TVP and ME
This article represents my own interpretation of the following ‘situations’. Keep that in mind. But not sure it could be otherwise though. If you take this article as “creating drama” then I can’t help you with anything. I am aware that the world became a drama of ‘confessions’, disputes, gossips, and so on, but for one I am not part of that world and I don’t care about it, and second: how else can I present my experience with TVP? Some people think that I did not cooperate with TVP, and others have no idea what went wrong because I never made my thoughts on this as ‘public’ so they project whatever they can about it – and TVP was completely silent almost as if TVPMagazine was swallowed by a black hole. Perhaps most don’t care, but I want to share some thoughts so that I may make things more clear and take this off my chest.
Very important: one thing I always found impossible was to project about individual people. Like I can’t say Emma, or Billy, or Jesus 
are like that or like so, because people change their behavior a lot, they are too dynamic to define them in one way or another. Like everyone, I too used to have opinions about other people, but then I got confused because I was like: Coco is such a jackass and he likes to annoy people. But then, knowing Coco better, I realized that he is not always like that, and depending on the circumstances he can be a good guy who can listen to what you have to say. Therefore people are in one way or another depending on the circumstances they face, and so you can’t really summarize their behavior unless you observe them reacting to many situations. And even after that, it’s super hard to have any valid opinion since people can change. So if Coco is a jackass in general, then maybe in a week he will change and become a nice guy. SO, this article is not going to be about people, but about situations. I cannot know how Roxanne is, or anyone else around TVP, I can only let you know about some of my experiences with them, from my own perspective. This is super important if you understand it!
Let’s begin:
My experience with TVP left me with a mix of ‘feelings’. If you are in a relationship (married or whatever) for 3-4 years or more and you break apart, then it is nearly impossible to explain to others what went wrong. Sometimes you might be bothered by how your partner responds to your questions, sometimes you feel like you are ignored, at times the partner’s attitude annoys you, and so forth. It is a journey of moments and the cumulation of it all leads to the break up. That’s how I feel about me and TVP and this is why it is so hard to try and explain what lead to the break up of TVPMagazine (and me overall) and TVP. I mainly felt that TVP was always distant from TVPM, never embracing the project, but mainly seeing it as its ‘little brother’ or ‘cousin’, or later on a ‘distant relative’ (or perhaps forgotten relative).
I’ve been focusing on TVP-like subject many years before knowing about TVP. I had a blog where I was writing about all kinds of similar subjects to TVP: beauty, abundance, monetary system, technology, human behavior, etc..I always ‘hated’ this world seeing how my parents struggle to survive, drowning in huge debts, and others in the world in the same situation. Once I came across TVP through the “Future by Design” documentary and later on Zeitgeist, I realized that a more organized set of solutions for today’s problems is already out there and I thought to help out. So, I contacted TVP multiple times around 2009-2010 offering to make videos, articles, or help with the website. No one got back to me. Later on I worked alone to make a huge series of videos explaining the problems of today’s world and solutions to solve them – they were based on my blog’s articles. I did that because I felt like TVP or TZM were extremely unorganized and no one would understand their direction very well, unless they made a huge presentation of their views: through a huge book, video series, or whatever. The problem was that I was broke and in college. I had a shitty computer and no one to support my views of the world. But I managed to make that series of videos after a long journey that put me through a ton of stress, argues and fights with the others around me, and so on.
That video series was called “TROM: The Reality of Me” because I knew that it was a worldview (a presentation) from my own perspective, my own interpretation, the way that I saw the world. After a year of work and minus 50 Euros budget, I released it and it made a substantial impact online (at least from what I expected before the release). I got hundreds, if not thousands of emails from people saying how much they loved it. I even made a fundraising campaign at the request of other people to raise money to buy a new computer to make TROM again with better voice overs (for the original one I used a text-to-speech at that time since I could not record any voice), and have a proofread script (my main language is Romanian so I had to translate the original TROM into English and I didn’t do a great job at that). I worked for almost another year and made it. So, a two years experience working for free (and mainly alone) on a humongous documentary.
Side note: my family was a ‘normal’ family financially speaking, but normal from Romania means very poor on a worldwide scale. They were full of debts and working like slaves in Spain. Once I went to Spain and saw my father who looked like a skeleton because of so much work, I got scared that things are going from bad to worse, and that was also a reason to make TROM, to ‘scream’ somehow at how fucked up the world is and how many solutions there are.
