I read 'go ask alice' as a teenager and even back then i found it blatantly fiction, watching a pretty-with-curls little darling degenerate into a sweary brat wasn't plausible.
I don't like being lied to, not like this and not by the coppas (I'm a brit) who came round to our school to give us The Drugs Talk. In a limited sense, when I became an adult (and a lot later), I was less afraid to experiment with drugs because of the one-sidedness of my drugs so-called 'education'. I guess it worked on some other kids though.
> the state is estimated by some to boast a Ponzi scheme for every hundred thousand people
Sorry but looking up the state population that's got to be way, way too low. I'd say 1:10k at the least! But so many of them are ad hoc and built on the back of business affinity relationships. (By the time you hear about them from your assigned ministering brother or sister, it's too late and the ground floor has been marbled over. :D)
>By the time you hear about them from your assigned ministering brother or sister, it's too late and the ground floor has been marbled over.
I was working at a concrete making place, and during lunch break the chief was talking about getting in on a Ponzi scheme, and he said "It's a ponzi scheme but if you're getting in at the beginning it's a good idea." to which his main guys in our group nodded sagely and I masterfully managed to keep from laughing.
The podcast You’re Wrong About recently did a three-part series on Go Ask Alice with Carmen Maria Machado. Episodes are here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270 or pull them down in your favorite podcatcher.
Years ago I had a rough but working prototype where people could submit individual podcast episodes that would then get assembled into a “best of“ feed. Now that podcasts have taken off, maybe it’s time to dust that project off!
I’d thought of doing something like that myself ages ago. I had conceived of a curated feed that would alternate a brief introductory episode saying what was cool about what’s next in the feed and then the episode (served off the original podcast’s URL).
What are you interested in? I have a fairly large list of podcasts that I listen to, I could maybe recommend a few. Sadly, many have wrapped up but the feeds are still up.
I really enjoy Dark net diaries. Im searhing for more "tech stories". Less how they scaled a business more how they scaled the cluster while the DC was on fire.
> Emerson sees Sparks chiefly as an impostor, but she comes across as a true believer, both in evil and in her capacity to combat it by scaring teen-agers straight.
Imposter vs. True Believer: evil schemer or naive righteous soccer mom...
Mmm... Or maybe she was... an artist?!
I find it quite shocking and incredible that still today, she's casually dismissed as a fabricator. Every fiction is a fabrication. That's what artists do; that's the original meaning of the word "poetry": to make [0].
The fact that publishers decided to market that fiction as a true testimonial is irrelevant. (It is mentioned in the article that the "impostor"/anonymous part was the idea of the publisher, and that Sparks only reluctantly agreed.)
It's possible her ultimate motive was to save teenagers from the perils of drugs, but in the process she created works that obviously resonated with a lot of people. How hard would it be to respect her a little.
I agree with your characterization of fiction and poetry. There have been many writers who wrote fictional diaries (e.g. Max Frisch' Stiller) and other (real) diaries that entered the realm of literature (e.g. the diaries of Anne Frank).
I'd say where most people would draw the line is when someone tries to sell something as autobiographic that has been clearly made up for moralist reasons, yet still lie about it's authenticity.
This has nothing to do with the book, and everything to do with the person who pretends to have lived a live that they have not.
In the end the artwork can sometimes be more wise, intelligent and impactful than the artist who made it. Yet the context the artist creates will always colour the reception.
I think the issue arises when a public persona is attached to the work, taking it from the realm of art to performance. I doubt most people would react the same to a fictional autobiography from a reclusive author a la J.D. Salinger like they did to authors like James Frey who went on Oprah to promote A Million Little Pieces. From the first few paragraphs of the TFA it sounds like Beatrice Sparks likewise attached the fiction to herself publicly through her lectures and self help work or whatever.
It's like designing a fake medical license in Photoshop and printing it out: it doesn't really matter to anyone unless you actually try to use it to treat people in the real world.
There is obvious difference between selling fabrications as fiction and selling fabrications as your real world experiences. The decision to mark it as such is not irrelevant and is not something you can blame purely on publishers.
