those we want to strengthen?
Have we done this to ourselves by placing too much importance on the messengers and not enough on the message?
Are we ‘fighting a losing battle’ with this issue at this point, is it too far gone?



Good questions. The main problem is this is (at least on the surface) to some degree a matter of aesthetic values. What offends, what pleases, etc. That's not amenable to logic.

Meaning, a highly intelligent, educated person might really like a piece of art that's a gaudy eyesore. Or cheap, low-quality 'music'. Or feel at home surrounded by inner city graffiti, while having no interest in National Parks and the beautiful wilderness.

One needs Emotional Intelligence, and Spiritual Intelligence (not IQ) to appreciate those. This can't be taught. It's a state of deep mind (or maybe, deep spirit).

It rubs off by example. That's how parents can support their children to appreciate real beauty. But it'll never be a class at school.

Here's what I'd show Richard. I hope he may see it. I'd not say anything at all, apart from: Look at this alternative.

http://projectavalon.net/Richard_Dolan_Stand_for_Truth.jpg


In other words, it’s a problem of class, or rather - lack thereof. :)

I’ll add to that, especially in regards to the Stockholm Syndrome issue, that there’s a lack of authenticity and integrity. As Jordan Peterson states in the following short clip, we can withstand suffering without being corrupted by being centred. IMO, the simple exercise Peterson describes in the following clip is the most powerful and immediate way to being in alignment with one’s true self -

SRC2mVNNGhg

[James]

Richard Dolan is definitely one of the preeminent researchers of UAPs, and an all around stand-up guy, so I'm a little surprised at his recent partnership with Pursuing X.

Marketing is the act (and/or art!) of throwing a rock to make a splash in a pond. The act is easy, but the art, not so much!

The choice of rock will determine how the splash will sound - is it a small stone or a heavy boulder? Is it flat? Jagged? Smooth?

How the rock is thrown will also add an influence - is the rock whipped into the pond? Is it tossed? Aimed?

In addition to the sound the rock makes when it hits the water, the type of rock and way of throwing will also govern how the waves ripple from the source of impact.

A jagged heavy rock thrown with a strong arm at a good enough distance will make a meteoric impact that'll be heard across the pond.

I don't see Richard as a jagged heavy rock that needs to be hurled a great distance to produce the desired effects in the market at large - he is a thoughtful, well-studied, articulate, effective individual. This can be better leveraged in a way that doesn't require punchy graphics and an onslaught of force (high frequency video uploads.) Consider Jordan Peterson's web presence.

A Richard-like rock is more shaped/polished, and best thrown with an artful twist, so that the sound it makes when it hits the water is an intellectual snap - with waves that would appear to have been radiated from a much larger, rougher stone thrown with force.

[Bill Ryan]

I was listening to a Joseph P. Farrell talk yesterday and I couldn't help but notice how many times he tempted the listener with the "member only" information. He would talk a small amount about a topic and then refer to the "members only", payed site where one could get more information. So what was once given freely is now monetized, and where money enters the picture there will always be the temptation of corrupting the info or dishing it out slowly to keep the viewers coming. I think that falls under the category of monetizing information.

Last week, Richard Dolan interviewed abduction researcher Dr David Jacobs — whose work I greatly respect and value. The video is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQE6qkwfaGo). The title is (in upper case):

THIS PLANET WILL BE THEIRS.

That's dramatic, and is intended to attract attention. But David sincerely and urgently believes this. He maintains that his very meticulously conducted regression research shows this beyond any doubt. Richard takes him seriously, and the interview is 55 mins long.

It couldn't be a more important topic, if there's even the slightest truth to this.

But here's the rub. Is this entertainment, and/or a product to sell — or vital, essential information for us all to somehow grasp and understand?

At 56:19, at the end of the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQE6qkwfaGo), Richard says:



"To hear David and I continue this conversation, you can go to my website, richarddolanmembers.com, where he and I go quite a bit further with some of the aspects of this discussion."
So. Dr David Jacobs, a VERY smart and grounded researcher with a great deal of experience, has concluded — CONCLUDED, not 'has come to believe' — that the Earth is being covertly taken over, with a goal to colonize the planet and replace us with hybrids.

