The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-18/the-dark-side-of-onetaste-the-orgasmic-meditation-company

by pmcpinto • 8 years ago

52 44 8 years ago

dwighttk• 8 years ago

Sounds like all dark side to me

OT: I really expected Bloomberg to do better than NYT and others regarding their subscription service. How is it, that I would have to contact them to cancel my subscription? What is so hard about a simple cancel button. Also their pricing is way out of line. The introductory offer is $9.99 (which is just in the Netflix range and about right for a single service) but after 6 Months I'd have to pay $35? It needs more than one subscription to a news site to get a pluralistic world view and this high pricing works straight against that.

yono38• 8 years ago

Try this: https://outline.com/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/...

mikestew• 8 years ago

It's the reason I buy my subscriptions through either Apple or Amazon. In both cases cancelling is a matter of clicking a button. I learned my lesson from The Economist (I still subscribe, but through the App Store app now).

pjc50• 8 years ago

Of course it's a disaster, it's a for-profit sex cult. It even tells you that in the name.

insickness2• 8 years ago

A few years ago I went to a one-day seminar with OM. It irritated the hell out of me. 90% of it was them talking about how much the 'practice' changed their lives. Then they went around the room and asked each member to talk about how excited they were to start. If you didn't, they put you on the spot and embarrassed you. I left halfway through after demanding my money back.

pknopf• 8 years ago

Did they end up giving you your money back?

insickness2• 8 years ago

They did. At first they said that it would be processed but I told them that's not good enough and made them process it right there.

throwawayqdhd2• 8 years ago

It’s best known for classes on “orgasmic meditation,” a trademarked procedure that typically involves a man using a gloved, lubricated fingertip to stroke a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes

Who would have thought that a company that offers this could have a dark side?

coldtea5• 8 years ago

The company might have plenty dark sides, but what's described above is only "dark" in puritan sex-phobic cultures...

toasterlovin9• 8 years ago

You may want to consider the idea that traditional, conservative attitudes toward sex exist in part specifically to prevent the kind of coercive bullshit that inevitable arises in "free love" environments.

moate3• 8 years ago

Love sex. All about it. Done all kinds of weird, gross, kinky things.

OM is about a clinical setting. It's specifically billed as NOT about sex. It's 15 minutes, exactly, of the man stimulating the woman. Then they DO NOT have sex in the immediate aftermath.

Being sex-phobic/puritanical and feeling that this particular behavior isn't a healthy sexual adventure aren't the same thing.

This company's whole deal is supposed to be about how sexual experience is any important aspect of your healthy human life, but the way in which they help to encourage this is through something that removes the "normal" sexual behaviors and replaces them with rote behavior and a focus on one specific aspect of sex (the female orgasm).

There might be some good ideas there, and Mussolini did make the trains run on time, but overall the whole thing is not good.

throwawayqdhd2• 8 years ago

I didn't know the definition of "puritan" had expanded to include "not willing to get orgasms from strangers in public"

You do know that there is a pretty healthy distance from being "sex-phobic" to this, right?

lifeisstillgood• 8 years ago

If the Anthony Hopkins film was accurate, The original cereal producer Kellogg ran a "health farm" with pretty similar procedures at the turn of the 20th C. I believe it was a common cure for female "hysteria".

yongjik• 8 years ago

...So they are, basically, disrupting prostitution.

/slowly backs off

moate3• 8 years ago

I've got a friend who works for these guys. It's always felt a bit off in the way weird hippie sex communes always would. I'd never have guessed it was this culty.

Wow

mmagin• 8 years ago

"At OneTaste events, attendees often played communication games prompting them to share vulnerable stories. Former staffers say they took notes that might help them sell later—maybe a student was recently divorced and lonely—and senior staff assigned subordinates to home in on wealthy students who seemed attracted to them or had experiences in common."

Eww.

jxub• 8 years ago

The company has hired executives and advisers who worked at CrossFit and the juice maker Odwalla, and OM has won endorsements from Khloé Kardashian and Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Body).

I am freaking out that such a dangerous cult could be so promoted and entrenched in the "influencer culture".

erric• 8 years ago

Reading the article, it feels like OT pulled directly from the $cientology playbook.

toasterlovin9• 8 years ago

ProTip: Avoid any organization that promotes living arrangements other than monogamous pair bonds residing in their own homes.

Source: extensive reading about cults.

moate3• 8 years ago

If you, as an individual, want to have some crazy free wheeling life with 5 people all sharing love, life, and responsibilities, go for it.

When your boss tells you it's part of the company culture though...

rosser5• 8 years ago

I suppose those monogamous pair-bonds should be heterosexual only, too?

Please lay off with the attempt to normalize any but your preferred flavor as deviant and wrong. You don't get to decide what happens in any bedroom but your own.

toasterlovin9• 8 years ago

You are arguing against stuff I didn't say. I would guess that monogamy works best for most of the people most of the time, but there's tremendous variation in temperament and personality in our species, so do what works for you!

I was making an observation about organizations that promote non-monogamy and communal living. They are almost invariably cults, regardless of how they present themselves to the outside world.

stickfigure2• 8 years ago

I'll bet the Landmark Forum folks are thinking: Damn. I wish I'd thought of that.

1024core• 8 years ago

As an SF native, and finding cults to be interesting, I dipped my toes in OM a couple of times.

Nicole Daedone is the founder.. but follow the links to Viktor Baranco, if you want to know more.

They used to run this "dorm" at 1080 Folsom in SF; but eventually got out of that business.

I remember once I was at one of their presentations. At the end of the presentation, men and women were paired up for a round of stroking. Of course, men outnumbered the women. So one of the organizers called up the dorm at 1080 Folsom (which was right around the corner) and told them to "send more women". And soon, a bunch of women showed up, ready to be stroked...

Once they had my number, they'd call me endlessly, selling some "retreat" or the other, for $$$. No thanks!

I've lost touch with them over the last couple of years, but it's a sex-addiction cult, if I were to label it.

The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company

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