Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Universe is a Giant Vibrating ATM

I just read an excellent article written by Greg Beato , a contributor to dozens of publications including SPIN, Wired, Business 2.0, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the April 2007 edition of Reason Magazine, Greg writes a piece called, "The Secret of The Secret: A cult self-help DVD fleeces the credulous.

My favorite quote from the article:

"And that's The Secret's real secret, of course: It gets people to behave irrationally."


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"If drudgery is not found somewhere in a book or course, it isn't worth reading. Of all great works nine tenths must be drudgery."
-- Russell Conwell

Calista McKnight
http://www.thesecretlie.com/

4 comments:

Cosmic Connie said...

Thanks for providing this link, Calista. (Makes me realize how much I miss "Reason" magazine; it's been a while since I subscribed.) That article is so full of good quotations it's hard for me to pick out a favorite. But I do like the fact that the author used the word "hucksters" several times...though I imagine that will raise the ire of the "respected experts" who starred in the infomercial.

Calista McKnight said...

Thank YOU Connie, for your wonderful blog and insight.

I really do feel the critics are having an impact. Not on sales of The Secret, which would be a futile attempt anyway, but on making the Secret teachers "come clean."

I see evidence of this everyday.
There's a ton of back peddling going on. All of a sudden, we're hearing a lot of , "well I didn't mean that", or "you're taking The Secret out of context" and "it's not the type of miracle you'd expect" and so on and so on.

And it ain't no accident....

They, the "New-Wage", "hustledorks", as you so aptly put it, attracted all of this on their own.

Cosmic Connie said...

Thanks, Calista. And you're right about the back-pedaling. Or, actually, "back peddling" is more correct, come to think of it, since the hucksters are "peddling" their own "secrets" that will help their marks truly take advantage of "The Secret!"

Calista McKnight said...

LOL!

Yes, I meant to say back "pedaling".

I was just writing another post and I noticed I used "peddling" in there too. Maybe it's one of those subconscious slips..

Anyway, this is all just way too much fun.