Ok. Until that moment when I re-created TROM, I worked 100% alone. I made the original tromsite, or any website I needed; I wrote articles, did research for them, translated them, edited videos and audio files, etc.. Now, after the fundraiser for the new computer, I got to work with a few awesome people who recorded voices for TROM, proofread the script, or made the main website better. All of them helped for free. We worked very well together and I was so impressed by that.
After making TROM I contacted TVP again, multiple times, and propose to them to use TROM (or any part of it) as their own stuff/material if they want to. Never got any reply. Somehow I ended up working with them for their Paradise or Oblivion website later on (don’t remember how I go into that), then after other such ‘projects’ for them (providing help here and there), around 2013 I proposed to them to let me manage tvpmagazine.com (that was their blog-like website at that time, with 96% of articles as copy paste from other sources) because I wanted to make TVP a much more detailed set of ideas. I thought that they lacked the details, and I wanted to help bring them to the project. I demoed the new magazine format that I made to Roxanne (something entirely different than a simple blog), she loved it, and I ended up volunteering to work for some 8 months for the magazine.
Stop for a moment. Please understand that all that I’ve done (my main blog, TROM, websites for TVP or other stuff, TVPMagazine, VideoNeat.com and so many other projects of my own that reached many thousands of people every month) I made them for free. 100% free. No ads, no nothing. Just free. Because of that I had to suffer a lot. Argues with my parents, a ton of stress, and so forth. My family was always poor, mainly living to work to live. And I was financially dependent on them but not making any money myself, so you can see how this situation was stressful for all of us.
Ok. So I reached a point where I could not work without a financial support anymore. Roxanne tried to financially help the magazine here and there, but I needed a steady help to keep on making the magazine.
Another stop. Please understand that I never did anything for money, because I never considered money as important. For me what I do is important and I never wanted to think about money. I can’t emphasize on that enough, but I suppose that making TROM, VideoNeat, other stuff for TVP including the magazine, all for free, are a testimony that I am never seeking for financial gain, only trying to get the basic financial help to allow me to do important projects. So I only need money to be able to keep on doing these projects.
Ok. So I told Roxanne that we need to do a campaign to raise money for me and Ray (who proofread the magazine) to work for a full year for the magazine. Mind you, the work was intense. 6-8 hours a day. No weekends, no holidays. She agreed. We made the campaign. We raised the money. Huge surprise for me! First time that I ever made any money to support myself. I was so happy I can’t describe it, because I knew that now I can focus on the magazine and there will be no more stress for me. I asked as much as to cover my and Ray’s needs for a year. We kept our promise and made the magazine for a year. We grew it. I made a website and created other tools for it (something not included in the campaign as ‘to do” things). The articles became more complex and we increased the reach. The following year we did another campaign and we raised the money and the third year we continued with Patreon (a monthly fundraiser). Every time we discussed with Roxanne about these campaigns, so that she would agree for us to make them and how much money to ask. Financially I was still in a struggle because having money for only the basic needs is not enough. Sometimes you need medicine, clothes, or who knows what, and I rarely had money for those. But it was much better than before. Much, much better! When you do something that you love doing, you don’t care about buying stuff, you care about having the money to keep on doing that what you love. However, for the past year we only got half of the financial support from Patreon and that made the project unsustainable, but the reason for that lack of support has to do with TVP’s attitude towards the magazine as I will explain, and this attitude of them made me want to move away from TVP regardless if we got the entire financial support or not.
In all of this time of managing TVPM (3 years) I felt like the magazine was becoming bigger, better, and more known, but I always felt like it was not part of TVP, despite Roxanne and Jacque being super excited about the project for the first 2 years or so. I felt like it was only TVP’s ‘cool’ project. Like: “Oh, look guys, we have a magazine.” I thought that if we present scientific and well-made articles, they could be part of TVP. Instead of providing simple answers and unsourced ones to people’s questions (see their FAQ), TVP should have used our articles as answers when necessary. How can we automate the world? We had a 260 pages TVPM ebook for that. How can people work without being motivated by money? We had a well-sourced TVPM article on that. How does TVP compare with other systems like socialism or communism? We had a 370 pages TVPM ebook that is very well sourced, unlike an answer of two sentences long based on a wrong interpretation of communism or socialism, or any such ideas, that TVP provides through their FAQ page.
