TVPC – The Venus Project Company

HEY! Mind you, this is posted in “rants”. I allow myself to let my brain vomit when it comes to rants. So take it as that :). This is my personal place where I am allowed to say whatever I want :P. This is why such posts are not going to be shared on TROM networks except TROM Curated News ;). Anyways….

I had enough with The Venus Project. They are a company that does not care about so called “changing the world”. They only care about TVP and they have become properly cultish.

Since I left TVP in 2016 I didn’t care much about them. I focused on TROM and we grew an amazing project. So many people are involved now with TROM and all of them are so friendly and hard-working. I didn’t have time to even think about TVP. But I said I will add their newsletter RSS feed to TROM Curated News and their Youtube channel to TROM Curated Videos so that we try to still inform people about them. But for the past months I lost my last marbles of respect for TVP. For the past months several Points of Contact for TVP got in contact with me and complained a lot about TVP. Similar stuff I’ve been through with TVP for many years. Volunteers’ work is ignored, they are treated badly (almost as if they are employed by TVP), and how cultish TVP is (they said). I had a relief-laughter knowing that now I have nothing to do with TVP, so fuck them with their backwards attitudes. I knew they are like that, so it was no surprise. But a series of events clicked inside my brain and I said “Fuck them completely” and I removed them from TROM Curated News and honestly I won’t even mention their website to anyone. Why? What events?

1. TVP volunteers continuing to complain about TVP – these are people that I know and are super nice and friendly and hard-working people and some helped/help TROM a lot and it hurts to see TVP shitting on their motivation and work.

2. I hear that TVP is more and more pushy with “asking” (cough’ – forcing) volunteers to sign all kinds of papers, like Non-Disclosure papers (something I was asked to sign several times); a recent one in particular is to sign that you won’t help any other RBE organization. Like, what? Are these people crazy?

3. I hear that TVP “high-rank-officials” ( 🙂 ) are asking those who also help TROM why are they donig that and not helping TVP more? Maybe because you don’t let them TVP?

4. I hear that in let’s say a particular interview/doco that I am about to appear TVP-close-friends are fussy if/about Roxanne should appear in that interview too because Tio is in’it. Such a sick way of thinking.

5. I posted this on FB which was an image that said the following:

It was from a TVP Mag that I wrote and Fresco and Roxanne approved. Of course it stirred the TVP fanatics’ hive and one of them in particular started to troll me saying I am irrelevant and attacking me personally. Unfortunately they deleted the comments, I am surprised to see now…So the TVP fanboys don’t even like when you post about them. How you dare?!

6. They don’t care about “creating a better world”. We started to make a series of videos called TROM Poems. Seb is doing it. Great series about short important topics like wars, poverty, corruption, etc.. He mentions at the end of each video TROM, TVP, and TZM. Seb is such a polite guy and he asked me if he should remove TZM and TVP since we are making these for TROM and I said it is up to him. He left them there. It was equally ok for me. I told him to also share these videos with TZM and TVP facebook pages since these videos are universally important. TZM shared a few, TVP said something like: these are great videos but we only share videos that are about TVP and with our footage so come work with us. They are so ego-centric that they refuse to share some “great” (in their views) videos, unless it is ONLY about them. Surprisingly the same guy who responded to this, was the guy who trolled our above TROM facebook post. Such “amazing” official TVP characters!

Aren’t we all, these organizations, trying to highlight the immense injustice in this world and point to solutions? How can you tell me TVP cares about such things when they refuse to share such videos? Actually look at their social networks and their website and you’ll see that they super rarely or never share anything unless it is from them or only about them. I know this too well since I worked with them for 4 years and I realized this very quickly.

Oh, I apologize, TVP shares other people’s work on their “recommended books” page. Well, you have to buy those books. And well, TVP makes money off of that through Amazon partnership. Actually pretty much every adblocker blocks that TVP page and years ago I made them aware of that and told them to put there a frickin’ message if they want for people to see these recommended books. It took a while but they put this message:

I see no “can you please disable”. Straight simple: “you can disable”. haha what a great attitude. But why TVP? Why is adblocker blocking these? Do they track me? Am I trading more than my money to buy these books? Of course, I am trading my data to Amazon through TVP’s website.

7. TVP is just a marketing machine. Speaking of selling stuff. The next thing that almost made my frustration with TVP explode was when I’ve read their latest newsletter and I realized that pretty much all of it is advertising their on-sale videos and products. I then looked at all of their newsletters over the past year and more than 60% are dedicated to advertise their on-sale products. Marketing! There you go:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Not only that but they are charlatans about them. They offer “free” ‘lectures’. But there is a catch (see, no trade-free?): you have to give them your data, and a lot of that:

An here’s their “privacy policy” – is TVP Apple? Who reads this?:

And in their “terms and conditions“, besides the carnival-mess of a lawyer-istic language we find:

Their excuse that “we are forced to comply with the law” that I heard from Roxanne many times is, in my view, non-compliant (to use their language) with the values that TVP tries to project through their documentaries and lectures. They could at least mention that they have to put these on their site to comply with the law. I would even apologize for putting this charlatan mess on the website.

