Originally published at: Take a look at how toxic self-help can become | Boing Boing
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Self-help schemes attract a particularly nasty variety of charlatan: victim-blaming sadists who delight in manipulating their marks into believing they’re at fault and must pay for it. With a smile plastered on their face the whole time.
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Thoroughly depressing.
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Somehow, I tend to think that was the whole point in posting this.
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Yeah, now I need some “self help”, thanks BB…
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I’m helping myself right now.
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You, I like you!
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Have to wait until tonight, but
mead awaits
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One day, when it’s safe and sane again, we shall smoke together.
Until then, burn 'em if ya got 'em.
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I figured if bestselling self-help books were really effective at helping readers solve their problems then they wouldn’t all have spawned so many follow-up books.
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Oof, the level of DRAMA in this video is really obnoxious. Good info, but the tone makes me feel like I’m being sold something.
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Almost as obnoxious as having questionable YT vids as the sole source of one’s writing material.
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Hmmmm, you don’t say . . .
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The only “self” the books are helping is the author. But people continue to mindlessly gobble this stuff up, accepting obvious, unhelpful statements as profound insight.
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Management book, which may or may not be a subset of self-help books, are the same schlock. “Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.” Yeah, right.
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: muses upon the bookshelves full of these things at the last three employers, ALL of which just cherry-picked the fun stuff out of them, and ignored the hard work parts :
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After a couple of minutes of watching the distracting, hyperdramatic Hollywood outtakes, I stopped watching and just listened. Unfortunately, I couldn’t entirely tune out the ridiculous soundtrack. His message is on point, and worth listening to.
All of what he saying stems from ego identification. Buddhism has a lot to offer in terms of identifying and escaping the problems that the ego causes.
One last point - not all self-help books are bad.
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Agreed. I can’t actually watch the video, because I just don’t want to, but there are good ones out there. Something like ten years ago I did “the artists way” with a friend and it was really helpful for us both. 
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The trouble is, it’s like financial advisors. Sure, there are trustworthy professional financial advisors who aren’t out to get your money and lock it up with massive managers fees to themselves, but if you need a financial advisor, how are you going to tell the difference?
If you can tell the difference between good self-help advice and bad self-help advice in advance, you probably don’t need the self-help advice.
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