So it felt like TVP would not incorporate any new ideas into itself. Regardless if those ideas were verifiable or beneficial to the project. I also experienced many weird, nonsensical, and surprising events/situations with TVP, Roxanne, and its teams. I was dragged into endless teams and lists, I came across some very ‘rude’ and egocentric responses from TVP people (I also felt like those managing TVP’s projects knew so little about what they were doing) – not saying all were like that at all, but some were; I saw how TVP is paranoid about people stealing their stuff (photos, videos, whatever) and it looked to me like they spent so much time fighting those who used their materials without their approval, and little to no time encouraging those who wanted to help them. They were like a full blown company from my perspective, from the way they ran the project, to their attitudes. For example I had to sign some papers for whatever reason, to be able to help them out. If TVP smelled like a new and futuristic society from outside, from the inside it smelled like an old library to me. I am sorry but that’s how I felt, to be honest. It is the best way to describe it. But I wanted to bring on some perfume, to try and renovate the walls, and make the books from the library as digital and more accessible to everyone. You can see more details at the bottom of this article about my attempts to revamp (renew) TVP (in my own view and with my own skills), so for now let me talk about the recent events.
Important: make the distinction now between TVP as an idea (rbe, circular cities, a world of abundance, etc.) and TVP as people (Roxanne, Jacque, and their teams). I think TVP is a great set of ideas, not that original in my view and not very detailed, but nevertheless awesome stuff and important!, but TVP people seem to reflect something else from my experience with some of them – the way TVP is organized as an “organization” looked to me way too rocky, unprepared, unorganized, and highly inefficient.
To keep in mind: in the first 2 years or so of the magazine Roxanne was very happy with it. She tried to help us financially when she could; she trusted us over other people when it came to posting stuff on social networks and so forth. We collaborated more than not and you can see that in the emails I attached bellow. I still found them to be paranoid about their stuff, very closed to new and different ideas, and so forth – maybe that’s just my projection, but that’s how it looked to me. But overall we had a good relationship. Though, again, I didn’t see them use the magazine very much, if at all.
So. For the past year or so, TVPM and TVP relationship became colder and colder, to the point of freezing. I always complained to a few close friends about how TVP is run and how it ignores the magazine or about the ridiculous situations I’ve been dragged into over the years, but never online to anyone, except mentioning these to Roxanne multiple times over the years (and at times to their teams when necessary), but it was like talking towards the sky as nothing improved. This is why for someone from outside it looked like I and TVP had a great relationship, because I tried working with TVP to solve these issues and not making them ‘public’, but after 3-4 years of trying to establish an effective communication path with them, it was enough for me as this attitude didn’t help much at all.
So recently (past year – 2016) they tried to reorganize TVP (again, as they tried that multiple times in the past…) and they took all kinds of decisions behind my back that affected the magazine, and because of that we lost several thousand readers and/or the opportunity to reach more. This made us lose exposure and financial support. I told Roxanne multiple times that their attitude will kill this project eventually, but she did not listen or did anything about it. In May 2016 I started to feel sick and despite going to the hospital more times than I went in my entire life, no test could figure out what I had. Severe indigestion, abdominal pains, fever, chills, lost lots of weight, and so forth (you can read more details here). I struggled with this for 2-3 months. Interestingly in the same period of time the stress with TVP was at the highest peaks. This was the time they cut us off from the Newsletter, they told me that they won’t allow us to post on their social network anymore, they delayed the release of a super important book “The Money Game and Beyond” (370 pages) for which I worked months to finish and they delayed it because of their Choice is Ours documentary in a very unfriendly way (they didn’t even bother to reply to my emails and tell me what is going on….so I was left in limbo some 1-2 months), and sooo on. They blocked us everywhere out of a sudden in a situation in which we were trying to maintain this project with 50% of the financial support we needed. All of that because of NO reason at all. Only their projections as to how they can run TVP as a company (their words) in a better way, and they decided TVPM will not be part of their plan that much. You will see more details at the end of this article.
SO. Since the only explanation for my health issues was the stress as doctors suggested (especially the seborrheic dermatitis that appeared on my face and for which there is no treatment so I have to deal with this for the rest of my life – it is thought this is created by stress and at least intensified by it and I can confirm that this is the case) I said that I won’t swallow TVP’s stupidity anymore. It was enough for me because the cumulation of stressful situations with them was affecting me physically and in a very bad way that I never thought it could.
STOP. Read! It would be beyond ridiculous to accuse TVP of this, I only accuse myself because I tried to be so patient and helpful with some people who were not willing to change or listen, and I swallowed so many ridiculous situations making me stressed inside.
