At first I ignored it as an anomaly, when the COS (Crimewave of Scientology) got rid of Tommy Davis as the international spokesperson and replaced him with……..NOBODY!
Anybody that they put out there to protect Scientology has to read the bad stuff about Scientology in order to combat the negative press." Eventually any normal person will realize this stuff is true and will leave.
That is what happened to Tory Magoo.
The only thing they can do now is to hire an outside PR firm that is not made up of Scientologists. This PR firm should also have to be made up of lawyers so that there is client confidentiality.
In marketing you have to fill the vacuum. You have to get out there. You have to get in people's minds in a good way. You have to dominate "mind share" or "mental real estate" in your industry in a positive way. Otherwise someone else, a competitor, will fill the vacuum.
You don't do that by hiding, putting up big impenetrable walls, withdrawing, not getting in front of the microphone during a crisis, not speaking or blogging to your market in their language and constantly. And most importantly, you have to be a real person.
...
What is happening? Is the cult conceding defeat on the Internet?
Not exactly. They're just following basic policy, a strategic retreat to better fighting grounds. So both "yes" and "no".
Working on the premise "do as was done successfully before", the first rule of handling a hostile PR situation is to "find a safe place from which to communicate". It has worked wonderfully in the past, and is a good rule to follow. There have been plenty of bad PR campaigns in the past that "ought" to have destroyed Scientology in some self-assumed genius's opinion, yet it persists and should be expected to for decades, in part because fundamental rules it follows to preserve itself are very workable. Containment of it to as few new members as possible, not destruction of it, is the only realistic goal.
An example of "first find a safe space from which to communicate" is the old practice of hiring a hotel meeting hall for a press conference in the face of a PR disaster. You can exclude whoever you please from it, so hecklers can't interrupt the spiel to selected press. Pre-internet, an incident likely to give major bad press to the church, like the U.S. FBI raid in the 70's, would be responded to by holding a press conference in a hired hotel meeting room, totally under control of the hiring party, and they were NOT shy about excluding reporters who they didn't feel would give them a shot at a good story. They often worked considerable beneficial operations by simply taking this first step rather than someone like Heber tyring to be personally brilliant on the sidewalk with the press, where he could be interrupted or heckled or whatever.
A modern equivalent is to rely more on email and pm's than publicly broadcast messages in recruiting people, such as by bulletin boards, etc. It's the digital equivalent of renting a hotel room to meet at.
Scientology is like recreational drugs. No matter how much people speak against drug abuse and the ruin drug abuse might cause in your life being fully demonstrable and understood by a person of ordinary intelligence, people nevertheless give it a try and get hooked. There are actual effects drugs create that aren't encompassed by a lot of yak-yak-yak about drugs. Experiences can dominate the decision making no matter negative the press level. The long lesson in the war on drugs, and people really ought to understand it applies to Scientology to, is that you can't win it if you don't acknowledge that there is some experiential aspect of it that negative and smugly self-assured yammer-yammer-yammer won't touch. People become Scientologists not because of what they think about it intellectually, but because of some experiential results they encounter when trying it out, just as people become marijuana smokers not because of weighing in the balance pro and con arguments for weed, but because of what they feel from having used it.
So the plan to overcome current bad PR environments means you first find a safe space on the internet from which to communicate, or only use the net to lure people into other safe spaces, and communicate from there. It's a falling-off-a-log simple rule that has long been followed by the church, and will be followed for decades to come. The experiential encounter of Scientology is what matters, and a good experience in early course can negate a vast amount of yadda-yadda-yadda from people who arrogantly hold forth that they know everything and anyone is stupid for not listening to their anti-Scientology mutterings. It's just like how high school aged loadies become such - all the warnings they've received before sound stupid and trivial in the face of the actual experience of THC hitting the organism.
I remember how smugly self-assured people on a.r.s., nearly two decades ago, used to respond derisively when I warned them that the church won't be going away for decades still. And furthermore, warned that their smug and arrogant approach would only win them victories with people already struggling with the question of whether they wished to continue in Scientology, so they should expect the core of it to last decades, no matter how often self-appointed geniuses kept saying the next big trick by clambakers is going to wipe them out. Scientology was born with a hostile PR environment like a pair of strangler's hands around its neck, and it is built to endure a very hostile environment yet grow in it. Smug self-approving thoughts to the contrary are a waste of time.
It's all for the greatest good.
The Anabaptist Jacques

Can anyone confirm the hotel location -- Florida or London -- where John Sweeney interviews the celebs?
Here's why I ask:
November 2006 -- Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes wedding in Italy. At the reception, Leah Remini and Tommy Davis have the "you don't have the effing rank" exchange. KR's were immediately sent. Thereafter, Leah Remini is reported to have undergone 3 months of sec checks in Florida, costing $300k.
May 14, 2007 -- BBC's Panorama episode, "Scientology And Me" was broadcast. (Without the celeb interviews included.)
(Co$ released the video clip of Mr. Sweeney 'flipping out' on May 10, 2007. Epic fail, Co$.)
