❀ the cult of: ➥motivational speakers ➥life coaches ➥personal growth gurus ➥new-age charlatans ➥AWESOMENESS FEST

we watched the investigation discovery 'the lost women of nxivm' -- p good, more lurid than the vow complete w/ theorizing the cluster of ladies who had lived w keith to die from cancer could have been via his poisoning them w rat poison

i mean this is more christian than "personal growth" but holy fuck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w--j_hnoDVI

“with the simple push of a button remove all negative thoughts”

https://www.inspirationcube.com/

Keith R had some words the other day and they were stupid.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nxivm-founder-keith-raniere-discusses-his-odious-public-image-in-rare-interview

Last night's Seduced episode reconfirms that it's the better documentary, and Mark Vicente gets his to a strong degree in that one.

Seduced covered more in two hours than The Vow irritatingly danced around in seven hours.

Also, Raniere's being sentenced today.

Report from the court:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/nxivm-victims-confront-sex-cult-leader-keith-raniere-at-sentencing

BREAKING: #NXVIM founder Keither Raniere sentenced to 120 years in prison and $1.75 million fine.

— Pilar Melendez (@pbmelendez) October 27, 2020

Seduced covered more in two hours than The Vow irritatingly danced around in seven hours.

Also, Raniere's being sentenced today.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 8:12 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, the fact that in the vow they don't show the misogynistic/abusive shit in the "curriculum" that mark, sarah and nippy were all peddling for years - and making good money doing so - until the penultimate episode is such bullshit. first ep of seduced you have Keith talking about raping babies.

In addition to the sentence and fine, the federal judge ruled #Raniere is forbidden to contact anyone affiliated with #NXIVM.

Speaking before the sentencing, Raniere said he was "deeply remorseful" for the pain and anger he has caused—but stressed he is innocent of some crimes.

— Pilar Melendez (@pbmelendez) October 27, 2020

"It is true I am not remorseful over the crimes I do not believe I have committed at all. But I am deeply remorseful of all this pain," Raniere said in his statement to the court.

Later he said: “I am truly sorry. It’s still painful.”

— Pilar Melendez (@pbmelendez) October 27, 2020

Exactly — in Seduced, you’re immediately hit with what a predatory misogynistic piece of shit this guy is. In the first four or five hours of The Vow, he’s a goofball who plays volleyball.

xp

in retrospect now the Vow is utterly bewildering to me. Hours of focus on irrelevant parts of this story. Loads of repeated footage. And avoiding getting around to the point until nearly the end, and even then, being vague about a lot of it. The filmmakers were ex-NIXVM members, no? Maybe they are just too close to the material to understand what other people find compelling.

yeah it's a bizarre series. 9 hours when it could have been half that.

also yes, started Seduced last night. Part of what it has going for it is that India Oxenberg is a more interesting person to listen to than Mark and Bonnie. I though Sarah was the most interesting person in the Vow but felt the doc focused too much on Mark near the end. Mark reminds me of someone I met in college; smart, engaging, but something off. He was a religious studies major so maybe it goes with the territory.

I mean the real problem is that you could just as easily see Mark leading his own cult.

i watched it in real time and thought it was going to be only 4 hours... thought i had read that somewhere or something. havent watched an episode since and dont think i will. coulda been good with the right editor.

Seduced is 4 hours. Vow is 9. Feels like 900.

India Oxenberg on the sentencing

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/10/keith-raniere-nxivm-india-oxenberg-court

inspiration cube is not a cube!

it's a cube of the MIND

So here’s a bizarre NXIVM artifact that ex-ilxor gr8080 & slutsky) found ...

I’ll quote gr8080 bc he summarized it better than I can

“In 2008 NXIVM sponsored an a cappella festival where college a cappella groups from all over the country to network, see performances by world renowned a cappella groups, and ostensibly participate in workshops and clinics, but a lot of participants felt like the whole thing was off and possibly a recruiting scheme

This is the a capella world’s premiere internet message board, and EVERYONE shows up - Vicente, Raniere, Claire Bronfman, Alison Mack, all of them

“2020 sex cult documentary but make it vintage ILX””

it literally is like reading the documentary filtered through an acapella board’s experience
...though forewarning, it’s 200+ posts long 😬

https://web.archive.org/web/20101109232011/http://forums.casa.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4412

wow

also towards the end this guy Deke Sharon kinda goes toe to toe challenging Keith & eventually the thread ends with Deke saying he wont have anything more to do w this acapella group at all bc of nxivms involvement

reading it i was like, huh, that’s ballsy

turns out he is Kind of A Big Deal tm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deke_Sharon

This woman also posted in that thread:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Malkoff

Dug around a bit and:

Waaay too complicated to tweet. Will have to email you. But I (personally) have had conversations w/Keith where he tries to refute my suggestion that NXIVM is a cult (and this was in 2008).

