# fuck Oprah: "The Secret" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 18, 2007, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688 "2007-02-18T06:50:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/21 "2007-02-18T15:40:32Z")
This book has had a cult following amongst the creduloids for years now including a passel of my ex-wife’s dipshit friends. Luckily for the ex, enough of me had rubbed off after fifteen years that she can see through the nonsense. She has called me up to joke with me about The Secret more than once. Like most self-help books, there is a grain of truth to it. If a collage on your wall will help you with your focus and work ethic, then you will have a greater chance to achieve the goal. Unfortunately, focus and work ethic seems to be innate and most of the folks who buy that book won’t even finish reading the fucking thing before the next shiny object catches their attention. It’s The Celestine Prophesy for a new generation. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/22 "2007-02-18T16:05:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Nam myo ho ren-ge kyo… Ya know, you’re not too far off… > [@](#): > > Lots of people have been inspired and helped by both Dr Phil and Oprah and the thinking they have exposed them to, thus their continued popularity. :dubious: Color me unconvinced. I’ve always liked Oprah, because I believe her to be sincere, if nothing else–and I’ve always despised Dr. Phil, for leading people to believe he represents actual psychology. Oprah, despite the many times I have watched her show, has never actually made a concrete difference in my life. If Oprah and Dr. Phil were changing lives at such a breathtaking rate equivalent to the magnitude of their popularity, don’t you think we’d have more happy people running around? I don’t see much evidence that the amount of unhappy people in the world is declining by any means. Regardless, this “energy waves” thing is hella bullshit. Certainly there are people out there who want help… but at the price of their dignity? I’m all for making the world a better place, but NOT at the expense of common sense. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/23 "2007-02-18T16:37:44Z")
[QUOTE=Lissla Lissar] This is a damn stupid book. (It’s a book, too. Yay.) We’ve got it at work, and we’ve got a little note taped to the front computer that says, “Whenever you sell a copy of _The Secret_, God kills a kitten”. [/QUOTE] [hijack]I recommend a ‘Books I Hate’ window. Mine did remarkably well: Kevin Trudeau, Silvia Browne, Dr. Laura, James Frey, Doreen Virtue, The Course in Miracles folk, French/Italian/Whatever Women Don’t Get Fat, the LeHayes, Deepak Chopra, that smarmy house flipper guy, Joel Osteen, Jonathan Franzen, the Rich Dad series. They sell like crazy and you’ll never run out of titles. Good times. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/24 "2007-02-18T16:37:53Z")
[QUOTE=hajario] This book has had a cult following amongst the \*\*creduloids \*\* for years now including a passel of my ex-wife’s dipshit friends. [/QUOTE] 😃 I adore that term, and will use it copiously (unfortunately there are plenty of opportunities). [QUOTE=elbows] They are, admittedly, simple secrets; “What you focus on in your life will expand.” So if you’re having some nagging difficulty in your life and it becomes your constant focus it will become what your whole life is about. Focus on the good, yeah, it’s pretty simple. . . . Sure the message that you can’t succeed if you can’t picture yourself succeeding is hardly a new one, but that doesn’t decrease it’s importance. . . . People are floundering all around you and maybe there is virtue in trying to reach them instead of just, y’know, condemning them from some high horse. [/QUOTE] I doubt anyone would be lambasting these people if they had merely turned out a book and DVD advocating valid but non-revolutionary bits of wisdom on how to live a good life. Heck, I myself am starting to study Zen Buddhism, and many of the concepts overlap. So I’m not dissing the idea of telling people how to better achieve what they want, be happy, and have coherent goals. What is drawing the vitriol is the completely unfounded package wrapped around that stuff - the idea that thinking good thoughts and whatnot works because of some weird pseudoscientific forces such as vibration and laws of attraction. This is not only complete, pulled-out-of-someone’s-ass bullshit, but as **don’t ask** points out, it actually puts blame on people who experience tragedy, from losing a loved one to getting AIDS to being killed by a tsunami. So, in addition to encouraging credulity and unscientific thinking, this claptrap also makes people feel guilty for tragedies that are utterly beyond their control, because of the conceit that everything is actually within one’s control, if one vibrates “properly.” ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/25 "2007-02-18T16:59:32Z")
