This is a report from the Flag local door-knocking campaign to “recover” all the people who have faded from view.
Recognize that even these paltry figures are padded. Nobody reports “stats” in scientology without inflating them to make it seem like things are better. Probably the vast majority of the numbers represented here came from knocking on the door of members of the OT Committee and asking them what service they put their children on over the summer holidays.
But even with that in mind — this is very revealing. Since January 2018 they have managed to get 569 people onto a “service.” That is less than 100 per month.
But look at the list of services. “Paid seminars” is the FIRST thing on the list. You know how many paid seminars have been done in the Tampa Bay area in the first 6 months of the year. Just Michael Chan has probably done 10. Let alone all the other leaching “Flag FSMs”… Not a mention of anyone on OT Levels. Or auditor training. But seminars and “Div 6 courses.”
Then you look at “where did the arrivals go” and it’s a random grab bag or missions and orgs around the world. Amazing. They literally just rounded up anything they could find that might have happened somewhere and “counted it”…
And this is what they are PROUD OF!
For the uninitiated, the way scientologists report stats is a bottomless pit of creativity. From holding a “seminar” and counting the people who are conducting the seminar as “attendees” (small potatoes) to handing out a few WTH booklets outside a sporting event attended by 85,000 people and claiming “we reached 100,000” to airing an ad on TV and claiming “tens of millions were guided onto the Bridge” the variations are endless.
So, know the hype and inflation — and factor it in. But even if these numbers were true, this is hardly the “world’s fastest growing religion.” The church of the flying spaghetti monster has better stats than this.
Flag IS booming, silly! .
Now listen up! And stop believing your own eyes. And don’t pay attention to ANYTHING you read, do you understand? Because its ALL lies, its NOT happening.
As David Miscavige said the other day:
“Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.”
Wait! Wait! CORRECTION! Somebody ELSE just said that! My bad! Whoops!
My apologies. So many conspiracy theories, so little time…
.
I’d like to see a picture of the restaurant at the AO about dinner time these days. Back in the late nineties it was near standing room only. I remember a nice lady named Margarite who was staff. I wonder how the See Orge worked out for her, getting ‘up the bridge’ and having a wonderful life of retirement and all.
Yo Dave,
Better jack up security. Don’t want any pesky empty photos showing up on the Inet. And whatever happened to Margarite Dave? Is she still cranking out 80+ hour weeks on no pay in exchange for ‘getting the priceless tech’? Or did You offload her onto the public welfare roles?
Dealing with those old useless eaters can certainly eat up yer day!
Coop I well remember Margarite. A very nice lady. She was old in the 90’s so what is she doing now? The SO is nowhere to be when old and become “a useless eater.” They off load you quick. And what about Thomas, the server in the Sandcastle dining room along with Margarite? Thomas had a Geran or some other kind of accent. He kind of went Type III. He started muttering under his breath not nice things, had bad attitude, and was doing and saying bizarre things. I think this was his way of speeding up his exit from Flag. I hope it worked and he is out. He too was no spring chicken. I do hope he got out.
Flag is BOOMING…OOMING…OOMING…OMING…MING…ING…NG…G… Now if you listen carefully you will hear the crickets cricketing and the coffin lids closing. Hear it?
Looks like FLAG is LYING LYING LYING. My qquestion is–what will it take for the final card in the deck to fall??
Don’t forget the tumbleweeds!
Yeah, take one look at any photo of David Miscavige or L. Ron Hubbard and ask yourself if you would buy a used car from either of them.
All sane people would NOPE the hell outta there.
Lyin’tology. Lying all the time to all people on all fronts, including to themselves as they look in the mirror every morning. One gigantic fabrication of bullshit.
“Tens of millions were guided onto the Bridge…”
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Now THAT’S some funny shit. I still have tears in my eyes! I…what that? She was serious? Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha. Now that’s some funnier shit!
You inspired me Old Surfer Dude
🙂
There once was a savage whose name may rhyme with cabbage,
He ravaged all who he ruled.
He lied stole and mistreated,
They all felt defeated
’til someone decided he needs schooled.
Now a Leah and a Mike, have turned on a light,
Exposing a mountain of shame.
The man screamed and shouted,
But now all those who doubted,
Know who is really to blame.