She found success in her time, but in retrospect and in a wider context her work is viewed negatively for obvious reasons. That doesn't seem shocking or incredible.
Art would be doing something like the Blair Witch Project, that is trying to maintain the credibility of the fiction but still has a producer listed on IMDb. This is a bad lie.
I put this in a response to a comment that became dead, so I'm reproducing it here:
Fargo was presented as a "true story", which it wasn't. Yet nobody ever dismissed the Coen brothers as "fabricators".
My theory is that in art, as in most things, you're either "in" or "out". If you're in, you can do anything with impunity. If you're out, your every actions will be scrutinized and you will be forgiven nothing.
This whole article smells of virtue signalling, and I have an issue with that.
because there are double standards for certain groups.
Nowadays if you are religious or conservatives you are a bigot nazi and should be demonized always.
This isn't one sided though, conservatives demonize liberals as terrorist commies, its just that the media companies push the first narrative more often.
When we realize its all hogwash, and that news companies are owned by a few companies to promote culture wars.
At the end of the day its a side effect of media radicalization to allow the corrupt to further rob the middle and low classes of what little they have left.
So strange. I had never heard of. Go ask Alice, and then last week I was listening to a 5-year-old podcast episode of "I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats" and they were talking about it.
I went to a middle school were most of the teachers were (ex-) hippies. In 7th grade we had sex-ed which also covered various drugs. I remember my sex-ed teacher saying something like (unironically) "As supplemental reading, read 'Go Ask Alice'". I think the book was more or less accepted as near-truth/reality neither fully good nor fully evil, something akin to Hunter S. Thompson (this is the first time I'm hearing it's a crock.)
In the same class we had an anti-drug speaker in his early 40s who told us his story: "After high school I lost my way in life, sailed around the world in a sailboat, did a bunch of strange drugs, and slept with 100s of beautiful women. But now I'm clean and my life sucks." My friends and I had finally found a role model.
It's because the book which is mentioned in the article, "Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries", was just released.
As a few ex-Mormons have pointed out, Sparks was not the first Mormon to publish a text ostensibly based on an original source that the rest of the world did not get to see.
Christianity and faith that everyone was created equal in the eyes of God was essential to inventing the concept of racial equality at a time when science couldn’t prove that assertion. Put yourself in 1850–looking around at societies in the world as they existed then—and make a scientific case for racial equality powerful enough to convince hundreds of thousands of free people to sacrifice their lives for it. Even today there’s nowhere more zealously committed to the notion of racial equality than Christian countries.
> Are you kidding me? You realize slavery, torture and beatings was justified based on the bible alone
This isn’t a historically correct statement. Slavery has existed in myriad societies that don’t read the Bible. In Civil War era America, the Confederates sought to place themselves on the side of “science” and characterized the union as religious “zealots.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto...
What’s remarkable about Christian societies is that they ended slavery the way they did. To my knowledge there’s no other example of a society that tore itself apart and where people sacrificed by hundreds of thousands of their own for the freedom of a different group of people.
Across the history of man the greatest mass killings of people were instigated by atheists e.g Stalin who murdered millions simply because they were Christian. Most wars are tribal fights where the religion correlates to the tribe and it has little to no effect on causing the war. You even said yourself that it does the opposite, it placates it.
That's not true. The original people who saw it (with their spiritual senses) also claimed that others could know it was real (with their spiritual senses).
If the world didn't get to see it, or can't see the literal face of, or a pointy appendage of God, or can't see the difference between this religion and every other religion that makes claims based on one's subjective spiritual senses, then that's a problem for them (and their obvious spiritual deficiency).
Why does everyone leave out the important details??
With all due respect, this is an extremely theological version of the Emperor's New Clothes: conveniently non-falsifiable and if anyone points it out, they're a bad person.
Former member, it hurts seeing everything that I " knew" to be true turn out to be complete falsehoods. I encourage you to read the sourced and cited first-party quotations.
I'm sorry, and I hope nothing but the best for you and yours.