Listen up. We're being invaded. Sign up and pay, and then we'll tell you more.

***

If anyone's a member, please record the conversation in any way you can, and I'll publish it freely on this new thread (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?105369-THIS-PLANET-WILL-BE-THEIRS-David-Jacobs-conclusion-about-the-ET-agenda).

[WalterBosley]

Yeah. Wow. I guess this is a new way to sell research and analysis or simply opinion without writing pesky books. Think about it. It could be kind of cynical on their part. "Gosh, people are too impatient to read a thought out report of research, findings, analysis and hypothesis and opinion in a format where they can go back and re-read and see data. They just want to hear us say what we think so it's the opinion that's the product not the data or material supporting the opinion. What the hell, let's just market us talking about it and giving our opinions. We've already done enough work on this stuff. Nothing new to find that may alter our conclusions. Make 'em pay for the talk that simply used to be the promotional material...".

I wonder how long Richard will give for this experiment?

[Rhogar]

I was listening to a Joseph P. Farrell talk yesterday and I couldn't help but notice how many times he tempted the listener with the "member only" information. He would talk a small amount about a topic and then refer to the "members only", payed site where one could get more information. So what was once given freely is now monetized, and where money enters the picture there will always be the temptation of corrupting the info or dishing it out slowly to keep the viewers coming. I think that falls under the category of monetizing information.

Last week, Richard Dolan interviewed abduction researcher Dr David Jacobs — whose work I greatly respect and value. The video is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQE6qkwfaGo). The title is (in upper case):

THIS PLANET WILL BE THEIRS.

That's dramatic, and is intended to attract attention. But David sincerely and urgently believes this. He maintains that his very meticulously conducted regression research shows this beyond any doubt. Richard takes him seriously, and the interview is 55 mins long.

It couldn't be a more important topic, if there's even the slightest truth to this.

But here's the rub. Is this entertainment, and/or a product to sell — or vital, essential information for us all to somehow grasp and understand?

At 56:19, at the end of the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQE6qkwfaGo), Richard says:



"To hear David and I continue this conversation, you can go to my website, richarddolanmembers.com, where he and I go quite a bit further with some of the aspects of this discussion."
So. Dr David Jacobs, a VERY smart and grounded researcher with a great deal of experience, has concluded — CONCLUDED, not 'has come to believe' — that the Earth is being covertly taken over, with a goal to colonize the planet and replace us with hybrids.

Listen up. We're being invaded. Sign up and pay, and then we'll tell you more.

***

If anyone's a member, please record the conversation in any way you can, and I'll publish it freely on this new thread (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?105369-THIS-PLANET-WILL-BE-THEIRS-David-Jacobs-conclusion-about-the-ET-agenda).

Woah,never expected this from a person with that amount of intelligence and integrity, i'd hoped the alternative media stays away from the filth and lies that'd taken main stream but it seems to get worse every day.

[Bill Ryan]

i'd hoped the alternative media stays away from the filth and lies that'd taken main stream but it seems to get worse every day.

Yes. As I've mentioned several times, there's a kind of Stockholm Syndrome in play.

The alt media is becoming more and more like the 'enemy' that it vilifies and criticizes. What really concerns me is that many of the alt media personalities that make maximum use of the social media resources at their disposal don't appear to realize this.

[shaberon]

It's quite spooky to me.

I grew up almost right next door to "The Voice of Dissent", which was free, and a fore-runner of the now-internet, in terms of being a place everyone could make public statements about various dissenting views. It was a weekly rag that sold ads for its revenue, but, aside from that, no charge just to read the stuff. However, a lot of published material you would have to pay for, has always been in this category of "I've got something to sell". One I remarked about here before, in 1996, some veterinarian in Colorado put out a book about how Congress skipped repealing some of the emergency banking powers around 1976. Sold this book, went on successful speaking tours, and was true but not complete. The powers were stripped the following year. To this day, people still encounter the idea and believe it.