Oprah has done a lot of good; principally she got people reading books again. I don’t think it’s fair to slang her personally. As for ‘the Secret’, the secret is that this is a very old theory which has been rehashed time and again by people looking to make their own selves wealthy. Remember '[The Power of Positive Thinking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale) ’ and ‘Think and Grow Rich’? She was all agog about an earlier, but recent, proponent of this theory, too, whose name escapes me now. If you check through Amazon, you’ll find a few dozen authors milking this Kool-aid cow. ---
**Author:** ![Campion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/26 "2007-02-18T17:20:08Z")
[QUOTE=elbows] IFirst of all you’re giving the Secret sort of short shrift in my opinion. If I understand it correctly, it’s a form of self help that revolves around focusing on what you really want in life. [/QUOTE] Absolutely. And the author of the book knows what she’s talking about. There was a blurb in People magazine about her; she used The Secret to cure her vision. She was tired of wearing glasses, so she just started thinking about fixing her eyes and three days later, voila! Vision cured, and she’s never needed glasses since! And that, my friends, is why The Secret is dumb. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/27 "2007-02-18T17:26:47Z")
Now that Oprah’s encroaching upon his turf, I wonder how [Anthony Robbins](http://www.tonyrobbins.com/Content/OurPhilosophy.aspx) will react? Merger? Corporate Espionage? Mindmelds? Psychic Battles? The world awaits… ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/28 "2007-02-18T18:11:33Z")
I wouldn’t fuck Oprah with your dick to save my mother’s life (a scenario that is, fortunately, extremely unlikely to present itself) but I can sure get on board with the sentiment. I’d be sick of her anyway—although I never watch the show (no, really), I’m constantly treated to the sight of her big mug, with the giant poodle hair and spray-on face, gazing down on me from the monitors in the gym—but her credulous support for this kind of woo-woo shit just increases the burn. ---
**Author:** ![Batsinma\_Belfry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@Batsinma\_Belfry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batsinma_Belfry)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/29 "2007-02-18T18:20:24Z")
There is something to positive thinking. Nothing cosmic or even life changing, unless you’re an incredibly negative thinker. Negative thinking can cause stress. And stress can cause all kinds of health problems. We can’t always get rid of the things that cause us stress, but we can change the way we react to those things. By doing this, I’ve relieved myself of chronic back pain and I only have a fraction of the migraines, I once had. ---
**Author:** ![Schuyler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/54ee81/32.png) [@Schuyler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schuyler)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/30 "2007-02-18T19:25:08Z")
[QUOTE=Unauthorized Cinnamon] 1. If you think nice thoughts, your life will generally be more pleasant. 2. If you focus on the things you want, it’s easier to attain them. 3. Having visual reminders can help you focus. [/QUOTE] I so hope I don’t owe you $14.99 for reading this. Maybe you ought to write a book? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/31 "2007-02-18T19:34:13Z")
[QUOTE=Campion] Absolutely. And the author of the book knows what she’s talking about. There was a blurb in People magazine about her; she used The Secret to cure her vision. She was tired of wearing glasses, so she just started thinking about fixing her eyes and three days later, voila! Vision cured, and she’s never needed glasses since! And that, my friends, is why The Secret is dumb. [/QUOTE] Just to advocate for Satan here: How do you reach that conclusion? Are you saying you don’t believe that her vision was cured? Or that it was ever bad to begin with? Or are you saying there’s a different explanation for the change? Or what? -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/32 "2007-02-18T19:36:47Z")
[QUOTE=Schuyler] I so hope I don’t owe you $14.99 for reading this. Maybe you ought to write a book? 🙂 [/QUOTE] 🙂 Sometimes, I’m sorely tempted to go over to the dark side and peddle some form of snake oil. Especially when buyers of such actively resist education about it. BTW, one of the features in this month’s “O” magazine is, I shit you not, “Will the Real You Please Stand Up: **How to Know What You Want, Think, Love** ” (emphasis added). If this is indicative of her audience, it’s not surprising they buy _The Secret_, too. Sadly, that headline kind of reminds me of my mom. You’d think she’s a critical thinker, since she rejected Catholicism and became an atheist (as am I). Then a couple years ago, she said she’d been talking to a coworker about the historicity of Jesus, and she said to me, “What do we believe about that?” like I’m the atheist pope or something. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/33 "2007-02-18T20:13:54Z")