The celeb interviews with John Sweeney were presumably filmed weeks?/days? before the show aired -- and, as HH noted, it is Tommy Davis who interrupts before Leah Remini answers Mr. Sweeney's question.
Was Leah Remini already in Florida doing her sec checks over the TC/KH wedding incident? Or did she have to fly to London? Or, had the sec checks not yet begun?
JB
Not exactly. They're just following basic policy, a strategic retreat to better fighting grounds. So both "yes" and "no".
Working on the premise "do as was done successfully before", the first rule of handling a hostile PR situation is to "find a safe place from which to communicate". It has worked wonderfully in the past, and is a good rule to follow. There have been plenty of bad PR campaigns in the past that "ought" to have destroyed Scientology in some self-assumed genius's opinion, yet it persists and should be expected to for decades, in part because fundamental rules it follows to preserve itself are very workable. Containment of it to as few new members as possible, not destruction of it, is the only realistic goal.
An example of "first find a safe space from which to communicate" is the old practice of hiring a hotel meeting hall for a press conference in the face of a PR disaster. You can exclude whoever you please from it, so hecklers can't interrupt the spiel to selected press. Pre-internet, an incident likely to give major bad press to the church, like the U.S. FBI raid in the 70's, would be responded to by holding a press conference in a hired hotel meeting room, totally under control of the hiring party, and they were NOT shy about excluding reporters who they didn't feel would give them a shot at a good story. They often worked considerable beneficial operations by simply taking this first step rather than someone like Heber tyring to be personally brilliant on the sidewalk with the press, where he could be interrupted or heckled or whatever.
A modern equivalent is to rely more on email and pm's than publicly broadcast messages in recruiting people, such as by bulletin boards, etc. It's the digital equivalent of renting a hotel room to meet at.
Scientology is like recreational drugs. No matter how much people speak against drug abuse and the ruin drug abuse might cause in your life being fully demonstrable and understood by a person of ordinary intelligence, people nevertheless give it a try and get hooked. There are actual effects drugs create that aren't encompassed by a lot of yak-yak-yak about drugs. Experiences can dominate the decision making no matter negative the press level. The long lesson in the war on drugs, and people really ought to understand it applies to Scientology to, is that you can't win it if you don't acknowledge that there is some experiential aspect of it that negative and smugly self-assured yammer-yammer-yammer won't touch. People become Scientologists not because of what they think about it intellectually, but because of some experiential results they encounter when trying it out, just as people become marijuana smokers not because of weighing in the balance pro and con arguments for weed, but because of what they feel from having used it.
So the plan to overcome current bad PR environments means you first find a safe space on the internet from which to communicate, or only use the net to lure people into other safe spaces, and communicate from there. It's a falling-off-a-log simple rule that has long been followed by the church, and will be followed for decades to come. The experiential encounter of Scientology is what matters, and a good experience in early course can negate a vast amount of yadda-yadda-yadda from people who arrogantly hold forth that they know everything and anyone is stupid for not listening to their anti-Scientology mutterings. It's just like how high school aged loadies become such - all the warnings they've received before sound stupid and trivial in the face of the actual experience of THC hitting the organism.
I remember how smugly self-assured people on a.r.s., nearly two decades ago, used to respond derisively when I warned them that the church won't be going away for decades still. And furthermore, warned that their smug and arrogant approach would only win them victories with people already struggling with the question of whether they wished to continue in Scientology, so they should expect the core of it to last decades, no matter how often self-appointed geniuses kept saying the next big trick by clambakers is going to wipe them out. Scientology was born with a hostile PR environment like a pair of strangler's hands around its neck, and it is built to endure a very hostile environment yet grow in it. Smug self-approving thoughts to the contrary are a waste of time.





Good detective work, sir!
Rinder would know all the details. Did you notice him lurking off to the side, looking like an RPF wraith?
I am actually happy that Tommy interrupted Leah for two reasons:
* I really like Leah, first met her when she was a little kid. I wouldn't want to see her captured on film demonstrating TR-L. Thank God Davis didn't trust her to answer with acceptable lies (which is a huge plus for her! LOL)
* It adds another spellbinding entry into the Tommy Davis portfolio of pricelessly pathetic pundrity! And it's a 2-For-1 deal, to boot! Not only does he lie his sanctimonious cult ass off--but he simultaneously uses Introversion-Tech, calculated to Gaslight Sweeney into submission. Let's review his tryptych-of-terror one more time, just for fun. . .
TOMMY DAVIS
1) I already answered that. 2) I told you none of us know what you are talking about.
3) It's weird! It makes you look weird!"
Until the cult gets a modern day Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks in front of the camera, they are going to continue losing members and positive media spin as fast as BTs being blown out of a volcano.
Suits me.
Still, I think a Scientological equivalent of the Third Law of Thermodynamics (the temperature absolute zero cannot be attained) applies: Given a single coin in the pocket of a single person with a phone, absolutely zero reg calls cannot be attained.
They've always been heaviest on the phone. How the mark was lured to give up the phone number in the first place has varied over time, and has often been subject to wastefully inefficient means of acquisition, but it is the phone call that keeps the fuel pumping into Scientology anyhow.
