Now how can Big Bopper Bevan not be a raja? Hell, he's the damn prime minister of the global country of hucksterism, he wears the frock and the tiara, how can he not be a raja? -------------------------------------------- On Sat, 10/26/13, TurquoiseB <[email protected]> wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Before evangelizing TM, consider your target audience To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, October 26, 2013, 8:09 AM --- In [email protected], wrote: > > In my experience this is really good market analysis. I think you guys really care. > -Buck Careful, Buck. You *know* what happens to those who dare to disagree with Ms. Authority, especially if she's gone on record as saying that the analyses you think are good are bad, and STOOOPID. Keep this up and you'll become FFL's next stalking victim. :-) But yeah, I think the analysis is spot-on. The TMO's whole marketing strategy is based on a cultist self-importance fantasy -- that the world is filled with people who just can't wait to become Just Like Them. All those unhappy people out there in the world want nothing more than to "evolve" to the level in which they spend four hours a day sitting and grunting and bouncing around on slabs of foam in a big room full of other people Just Like Them. Having paid several thousand dollars for the privilege. Yeah, right. :-) That's a cult fantasy. The world is full of people who *might* be in the market for a simple technique that could improve their lives, and allow them to enjoy them more and be more productive in them. They are *not* in the market for a technique that *eats* their lives and renders them centered on traveling across town like the Eloi marching to the domes of the Morlocks in "The Time Machine" twice a day so they can sit and grunt and bounce and sleep together. And by "sleep together" I mean use the "flying time" to fall asleep, not "sleep together" in the sense of gettin' it on with your cult buddies. There *might* be a market for that; there isn't one for convincing people to spend thousands of their hard-earned dollars to become a classic cultist. You know my position. I don't think the TMO has a ghost of a chance of being able to "bring more people to meditation" any more, because it drags along behind it the stinking corpse of its own bad history and bad reputation. It's like a parade of losers -- in the front is da King, followed by a bunch of Raja-dweebs in their robes and crowns, followed at a discrete, well-mannered, and above all *appropriate* distance by their own wives, the Rajinis, who after all are not evolved enough to walk beside their husbands. Then come the non- Raja-dweebs like Bevan (a towering zeppelin of good health), Hagelin (once considered a scientist and now considered a crackpot), and David Lynch (accurately considered some- thing of a pervert and the essence of gullibility itself). Then come all the hangers-on still clinging to the ideas of self- importance they were brainwashed with by Maharishi, all chanting, "Come to the domes. Join us." Yeah, right. That's gonna happen. John Q. Public is going to look at these nutjobs and think, "Wow...I want to be just like them. Honey, sell the cars...we're going to need the money to pay for our TM-Sidhis courses, so we can go join in the Cosmic Buttbouncing with these other paragons of enlightenment." "Twenty minutes twice a day." "No change to your lifestyle or your beliefs required." "You practice TM not for the time spent in meditation but because of how it enables you to spend your time *not* in meditation more fruitful and productive." That's the way that TM *used* to be marketed. Look at the parade of clowns trying to persuade people to become Just Like Them and *give up their lives* in favor of four or more hours a day of mass butt-bouncing. Kinda makes you think that the original TM marketing phrases from the 60s were a lie, doesn't it? For the clown parade, TM became a "gateway drug" to life as a cultist, not to a better and more productive life by the standards that most people would use to measure one. And now they're like drug pushers on a school playground (literally) trying to entice young, naive students to try TM. "Try it... you'll like it. If you take advantage of the DLF special price, the first one's free." I think that most people are going to perceive this market- ing approach as what it is -- a fraud, perpetrated by cultists whose numbers are dwindling and dying off, and who are becoming increasingly desperate to swell their ranks with new suckers, just like them. Not gonna work. Not gonna happen. > > turq, I'm encouraged by these Gallup findings and I'm > > sure a lot of long term TMers would be also. The ones > > I know are practical, intelligent and compassionate. > > Also I bet a lot of people would love to know about > > and do something for world peace. Maybe whirled > > peas too (-: > > My point is that the "marketing approach" of the TMO is that of > cultists, while pitching their product to non-cultists. Many (including > some of this forum) seem to equate "TMers" with "TM-Sidhas practicing in > a group." They seem to believe that the leap from 20 minutes twice a day > and an average of four hours per day (including travel time) is "No > Biggie," and that everyone that wants to learn TM wants to learn to > butt-bounce and spend that much time away from their real life, too. > > I'm merely pointing out that this is an assumption made by people who > *themselves* in most cases gravitated to the four-hours-a-day lifestyle > after *decades* of indoctrination by the TM movement. They've actually > come to believe that such a schedule is "normal." > > It ain't. And very few people who have...uh...lives will see it that > way, either. They *might* be open to learning a simple, > 20-minutes-twice-a-day relaxation technique, but if the first thing that > happens when they go to a TM center for their followup is that people > start hustling them to learn the Sidhis and do them in a group, they're > gonna smell cult. > > > > > > > Just a note of caution to those who still believe that "If we charge > more/less/enough for TM, they will come," *they* in this case being the > untold millions you think are required to make the world a better place > and who are out there, just waiting for the right TM marketing approach. > Consider who you're talking to, and what *they* believe. > > > > The latest Gallup poll doesn't seem to indicate that John Q. American > Public is quite on the same wavelength that you are. 58% of them > probably wouldn't make it through the "15 day waiting period." The > legalization of marijuana has five times the number of supporters as > Congress does. 63% are unthreatened by homosexual behavior, and 53% > believe that same-sex marriage should be legalized. The > more-puritan-than-the-Puritans lifestyle ethic of many die-hard TMers > just doesn't map to the way that most Americans see the world. > > > > > > > http://www.businessinsider.com/gallup-legal-marijuana-is-more-popular-th\ \ http://www.businessinsider.com/gallup-legal-marijuana-is-more-popular-th\ \ > an-almost-anything-else-2013-10 > http://www.businessinsider.com/gallup-legal-marijuana-is-more-popular-th\ \ http://www.businessinsider.com/gallup-legal-marijuana-is-more-popular-th\ \ > an-almost-anything-else-2013-10 > > > > Me, I find these Gallup findings positive, and hopeful, because > they're *pragmatic*, and on the whole they seem to indicate that > Americans aren't quite the hyper-conservative know-nothings that the Tea > Party and others would have you believe they are. But such pragmatism is > not gonna be appealed to by Woo Woo propaganda about how many Yogic > Flyers can butt-bounce on the head of a pin made of polystyrene foam, > and how that's gonna magically create Whirled Peas. > > > > The thing that would make TM "marketable" again IMO would be a return > to the more pragmatic approach of the late 60s, in which it was marketed > as a simple relaxation technique that would help to make you less > stressed and more productive in your real-world activities. Nobody gives > a shit about enlightenment; if the Gallup organization polled for that > one, my bet is that the percentage of people they'd find who believe it > exists wouldn't crack two digits, and the number who would actually pay > money for it would be a fraction of that. > > > > A non-drug technique that takes only 40 minutes per day and could help > to lower stress levels is marketable. A Woo Woo "gateway drug" that only > seeks to hook people on a path to spending several hours of their day > bouncing on their butts with other people to create Whiled Peas is not. > Just sayin'... > > >