Very interesting article and it's worth considering how even though we can easily recognise these stories as being laughably fake these days, it's worth keeping in mind that fearmongering stories like this continue to be peddled to people with certain prejudices, and the only thing that's really changed since then is its shape and approach
Be careful with dismissing the general idea that drugs can lead to a miserable life since drugs can lead to complete misery. I was going down the street at my downtown the other day. I looked to the side, the side of the sidewalk, and saw someone that had lost all control of his life and was barely hanging on. He was sticking a needle in his arm and was shooting up. He looked like life had chewed him up and spit him out. Up to that point I had only seen it on TV or the movies. This was the first time I had seen it in real life. It was much uglier than I had ever thought it would be. It was shocking to see it. It's very sad that addiction can lead to such circumstances.
I live in Utah and was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the dominant church in Utah -- which often bleeds into the culture). In my opinion, the large amount of former missionaries (who often participate in door-to-door sales-like evangelizing) in Utah provides an ideal workforce willing to participate in difficult sales. Many of my friends and family went into sales after their missions as an easy way to make a lot of money. I think this is a large piece to your question.
Additionally, as another comment has said many of the stay-at-home mothers I know who are members of the Church become huge advocates for these pyramid schemes and push them onto friends and family.
This is just anecdotal data so I apologize for the lack of sources other than my own, subjective experience.
My anecdote agrees: a good friend of mine was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and is now an incredible salesman. He explained that he spent his entire childhood selling something no one wanted and where people would hurl insults at him daily. Now as an adult in business, selling whatever product is 100x easier and he has limitless tolerance for rejection.
Yeah, I served my mission in California and I can say there aren't many topics that make strangers more uncomfortable than religion.
At the end of the day, though, I found most people (whether or not they were interested in religion) care about being happy and having purpose and it was/is enjoyable to observe common ground with other humans in that realm.
That being said, lots of people get pissed about religion being shoved in their face and I do not blame anyone as it can be a huge source of trauma.
This sounds like it is backed by some negative experiences with religious folk. I'd be interested to hear what you have experienced if you are willing to share?
Good grief. I have never had a negative experience with religious people. You just can’t accept that I (and most people) dislike door-to-door sales shysters of all types. Don’t project your problems on me.
Utah has the strongest legal protections for MLMs/Pyramid Schemes/etc. in the country [1].
The demand for that safe harbor and the political will to pass it is largely a result of Mormonism. The hierarchy of the church discourages anyone from criticizing the next level 'above' them. There is also strong societal pressure for Mormon wives to be stay-at-home mothers, but the economic reality means they often need to find some way to make additional money. Add that to the Mormon mission system, and you have a vast number of people comfortable making cold calls (whether for Elohim or doTERRA).
I'm not sure about the "mission system" part. Most of the MLM people I encountered in Utah did not come through the "mission system." I kinda discount the church hierarchy theory, too. The point about stay at home moms carries water, I think. There aren't a lot of ways to make money while raising a 1, 4, and 7 year old. You can let somebody else raise them while you work. Or... you could have a playdoh party at your house. You can have your one-year-old on your lap while you explain to the other mothers (who are playing with their children as you talk) why they need the rainbow castle addon to the playdoh kingdom set.
A couple fingernail kit / vitamin / kitchenware / scented candle / whatever parties might promise to make you $500. That could pay for a month of piano lessons. Your old dental hygienist job didn't let you bring your kids to work and only work 4 hours on two Saturdays a month. I guess you could give it a try once. And who couldn't use a new cheese grater?
Here's my (subjective and likely limited) perspective: the LDS church has a culture that heavily emphasizes missionary efforts. Young adult men active in the church are expected to serve missions. Most of my female friends/family who are active members are taught to marry active men who have returned home from missions. My opinion is that that missionary culture saturates even those women who have not served who are active members (especially if they have married a former missionary) and I would imagine that bolsters their willpower to persistently push these products. Additionally, there is a busy-body culture (that I also feel is heavily influenced by missionary culture) I have noticed to be always engaged in good things and I would imagine for a lot of women making money fits that mold.
I may be totally wrong, but that's a theory that makes sense to me and lines up with my experiences.
