Facebook Likes Are A Scam

In April 2011, I started rookiejournal.com. I didn't know much about making web-sites and used WYSIWYG to build it. I was somewhat more passionate about lifting at that time. I was also naive and thought miracles were possible. Like every web-site I decided to to have a Facebook page. I didn't do any promotion and after 3 years I had about 200 likes. 

In comparison I built IronGangsta 1 year ago and with small promotion I reached about 1 200 likes. However, there is not difference as far as user interaction goes. So, 200 real likes equal 1 200 likes reached with legal Facebook promotion. 

My conclusion is that likes mean absolutely nothing for small sites like the ones I have. It's quality over quantity and Facebook is highly overrated.

P.S. I was in a car crash today. I'm fine and so are all the others. Don't worry. At least I got an interesting idea about destiny which I will present in a next post. 

Thanks for the support to all people who visit this site.

“Ruined by ‘Experts” | Guest Post by Steven Mulraney

Note: You can contact the author at: steve@diettrans.com

I just finished reading The Art of Teaching by Jay Parini (http://amzn.to/1eY5LTG amazon affiliate link), and about two thirds in, this one line really stood out. It was:

“A whole book could be written on the destructive power of masters, who drew innocent seekers into their orbit, only to destroy rather than enlighten them.”

Too many people, knowingly or not, use their status within a community to impose damaging nonsense onto people who are only just starting out. Whether it’s the “17 year old science guy” (17YOSG) who moderates a forum, and doesn’t understand science, or the older guy who is set in his (erroneous) ways.

The “keyboard warrior” 17YOSG has been given greater status over other people, and an air of authority. So, his positions are given the appearance of greater credence and disagreeing with him might come with negative consequences. This wouldn’t be a problem if he were open-minded, understood the subject-matter or had received the temperament that comes with ageing.

A recent example of this kind of person ruining conversation was when I made a post on a forum saying that a specific dietary supplement makes next to no difference in the long-term(a wildly controversial claim, I know). The resident “expert” came right out of the woodwork to vehemently disagree with me, saying that the (short-term) research done on the supplement paints a different picture.

I pointed out that most people are already very-likely covered as far as what the supplement helps with (a position heavily supported by other research), so it’s likely to yield no real benefit, and that real world observations further supports that claim. A great number of coaches don’t even have their athletes use the supplement, because they found 0 differences in the results… as expected.

The small intra-sessional impact of the supplement didn’t result in noticeably better long-term outcomes, because it only allowed trainees to perform slightly more volume*- something trainees usually do more than enough of already. If the 17YOSG actually knew that, and if he also knew that if something doesn’t line up with core science that it’s pretty suspect and needs further work to be done on it (even more-so if it’s exclusively promoted by a shady industry), he’d probably have the same position as me.

He was fed junk, didn’t have the means to self-right, and worst of all was passing that trash onto other people from his exalted dais. And, needless to say, he still holds his erroneous position as will most everyone else who’s introduced to it by him.

As for the older, possibly more established people, there’re a number of corrosive experts here. The most obvious of which being the snake-oil salesmen, or the “bros“. Those people are easy enough to spot and see the trouble with, so I won’t bother covering them here. Who I would like to cover, however, are the “online coaches”, who seem to be cropping up everywhere nowadays. There are competent online coaches, even fantastic ones, but some are absolute garbage.

Will McKnight, in 90 Days to Success in Consulting (http://amzn.to/1h2PTn6 Amazon affiliate link), has a short list of things every respectable consultant should have, and you can use it as a means to filter out undesirables. A few of those things (if I remember right) are: a website, articles, testimonials, a contact page, and a listing of their credentials. You’ll note, an Instagram profile is not among these. If a coach is only available or known on Instagram, and can only sell their services based on pictures, you’ve likely found a bum.

If they can’t provide: evidence of their competence with ordinary natural trainees, a show of commitment to the profession of coaching, and articles which show their understanding of the subject matter, they should be avoided. Best case scenario: their advice will lead to less efficient progress. Worst case? Increased rate of injury or slow copy+paste responses to questions.

Obviously, there are more out there, but these were the ones I felt like covering today… So, questions? Comments? Other damaging people? Leave them below.

*more volume on particularly light sets.

Note : This post is not written by IG.

It's a shit in a box

Just like in the fake bodybuilding world, the whole modern society has been thought to judge everything by its label. If it shines, it's nice. If there are naked bitches, it's even better. If it's advertised by Kim Kardashian, it's phenomenal. We have become buyers of labels, fancy boxes and value deprived ideas.

The "cool" thing is that we are slaves who love their own slavery and are willing to protect it in any way possible. We've been brainwashed and blinded. We see the cover, but we cannot see nor smell the insane amount of shit in the box. 

It's there trust me.

The saddest thing is that we have lost our identity. Our passions and behavior are being dictated by others. We've been conditioned to love and protect things, we are not truly behind.

The following quote by Oscar Wilde describes the lost individuality perfectly. It's even a little scary. But true. About all of us.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” 

― Oscar Wilde

Does Money Equal Success? The story of Franz Kafka

The word "successful" has become a synonym for "making" a lot of money. The sports stars making tons of cash are presented as "successful". The famous singers are presented as "successful". Arnold Schwarzenegger himself has adopted this definition. If it makes money, the modern society considers it "successful"'. How sweet....

