Tim Ferriss: Master Marketer or Just Another Spammer
Originally published on December 6, 2014.
Last Updated on September 30, 2019.
Tim, Tim, Tim …
I’ve been following Tim Ferriss since the early days of the ‘yellow background‘ blog. Back then he wrote to the common people; cool topics that fed dreams and encouraged people to break out of the rut they were in. Stuff like travel planning, gaining muscle while losing fat, to-do lists, language learning … cool stuff … the stuff of dreams! Back then, it was not about selling kitchy garbage, carrying on about angel investing as if it is curing cancer or titillating tales of practicing sex. Even back then he showed shades of the Internet Marketer he’s become (name dropping, crosslinking, etc.,) but it was muted and mostly hidden which is the way internet marketing should be done.
Then came his 1st book: The 4-Hour Workweek. Brilliant!! It was the right book at the right time. It gave hope to people and provided a tangible step-by-step plan that people with balls (and no family) could follow to maybe get lucky and break away from the drudging path they were on. I loved that book and still dig it out and reread parts of it about once a year. To promote the book, Tim put himself out there … and that is where he began to fall (or show his true colors.) Book promoting is one thing = most authors do it, but self promotion = that was a Tim thing. It was not about the book anymore, or about helping people; it was about him and what he thought and what he was doing and what junky bauble he was using in his kitchen (with an Amazon link of course.) Everyone wanted to be like Tim. … and Tim got rich. Yep, the book was/is a best seller, but the Internet Marketing money was the goal and continues to be the driving force behind most of what Tim does. And the thing is: we were all sucked in by it! We shopped at those virtual shops and bought that junk ’cause we thought it would make us Tim. I wonder how many ‘fans’ out there are trudging off to work right now to trying to cover the minimum payments on their debt, some of which they accumulated buying the crap that Tim promoted at them. I’ll bet there are a lotta desk drawers or boxes in basements that contain the hopes and dreams they were sold by Tim = the Internet Marketer. Before I go on, don’t get me wrong. I believe that we all are responsible for the place we find ourselves. Your debt is your debt (and it’s your fault, not Tim’s.) You made the choices you did … nobody forced you. So even though I see what Tim is doing as slimy Internet Marketing, you are responsible for the bag of magic beans you’ve bought.
Which brings us to Tim’s fans. I suppose I was once like this (it’s hard to look back and be objective about what I did back then), but I’ve never seen such a bunch of sycophantic, fawning, brain dead sheeple in all my life! (Except maybe Obama supporters in the early days … lol.) The ‘hipsters’ of today are SOOO blind to the bill of goods they are being sold! Maybe it’s a product of being brought up in the information age with everything available at the keyboard and flitting from one 140 character pearl of wisdom to the next … always searching and never finding. I feel sorry for them – they are going to be the next generation of unfulfilled, debt ridden schlubs, slowly unwinding their lives toward death. … but sheeple have always been sheeple. From the early days of playing pass the apples (in the garden) to ‘come, let us kill him’, people have allowed themselves to be mindless followers. Some follow their own greed while others blindly follow the herd … like sheep. And this herd of followers seems to be the worst of all. Get this. They are following a guy whose original message was … do your own thing … be who you want to be – and they follow him by trying to do what he does and trying to be him. If it wasn’t so sad it would be laughable.
Back to Tim. His last two books are crap: at best coffee table books to show visitors how hip and cool you are = full of pretty pictures and big ideas, but short on real life … book candy, not meat and potatoes books.
And now we come to Tim the spammer.
A couple of months ago, Tim decided to tap the barrel of his blog and set up a mailing list asking people to opt in. In return he’s been sending out posts full of fluffy nonsense and affiliate links. And people are sucking this crap up! Oh my, the Facebook Fans are the most unbearable! Not a brain to be found in the bunch (and if somebody dares walk upstream they are quickly ridiculed and shot down by Tim fanatics.) So sad. So sad to see soooo many lovely people, sons and daughters, young fathers and mothers, sucking on the teet of an Internet Marketing spammer. Do you really think you are going to get sustenance from that teet? Is it going to put food on your table, or provide for your future or even satisfy your craving for a new life? It’s a dry tit people – no matter how hard you suck, nothing of any substance is going to come out! Spit it out, get real and build your own way!
Then, last week Tim started with the Internet Marketing spammers trick of ‘ooops, I forgot the link’ or in Tim’s case, ‘Damnation! So sorry about email dupes! Thank you for your patience this week + next. If I fuck it up again, I’ll give away more prizes.’ Sheeple … this is classic Internet Marketing! He’s doing this on purpose! This is list building 101 and is used (and taught) by every internet marketing spamming guru out there! Open yer eyes and see for real the slug that is feeding you this nonsense! The funny part is, the people he’s spamming are sucking it up:
“No worries. You may be superhuman, but you are still human.”
“No worries. it is makes me feel better to know that you also fuck things up occasionally”
“You are being to hard on yourself, it’s okay, really.
Fawning fans. It’s a sickness and one that is spreading like a virus … affecting the minds of good folks everywhere. People: pull the wool out of yer eyes … pull away the facade that Tim is hiding behind and see slimy slug that you are feeding on! Alas, I don’t have much confidence that many will break free. Hope is the driving force behind the hopeless and ‘broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many travel it.’
Tim Ferriss is both a marketing master and an internet spammer … but he’s the worst kind of both in that he does not care who he hurts as he leads the people down the proverbial garden path …
Want hope? Get real! Do something tangible! Grab an axe and build a woodpile (so to speak.)
NOTE: After writing this post (my 1st real post here …) I Googled to see if anybody else was seeing Tim for what he really is and found this absolute gem by Penelope Trunk called 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss. The comments are the fun stuff … lol. Plus seeing Tim comment on Penelope’s Blog and then mention her on his blog two days later … makes this post even more priceless.
Oooo … another one: Are You Riding The Tim Ferriss Wheel? Nice!