Woo products are still very popular

Skepticism Junk Science and Alternative Medicine
1

On Saturday I helped my daughter sell her cupcakes at a country market. It was our first time there and we were allocated a stall next to an esoteric one. (Here’s a link to them.)

My daughter, fearing that we wouldn’t sell a single cupcake if I created a scene, asked me very nicely to keep my trap shut and to ignore the nonsense they were selling. So, instead I decided to watch the people who stopped at the stall. Not a single person questioned the utter crap they were told.

One example was a brown medallion that these people were selling ( I can’t find it on their website, but I overheard the sellers saying it was new, so it might not be up yet.)which supposedly balanced out your energy field like a magnet, but it wasn’t a magnet. ???

It also supposedly made you more supple, much stronger and healthier. To demonstrate an improvement in strength, the sellers used the two finger lift trick (similar to this one) where they attempt to lift someone without using the medallion - which they can’t do. Then with the medallion clasped firmly in their hands, they lift their gullible client with no effort at all. Had their “magic” medallion not been so expensive - R700.00 - I’m sure they would have sold quite a few.

They also sold “spirit and celestial” chimes which were used to “clear, balance and transform energies” - see here. The constant pinging succeeded in giving me a headache, or perhaps it was from their special “money” incense they burned to increase their sales. Oh, and I forget, they had both put on special “money” oil for that purpose too. I’m sure the four sales they did make for the day will be attributed to their incense and oil.

Some of the products they had on sale were smudge sticks - to clear evil out of houses etc.
Angel wings - I have no clue what those were, but I imagined little wingless cherubs littering heaven.
Finger labyrinths.
Wind chimes - which I do like, I love the musical notes. However, these were being sold for balancing vibrations.
Chakra candles.
They also advertised, and guaranteed, healing sessions which apparently worked in only one session. I didn’t investigate this one because I’m sure I would have broken my promise to my daughter and we wouldn’t have sold anything, but I really wished that some of the forum members were there to pose some very good questions to these two charlatans.

BTW, while watching and listening to the people who stopped by, I learned that I have a drumming circle/sweat lodge in my area; not to mention a whole load of gullible neighbours.

mdg

2

Not quite woo products, but in a similar vein:

I recently attended a book discussion. The author’s daughter, Liezel, had been murdered and she wrote a book about the impact it had on her life. The interviewer (who clearly had not read the book) then asked her if she was “in communication” with Liezel. I wanted to scream out: “She’s fucken dead, arsehole!” The author gave an appeasing reply that basically implied that she talks to her daughter in her thoughts. Next someone from the audience asked her why it happened to her. This evoked a long reply that amounted to I don’t know. Another member of the audience then gave a long speech in which he assured her that “…the Father dries all tears and you will still see Liezel walk this earth.”

One would have thought people attending book reviews would have a modicum of literacy.

3

i do photography for the local country market, and there is this dude selling wheatgrass juice. and lo! he stand there with a fag in his jaws.
erm, arent you supposed to be selling health, yet you are killing yourself with nicotine?
the next one is on the 25th, and i generally quite enjoy it, coz its a farm market, so you actually get cheese, eggs, veggies, and the like. but i really wish a woo with goodies rocks up there. helps while the time when there are fools to pity.
i used to believe the whole healing natural stone vibe, until i sat down and really thought it through.
if that stone had any energy in it, then surely that vibration or whatever was fucked beyong repairing when it was broken off from its formation? and, whatever vibration it contains, is surely only molecules doing what they do, so the impact on your body, is buggerall.
i still have stones, coz they are pretty. and they make good projectiles to get the noisy fucken hadedas out of my garden.

4

Ugh, the woo is strong everywhere I look. In my office the word of the month is: http://www.powerbalance.com/

This is also based on some woo about balancing out your energies making you more supple, stronger, better balanced, etc. It sounds like the same thing as mdg’s “medallion” thingy. I’ve gone through pains to distribute a link to a youtube vid firmly disproving the whole thing. But nothing, everywhere I look is these bracelets around peoples’ arms. It drives me nuts…

And now, they’re setting up a mass order for these things from the states, based on those who’ve been wearing it’s “testimonials”. I, it would seem, am just a skeptical fuddy duddy who should stfu and sit in the corner. Fuck them.

5

I sail (it’s said sailing in a storm has created more believers than any church ::)) and one of the doodads that we use to stop seasickness is a little bracelet with two thingys that place pressure (aka acupressure) just above your pulse on a wrist and it seems to work whether it’s psychological or plain woo. I was once on a ferry from Zanzibar and the Chinese woman sitting next to me was getting VERY pale and sweaty…so using the acupressure gently on her wrist (she was pretty as well :-*) she recovered sufficiently to enjoy my company ;D…

6

i think possibly, that distraction helps with the motionsickness issue.
i get car-sick, and feel like death incarnate, but when you start chatting with someone, then you forget about it.
there is supposedly a pressure point inbetween your thumb and index finger, that helps for pain. but believe you me, when i have period pains, fokkol helps except two myprodols. no amount on pinching or squeezing does a crap.
i have the same theory about a voltaren injection. the injections burns like all hell, so you forget about what the hell else is hurting.

i think people are leaning towards alternate therapies, coz they are being told to do so, by everyone who is hip and in fashion. every celeb punts some kind of vegetarian lifestyle, or meditation technique, or aurvedic healer… its trendy.
and since you cant afford a session with deepak chopra, you just buy his meditation cards and crystals.

7

Try living with it, my Mom’s full of woo and then some, and she lives with me in a cottage(I sometimes lock them out of my house to get some peace). She goes see a psychic every 3 - 4 months and lives accordingly (hence the psychic is really very accurate in her predictions), I also every once in a while walk into my house after a hefty day at work and find my bathroom decorated with angels, now I do like angels, some of them are really pretty, but to spend a saturday morning scrubbing off angel transfers off your bathroom tiles, taking off angel figurines stuck with double sided tape on the tiles, and then getting out the handcream from your bedside table to soothe your poor scrubbed hands, to find all your earrings was transferred into an angel “box”, it gets a bit much…

8

jissis.
that’s is so disrepectful. what right has she to come and re-decorate your house? i would have thrown my toys ages ago.
maybe go and re-decorate her pozzie with things you like, and see how quickly it stops.
gather all the goodies you take off, and deposit it at her front door.

9

I love the whole esoteric movement. Really do. In as much as they ought to irritate me because of the drivel they come up with, I am even more impressed with and take great delight in their ability to rip their moronic clientèle off. My attitude is: Hey! If you’re dumb enough to buy into that crap, then you REALLY deserve to own it!

Kind of like my attitude to the religious…

10

True, the powerbalance thing does allow you to spot the credulous at a distance.

11

It’s a lot of fun. I seel duck products at the Shongweni Market every Saturday (this includes dressed duck, confit of duck springrolls, sosaties etc etc) and you should hear some of the comments:

Tannie: “Ooo nee ek eet nie eend nie, sies man”
Ekke: “Hoekom nie. Het tannie al eend geeet?”
'Nee Oooe nog nooit nie ek gril eintlik (by this time I’m ready to moer her over the head with a frozen fucken duck)
“Kom probeer net hierdie lekker gebraaide vlerkie, gemarineer in chunky mango”
Hesistant tannie, nibbles:
“Oe maar dis lekker ek kan dit nie glo nie !
“Sien jy nou wat jy gemis het?” Hoeveel kilos?”
“Oe nee! Liewer nie hoor! ek’s 'n vegetarian”
“My eende ook mevrou”

Fok!