So after this period of time, I became more vocal and I proposed to Roxanne several ideas to make TVPM financially sustainable (you will see the details bellow), or to make them understand the unnecessary roadblocks they put to the project. I was mainly ignored, if not entirely, yet again. So recently, after some discussions, Roxanne and a few people close to her accused me of not collaborating with TVP for the past years, not taking their suggestions into account, even went so far as to accuse me that I asked money from their own supporters for myself. And Roxanne took the decission to disolve TVPM entirely. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say.
You need to understand the following:
– I never published something for TVPM (articles, design, etc.) that was not approved by Jacque and Roxanne. They had to approve everything before going public. They had full control over the magazine. I even sent the quiz, or news module we had on tvpmagazine.com for review before making them public.
– I always cooperated with Roxanne and took her suggestions into account. You can see most of the emails between me and Roxanne here (emails about TVPM articles). Decide for yourself if I collaborated or not.
– I was always nice to everyone and always tried to find solutions to our differences or issues. See this example with the newsletter situation in which some people around TVP didn’t take my suggestions into account and because of their actions we lost 80-90% of the readers that came from the newsletter. I proposed a solution and to help with implementing my approach to not lose so many subscribers, but I was ignored, and in a very unfriendly manner. In my experience this attitude was always present in many of TVP’s project coordinators or people close to TVP. Multiply these situations and you can see how this can become stressful. Therefore I always looked for solutions and most of the time I was ‘rejected’ in very unfriendly manners.
– I never asked Roxanne to help the magazine financially. She helped a few times because she wanted to, but we were primarily (or entirely) supported by our readers. I never publicly asked money for TVPM if that wasn’t approved by Roxanne first.
– They put so many roadblocks for the magazine for the past year that they made it unsustainable. For the past year we were not added to TVP’s website as a TVP project, or to blog/news when we released a new issue, we were not allowed to send a separate newsletter for the magazine anymore, and I was told they won’t let us post TVPM memes on their social networks in the near future. All of that for no real reason at all. I asked, I got some answers that were assumptions (like they said companies only send 1 newsletter a month so they should do the same and remove the TVPM one), but more often than not I got no answers at all – a complete mystery to me. We lost more than 50% of our total readers because of that. We were unable to ask for more financial support (they didn’t want that), and overall they did not use the magazine (not recommending it to TVP supporters, not using it to correct or improve TVP, not mentioning it in interviews, and so forth); so they left us without options.
– Lately they accused me of asking money for myself from TVP’s supporters and that I did not cooperate with them very well, despite all of the above, which was extremely strange. Also, they always forgot that the money was split 60% me and 40% Ray (they only accused me of asking money for myself); on top of that I also spent tons of money on hosting, domain, plugins, and so many other stuff for tvpmagazine.com. Plus I never made any fundraising campaign without it being approved by Roxanne first. So keep that in mind.
This is one of Roxanne’s last emails to me:
“ Tio,
I want to set up new guidelines for TVPMagazine.
Since I we really do not have any input with the articles you are doing as you have many times rejected what input we gave you and since then we do not make any suggestions because there has been too much resistance when suggestions were given, that it has now become your private venture that you are asking money for from our supporter and under TVP name. Because of this we are asking that you do not use The Venus Project name any more with the magazine you are producing. It is best that you do your own thing as it has been that for quite a while. Also we ask that you set up your own advertising on your own Facebook and do not use our Facebook for that any longer. “
This is what Roxanne said only 5-6 months previous to that email, addressing Filip’s comments about TVPM not representing TVP (Filip was in charge of many TVP projects – including the main website):
“Fil I need to talk with you about what you are doing with Tio and the magazine. Both Jacque and I think he does a lot of good to help people understand this direction. He did it in his own way but this is fine. Tio doesn’t have to have that many advertising, but Jacque and I feel he does a good job with the magazine and it is important. I am sorry Fil but TVPMagazine represents TVP. It is his way of describing it but that was ok with both me and Jacque. All people will interpret different aspects their own way – even you. This is only what everyone can do is to describe it as they understand it and Tio does a good service to help others understand certain aspects of Jacque’s work and this direction. Jacque would like TVPMagazing to be listed on our website as a project that TVP endorses. He always wanted that. Jacque and I want to support TVPMagazine. Jacque would like Tio to be able to send a separate news letter for the magazine whenever it is issued even if it does not come out the first of the month. Jacque feels strongly about that and wants to support the magazine. That is the bottom line.“
So what happened in that 5-6 months timeframe for Roxanne to change her attitude that much? I was very sick (as I said) and Ray had to take care of his mother who went through 2 lung cancer surgeries, so we didn’t even release a new issue in 2-3 months time because of these, therefore fewer opportunities for ‘conflict’ because of that. We only released one issue in that timeframe. An article about Luke’s journey across America to spread the word about TVP, and one article on Language that was scientifically accurate presenting how the written language came into existence and how it works today across many languages, and that was part of a series that I explained to Roxanne as follows:
“ This will become a book, and I think it will be massive but the subject is too complex and people need a brain enema for this subject because it is a religion to most. This first part is huge, and I had more written but I don’t want to overkill with it. When you review it keep in mind that this is only the introduction to the subject, to learn how languages of the world work. It will be crucial for the next parts when we explore mathematics, chemistry, biology, sign language, body language, and then how we can invent a better language.