Let’s say you are a person who is getting harassed by phone calls from scientology. You change your message to something like, “Hi! You’ve reached Xenu the Intergalactic Overlord. Sorry I missed your call, but I am busy implanting body thetans over on planet Teegeeack. Leave a message after the beep!”
Does the scio who is making the phone call have to write a KR on himself because he heard those “sacred, top secret” words?
Miss Q, l responded to your question.
No less than an inspired handling, Ms. Q, and very funny too!
“The church of the flying spaghetti monster has better stats than this.”
While Mike might be saying this in a tongue-in-cheek manner, this is actual true in some areas, such as the 2016 Irish religious census. More people (92 total) identified as Pastafarian (the flying spaghetti monster) than did Scientologists.
Only 87 people (out of a country of 4.773 million in 2016) identified as Scientologists (ironically, the exact same number of folks identified as Hare Krishnas, another group with a reputation of being a cult). While I know not everyone lists their religious preferences on these things, the fact that only 87 people put Scientology as their religion likely means it’s a true representation of the number of Scientologists in that country, or if there are more than that, they were actually ashamed to admit it (and some folks might have just put it down as a joke or because they’re a Tom Cruise “fan-girl/boy”).
Just for shits and giggles, over 20X more people identified their religion as “Jedi Knight” (2,050) than Scientologists.
On the plus side of things, I suppose they can claim they beat out “Satanism” (78) by 9 people, so congrats?
A chart showing the results of that census can be found here:
https://www.michaelnugent.com/2017/04/06/irish-census-all-religions/
3914 people actually answered their door? That is pretty phenomenal if you ask me.
Where are the stats for; How many people yelled at them; Number of krs resulted: Number of SP declares?
True story…in 1998 at an international event, DM announced that a local TV show which featured a couple of prominent OT 8s “reached” 20 million viewers. I watched this talk show when it aired at 1:00am, since I knew the participants.
At the time I worked for a British company which supplied media statistics to the advertising and publishing industry. They published the industry “bible” for TV and Radio programs. I looked up the talk show in question, and its viewership was “N/A”, meaning it was less than 25,000 viewers.
Very, very few TV shows in the UK can claim 20 million viewers. Maybe season finale of The EastEnders, or a royal wedding.
I knew, for a fact, that DM was full of shit, and lying through his teeth.
For a while Sea Org members at Flag at Security guards have practiced a kind of segregation where a certain amount of Scientologists were “not allowed on Base”
Those in good standing could come and go on base, but the other “ethics particles” were not permitted to set foot…not even for INT events where they want STATS and call 23 times a day for attendance.
Also reports leaked where a husband and wife could get separated where a husband was allowed in for the INT event, but the wife could not set foot in because she had too many “knowledge reports” on her complaints on over regging and after attaining OT 8 she was told she was not clear and had to re do Bridge from the bottom up at her expense. She had complained about that as well. Separating a kid from parents and husband/wife etc had become routine re setting foot on the base.
So after years of segregation of the “Good Scientologist” and the “Bad Scientologist”…it makes me wonder if those not allowed on base will now be “recovered “?
Sea Org members knocked on our door and tried to separate me from my wife. They thought that she could be led back into Scientology. It was very interesting to watch. They planted literature in the mail box bypassing the post office. A Sea Org member then knocked on the front door asking to see her. I told them she was sleeping. I could see a car with more people parked to the left side of the house. In order to stop this nonsense, I offered my cell phone number to the lady at the front door. She took the bait and left. As I predicted, she called me the next day. I had a great opportunity to blast her ear with the fact that Hubbard was Luciferian and that she knew nothing about Scientology. It was a real opportunity to see her back down because my strength of knowledge was far greater than hers. She was simply totally brainwashed with all of the BS. My creative imagination kicked in that evening and I planned a real surprise for them if they wandered on my property. I had the Christmas lights set to go off with the alarms and the sprinklers – all five zones each with six or more water spouts. They never returned so I never had a real test.
I wish I had been there! Sounds like fun!
Goodness me! And all this from the masters of communication.
There’s that, “hey Rocky, what me pull a rabbit out of my hat,” trick again.
I guess it all boils down to; there is no product as stated available from Scientology, never has been! This sort of behavior, especially at the mecca of technical delivery is the organization’s response to unrecognized unworkability. Any moron can excel at being a Scientologist!