So as someone who grew up with lots of Utah Mormons (mother was a convert) I believe there was a strong evolutionary selection pressure for naivety to both become a Mormon and then remain Mormon through all of their “trials and tribulations” in the mid 1800s. If you thought it was all horse shit you wouldn’t have moved 1000 miles to Utah in the middle of nowhere.
While members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can be exceptionally intelligent people, there’s also an air of childish gullibility I don’t see in the general population.
I’m not super confident with this theory and have no skin in the game but it’s something I’ll posit to friends over a drink if Mormons come up.
I think LDS folks have a little too much trust in other LDS folk.
“Brother So-in-so works for doTerra, Sister So-in-so sells it and says it cleared up her eczema. These people wouldn’t lie to me!”
And so they take whatever they say as truth. I don’t think it’s what I would describe as “childish gullibility”. But too much unchecked trust in members of their circles (still gullibility. But I wouldn’t call it childish). And then it compounds. Well, Bishop So-in-so wouldn’t participate in an MLM if it were immoral so it must be good!
I think this is at the root of the problem in Utah. Between that and the Utah moms wanting to make an easy buck.
Source: LDS myself living in Utah County. My wife and I often discuss why there is just so many MLMs that are clearly (to me) scams that run unchecked.
I sympathize a lot with the moms you characterize as "wanting to make an easy buck." How do you put in 8 hours a day as an accountant or hair stylist or fire fighter or HR rep between morning snack, potty training, reading time, nap time, outside play time, music time, etc.?
Maybe you try to get paid for raising your own kids by daycaring other kids at the same time. Is that also an easy buck?
Not everybody has a k8s genius spouse pulling down 6 figures. Any buck that can be gained in two or three hour increments a week is a lifeline.
Oh don’t get me wrong. I get it. maybe “easy buck” was lazy commenting. Being able to work your own hours, focus on the family you prioritize, work from home, etc etc. I get all that and is exactly what I was trying to say with “easy buck”. Poor choice of words.
So what if a housewife/family refuse to purchase any product another housewife/family is pushing? Is there any rejection of said family? Is the whole family networking system based solely on sales? Is it considered not cooperating, from a religious stand point, not to purchase these products? Will church status be effected if purchases aren't made and a family punished?
This is a fair question from somebody who has never seen it in action. The answer, from my experience, is no. Regarding the religious or church status matter, absolutely no. The church isn't pushing these things and even cautions about them.
Socially? A person might feel obligated to help a friend, same as any other culture. Then again, if you're just as cash strapped, ... It's really a personal decision. Just like buying Girl Scout cookies. Or the open guitar case next to the street performer. Plenty of people refuse to respond to invites to an MLM "party." Some people avoid yard sales. But it shouldn't affect friendships.
I lived in Utah. There’s plenty of MLMs and Ponzi schemes due to the religious culture. Oils, beauty products, blankets, weight loss solutions, workout pants, you name it.
There are many stay at home mothers who get involved in these schemes to make a few dollars here and there. They end up buying plenty of product up front and not being able to sell it.
Likewise. All negative or positive aspects of the religion aside, the geographical aspect to Mormon congregations build affinity networks quickly. This is both an asset (it can integrate you into a community quickly) while also being a liability (more MLM and Ponzi schemes).
I learned this weekend this geographic designation for local congregations is shared among the Amish, where congregation (to my understanding and happy to be corrected) are between 20-40 families.
Bernie Madoff is the classic example, his affinity fraud targeted wealthy Jewish individuals, foundations, and charities. In terms of relative frequency though, good question. Utah is an oddity where state-level stats are a decent estimate for Mormons, given the 70% membership. It would be harder to get equivalent stats for Jewish or Amish communities.
Completely anecdotal but this might be related to the notion of it being the MLM capital as well. Most marry young and settle down quickly. The notion of a housewife being able to contribute monetarily is infatuating. This coupled with the fact that Mormons (typically) are trustworthy of insiders means frauds and MLMs can spread virally.
Entire communities would get caught up in the latest herbal essence MLM.
Utah now has a fraud registry (like a sex offender registry) to help prevent serial fraudsters from finding another mark. I have no idea if it's effective but it did seem like a good idea when they first implemented it.