I went into details here and there because I think that we can’t explain language without exemplifying. The next part will be about the religiosity of language, the context (as I understand now it is the most important aspect of language), looking at new attempts to invent a new language, and more. So the journey is big, fun, and really interesting I say. “
Roxanne said Jacque couldn’t read the entire article, and she reached her saturation with it….We talked a bit about it and in the end she decided that I can publish it. As I remember (since we talked over skype messages and not email and I do not have that conversation anymore) she only said that I could have made the article smaller and that Jacque’s old ‘lectures’ are better. I asked if Jacque’s lectures are about the history of the written language and so forth (what the article was all about), but as usual Roxanne decided to not follow up on the discussion, as she did so many times in the past. I told her that I know about those lectures (I listened to them many times) and I will address some points form there in the next parts of this series as this one is specifically about the written language. From what I can tell they really do not understand language if they could not see such an article as important. You can read it for yourself to decide if this article is important or not, and you can also read the explanation I gave to Roxanne to make sure they understand what this article is all about:
“ Haven’t heard from you since I’ve sent you an email about our meeting (with Filip).
Anyways, the next TVPM is ready but let me explain a little the article on Language that you and Jacque didn’t regard as that important or well done, because I think I failed to explain what I aim to explain with this series:
1. I am trying to first clean people’s heads of language as a religion because in my experience people go crazy when it comes to language – we too at the magazine got a few emails and comments from people being so repealed by ‘grammatical errors’ that we’ve made. So with this first part I wanted to “destroy” this confidence that most people have, and this “trust” in language so that people understand it is not a well thought “thing” but a chaotic and nonsensical one, so they are prepared for changes in language/communication. But in my view this takes a lot of time to do since we’ve all learned “grammar” and language in this erroneous way in schools for 12+ years. It is an ingrained “religion” in most brains.
2. I want to prepare people for the next parts where we explain the most important aspect of any language (I think), and that’s the CONTEXT. The words and syntax, grammar and so on, make little to absolutely no difference. Everything relies in the context. So in this first part I wanted to show how many different grammars are out there, yet in the next I will point that regardless of grammar, human behavior and how we communicate is mainly (if not entirely) created by the environment (the culture – context). In short: it does not make any difference if you speak Chinese or English, you will end up hating black people or understand the world in certain ways due to the environment. Both a Chinese and American can share similar values if they share similar environments, regardless of what language they know.
3. This prepares me to explain to people that if we want a better language with better communication we should first focus on the context, so the saner the context (the society) the better we can communicate regardless of the language. I too use the “sun rises” saying, but I understand a completely different thing from my mother, even if we use the same sentence. The difference relies in the context (what I know about the Sun and how the Earth spins around it). So a society like TVP, I will emphasize, is crucial for a better language/communication.
4. On top of all these I will explain languages like maths, chemistry, programming language, etc., showcasing how those languages are less subject to interpretation (or not at all), not because of the language they use, but because the context there is based on either physical references or just because that context is “respected” by those involved in those fields and so the way they communicate it is an “agreed upon” manner of communication. In other words doctors use many of the words we use on a daily basis but between them these words can mean very different and universal things: from the word “theory” to “heart”.
Hopefully it makes more sense now. I want to explain this very very well in this series but I need to go into details or else there will be no “contexT” for people to get it. 