Please do not sully the good name of Bullwinkle by comparing him with this. Compared to this, his rabbit trick was a stellar success. He did manage to pull a lion out one time. :3
44 volunteers?
My little local church has more than that to put on our kids vacation bible school summer program.
In the world of nonprofit measurement, quantity doesn’t really mean as much as quality.
The number of square feet you own or the number of people who were handed a booklet don’t mean a hill of beans. Funders ask for best practices in qualitative impact measurement, and so should Scientologists.
If you hand out 85,000 booklets, and only ten of them remain outside of a garbage receptacle within 10 minutes, what have you achieved? How can you attribute lowering the crime rate by this method with a straight face?
Scientologists should be freaking demanding real-world assessment and evaluation, or at least financial transparency and a succession plan.
in the world of non-productive measurement, scn lies, must lie, cannot not lie. it’s scripture, doncha kNOw?
AND, AFAICT, those “stats” aren’t for anything real for any particular entity. Just feel-good numbers unconnected to anything they’d actually want
Of course. My point is that even if they were accurate – which I’ll bet dollars to donuts they aren’t – the stats they are choosing to report are meaningless. They cannot prove they are making a measurable positive impact upon their own parishioners, much less the communities they suck dry of tax revenue.
I think the current $camology thought process is more “quantity has a quality all iits own”.
The numbers are for internal and external propaganda. I believe COBagge gave up on results a long time ago.
I gave up on results about 20 years ago when I was trying to design a social impact assessment of Scientology, Inc. upon the community of Clearwater. I asked about the disparity between the information they were providing and information coming from more neutral sources. For that, I was threatened with private investigation into my crimes. I was never even in.
Gotta love their little souls. As soon as you weren’t swallowing the Koolaid, you were a criminal. Per policy.
What were your crimes? 😉
Asking difficult questions.
Mr. Rinder,
While we are a comparitively small faith, and considered fringe by some, we are a legitimate organization of believers.
We feel the repeated references to our faith in your writing about Scientilogy creates an unwanted association with us and Scientology. We do not wish to have our reputation tarnished with any ties to such unhinged philosophies.
Please refrain from mentioning our faith in your blog on Scientology.
Thank you,
Rev. Bob Clergyman
Superintendent, Southwestern Conference Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
LOL! that’s priceless Kyle. Thank you for my afternoon laugh 🙂
Rev. Bob, please clear this one thing up for me. Is it sauce or is it gravy?
Our faith is pure. No sauce or gravy. Unlike the heretics in the Eastern Conference that professes that our lord prefers alfredo sauce.
Rev. Bob, you are, of course, a registered member of your church’s Meatball Org. Correct?
Ramen!
This is excellent. I can totally be devoted to an edible monster.
Sign me up.
When I read they are on a campaign to recover people, that explained the situation to me. I recently had a friend from out of state contact me after ten years of no contact. We had just drifted apart then. She reached out to me to get back in comm. I was immediately suspicious that she was working for OSA or for an OTC to recover me. Why else would a KA drinker contact a “bitter defrocked apostate” like me? But I gave her the benefit of the doubt and had several emails back and forth. Now that I see they are on a kick to get back off lines people, this is probably why she contacted me.
It was interesting to get her level of blind faith, non confront of evil, and the degree she wears blinders in order to keep this house of cards up for her. The last straw for me was when she said that the Briefing Course at ASHO was not operating, “because they are checking the tapes etc…” and at AOLA the Class VIII Course is not offered (for many decades now) because they are checking out the materials etc, same thing. What a crock that is. And she believed it.
I pointed out to her that LRH’s voice on a tape is pretty hard to alter, not like written words are. So if his voice is saying it, that’s a pretty good sign that he said it and thus no checking of tapes on the BC is necessary. What she doesn’t know is maybe they are editing out Nibs, Aurthur, and Mary Sue from all tapes so it will be as if he never had certain family members at all. I told her to Look; don’t listen, like Ron said to do and that she should look inside the beautiful Ideal Org buildings and count heads. How many are actually paying public to receive auditing or do an auditor course? I told her that would be her answer. She has disconnected from me. But I tried to put a few seeds in her head before the hammer came down.
Compassion and honesty aren’t workable and are despised within Scientology hey? Nice try though, you are a kind soul.