It's somewhat interesting reading to just skip around and see the different kinds of schemes being used (they all have descriptions of the how the fraud worked).
Yeah, it happens in Japan. Even more dangerous are new religious groups - like the Unification Church you'd probably heard about due to Abe's asassination.
I described it that way because I live in Japan and recognized the similarities :). Outright violent crime is very rare here, but there are a lot of scams.
I was extremely disappointed to see this statistic trotted out in the New Yorker - almost as a throw away line. It’s such a weak claim for something to be “reputed to be” or “estimated by some” which is probably how it got past the fact checkers (I have not been able to find the source of the 1:100,000 estimate), but it’s stated with authority and smugness and contributes to national readers’ general misunderstandings of Utah and Latter-day Saints.
I know MLMs happen in and are more common in Utah than in other states for all the reasons people have identified in this thread, but it’s also true that high-trust communities have many many benefits, and though there are bad actors who figure out how to exploit these trust networks, the networks somehow stay resilient and help lead Utah to lead the nation on a number of wellness statistics such as the lowest unemployment rate in salt lake out of all big cities [1] and having the lowest income inequality other than Alaska and Wyoming (which have less than 1M people each) [2]
The conspiracy theory that it is fabricated is mostly pushed by fringe "historical revisionists" engaging in Holocaust denial. There are some Christian fundamentalists in the US who also peddle this narrative because the original unedited diary contains segments describing Anne Frank (a girl) feeling physical and romantic attraction towards other girls -- despite the glaring issue with this narrative being that her estate initially removed these sections from the published versions because they were uncomfortable with them.
You don't need to play these games here. Pretending you're "just asking questions" to hide your political alignment is not working as well as you think and not nearly as clever as it makes you feel.
No, I actually did not. I believed (and still do) that the diary is mostly true, with some editing and sanitizing being done for publication. I had heard that there was some minor controversy regarding those edits and omissions, and I assumed that the flippant post by user “halffaday” (who is not me, N.B.) was referring to that.
> The conspiracy theory that it is fabricated is mostly pushed by fringe "historical revisionists" engaging in Holocaust denial.
I was not aware of this. All I saw was that a joke about Anne Frank’s diary not being 100% accurate turn into an accusation of antisemitism, with no explanation. Not everyone is aware of all of these opinions which are apparently widely considered proxies for antisemitism, racism, etc.
> You don't need to play these games here. Pretending you're "just asking questions" to hide your political alignment
No everybody who just asks question is secretly a nazi.
> No everybody who just asks question is secretly a nazi.
If it walks and talks like a duck, it's usually a duck, even if it says and believes it's a goose. "Just asking questions" is literally a far right meme (if you're wondering, it's part of a tactic called "sealioning" using leading questions to spread talking points and derail conversations).
I'm not saying you're a card-carrying member of the German National Socialist Workers Party, but whether intentionally or (more likely) accidentally, you're hitting a lot of the same chords and you might want to reflect on where you picked them up and why.
To be clear: HN is fairly accepting of far-right accounts as long as they avoid being explicitly so (and even then they're more likely to be downvoted than actually banned). The person who made the "joke" about Anne Frank has a history of making easy-to-miss remarks that just happen to fit in a certain political bend (e.g. complaining about "exotic sexual identities" or stating everything got worse because of something unspecified happening in the 1960s, a decade defined by civil rights victories). Even if HN's moderation policy was to actually ban far right individuals they probably would have a hard time justifying this one even if the aggregate of these comments paints an obvious picture for anyone familiar with the tropes.
It's always just jokes. The playbook literally involves telling "jokes" until you stop laughing (i.e. when it stops being a joke or as they say "when the joke really lands"). Far right communities have been at this for well over a decade at this point (though the defining moment was most definitely the GamerGate harassment campaign that populated "red pilling" in their target demographic). "Edgy jokes" are the gateway. You are not immune to propaganda.
I don't like being lied to, not like this and not by the coppas (I'm a brit) who came round to our school to give us The Drugs Talk. In a limited sense, when I became an adult (and a lot later), I was less afraid to experiment with drugs because of the one-sidedness of my drugs so-called 'education'. I guess it worked on some other kids though.