Seriously, the dismal rewards of mass mailing and other forms of mass advertising are well known to almost all hucksters, and Scientology can be seen to be constantly striking out in trying it over the decades, as an analogy to its present lameness online. But somehow enough phone numbers to dial have always been obtained and it has kept itself alive despite being so hard pressed to do well with mass advertising. The mass media in use has never been crucial to Scientology, therefore, because they've always been expensive drains and a losing proposition to rely on, except to the extent they yielded of trickle of usable phone numbers from time to time.
It's the phone that matters in 1963 and in 2013. It's a safe space from which to speak, the phone call. They only need a trickle to stay alive.
Suits me.
Still, I think a Scientological equivalent of the Third Law of Thermodynamics (the temperature absolute zero cannot be attained) applies: Given a single coin in the pocket of a single person with a phone, absolutely zero reg calls cannot be attained.
They've always been heaviest on the phone. How the mark was lured to give up the phone number in the first place has varied over time, and has often been subject to wastefully inefficient means of acquisition, but it is the phone call that keeps the fuel pumping into Scientology anyhow.
Seriously, the dismal rewards of mass mailing and other forms of mass advertising are well known to almost all hucksters, and Scientology can be seen to be constantly striking out in trying it over the decades, as an analogy to its present lameness online. But somehow enough phone numbers to dial have always been obtained and it has kept itself alive despite being so hard pressed to do well with mass advertising. The mass media in use has never been crucial to Scientology, therefore, because they've always been expensive drains and a losing proposition to rely on, except to the extent they yielded a trickle of usable phone numbers from time to time.
It's the phone that matters in 1963 and in 2013. It's a safe space from which to speak, the phone call. They only need a trickle to stay alive. If their internet presence is rotten but they get a trickle of phone numbers, they live.
Suits me.
Still, I think a Scientological equivalent of the Third Law of Thermodynamics (the temperature absolute zero cannot be attained) applies: Given a single coin in the pocket of a single person with a phone, absolutely zero reg calls cannot be attained.
They've always been heaviest on the phone. How the mark was lured to give up the phone number in the first place has varied over time, and has often been subject to wastefully inefficient means of acquisition, but it is the phone call that keeps the fuel pumping into Scientology anyhow.
Seriously, the dismal rewards of mass mailing and other forms of mass advertising are well known to almost all hucksters, and Scientology can be seen to be constantly striking out in trying it over the decades, as an analogy to its present lameness online. But somehow enough phone numbers to dial have always been obtained and it has kept itself alive despite being so hard pressed to do well with mass advertising. The mass media in use has never been crucial to Scientology, therefore, because they've always been expensive drains and a losing proposition to rely on, except to the extent they yielded a trickle of usable phone numbers from time to time.
It's the phone that matters in 1963 and in 2013. It's a safe space from which to speak, the phone call. They only need a trickle to stay alive. If their internet presence is rotten but they get a trickle of phone numbers, they live.
It might just be a tweaked search engine algorythm. You were signed in to google/youtube. Past history reveals you prefer watching entheta to thetaand thus you only get served the good stuff.
Try signing out of all your accounts and see what search results you get.
...
SOS? (no, not Science of Survival)
Signs of Surrender?
Is the cult of Scientology showing signs that they are surrendering and giving up the fight against the worldwide SP media?
At first I ignored it as an anomaly, when the COS (Crimewave of Scientology) got rid of Tommy Davis as the international spokesperson and replaced him with……..NOBODY! LOL. Now all they do is just release written denials by a faceless cult attorney. They are very likely the first billion dollar organization in the history of the world where every single one of their members is afraid to get up and speak in front of a camera.
But, then today I noticed something truly bizarre. I YouTubed "SCIENTOLOGY" and there wasn't one single cult link, website or banner that appeared on the front page. The first twenty (20) results were all anti-Scientology. Every single one of them! Here, take a look for yourself. . .
but the internets are so insidious.
like, i have friends in the uk, and their googles on random stuff come up completely different to mine.
i would like to ask a uk friend, who i have not tainted with my anti scientology agenda to do a search.
but i don't know if i have any.
i just want to know what an internet virgin would get as a result for scientology?
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What is happening? Is the cult conceding defeat on the Internet?
Somehow, this doesn't seem like an example of "Total Cause Over Life". LOL
..
A note on YouTube.
Searches for "Scientology" used to show up a ton of those awful TESTIMONIAL ADS with glowing Scientologist in closeup, using the ARC Triangle to mock up sounding like they believed a "normal person" would speak.
Then they would give their "hey-I'm-just-like-you-people!" pitch about how the tech saved them. The problem with those videos was that they were all eerily scripted and shot the same way so that after you saw a couple, you got creeped out at the calculated sameness.
And then there was that awful triumphant game show music playing throughout.
And the mocked up exhilaration.
And the ever-present mystery sandwich.
And the abysmally atrocious adjectives & analogies.
Just the standard cult-crazy.
I guess they scared wogs away because they are not using these videos any more.
Get ready to cringe………………...
[video=youtube;oXVSrmmqP-c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXVSrmmqP-c[/video]