Also, the design for the language series may rely a lot on the words themselves being “designed”, highlighted, so less images there. Anyways, if you want me to change or add anything to the design let me know, if not we can release tomorrow. Let me know if we can send a newsletter for the magazine (I suppose not) or if we can post it on the TVP’s News section.“
I don’t remember for Roxanne to ever reply to that email, and Gmail history agrees with that.
So if that’s what bothered them, this article on language, then they failed to communicate it with me and propose changes. However, they approved it for publishing, don’t forget that. Regardless, this is not something Roxanne said in that last email when she accused me to not cooperate with them for “quite a while”, right?
I tried to talk to Roxanne about these issues with the magazine, the roadblocks they put to it, I offered all kinds of solutions, but she wasn’t keen about any of them, except when I proposed that we should better move apart if we are in this situation because what is the point in having a TVP magazine when TVP ignores it completely. Even if Roxanne would add the mag on TVP website right now, and take off those roadblocks, and we will be 100% supported financially, I would not continue with TVP because of so many other reasons that I will detail bellow. However please keep in mind that was Roxanne who finally decided to move apart as that email confirms, not me! I was still trying to find solutions when she slapped me with that email out of nowhere.
I am not ‘upset’ at TVP, I just think they do not know how to manage their project and waste people’s energy and motivation, and theirs too. And this article is pointing these flaws so that others are aware of them, and hopefully someone can fix TVP in that regards.
The main two reasons of why I became more vocal about such things are:
1. Because the stress caused by TVP over the years caused me or intensified many health issues recently that will affect me for the years to come, and I do not want to keep on swallowing stressful situations to make my health worse, so I want to spill them out to not affect me anymore.
2. I want for others to know about my experience with TVP since I kept many ridiculous situations for myself and people wrongly assume that TVP is what they see in “public”. In my experience TVP is very unorganized and interestingly the ‘wrongest’ people end up managing stuff for TVP – and in that sense TVP shots itself in the foot multiple times until it will no longer be able to stand up.
Here you can find all emails between me and Roxane for the past year if you are interested – so that you get the full context of our relationship for the past year and don’t project that I cherry picked stuff to make TVP look bad. These do not include the discussions about TVPM articles that I linked above. As you will see again in these emails Roxanne didn’t follow up on several of my emails/ideas, and this became frustrating in time for me as I felt like talking to myself.
So, here are many of such situations that made me so stressed because of TVP, and these situations led to this break-up (I will add more in time) – this is, of course, my side of the story, but many such situations are based on notes that I took while they were happening, as I was amazed at the ridiculosity of them all, and I also didn’t want to get stressed so much and “letting them out” (writing them down) helped me in that sense:
If these will bore you to death I will resume them as such: I tried to help TVP build a better website for example (their main website), multiple times, because their website was always very poorly made. I make websites for more than 10 years now, I demoed to TVP 3 or so functional websites and fully designed one at the request of Roxanne. All of those for nothing – lost time of my life, many months of wasted work. I tried to help with making videos, I wrote a script for their movie, I suggested many solutions for many of their teams (marketing, social networks, webdev, media team) and I don’t remember for anyone to ever listen much at all – and even if they seemed to listen, nothing happened; I proposed a new financing model for TVP to increase their revenue and also make their stuff cheaper for more to afford them, and I was ignored by Roxanne even if I tried to propose this change in detail; I always tried to come up with ideas, suggestions, and solutions, and almost every time their responses were either none at all, or super slow and fading out into the abyss. Interestingly I continued and continue to make websites (see tromsite.com, videoneat.com, tiotrom.com), videos (TROM Documentary, TROM Series), and manage a big project like TROM and teams for TROM. So I do stuff, I’m not merely talking. I can, and I do stuff. Though that wasn’t possible working with TVP. Unfortunately!
The following are random ‘events’ and the only reason I tried to provide details is for you to try and put in my shoes when I tried desperately to help TVP with so many things and my time was wasted.
Make sure you click all tabs bellow:
Bottom line: I always tried to help TVP because I felt like it is such an important project, but I found it super difficult to do so. I say give them a try, get involved and try to help them, because this is only my experience though I have heard the same complaints from so many people. One thing TVP must understand is that usually those disadvantaged in this world want to get involved and help with TVP. Those who are already suffering because of today’s world and they want to see a change, so TVP must not give them false hopes and/or ignore them. This may not be entirely TVP’s fault though, since so many people contact them, but a simple reminder that they are busy and they may not reply soon or at all, is a must, because I can’t tell you how many people contacted me or the magazine, because no one from TVP replied to them. These people wanted to help with so many things but no one got back to them. So, TVP, please try to understand that and fix it.