Well done. She may have disconnected (through fear/pressure) but you have no way of knowing at this point what seeds you planted may yet flower inside her head. I hope for her sake that the things you said take root!
“The church of the flying spaghetti monster has better stats than this.”
The church of the flying spaghetti monster doesn’t abuse children, cover up the crimes of serial rapists, or sign up its clergy for perpetual enslavement.
I cannot understand How, with all the recent, overwhelmingly adverse, publicity surrounding these Scammers (not to mention access to the internet), Anyone can swallow their swill ! ! ” ‘Splain it to me, Lucy “.
That looks like an over 85% failure rate to me… (total who did not “arrive” vs total contacts.)
And, I am sure the highest count of volunteers (44) was taken at the highest point in time during the past 6 months. The last month, meaning now, might have only 1 or 2 active people left in the “recovery” program. Most of these “volunteers” are probably ineligible to get services at Flag and so were required to work on OSA programs in the hopes of getting services someday.
In the course of knocking on 3,914 doors, they were undoubtedly fed a huge rash of shit from the 3,914 disaffected X Scientologists. An ugly scene. Knocking on doors of X Scientologists has got to be the worst job in all of Scientology!
As with everything in Scientology, it is way worse than you think, even after you discount it by multiple orders of magnitude….
That is true about the FSM. I am an ordained FSM minister.
Please! Their modesty is not being acknowledged! Just. Look. These numbers are HIGHEST EVER. On a year over year basis their stats ARE straight up and vertical. You diddlatants cannot deliver stats that are 569X on a year over year basis.
And just you see. For next years massive expansion, going leap-eons beyond scienoTV, we hear COB is going to release ScienoGoogle to surpass that WogGoogle effort.
OT IX and X are now being pushed into the 2020’s since the orgs are being swamped with raw meat public at the moment and cannot properly prepare for the onslaughter when OTIX and OTX are released.
/S
Orgs are out ethics if they cannot prepare for the flood of visitors once OT IX and OT X are released!
Staff there is PTS and should report to ethics so they can get cleaned up.
We need them to be ready RIGHT NOW.
The future of the planet is at stake!!!!111!!!1eleven!!!11!!!!
Also, LOL!
I used to keep the stats for my OTC and always inflated them by about 20% – and much more if I believed someone hadn’t reported their stats but were quite ‘likely’ to have been busy doing something. I was suggested to do this by my supervisor at Flag who said people ALWAYS under-reported their stats on course. I’m pretty sure anyone who touched those stats after me also inflated them with each handling, because by the time I saw them announced at the MV event they bore not even a mystical esoteric relation to the stats I was counting at source.
Didn’t LRH tell everyone to multiply their stats 47X for his birthday?
Speaking of reporting stats, where is that Flag news letter reporting stats that Jeff Mintz put out monthly? You haven’t posted it in months, hmmm, could it be that the embarrassment was stopped by DM? LOL
Absolutely guaranteed it was stopped. Like the OT Committee minutes. This stuff is embarrassing because it’s their own unvarnished, internal stuff and that doesn’t match the public PR lines.
Out of the 3,914 that were contacted, only 569 attended a ‘service’, that leaves 3,345 with ‘no result’.
It makes me wonder if those 3,345 told the one that knocked the door: ‘No thank you, I have seen the Aftermath and that let me know how criminal your Church really is”, or “Sorry, I have been declared for not agreeing with Miscavige’s abuses”, or “No, I have been ripped off my money” and so on.
Another point is that SMP is supposed to have reached millions and millions and even then no decent individual would dare to reach the doors of any Scn Church/Org.
So true…
Yo Dave,
So how are the weekly stat(uses) looking to ya good buddy?
1) Staff beatings : 2 – down from three last week (good trend)
2) Staff pay/wk (for 80 hrs work): $52.23 – up $2.23 from last week (good trend)
3) Staff galley/meals : porrige added to breakfast menu. (good trend)
4) Lawsuits settled : 1 – up from none last week. (good trend)
5) ‘Curious’ billboards : 35 – up from 20 last week. (good trend)
6) ‘Nasty’ press articles about $cientology: 2347 – up from last week. (Oops!!)