I spent most of my life training in disciplines that I always intended to pass for free, like a torch, and I've found you can't give the real thing away. You can only sell a sham. There definitely needs to be a free press with real investigative journalism that doesn't follow CIA orders, but what you have is a circus. I've lost the ability to contend with it or really even take any interest. The "alt" people are perhaps even worse, because with the "big guys", it's easy to figure out the agenda and expose it. And they still report truth to some degree, this belief that everything in MSM is a lie or that any military action is a false flag is kind of worn out by now. So I would have to agree, it is more and more like its supposed "enemy" and just turning into another shark tank for dominance.

One of the few I still go to is Information Clearing House, it has nothing to sell. It just collects from several sources, doesn't delve into anything particularly bizzarre, and has a decent comment section where I can still find people with a similar understanding, and sometimes learn a thing or two. Very plain, basic format like Avalon. I'm not likely to visit anything that has flash, blinking lights, sensationalized headlines, etc., which takes care of 90% of everything.

[WalterBosley]

I make a distinction between selling books and stringing people along for bucks. When I release a book, I've put everything there is to convey my points, to present my investigation and analyses, into that book, so when you purchase the 'product', you get the whole story, so to speak. I don't share two chapters for free and then sell the rest piecemeal, which was sort of done in publishing for a century, when you remember serialized pieces. Now when it comes to discussing and promoting said book, I consider that discussion greatly as a promotional marketing tool, i.e. by having the good fortune to be invited to talk about my work, I might motivate a listener to buy the book to explore it further. That discussion should be free to the listener for one very good reason among a few: Money is tight these days, people are particular about what they can spend and where. When you've lured them into a discussion for which they need to pay just to hear, that cuts into their budget. They may not have enough to buy the book, which is really the full story on what's being discussed anyway. Add to that the possibility that the discussion they've paid for ends up disappointing them and they're pissed off they had to spend money to hear two guys' opinions. That leaves the listener less inclined to buy a book. No offense to Richard Dolan or his guests, but neither he nor anyone he's ever had on the show is so brilliant that they're worth paying to hear with the added expectation that, should he or his guests actually have a book that further extrapolates on the discussion, the listener should pay additional for that. The optics are not good there. It's self-defeating for me to do something like that, from my perspective. I'd rather do hours and hours of podcasts and radio interviews that people can hear for free and decide if they want to spend a single dime on any of my works.

The other concern I have, as stated previously, is how soon paywalled interview discussions will be considered the 'work' and researchers might forego books to simply start asking for a piece of the paywall action, treating podcasts like live appearances wherein they present their main points and bullet statements of evidence etc. You could argue that the free media already presents this model ready for monetizing in the hosts some may consider equal to researchers, i.e. the popular host or documentary director somewhat adept at simply coordinating material (other people's work and theories) and their video bits perceived as 'works' of research.

I think what we're seeing here is like real estate. Developers and real estate agents crawl through neighborhoods and areas, looking for plots or houses to turn over and make money. Show biz minded developers and talent rep types have discovered the alt research community and are seeking to develop it the way movies, music and TV have been. This has been more prevalent in the last ten years, since Ancient Aliens has made a bunch of money for The History Channel. I've been on that show and others and am going to be doing my part on a Travel Channel show in January/February, plus I've sold the rights to my Empire of the Wheel books for development as a series. You bet I will do as much TV and movies as offered. Only a fool wouldn't (no matter how 'noble'). There's nothing wrong with any of it. The problem here that we're discussing is twofold: People being asked to pay to hear two guys talk looks pretentious (some might see it as 'greedy', though I don't see it that way). The other problem is that the now paywalled host/personality may lose some listeners/fans and hurt himself.

Personally, I wouldn't paywall my show. I would tell the 'showbiz pro' suggesting it 'No, thank you. I don't mind selling products but I'm not gonna make my listeners pay for what they have been enjoying free all along. I'd feel like a pretentious asshole, so let's move on to the next suggestion, thank you.'

Just my thoughts.

[Bill Ryan]

I do think this wonderful short video belongs here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6y1kc8Equk

Tom Waits is clearly someone (a rare person!) who despises every aspect of sell-your-soul commercialism as much as I do. :)

If only those in the alternative media did as well — who are supposed to (but do they??) espouse all the values and principles we all desperately need for a better, ethical world.

[Bill Ryan]

I've mentioned Alvin Toffler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler)'s seminal and prophetic Future Shock (http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Alvin%20Toffler%20-%20Future%20Shock.pdf), written in 1970, several times in this thread.