— Amy Malkoff (@amalkoff) October 17, 2020

wild thread, thanks for sharing... here is the nxivm a capella group. love the comment 'wow... this sucks!' it is quite bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrnOaQG7Tgk

I read that entire thing, my goodness, and I just want to say that Deke Sharon is an utter boss and I seriously recommend reading the thread just to get a master class in how to be polite but authoritatively firm when people are trying to snake around your boundaries.

the thread was tl;dr but deke was being very thorough in his responses

There's also a great B story about a capella bros shitting in the dresser drawers, seriously, people, it's worth your time

otm
Bingamton Crosbys are the real heroes

^^ yes

gr80 have you tracked this one down yet:

Online you can see him posting repeatedly in another forum (HiIQ topic) and being chatty.

I felt like the final episode of Seduced was about 1000x more informative, powerful, and impactful than all 9 hours of the Vow. I know some people are poo-poohing India and think this is meant to rehab her image; certainly there's a part of that, but it seems evident to me that she's a victim. Cult shit is tricky, it's too easy to say she was 100% complicit. I really like all the women with whom she gave that presentation to the law school. Seemed like some fairly strong hints in it that everyone thinks Scientology needs to be tackled next.

they really said “no guatemalans, just vibes 🥰✨” pic.twitter.com/uv3L6FrZqW

— ratty tooey ☭ (@200mgedible) March 21, 2021

not going to say i hope someone there gets kidnapped and held for ransom but im not going to say the inverse

Just started in on this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKtbJvL2xWI

If I didn't know the T3@l Sw@n cult was real, I'd assume it was fake. It's that far out.

Omg. Someone I have mutual friends with posted a long, weird thread defending this person. Something about how TS is an "energetic mirror" so if you think she's psycho it means YOU'RE psycho.

Wow look at the YouTube comments

she needs to make herself waaayyy less accessible, appearing only briefly in an upstairs window once a week

That's how you run a dangerous yet highly profitable cult

ok, I watched half an hour of that show over lunch and that lady crazy

having listened to podcasts/and having read about some incredibly weird utah-based "therapies" that kids were subjected to, I have no doubt some incredibly fucked up things happened to her as a kid, though

apparently she then consulted with the recovered memories/satanic cult therapist afterward? good lord

this is a zillion hours long but, oh boy
T3@l Sw@n childhood friend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY04M9tNEq0

Turquoise Falcon
Fuschia Egret
Lavender Seahawk
Mauve Albatross
...man, I'm never gonna get my cult off the ground...

"If I didn't know the T3@l Sw@n cult was real, I'd assume it was fake. It's that far out."

My first thought was "what has Tilda Swinton done wrong, and why do we have to censor her name".

listening to that long interview with the friend. ummm holy shit!

highly recommend The Gateway podcast from 2018 (6 parts, produced by Gizmodo iirc) - it’s the original reporting that the hulu documentary series is based on, by the same reporter Jennings Brown

+1
but it's like i pay so little attention to some podcasts that i thought she was done for in the end. it was just like whatever?

i listen to fewer such things now

as weird & suspect & fuckin snake-oily as t3@l absolutely is, for me the interview w the husband of leslie, her first client who committed suicide, is still a HUGE red flag that haunts me

faux-affable hippies are like an entire category of red flag in and of themselves

highly recommend The Gateway podcast from 2018

+1 again on this - there's some minor talk about it upthread. The Conspirituality podcast (worth a listen, just not every episode) recently interviewed Jennings Brown about the aftermath of both the podcast and the new series.

not sure if I can watch much of this hulu series, because having known some people with, hypothetically, undiagnosed personality disorders, I’m just internally screaming “red flag! red flag!” every few minutes

Yeah when someone asks if there's anyone that can call you on your bullshit and you say no ... not being able to walk the talk is one thing. Not being able to talk the talk ...