The saga of the Cult Shopping Network continues. What we are NOT seeing is shouting from the rooftops about the incredible results of this venture. So far we have been regaled with the amazing feat of one woman starting an extension course after being told her illness was psychosomatic and could be cured. It's been on the air for a week now. If the hype was true, we would be seeing pictures of Introductory Courses full of people and Facebook would be filled with local scientologists boasting about how many people are in their org. Nothing in sight. Instead, they keep telling … [Read more...]
CSN TV Tweets
It's Saturday morning and that usually signals another of Terra Cognita's thought-provoking essays. But I am changing things up and have a special surprise for all you Terra fans coming tomorrow and each Sunday for the foreseeable future.Tune in tomorrow to find out... So, for something of the moment, we turn to Cult Shopping Network news. Though I am blocked from experiencing the social media amazingness of scientology's online domination, some of our readers are not. Thanks to Valerie for forwarding some recent tweets that highlight the excellent reception CSN TV has received. And … [Read more...]
Scientology TV Fail
There have been some marvelous takes on scientology tv, and I have included just a few of my favorites here. But there is a HUGE missing piece. If this is the most important and monumental thing in the history of scientology and Miscavige himself "emerged from witness protection" to introduce it, where are the other big names? THE thing that most people know about scientology, above and beyond anything else, is that it has celebrity members. And a bunch of them are even TELEVISION stars. How can scientology TV not have ANY of their celebrities participating? Not even a cameo ad? … [Read more...]
Scientology and TV
Scientology is taking to the airwaves (sort of) tonight. It's interesting times. They put out a press release that resulted in this story in THR: This story highlights just a few of their problems. They have nobody willing to talk to the media, and apparently these days, nobody willing to respond in any way. Not the recipe for success in this field. Every story that mentions scientology tv is going to mention Going Clear and The Aftermath -- that favor will not be returned. Scientology TV is a novelty that will be forgotten fast. A quick scan of the comments on this s … [Read more...]
Scientology Events
They are really getting desperate for people to show up at events. Now they are using something Hubbard said in 1957 about Congresses as if it is somehow speaking about "Int Events." Two things: 1. Int events are NOT Congresses. Nothing like a Congress in fact. 2. I guess whoever sent out this promotional piece is unaware that Hubbard CANCELLED Congresses, stating they "crashed stats" as everyone went off into preparing for, calling in and attending the Congresses and they forgot about training and auditing. As Hubbard would say, they were canceled with an atomic branding … [Read more...]
Where’s The Beef?
This post was prompted by some back and forth with one of our commenters. It got me thinking, and though I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, sometimes I cast a bit of light onto the shadowy world of scientology. I recently posted about the ineffectiveness of the massive investment scientology made into TV advertising. It has resulted in no appreciable increase in interest, though it is somewhat debatable that this is what they even care about rather than providing the latest reason to collect money from their members to buy more ads. But that poses the question: what … [Read more...]
Scientology Advertising Fail
My good friend Shel Goldberg sent this to me. I thought it fascinating. Obviously, scientology has been spending a lot lately on TV commercials. The ad is on youtube and has over 1.8M views so far. Of the 1.8M views, only 297 comments and ZERO likes or dislikes. I've never noticed a youtube video that had no likes or dislikes, unless it had 0 views. The church must be so paranoid of dislikes. I can only imagine. So, in the last 24 hours, the video has been seen by 200K+ as it was about 1.6M yesterday when I first started this research. BUT, yesterday there were also 295 comme … [Read more...]
Fear and Loathing in Clearwater
You may have read or seen others commenting on this recent article by Tracey McManus. Clearwater City Council candidates mum on Scientology’s impact downtown I found the article fascinating (I have included the full text of it below) for a number of reasons. First, EVERYONE in Clearwater knows exactly what the biggest problem facing Clearwater is. The downtown is dead. While neighboring Dunedin, Safety Harbor and even St. Petersburg are flourishing and prospering, Clearwater languishes in the empty storefront doldrums. Yet Clearwater has greater potential for its dow … [Read more...]
Ribbon Yanking Extravaganza
It's a big weekend of ribbon yanking for the Chairman of the Bored. These HAVE to be done this weekend or they will not make it into the March 13th event -- and he doesn't have anything else to hype at that event other than to bring the Sherminator on stage to ramble on with some more fascinating tall tales about the life of LRH, and handing out some awards to pre-ordained winners of the "Birthday Game" (you will see, the ONLY winners allowed now are "ideal"). So, it is absolutely imperative these ribbon yankings were made to happen. After YEARS of endless PR pieces about … [Read more...]
Scientology Tax Exemption — Muffins Strikes Back
Clearly, David Miscavige is feeling the mounting pressure on his most cherished treasure: tax exempt status bestowed on scientology by the IRS in 1993. It takes considerable effort to get a letter published about a relatively obscure subject in a major paper like the LA Times. It is apparently a response to an op-ed piece that ran last November. 3 months of work to get this miserable piece of misleading propaganda to run... Monique "Muffins" Yingling makes a rare appearance to argue on behalf of Miscavige. She has been as out of sight as the COB himself since her fateful appearance on 20/20 … [Read more...]