Here's the audiobook: :thumbsup:


http://avalonlibrary.net/Future_Shock_Alvin_Toffler_audiobook.mp3

[Bill Ryan]

A minor update here, also taking the opportunity to bump the interesting thread.

I've been listening to Linda Howe's Earthfiles livestreams: her channel is here (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN9WjlKBvjBIm3AWDXI1EUA).

She's no longer using Lori Moriarty (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1256886&viewfull=1#post1256886) (from Pursuing X) as her facilitator/moderator, collecting questions from the chat. She's now working with someone called Peggy, who doesn't feature on the Pursuing X website (http://pursuingx.com).

This is hardly anything major! But it's quite interesting, as this thread started when we became aware that Pursuing X was working closely with both Linda Howe and Richard Dolan. (Richard is still using them.)

After that interesting start, which prompted a reply (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104868-PURSUING-X-Marketing-money-and-manipulation-in-the-Alternative-Media&p=1257031&viewfull=1#post1257031) from Richard himself, the thread morphed to discuss the ethics and problems with internet marketing for alternative platforms.

[Rhogar]

:bump::bump::bump:

It's pretty obvious why this thread is important right now.

[TomKat]

Netanyahu weakened, as protests grow in Israel


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtNGwSCsEZU

it pisses me off that greedy youtubers are embedding their own commercials ("Where's the poop?") in their videos, on top of the youtube videos. So we're watching commercials for commercials.

[arwen]

And it's about 'professional' marketing. Money. Clicks. Quantity. Numbers.

...But man, where is this headed? And I do wonder who else has signed up for this.

I'll write more, as more thoughts come to me. But this is Brave New World level unhealthy.

:bump::bump::bump:

Bumping this thread - as we are seeing now even more where it is going. I call it the "Attention economy". Everyone out there is vying for peoples' attention - everyone - and getting people's attention has become the new economy for financial reward. Attention is currency.

Which utterly contaminates the quality and quantity of information.

I took a break for a while to just enjoy life. I only checked Avalon periodically, which is a rare oasis of pick and choose data.

Yesterday I went back online for a short while to the few social media sites I use - X, Facebook, YouTube. And there was this frenzy of many people I usually like, all energized grasping for attention. It was more noticable after a break. Look at me, hear what I have to say, I have a new insight, theory, opinion!!!!

FRENZY. No, this is not at all healthy.

And we have seen youngsters now doing thefts, rapes online, dressing up as cats and grunting that "ice cream good" - all for clicks and attention on TikTok, X, Facebook, whatever. It is turning us into idiots and monsters. Idiocracy.


An Attention economy is giving me Attention Deficit Disorder. I just find it draining. So I am going back to reading books and learning new skills, and art and craft projects, studying some subjects, and nature, and personal life, and am reducing the number of people I track, much as I love them. Avalon will of course remain my favorite sanctuary because it fits in nicely with my new trajectory.

In this brave new world, now that my attention has become currency for others, I am not going to throw it all around any more than one would throw large amounts of money around in a wild spending spree.

Wondering how everyone else is feeling about this now? And this was brilliantly identified by Bill, absolutely spot on as a syndrome we would have to strategically deal with, one that cannot be ignored, or slid into.

[Bill Ryan]

Wondering how everyone else is feeling about this now?You saved me an update, which I'd been thinking about for a little while. :ROFL:

It's getting worse. For sure. I've now lost count of the number of YouTube clickbait titles (with NO relation to the content!) I've been dumb enough to fall for, and similarly of the sometimes wildly deceptive thumbnail images, all screaming for attention.

And the monetization, and competition for $$$ from viewers, is like a Victorian flea market with everyone yelling at the tops of their voices that passers-by MUST MUST MUST pay attention.

It all seems like a combination of anxiety, narcissism, and desperation.

And sometimes I feel like if I hear one more DON'T FORGET TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE, even from presenters I respect, I'll slam my laptop shut and not open it again till next month. :)

[palehorse]

It may fit very well in this thread

Bill Hicks on marketing (02:42 min)
tHEOGrkhDp0

[Bill Ryan]

:bump::bump::bump: