Masterclasses, TEDx Talks, Spam, and the Rise of the Fluffpreneur

My long-term slightly scientific study of fluffpreneurship

The vast majority of people want to be happy, comfortable, accepted, and successful. And when a lot of people want something, other people will step up to sell it to them. Some of the sellers are honest, to be sure, but sadly, too many of them will be con artists and snake oil salespeople.

We are now in the Epoch of the Memeocene in which things are oversimplified and vapid. It is an age in which society recognizes facile imitation more than substance. Not surprisingly, the snake oil merchants have adapted to the times. What they sell and how they sell it has been pared down to exploit our age of pretending to solve problems with empty platitudes.

I love spam e-mails. It’s weird, I know, but they provide insights into the human psyche, revealing what people want and fear, and how other people try to exploit those desires and fears. For nearly four years, I have used a throwaway e-mail address sign up to things that will get me spammed. It is a free and easy way to study humanity. In particular, I have been observing a dark side of humanity that is as overly sweet and substanceless as cotton candy.

What fills my inbox are e-mails selling me fluff. Not stuff, fluff. Fluffy classes, fluffy talks, and fluffy get-rich-quick schemes. The sellers sending the e-mails are the fluffpreneurs — professional fluff sellers.

Fluff 101

When we need a service, we are prudent to hire an expert. Plumbing and electrical work are best handled by those with the proper training and equipment. Heart surgery and organ transplants are procedures we can’t do ourselves, so we pay someone to do them for us. Makes total sense.

Along that perfectly sensible line of thinking, it would seem that we could also hire someone to help us be happy, comfortable, accepted, and successful. That’s where the fluffpreneurs come in. They claim to be experts who will bring us wealth and well-being. Never mind that no one can make you happy, and no one but you can decide what is fulfilling to you, the fluffpreneurs are there to sell you their formulas and services to get people to like you, give you money, and bring you joy.

The fluffpreneurs fill my e-mail inbox with ecstatic, breathless pronouncements about their latest ebooks, webinars, online courses, and coaching services about which they super excited. They are crushing it and want to help me to crush … something.

In the imaginary worlds of their e-mails, everything is incredible, awesome, and AMAZING!!! Their energy in their Webinars is always insane and intense. Everyone who pays for their services are blown away and on FIRE over what they’ve learned from the fluffpreneurs. Oh, and the fluffpreneurs often claim to be writing to me from some beach in Malta, Fiji, or some such, because, you know, they are so rich they don’t need to work anymore. More on that later.

Masterclass Mania

Remember when people offered online classes? Now, no one offers “classes”; they only offer “masterclasses.” According to one spam e-mail, you should take masterclasses to build your masterskills to reach your mastergoals. :: eye roll ::

The subjects of the masterclasses are prosaic. This past week I’ve received spam advertising, “Revamp Your Breakfast Routine,” “Improve Your Relationships,” “#1 Asset Masterclass,” “How to Crush the Coming Year,” and “Outmaneuver Your Challenges.” Then there’s always the classic title of “Masterclass with ____.” The masterclasses are always taught by “expert and #1 bestselling author, ____,” often a name I’ve never heard of. If I search on the name, the only references to the person across the Internet are their own Website and social media accounts that say no more than they are an expert certified in something and they offer masterclasses and other expensive coaching. They are, of course, a “bestselling” author, because in this world of the fluffpreneurs — like there are no classes, only masterclasses — there are no authors, only bestselling authors.

TEDx Tripe

All of these bestselling, expert, masterclass teachers also give talks. The talks are usually in the form of Webinars, advertised extensively through e-mails. The talks are informercials for the expert’s books, masterclasses, and coaching services.

Now, that’s fine, everyone has a right to hawk their wares. I start to object when the infomercials masquerade as intellectual, academic lectures. Prime examples are the TEDx talks, though the TED Conferences, LLC prefers the term “Event.”

If the TED talk concept ever had substance, it lost it quite awhile ago. TED Conferences, LLC now operates as a franchise under the brand name “TEDx,” and any institution can pay a fee to use the brand name. Pay enough money and you too can sponsor one. It’s a business, selling marketing services to fuffpreneurs.

Invitations to TEDx Events™ list speakers and subjects that are creepily similar to the fluffpreneurs and subjects in the spam e-mails. The speakers are mostly coaches and consultants talking about their coaching and consulting services and inventor/salespeople bragging about their inventions. Infomercials.

Some of the TEDx Events™ give a few slots to young people who can gain experience at public speaking. That is good, but these young people are sadly mistaken that it will impress future employers to put “TEDx Speaker” on their CV.

What really raises my ire is that it is a trend now for small colleges and universities to put on TEDx Events™. They invite faculty like me to pretend to raise up the level of these infomercial events. Being a professor, I’ve been asked to give TEDx talks multiple times, but I have always, and will always, refuse to lower myself to that level. I’m not alone among faculty in taking that ethical stance.

These Events are titled “TEDx” plus the name of the university (marketing) such as “TEDxFluffU” despite TED Conferences, LLC declaring that “TEDx events cannot be co-branded: you may not connect the TEDx logo/identity/name to the name of another organization, non-profit, corporation or other entity.” Money trumps integrity.

Yes, I loathe hypocrisy. That’s especially the case when a university puts on their TEDx Event but don’t have any scholars on the speakers list. Nope, only coaches and consultants talking about their coaching or consultant services and inventor/salespeople bragging about their inventions. Infomercials by fluffpreneurs.

Spammer Scammers

Then there’s the most pernicious of fluffpreneurs — those engaged in what I call “Multi-Spam Marketing” scams. The Multi-Spam Marketing (MSM) fluffpreneurs send spam hawking their fluff. They feature one posing, bleached-toothed person after another shouting “I WILL MAKE YOU RICH!” They all promise to help you earn 6 or 7 figures because they (of course) have earned 6 or 7 figures. Well, except for the fluffpreneur who swears he will teach you how to earn 8 figures, after you pay him 5 figures to start.

These fluffpreneurs tell similar stories. Each was a ridiculously successful money-maker for some famous corporation. They quit that gravy train because they figured out the secret of how to make it rich online earning passive income by selling fluff. Now they want to help make YOU rich! All you need to do is subscribe to their e-mail newsletter, attend their Webinars (in which the energy will be insane and intense), and pay shedloads of money for 1-on-1 coaching.

Now, call me a cynic, but an actual millionaire would not share the secret of how they made money — they wouldn’t want to create competitors. If this con artist really had the secret knowledge he claims, he would keep the secret. It’s a scam, but the scam undoubtedly fools some people looking for an easy way to make money.

Coaching Cons

Many spammer scammers aren’t selling a product. They are selling online “coaching.” That is why this is Multi-Spam Marketing not the Multi-Level Marketing of old. In MLM, you bought product and tried to resell that product at a profit. There was an actual tangible product, such as Avon cosmetics, Tupperware food storage, Amway this and that, and so on. In MSM the product is more nebulous.

What the MSM spammers are selling is spam itself. The spam comes in the guise of a formula cloaked in a suggestion of expertise. These bleached-toothed overly coiffed persons of whom you have never before heard sell themselves as the experts on making money.

They fill your inbox with breathless tales of how they have helped people just like you come to understand their potential to sell themselves. They tell you how you too can learn to feel good about yourself and start to make money by selling yourself. BUT you need to buy the spammer’s Web seminars and subscribe to their e-mail lists and in various ways stay in constant contact with them so they can “coach” you on “finding your gift” and becoming a “coach.”

That is what it all comes down to: they are trying to convince you to become one of them or at least similar to them. If you subscribe to their e-mail lists, you quickly learn that the multi-spam marketers are grooming you to be a spammer like them.

They call it “selling your story” or “selling your gift.” They are teaching you in their spam and virtual hand holding how to write effective spam to convince others that you have a “special gift” for which clients will pay you money to hear more about.

On what a “special gift” is, the multi-spam merchants are vague. But the multi-spammers, through multiple spams, will help you find it. Just send them several thousand dollars for a year’s worth of “coaching” (spam). Seriously, the price tags of the multi-spammers’ services range between $4,000 to $8,000 a year (if you take the discount of paying a year in advance). For the money, you receive even more constant fluff in your e-mail inbox about how you can fluff up your life and learn how to spam other people.

The promise is that after a year or so of this coaching you will be able to spam others and have them send you thousands of dollars to share your “special gift” with them. No product is involved other than e-mails, Webinars, masterclasses, and the occasional e-book. You will do so little work as you rake in the money that you have time to make TEDx informercials.

Some Sanity

Now, I am all about finding your calling. There is no greater blessing than knowing who you are and what you have to offer to others. I am also not against the idea of someone earning money by helping others find their calling. There is, however, something about blending new age fluff with get-rich-quick marketing hype that seems to go against genuine self-discovery.

Could someone be helped by spending their life savings on online coaching? Perhaps. To me at least, that’s a tough sell. I suspect a program of self-reflection and meditation, all free, will yield better results. Some slick fluffpreneur on the other side of an Internet connection can never know you better than you can know yourself.

Don’t buy fluff, create substance. If your calling is to be a writer, or a life coach, or whatever, learn by doing. Better than buying snake oil.

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