Ya know Dave, I think ya better get onto those young gals doing the love bombing of that elderly gentleman you are enticing with visits to the ice cream parlor. And what about those Financial Irregularities being created out of thin air by yer credit (card) department; DIV Three I think ya call it.
That is how you got my ex to step up on the dono lines so many years ago. Clever ya all are. So howz the stats shaping up?
7) New credit cards approved for upstat parishioners: 14,329 – up from last week by 1231! (Excellent)
8) Credit limits extended for parishioners: 10,625 – up from whatever it was!
Now yer talkin Dave! More easy money for the most ethical group ON THE PLANET !!!!!!!!!!
that’s hilarious!
Whew! I remember the “good old days! of over 500 a week. Wow.
500 a week – do you mean dollars? If so I never heard of any staff anywhere making any where near that much money!
Fatest imploding religion.
“FATEST imploding religion?” Tell ’em to join a gym.
An attendee at a seminar is now an ARRIVAL on a SERVICE? … My my, how things have changed … Maybe Ron is still “out there” far far away doing his research, cause if he could read today’s post …
I watched about 15 minutes of the Scientology Channel last night. Very slickly produced, with a lot of warm and wonderful little sales pitches and “social proof,” with numbers flashing on the screen showing how big they are growing and how many are involved (I believe one number flashed up that implied they had 5 million new folks each year). I sure hope no one is dumb enough to watch and become interested.
I guarantee you people are dumb enough.
hgc10, No, we are not dumb enough.
Yep. I hate to admit it but ‘stupid is as stupid does’ and I’ve been there, done that.
So what was I thinkin?
Long ans: I wasn’t.
Q: (from the spiritual universe) …. in unison: “Well then what the hell WERE YOU DOIN?”
A: “believin’ what I wanted to believe!”
Q: “and how did that work out for ya?”
Short ans: ” If it looks like shit and smells like shit it probably isn’t a candy bar!”
” PASS!”
How to Lie with Statistics should be one of their courses!
Mark Twain said it best – “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
My guess would be that they contacted a lot of UTRs, or people with enough personal and business connections to members left that they don’t want to risk being declared, who signed up for the most minor “service” they could just for appearances’ sake. And if they are, typically, claiming “confirms” who haven’t actually completed the “service” yet, and if the actual attendance rate is as bad as it is for many Scientology events, fewer than half the number of people claimed may really end up having done any services.
“For what service were the Arrivals for??” First, I’d like to know what that bit of tortured English and re-definition actually means! My suspicion is that the international listings indicate that some of the contacts claimed were actually for people in town visiting Flag – or their family members – and not Clearwater area residents.
So in other words: Since there have been 23 episodes of the Aftermath shows that means that approximately 35 million people have left scientology in the last couple of years…
BTC: there CAN’T have been that many ex-scns, as there never have been that many “in”. AFAICT, there might have been as many as 10,000 in the US at one point IF you count everyone who bought a book and never even did a course. By that measure, Flog’s CF was 26,000 strong about 1979-1980, and very few of the folders were started with less than an intensive — or at least a downpayment on one: a few bucks “to get the flow started.”
Here is a report from the REAL WORLD: I walk my dog to Central Park and pass the Celebrity Center New York every day. To say Ghost Town is a disservice to Ghosts. I have NEVER seen anyone go in or out. Once in a while a couple of tourists stop to gawk as in “so this is the crazy place like on that show with Leah Remini and Mike Rinder. As I pass them I whisper “don’t go in there you will never get out” and they crack up
Zenster – just found out last week from a reliable source that the NY org is completely empty. This in the biggest, greatest city in the world.
I was doing my levels at NY Org in the 70s when they were trying to start up a CC. There wasn’t much enthusiasm about it in the area except for a bit from the i/c. Seems my initial impression at the time was accurate: that it wasn’t going anywhere; They didn’t seem to have a single contact in the local celebrity circuit. Oddly enough, I DID have two local celebs I could have “worked”, both HS friends; but I couldn’t lie to save my soul (still can’t), so couldn’t have regged/sold them., wouldn’t have tried.
NY Org in the 70’s had some of the loveliest people (albeit misguided and lied to) you’d ever meet. The kind of people who truly wanted to help others. (Leah’s mom Vicki was one of them)
It is doubly sad that it all turned out to be a ridiculous and evil con for money.
Thus the memories are bittersweet….