Nope, I’m not looking to purchase one. But he’s been around a long time. What are they like? How many different ways can you say, “You can do better?”
I"ve seen “Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein,” “Son of Frankenstein,” “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” and “Young Frankenstein,” do they count?
I don’t get it. Does he look like Frankenstein or something? I know he has huge teeth, but that’s about it.
His whole schtick seems to be about “You can do anything if you believe in yourself and TRY REALLY HARD.” Are there are lot of low self-esteem types who are in sales or something who need this advice? I just can’t figure who his audience is, or why he’s been around as long as he has.
I have friends who would go to his seminars and and listen to his tapes like religious zealots. But these were the type of people who believed in magnets for arthritis and all other kind of stuff with no scientific basis.
It seemed to be kind of a fad. They just stopped after about a year.
I used to watch the old Tony Robbins videos back when he looked halfway decent and had friends like Fran Tarkenton. Nowadays he looks like he is in the middle of a 3 day crack binge with friends like Todd Bridges.
James Randi’s commentary discussed Robbins’ meetings here:
http://www.randi.org/jr/090602.html
and here:
He reminds me very much of Frankenstein, yes. No bolts in the neck, but the whole package says “We belong dead” to me.
Criminy. He does look like a “handsome” Lurch.
No, he looks like the original Lurch from the Adams Family series.
crapcrapcrapcrapcrap
Yes a35362! I couldn’t agree more.
That’s what I get for replying 30 minutes after a refresh.
In the movie with Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow he shakes Tony’s hand and says it’s like grabbing a bunch of bananas! Probably the only funny line in the movie.
I saw one a few years ago…a friend of mine had borrowed it from his mom, who had gotten it as a X-mas gift from her boss.
(Tony Robbins as a gift from your employer…as if that isn’t insinuating something…)
It was pretty entertaining, but if you’ve seen the infomercials, then you’ve pretty much seen the videos. There’s some generic self-help rhetoric and some self-realization exercises (like listing 10 things you want to do before you die, and numbering them in terms of priority) but overall nothing really worth the money in my opinion.
Have you ever noticed how Motivational Speakers don’t seem to have ever had a real job for very long? So they fall back on ‘being positive’ instead. Because they’re so talentless at anything really useful and productive.
My mother used to be really into him – she’s been to several seminars, and has a dozen or so of his videos still. So one night when i was channel surfing, I came across an infomercial for him.
God, what an arrogant prick. He said something about how he has critics, and how he feels sad for them because they’re not willing to try to turn their lives around, and how if they’d open themselves up to the idea of self-empowerment, they could really achieve something positive. Dumbass.
My sister attended one of his meetings once, too, and later told me all about her mystical firewalking experience. At the time, I didn’t know how firewalking worked, but I was pretty sure that when Tony said there was no scientific explanation for it, he was lying. Next day I went to the library, and within 15 minutes I had an article by CSICOP explaining the physics of firewalking in layman’s terms. I, as triumphant as any little brother, showed the article to my sister.
That was seven years ago. Over this past Christmas, I overheard her telling my father about firewalking and how there was no scientific explanation for it.
Bleh.
Daniel
It’s because he’s a self-made man.
d&r
Dave Barry did an article about 5 years ago detailing his experience of attending one of Tony Robbin’s seminars (I would link to it, but you have to pay to read it, search for “Altered States” in the archive at davebarry.com)
His take was that it was pretty lame, just a bunch of upbeat music and motivational slogans.
Lisa Simpson: “He’s just selling easy answers.”
Lenny: “And how!”
Sorry – posted in the wrong place, and accidentally resurrected this old thread.
When I worked for a large retailer in Daytona back in the late 90s I received the highest audit scores in the region and was told I would get some sort of great reward.
The reward of course was the 3 day Tony Robbins seminar in Orlando.:mad:
Myself and 4 others from my company were put up in the Peabody hotel across the street from the convention center. It ran 3 days (starting on a Friday) and the days were something like 15 hours long, all inside a windowless convention hall. I heard the tickets for the thing fetched near a grand. So this made the demographics of the audience a cross between people who were writing it off as a business expense and people who were rich but had no social skills so they were buying membership to a very expensive social club where everyone smiled at them and made them feel good about themselves.
It wasn’t much different from a company pep rally. Loud music, dancing, inspirational stories, give everyone high-fives, lay on the floor and meditate, group excercises, blah-blah-blah.
One of the members of our group, a man in his 40s, told us “this is crap and an insult to my intelligence” after 3 hours on the first day and left.
I hung in there for the duration of day 1 since the day culminated with the WALK ON HOT COALS thing around midnight and I just wanted to do it so I could say I did. They tried to get you all ramped up for the WALK by saying b.s. about positive thinking, psyching yourself out, mind over matter, you can do anything, blah-blah-blah.
I wasn’t buying into the crap but waited my place in one of the multiple hot coal lanes set up in the back parking lot outside. Shoes off, roll up the pants, step into a tub of water, walk quickly across the coals, step onto a cold water drenced piece of sod and wipe your feet. Nothing to it.
I never showed up for day 2 or 3. Apparently the others dropped out early too.
Oh, and the whole time we were there they were promoting/pushing the next convention which was going to be in Hawaii. It was like $5K or someting.