The Vow
I’m looking for me
You’re looking for you“The Seeker”
The Who
If this was on Netflix it would be the talk of the nation.
Media gets the message last. It fans the flames of the status quo, the breakthroughs always happen on the fringes. Meanwhile, industry, in an effort to maintain its sacred business model, surrounds its actions with hype that the media reports, giving the public a false sense of what is going on, assuming people are paying attention at all, assuming they’re not so deep into their niches that they cannot see what is going on around them, that they do not care what is going on around them.
We live in the binge era. For all the b.s. about the short attention span of the younger generation, nothing could be further from the truth. People want to go deep, they want to marinate in something, and they want no artificial gatekeepers, they want it all and they want it now, or whenever they choose to partake of it. We live in an on demand society, why do TV outlets continue to drip out material?
Worst offender is Apple TV+. Their shows get no traction, they’ve got no hold on the public consciousness. But believing they know better, because they’ve heard from the lackeys from Hollywood they’ve hired, they’ve completely missed the target. When you’re an upstart, when you’re looking for traction, you flood the marketplace with material, you don’t hold back. A superstar can get by with an album a year, but if you’re a wannabe on your way up? You’d better be dropping material constantly, interacting with your audience constantly. Otherwise you’re forgotten. You’re looking for that one hook that will start a conflagration of word of mouth after which newbies will go deep into what you’ve already released. Apple TV+ announces a new series, drops one episode, and then the series is forgotten. TV is not quite like music, as in you don’t have to grab them right away. TV is inherently a deep commitment. The key is to get somebody, anybody, to go all the way through the steps and then spread the word when they’re done, assuming the word is worth spreading. Supposedly “The Morning Show” is good, but the series took a while to build, the public moved on, and it’s hard to bring people back.
“Breaking Bad”? It broke on Netflix, years after it started, people want to binge, to get a sense. But Apple TV+ and HBO are still making us wait a week, HBO beholden to its old business model, all in the effort to build water cooler moments. But that was back when we all worked in an office, before everybody was a freelancer, before people weren’t timed by their bosses to the point they’ve got no free time. Furthermore, word of mouth in real life is a fraction of what it is on the web, you want to start it online, and now when everybody is home…
As for HBO, its problems are well-documented. HBO Max is hampered by being too expensive, the executives being worried about pissing off their cable partners. And sure, disruption usually happens after the initial event, in this case on demand streaming services, but once the new model gains acceptance to ignore it is death. Don’t forget, the public railed when Netflix announced its switch to a streaming format from DVDs by mail. A great company is ahead of the audience, an old, dying company falls behind. Kind of like Exxon, dropped from the Dow…it was so busy lobbying elected officials to maintain the status quo, to keep us in the fossil fuel era, it missed the switch to solar/electric. Tesla is making home batteries, not Exxon. And maybe Exxon had to be more than a fuel provider, maybe it had to use its expertise to make cars or… Or else Exxon needed to prepare for its death. Like Digital First Media’s acquisition and then starvation of local newspapers. They’re dead folks, at least in their current version. But all the old journalists and publishers are nostalgic about the old days and want to prop up a dying business model just like oldsters wanted to prop up the record stores twenty years ago. What happened? They died! You cannot hold back the future, not for long. There is no reason for a local paper to be doing national news. Now, with everything at your fingertips, the local paper has to distinguish itself from its national rivals…but so far, none of them has done this, and they’re all on the way to extinction.
So, HBO Max is lagging in subscriptions. Primarily because it’s too expensive, the company trying to protect its cable partners. Furthermore, HBO Max is unavailable on Roku and Fire platforms, which is like making an album and only having it available on Apple, not Amazon and Spotify too. But the old executives believe they can bend the behavior of the public to suit their will, but that went out the window years ago. If you’re behind the public, you’re dead.