[QUOTE=Frylock] How do you reach that conclusion? Are you saying you don’t believe that her vision was cured? Or that it was ever bad to begin with? Or are you saying there’s a different explanation for the change? Or what? [/QUOTE] Also, did the article say she’s not wearing contacts? ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/34 "2007-02-18T20:32:37Z")
I’ll just chime in long enough to state that I find it amazing how Oprah can spend a whole episode carving a new asshole in dipshit James Frey (of “Million Little Pieces” infamy), but then goes on to tout this! Not that Frey didn’t deserve to get blackballed for his piece of shite, but it seems especially two-faced to me that Oprah can act so self-righteous about being ‘conned’ by Frey, and then give brazen cons like John Edwards & the promoters of “the Secret” a platform. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/35 "2007-02-18T20:35:22Z")
[QUOTE=Jeff Lichtman] Oprah also recently had on some “psychics” to help people communicate with their dead relatives. Of course she didn’t have on anyone like James Randi to present an opposing point of view. [/QUOTE] Randi wrote/said somewhere that he was on her show once years ago. IIRC, the producer he worked with led him to believe he’d be on solo. However, they did spring some psychic on him. If he had known that and who it was, he could have been prepared. So it was a less than optimal experience for him. ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/36 "2007-02-18T20:39:02Z")
The concept of [self-efficacy](http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/BanEncy.html) is both valid and important, and surely people do far better in life when their sense of self-efficacy is well-developed. However, translating this idea into a vague misty theory that confabulates metaphysics with psychology does people a disservice. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/37 "2007-02-18T20:39:54Z")
She only tore into Frey after she realized the public wanted her to do it. She defended him at first. I’m not an Oprah fan, but I thought that was a surprising and egocentric mistake on her part. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/38 "2007-02-18T21:05:41Z")
[QUOTE=Unauthorized Cinnamon] 🙂 Sometimes, I’m sorely tempted to go over to the dark side and peddle some form of snake oil. Especially when buyers of such actively resist education about it. [/QUOTE] I don’t need to peddle snake oil. I’m going to write PunditLisa’s Guaranteed Weight Loss Program. For 4 payments of only $24.99, you will get a nylon rope, 2 plastic handles and a book. The book will instruct the reader to attach the handles to the rope and then to jump it for one hour a day. And then it’s going to say, “Eat whatever you used to eat, but cut off a third of it and throw it in the trash.” Voila! ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/39 "2007-02-18T21:16:33Z")
[QUOTE=PunditLisa] I don’t need to peddle snake oil. I’m going to write PunditLisa’s Guaranteed Weight Loss Program. For 4 payments of only $24.99, you will get a nylon rope, 2 plastic handles and a book. The book will instruct the reader to attach the handles to the rope and then to jump it for one hour a day. And then it’s going to say, “Eat whatever you used to eat, but cut off a third of it and throw it in the trash.” Voila! [/QUOTE] No good. Lame name. You have to come up with something that Pops! 😃 d&r ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688/40 "2007-02-18T21:58:12Z")
OK, so the concept of actual vibrations leaving your body sounds like complete horseshit and probably is, but I do believe that how you think influences how you act in a lot of unconscious ways (what do you think of Freud?) that subsequently affect other things, particularly the way other people act toward you. I just had a conversation last night about how your opinion of yourself affects your ability to get dates–even if it doesn’t happen on a conscious level, people find you more attractive when you exude confidence, and leechers are drawn to you if you seem unsure of yourself. Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s your fault if someone uses you or does something awful to you because you put out “the wrong vibrations”, but it does mean that your outlook on life and the way you think about yourself can indirectly affect your ability to achieve your goals. Not having read the book or done much research on the people extolling the system’s virtues, I can’t say for certain how far removed it is from that, but how many of you find what I said above unreasonable? > [@Campion](#): > > There was a blurb in People magazine about her; she used The Secret to cure her vision. She was tired of wearing glasses, so she just started thinking about fixing her eyes and three days later, voila! Vision cured, and she’s never needed glasses since! If she really said that, then you’ve convinced me that she’s full of shit; but OTOH, this is a nation and a world where people justify all sorts of violence and mayhem by appealing to the notion of an invisible man in the clouds, so if someone can do something positive with their lives by hanging a vision board on their wall instead, more power to 'em. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-oprah-the-secret/392688.md?page=3)