I will continue to talk about the TVP idea, but I don’t want to have anything to do with TVP the organization. And regardless of what a few around TVP may say about me that I do not cooperate well with others, that I want to do things by myself, and so on, at least I am doing something and I want to hear from anyone who felt like it’s so hard to collaborate with me, because I collaborate with anyone and am super happy when I work with other people. But again, I am at least doing something, creating a ton of new materials in this direction. What does TVP do? What new stuff is TVP creating?
If I misinterpreted something in this article make me aware and I will change my mind! Also, I wrote this article quite fast and for sure there are typos and some parts are hard to properly decipher :D, but I am too busy with TROM and I want to remove TVP from my list of to do things so I had to rush with that.
One last mention: the fact that I experienced stress so badly physically was because it was a built up for the past 6 years in which I tried to help this ‘good’ cause and I was sent from here to there, from nonsense to nonsense, and I was ignored so many times, and so many times the replies from Roxanne and others were so vague that they left me in confusion. When I tried for the past year to send a freakin’ newsletter for our Patreon campaign Roxanne was like “that’s great”, then I was left in limbo….then many times she ignored me, other times she replied talking about something else completely, other times she was like “we need to send just one newsletter a month because that’s what we decided”….months and months of this blurriness while trying to get a NO or YES answer to my question about that particular thing. And still never got an asnwer. I was striving to save the TVPM and she and others were slow, they ignored me, they talked about something else, and so on. I asked why TVPM is not represented as a TVP project on TVP’s website…and Roxanne ignored that all the time, giving no answer at all. I am telling you such situations for months and months, and even years, are going to put a toll on anyone.
By the way, all of the TVPMagazne project moved to TROMsite.com in case you are not aware of that. I continue the work there with a few other people. We make new magazines (or as we call them “books”) and we also started to make a video series out of these books + transform them in audio books too. So, awesome stuff! – If you liked TVPM you will love the new TROM.
19 Replies to “TVP and ME”
Thankfully I realized this within a year’s time frame, instead of six… I’m sorry that this happened to you Tio. I wish there was another way, but just as you have experienced yourself, once you learn the material, it is up to you to make the direction happen, because working with TVP will simply not bring about an RBE as we all hoped.
I realized many such things before trying to help TVP, but I hoped that I can make them change bit by bit and be more open to new ideas, let others help them, and so on. But that didn’t happen.
Ya I feel you, for me it was just suspicions at first, but in order to confirm them, I had to volunteer just in case I was wrong. This is why I always tell people I love it when I’m wrong, because when I’m right, it’s always about something negative.
It is as if TVP’s strategy to make people do more “real” contributions, like the ones you did, is to stress/burden them out so much with bureaucracy, lack of knowledge, not living with accordance with updated values, so that those people leave and do their own thing without the burden of the things mentioned that are, more offten then not, associated with TVP. You are certainly not the first nor the last one that has gone trough this kind of a hassle, although you are for sure the one of few, if not the only one, who has managed to keep pushing despite the resistance for this long. It is a sad situation and i fear that even if TVP somehow managed to get the attention of someone with the money (but for real), they would not be able to showcase a viable plan of action for such an investment, because of lack of sourced/verifiable/detailed material. The world is running out of time, clearly. I am glad that you have made the desicion to go on “your own”, as has PJ done, and many other people that left TVP, because TVP clearly has no idea, or balls, to do what is necessary in these difficult times. I know im ranting but from your perspective this is so sad/frustrating/damaging that i could not leave without leaving a comment.. Respect for your effort Tio.
Sorry to hear that Tio! From my perspective, TVP Magazine was/is something very valuable because of all the sources attached to every article. This is something that i miss at the book “The Best that money can t buy”, they should have a version of that book with hyperlinks to many of the informations or some claims that they have there. It should give a possibility to dig deeper and deeper into the sources of the 70 + years that Jaqques worked in that direction. It is a valuable book but it could be better. It could be a “changing book” accordingly with the best knowledge we have up to now, isnt it more or less what Jaqques always speak about? “The best that we can do up to what we know today”…? I am very grateful to have read TVP magazine and have shared it to some of my closest friends, thanks Tio! I ll keep following your work!