Furthermore, HBO is afraid of cannibalizing its cable product, ending up with a foot in both worlds, which is nowhere. But if the entire nine episodes of “The Vow” were dropped all at once on HBO Max, there would be a reason to sign up for the service. Services are built on hits, different from what came before. “House of Cards” on Netflix, “Hamilton” on Disney+. You’ve got to drop something so hot that it inspires people to watch it and spread the word. As for hype in traditional media…that’s like saying one critic’s review is equal to RottenTomatoes, which it is not. Oh, the creative industry hates RottenTomatoes too, they have an investment in opacity in a world of transparency. How successful would Amazon be without reader reviews? You’d buy a bad product and never purchase from the company again.
So…
The NXIVM cult. What do you know about it? Assuming you know anything at all. That they branded women and there was sex involved. That’s what makes the story enticing, but that’s just the end result of…
We’re looking for answers. You and me, everybody.
It started in the seventies, with EST.
Growing up a baby boomer was very different from growing up today. Oftentimes only one parent worked outside the home. State college was dirt cheap. And you could support yourself on minimum wage, you didn’t feel like you were falling behind if you didn’t initially hop on the corporate bandwagon.
So…
People started to wonder about life, looking for meaning, for answers. Their parents lived through the Depression. Their parents worked to survive. But their progeny, the boomers, they wanted more.
The sixties were a tumultuous age. Which faded quite quickly in the seventies. Nixon was president, the war continued, the boomers licked their wounds, they grew up, they were out of school, they were looking for something, they were looking into themselves. Ergo, the personal development industry.
Credit Tom Wolfe. He wrote the definitive piece in the summer of ’76, he labeled the era “The Me Decade.” You can read the original article here:
Wolfe was a brilliant writer. Not only in analysis, but readability! That’s what made Wolfe a star. You could read what he wrote, it intrigued you. Wolfe excoriated the pretentious “New Yorker,” because it was too reserved, too stuck-up and all read the same. Read it today, he’s still right. Wolfe was edgy in an era of conformity. But this was back when writers were respected. When a great magazine article bled into the national consciousness. And that was a long time ago. Today not only are magazines scrambling, they’re beholden to their readers, they’re dumbed-down entities to sell advertising. One article can break or boost a magazine, but usually that one article doesn’t even exist anymore. However, “The Atlantic” is doing a good job, because it spends money. The pros only work for money, the amateurs will do it for nothing.
So the century turns and you can get your message to everybody, assuming they’re interested. And Keith Raniere builds NXIVM.
But the most amazing thing about NXIVM is nobody knew about it! This would not have happened in the pre-internet era. But in the digital era there are so many stories, so many niches, that what lies in plain sight is rarely amplified. There are not only news niches, but activity niches, belief niches, that have nothing to do with what is going on in Washington, D.C. And you can find your niche on Facebook, but D.C. doesn’t know about it and the media is still caught up in the pre-internet mind-set, i.e. if they don’t write about it it doesn’t exist.
So what you have here is a crook. Just go to Keith Raniere’s Wikipedia page. That’s another thing you don’t want to do today, lie, not if you want to have a public profile. Raniere started with Amway, he was all about multilevel marketing, i.e. pyramid scams. And he got busted, but don’t they tell you in Silicon Valley that failure is a badge of honor, that you’ve just got to try again? Raniere tried again, he came up with NXIVM.
The truth is we live in a lonely society. Used to be you grew up in a burg, everybody knew you and you never lacked for community. Today, you can be in a zillion groups online and still feel lonely as hell. And, for all the anti-tech zealots, the truth is loneliness is the human condition, we’re all looking to connect, and if you provide that, people will jump.
Not me. My father was a skeptic. And usually it’s not the educated who make the leap. But the rich, those whose success is based on the outside not the inside? They’re ready fodder.
So, Raniere creates a system. Filled with charts and a patent application… All to give it a patina of respectability. Now the truth is many entrepreneurs are sociopaths, narcissists, you’ve got to be to stay the course and build your fan base. The average person does not start a cult, just someone slightly deranged with a hole in their heart. And people can be manipulated…remember Mystery and the “Pickup Artist”? Yes, find men who can’t get laid and dupe them into a system which manipulates women and…the truth is it doesn’t work for most followers. And you can convince women to go against their instincts. Well, we’ve got a president who is gaslighting the entire country, that’s not news. But it is news that there are businesses built on this approach, that do not get busted.