…..but TVP uses lawyers a lot. Again, maybe they are forced to, but damn this is so un-jacque.

If you look throughout their website you’ll see that they employ charlatan marketing tactics to sell stuff, like the .99-type of price. Here, and here:

And when they started the online store it was full of .99 price schemes. I insisted for them to give up on that. And finally they did the change for some products. But took them a while. And they still have such prices on their site.

8. The straw that broke the camel’s back. I saw that TVP only accepts volunteers that go through their training process now. Something akin to Scientology if you ask me. You have to go here and follow the many steps, videos, pages to read and quizzes. The “test” starts with:

TVP and its obsession with “levels of education”. Jacque talked about the nonsense of these things, but apparently TVP is crazy with these and pushes them onto everyone who wants to volunteer for TVP. Anyways, they have some 7 “levels” and their quiz is designed to not let you move to the next “round” until you complete the first, then second, and so forth. You are given a code that you have to add to the next quiz, and so forth. Man, these people are not joking! :)). The quiz questions range from very dumb to cultish.

Examples:

And my favorite:

Apparently no one but TVP aims to “prepare people for changes that lie ahead”. Just, wow.

An now happily sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement!!

You know what happens after that? From my 4+ years experience and lots of other people who were or still are volunteering for TVP: they will put you into a team or more; add you to lists; skype groups; you’ll talk and have to ask for permission; the stuff you do must be reviewed several times and will never be published; probably you’ll have to pass more quizzes and some “mentor” course to prove you are on par with TVP’s excellence. I even heard people saying that TVP told them to buy a $400 “package” from them with books and videos in order to become a volunteer.

Here’s a joke: how is TVP changing a light-bulb?

They send a newsletter asking for volunteers to help with it and for donations for a new light-bulb. Volunteers must go through a 5 step quiz, and several TVP website pages before submitting their request to become a volunteer. Once accepted, they sign a Non-Disclosure Document and are put into a skype group. They will debate what to name the light-bulb changing team and what logo to make for it. They won’t agree on the colors, but at one point they’ll have to submit the idea to a TVP supervisor. They wait a few months and after being dragged into several other skype and Facebook groups, they wonder how would Jacque change the light-bulb. Months later and the room is still dark, and those volunteers are dragged back into their normal life. One day Roxanne enters the room and observes there is no light-bulb. She asks if there are any volunteers helping with it. They decide to send a newsletter to ask for volunteers and for donations for a new light bulb. Volunteers must go through a 5 step quiz, and several TVP website pages before submitting their request to become a volunteer. Once accepted, they sign a Non-Disclosure Document and are put into…..

🙂 Admit it, it was funny! 🙂 And honestly it was true. That”s what I experienced with TVP.

I can rant about TVP enendlessly, but I need to stop. I’ll only mention one more random thing:

TVP used to say their phase 2 is a Major Motion Picture, but now they include “documentaries” to perhaps say that they are in phase 2 since the Major Motion Picture is nowhere in sight. TVP raised a shit load of money for the script of the movie, since I think 2009 or so, and basically fucked all of the money on different script writers and have no finished script many years later. Also, nearly zero transparency with the process.

What’s next? Phase 3 goes from “Experimental Research City” to “Digital Books and Experimental Research City”?

SO, all of this made me finally say: TVP, the organization, is just a company. That’s all.

They want to make money, they are all about TVP and nothing else, and they have become a cult with Jacque transformed into their cult leader. It smelled like that since 2012 when I first got to work with them, but I hoped that I have problems with my nose. Then others started to complain about the same smell. And now I am sure, the smell is real. I accept it and move away from it.

I will still talk about the idea of TVP and Jacque’s ideas, but bloody hell I don’t want to hear about anything else when it comes to TVP. This organization is worse, in many aspects, than Apple or Facebook. It is deceiving, non-transparent, aggressive at times, has many fanboys (the nice word for cult members), sells the “truth about the world” like any conspiracy-prone and money-grabbing and Facebook-liking organization that you see the Internet being full of. I am not sorry for saying all of this because it is true and I had enough. Why “be nice” with this organization? They are not nice with their volunteers or the rest of other organizations that are trying to help out.

Now that I kicked TVP in the butt, I accept kicks back because this is the rant section. So, go for it 🙂 – In a way rants are good. Let it out. But also, let it in.