Thank you! TVPMagazine morphed into TROM books https://www.tromsite.com/books so we will keep the work going with or without TVP. I agree with you 100% about “the best that money can’t buy” book and this was my main critique of the book – where are the sources? – If TVP wants to present itself as a serious project then ‘sources’ for the claims they make are a must. That’s what I tried to bring to TVP with TVPMagazine. I asked Roxanne several times to make 1-2 blueprints available to the public so that the public understands that TVP is more than just pretty designs, but nothing of relevance emerged from that discussion. If they have a ton of materials: from blueprints to sources for their claims, then they better start to make those public so that people look at TVP in a more serious/scientific way.
Tio
Thank you for sharing this. I feel that we had a very similar experience back in 2009/10 and share the same beliefs. In 2016 I stumbled across the magazines and thought they were absolutely brilliant. I shared them with my students when they asked certain questions and I used them briefly as a resource. I came back on because I hadn’t been on here for a couple of months and noticed it was no longer TVP. When i read this i was disappointed but not surprised. It is definitely not the first time that this has happened. Well done for everything you have achieved. You have my 100% support.
So wonderful to hear all that! The same magazines, or as we call them now “books”, can be found at tromsite.com (if you were not fully aware of that). We are now making a video series out of them, and also transform them into audiobooks. So all of TVPM and more is on TROMsite.com. And honestly thank you for your message!
Please, upload them to youtube!
We have them on youtube – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlkY7JhD4qyMYw-KaDkWBZympzIt4TZJD and we are making more.
Yeap, found it & subbed! Watched a few of the 30min ones already.
Hi Tio, i read your amazing magazine, back then it was TVPM. It made a lot of sense and such an eye opener. I’m sorry to hear about your struggle, stress and bad experiences with TVP organization. I guess humans will be humans and everyone only have 24 hrs per day..
I strongly believe that this world can be a much better place if only we can change/update our primitive mindsets.
I cannot help you with money yet, but I can help with audio needs such as music, sound effect, recording cleanups etc(I’m a music producer) so hit me up if you need those!
Sorry for such a late reply. Usually I get an email when a new comment is posted but didn’t get for this one. So sorry honestly and thank you so much for the message. Can you please subscribe to TROM Newsletter https://www.tromsite.com/ bottom of any page – if you are on that list then whenever I need help with something or any TROM updates I will send an email.
Thank you again for your message and I feel so bad that I didn’t see it soone, but wasn’t my fault.
According to POSIWID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
yeah I believe TVP cannot accomplish a RBE, but it can diminish the FINANTIAL NEEDiness of the population, which is pretty amazing. Bad News that TVP rely strongly in the construction of a City. I would love to see a city of Fresco,but originilly conceibed, just with material sciences and robotics, even without the programming and electronics that we have today…
Hey, Johnny come late.
I recently remembered I used to read the magazine and I ended up here.
Dang. I still respect Jacques though. I think TVP definitely has organizational issues, same with Zeitgeist. Jacques being a century old doesn’t help, and the rest of the movement seemingly not structured right for growth and resilience.
Even progressives(Real ones) have hard times trying to unite. Look at the American Greens and more. Or other movements entirely that go against establishment grains.
Anyway, good to see you’ve continued it with your own moderation.
So overall your point is that The Venus Project’s ideas and proposals are good, but the organization itself is not. Am I right?
It’s interesting to see what will happen once Roxanne Meadows is gone (I’m not wishing something bad to happen, just to be clear). Who will then get the leadership, will everything be reformed? Especially reformed the way you and others (Sasha, Lucy, Roberto etc) would wish? I agree with you about the liabilities of the current organization of TVP, but I won’t blame Jacque that much. He always rejected the position of “leader”, “martyr” or celebrity, but the fact is that if there was someone who knew TVP to its core, that was him.
My opinion is that TVP is probably the best idea/vision of the sustainable and better future we have now (by scientific standards), but that organization needs a massive hollistic change. Also, if something like that happens in near future, it would be nice to see TVP join or at least exchange ideas and views with your TROM.
Yes overall TVP has a very nice set of ideas about the future. I’d say good for inspirational purposes only. They do not have the details nor the structure to create anything in the “real” world. As far as I can tell. Regardless, Jacque’s ideas are great and they deserve to be wellknown. But now I think even Jacque’s focus is not what I would follow as guidance and I argue what’s my line of thinking here https://www.tromsite.com/books/#dflip-df_6562/1/