So, NXIVM promises to get rid of your fears and unlock your potential. Sounds good, right? And the key is to recruit successful people to sell the message, because you want to be like them, right? Furthermore, they give you the time of day, they’re your friend, suddenly you’re part of a group, your mood improves, you’re having fun…and then you’re all in.
What causes people to go all in? But even more interesting is…when you go all in, how hard is it to go all out? We see this in politics…you can’t change people’s minds, they’ve got too big an investment in their belief system. No matter what you confront them with they will not change, because they will have to admit they wasted time and money and now they’ve got to start all over.
But, NXIVM is all about rich, good-looking people.
It’s also about marketing. That’s the scariest part of episode 3, wherein Raniere teaches his acolytes how to sell. They’re just tools, cogs in his system, he rewards them for signing people up, with both status in the cult and cash, and they think they’ve got a winning formula, as they get ever more insular and move further away from society.
What you have to understand is these cults are attractive! Ever take the Scientology test? It’s always given to you by a newbie who sells you hard, that you need courses, no matter what you answered. And if you join…you can be a member with all these famous people, who will help you get ahead.
I hate to say it, but it’s the same thing with AA. Join AA and the other members will look out for you, not only will they be your friend, they’ll get you jobs.
Meanwhile, life outside the group is hard. Both economically and emotionally.
It’s the essence of religion. Do you want to place faith in a deity, a prophet, in return for a belief system that will organize your life and give you hope as well as fill up your social life, give you a sense of community?
After all, we’re just animals under the skin. We want to belong, we need to belong, and if you discard it all, you’re either an outcast or a leader. Yes, that was the essence of the adulation of the rock stars of yore. They rejected the system, they wanted to do it their way, and they made as much money as anybody and they were not restricted by society’s mores and…you wanted more of that, and you went to the show to hang with your like-minded brethren.
But then, the acts found out that stardom, money and sex, did not fulfill them. And the truth is most uber-successful artists are damaged. So in the late seventies, a lot of them started paying fealty to God, to Jesus. He helped them just like Keith Raniere, like L. Ron Hubbard, and the great thing about Jesus is he would forgive you! And a lot of these stars had a lot to be forgiven for.
But so many of these stars were uneducated. But, in the classic rock era, they were middle class, back when thinking for yourself was a mantra. But as the eighties wore on and income inequality burgeoned only the lower classes got on stage, the odds were too long. The intelligent worked behind the scenes, they knew the talent came and went but they remained. And they were opaque. Which is why the record labels hate digital media, zeros and ones, because their business model was theft, and that’s hard to do when the sun shines in.
The sun ultimately shined on NXIVM. Keith Raniere is in jail.
But don’t watch “The Vow” for the story, that’s missing the point. Yes, the narrative is interesting, but what is truly fascinating is the choices these people made. Would you have done the same? Could you have extricated yourself from the system?
I have not gotten one e-mail about “The Vow,” not a single one. No one has talked to me about it. Today there’s an article in the L.A. “Times” about the directors, but most people I know no longer get the paper, it shriveled itself down to irrelevance, and the truth is the public is sick of hype, which this article is. It’s marketing, little different from Keith Raniere and NXIVM. I need to hear it from a compatriot, from someone without an investment.
Kind of like…
If you live in Los Angeles to this day you’re urged by friends to join the cult. Just come for a free seminar. The Landmark Forum helped them, it can help you! And if you resist too hard, they’ll start cataloging your faults. If you’re not with them, you’re against them. They need to shame you to get involved. You don’t want to be an outsider, do you?
In other words, “The Vow” is the story of America. How we’re all looking for answers, how we all want to join tribes, how we all want to belong, and if you go against the grain you’re a pariah.
Watch it.
