§ê¢rꆧ wrote:I think you are are on to something ... that's how the big-time operators operate, by selling the right to use something that is not *really* theirs in the first place. Glad you didn't go thru with it though, that's a pretty lowly traveller scam. Save your scamming genius for corporations!
I don't know why I can't bring myself to pull off one of these. Like this dude:
old dude sells some pretty cool magnet gear, actuallyScam Treatise 001: AlternahealthShame is, dude has a bunch of fanboys all over the internet, just like the Speed Seduction people. Motherfucker is so shameless he bought the top search result for his name with "scam" added to the end. Anyway here's my three-step speed seduction technique, TOTALLY FREE, if you act now:
1. Go to bar frequented by single men/women
2. Keep drinking. Use stimulants in bathroom if necessary/desired
3. Make eye contact with attractive individual, see if he/she shows continued interest
4. Introduce yourself ("hi"--no lines)
Oh shit, I put in the secret fourth step. That'll be $1500.
It's not b/c I have a conscience, that's for sure, not in this regard. Seriously. It's more one of those things were I feel like my energy is better directed towards more boring goals. I mean, I could book $500/day Dale Carnegie meets L. Ron Hubbard scenarios. I'm not above it, and I'm pretty good at faking shit like that. And to be honest, if you've ever worked in any support capacity at a legit conference run by a legit organization that provides an actual service besides selling services that sell services about marketing products that are about marketing SEO4TW4EVR!!11!11 etc; you know that the legit organizations aren't really provided anything that much better than the charlatans, just charging a shitload and not getting criticized by people like me.
I actually felt bad about it for a while. Then, suddenly, I realized: I'm making more money at a soulless, square corporate job than these snake-oil salesmen are, and definitely making more than their fanboy friends. I'm not now (see "boring goals," like education and a stable home life, above)--but I was.
That was kind of it. Walls in my mind came crashing down. I realized these people only seemed authoritative b/c they had -.com after their names. They found a legion of supporters b/c people really want hope. Their supporters found affirmations in the constant, never-ending way that the word "marketing" gets thrown around in the United States, because we make so little shit besides RFPs anymore, and even worse, on the internet, where you're not "unemployed," you're a "design professional". And they all want to believe that a vibration machine will have the same impact on their health as doing vomit-inducing Tabata intervals. They want to believe that negative thinking, not a toxic and despoiled planet, not a lifetime of abuse, not the jury-rigged-by-evolution nature of the immune system, cause cancer. They want to believe that spending $1200 to learn how to make money will cause money to appear when really all the advice in that regard is freely available.
And more than that what they need most is community. Not a leader necessarily, but having a central organizer helps. They want to have conferences where they can share eccentricities openly, where they can talk about "creating their own reality through intention" and be taken seriously. They want to hear that the best way to get rich isn't to start a bank, they want to know that they don't need a JD or an MBA to earn more, just positive thinking.
But let's get back to fucking reality. Not Snakeoilland Reality, where the charlatans come to believe they have a sanctified mission to bilk people. Dude at the link really believes he has a mission to teach people that it's okay to charge $1200 for a seminar b/c it's part of the eternal flow of universal energy (some old dude talked about "universal equivalent," but I can't remember who it was right now and why it sounds suspiciously familiar). That's Snakeoilland Reality. In really-existing reality, resources are distributed according to wealth and wealth happens to be a limited resource currently tied, 100%, completely and intimately, with debt--i.e., with an agreement that the productive factor of your labor that you do retain will go to line someone else's pocket. Doesn't matter what end you receive--every bill is debt-backed, and all debt is a claim to the product of someone else's work.
In other words, Snakeoilland is really half-asleep. Deepak Chopra can talk about "exchange" being "universal" but what I'll say is exchange carries the whip of market discipline and will not hesitate to use it. That's the real thing going on there. The charlatans and their followers are the true believers in a kindler, gentler world--one not borne out by evidence. I know people whose net worth has depreciated 60% in a few days and who have never recovered financially. It's not negative thoughts they have about money, or their conscious that puts them there--it's just the way the fucking thing works. It's got teeth.
So maybe this is a long way of saying--I can't fake it. Come to my $20,000 wealth seminar, and on day one, I'll show you a couple slides of car wrecks, of amputees who don't go on to win marathons and of traders collapsing on exchange floors. Not as a scared straight deal. As an attempt to lift the veil. There's no fucking secret. Look at what really happens. Look at it. Go out and pull off a Scarface-style ascent. Maybe you'll start an empire and live in hot-tubs--maybe you'll run into someone's chainsaw. That's my wealth secret. I could tell you to balance your budget, live beneath your means, calculate your risk tolerance, go to law school, get a job in weapon sales. I could tell you that the wealthiest people around today are computer geeks, and they came from wealthy families to start, and had easily nearly all the heavy work of their industries done on the taxpayer's dime by the military. I could tell you that the famous robber barons got rich off insider trading and even admitted as much explicitly. I could tell you that I have more respect for those white collar criminals who at least have the intestitinal fortitude to break the law when the swindle people, as opposed to the purveyors of quackery who only ask that people submit their health and wallets to inefficacious, often-toxic treatments and to miracle chemtrails cures. I could tell you that if you can come up with some retarded, simple-minded platitudes, and wrap it up in a brightly-colored but non-threatening wrapper full of other platitudes about health and mind-cure and all sorts of bullshit that is so culturally-bound, not "universal," that it'd get you laughed out of most of the world if not outright flogged, that people would pay you for it.
But you already know all that. You might want your $20,000 back. Look at me, I'm being negative right now. I should go start a website devoted to soliciting money for no real value or service, rather than complain about it. But you know the other reason?
How long would it take to code this shit? Eight hours? Ten? Four of testing across browsers and platforms? A couple phone calls etc.? How long would that all take? Twenty hours? Factor by 2, then by 2 again. Eighty? Two week's work? That's a couple weekends. A month at four hours a day on weekdays. Easy, right? You know what? There's more important things out there. And by more important, I mean, things like mowing the lawn. Fixing the car motor. Putting flea repellent on the cats. Looking at old photographs. Getting stoned. Working a real job.
Or it might just be that I can't find a scam that resolves well with my aesthetic. Fatback Extract to Cure Morgellon's and TI? Amphetamine-manufacturing time-travelling robots that conjure up alien abduction dreams that rescue kittens from the pound?
But life is hard. If you can't get a helmet, you can wrap yourself in the cotton candy of confusionism.
Maybe I can post this to a blog. "Learn the Top Three Secrets of Spotting a Scam for Just $99.49! The million-dollar secrets professionals use that can save you thousands for the cost of less than a family outing at a nice restaurant!" and then coat the page in a layer of Russian-mob-run bot-net scripts to spread rootkits that only target Mac ("What's a rootkid? Is that like Garage Band?")