If a young boy tells his mother than he wants to be a philosopher (not that this will ever happen) she would look at him and say: "Hey, get real. When was the last time you saw a philosopher on the cover of Forbes magazine?" On the other hand if you want to become a footballer it's perfectly fine because footballers make tons of money and everybody is willing to suck their dicks.

Activities that don't make money are not only discouraged but they are also not respected. If your bank account does not have a big dick, you are not successful. In fact, you are labeled as a loser and hater. If you are not making a lot of money from what you are doing, your self-worth is considered to be low. 

In reality, however, money does not equal true success. There are many people with money who are successful only in satisfying their own narcissism. This brings me to the story of Franz Kafka.

Franz Kafka is one of those writers nobody heard of when he was alive. He became famous after his death. He actually wanted his works to be burned after he is gone. However, luckily his will was not respected and pretty fast his writings spread over the entire globe. His style is a little crazy to say the least. He uses a lot of metaphors which have dual, if not triple meaning. What's interesting about him is that he didn't do it for the money. He did it simply because he wanted to. If he was alive today, most people were probably going to label him as a loser because he was not making money by selling his books. He was unknown. 

That only reveals that success today (and in the past actually) has become a cheap word used by businessman who like to screw over clients. A few months ago the famous rapper 50 Cent started posting online comments saying how successful he was for selling millions of Reebok sneakers. It's all about money. 50 Cent seems to completely ignore the fact that all Reebok shoes are made in sweatshops and the workers get paid USD 1 dollar a day. There are kids working over-time in factories while 50 Cent is bitching about how much money he's made by working for the same company. Is exploitation success? The same stays true for fags like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates...etc.

Some celebrities actually realize all of this. Many wonder why famous and rich people kill themselves. It's simple - some of them are not so stupid and see through the fakeness and the shallowness and simply cannot live with themselves. As a results they commit a crime against their soul and kill themselves. 

Money is not bad. We make it bad. There is enough money for everybody, but we have been conditioned to accept exploitation as normal and to label poor people as losers. I am not anti-working hard for your money. Not at all. It's needed. What I am against is making money the ONLY measure for success. It's part of the picture but will never be the essence. 

Arnold's Bodybuilding And Moral Detransfomation

It's time for a quick Bodybuilding Detransformation.

Bodybuilding detransformations are meant to illustrate that bodybuilding is pretty much all drugs. The muscles of the IFBB pros dissappear into the nothingness soon after they stop injecting. Whether you believe it or not, bodybuilding is a sport completely based on drugs since day one. 

After 1930 there is no a single natural bodybuilder.

“How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.” 

― Judy Garland

What happened?

Arnold decided to collect some more money by making another substance deprived soft porn like training video. Notice that he looks deflated like a balloon. That's how he looked on low doses of steroids. The video above says more than you think and reveals how shallow and artificial the bodybuilding culture is, and how little integrity even the so-called "legends" had. 

The clips shows an infective way to train. I would even say that this is one of the worst ways to train. Training videos like this this cause cause serious disinformation. Unfortunately, if we put the technical part away and focus on the moral side, it does not get any better. From the video it turns out that Arnold is a hypocrite. This is not a shocker. Integrity deprived videos like the one above were probably his preparation for the political scene. He never trained like that. Never. It's a gimmick and he knew it at the time. He didn't care. The same way the bodybuilders don't care when they sell protein powders to the little kids. All they care about is money and justify their behavior by saying that if you don't know what's going on you deserve to be robbed. This is a statement that only a blind person would do.

If I am a doctor and sell you a pill that doesn't work and you remain sick, should I justify my behavior by saying: "You should know better?".

The cool thing about bodybuilding is that you get to learn a lot about the world because the same principle applies everywhere. The idea is, of course, that the celebrities are liars and the society has been brainwashed into worshiping individuals who are not worth much. 

Everybody wants to be famous and success is always measured in money. If you are not making money out of what you are doing, you are no good. On the other hand if you are making money even from not so moral activities, you are treated as a king. Having a small cigarette kiosk on the street is considered a low life, while being the CEO of Philip Morris is respected, even thought in both cases the money comes from the same place - from those who are supposed to "know better".

The sellouts think that they can escape justice. They believe that they can get away with doing harm to other people. They believe they are GODS. But they are wrong and are ultimately slaves to their own egos. If natures has taught us something, it's that balance is achieved at all costs. Nigh and day, young and old, hungry and fed, drinking and hangovers, work and sleep...everything comes with an opposite. That's how balance is achieved. 

You do bad, you get bad - maybe not in this life; but sooner or later we pay the price under one form or another. We are here to learn a lesson and that cannot be changed.

Is working hard for a living a requirement for a happy life?

The story goes like this:

    An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

    “How long it took you to catch them?” The American asked.

    “Only a little while.” The Mexican replied.

    “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The American then asked.

    “I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” The Mexican said.

    “But,” The American then asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”

    The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”

    The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”

    “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

    The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

    To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

    “But what then, senor?”

    The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

    “Millions, senor? Then what?”

    The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…”

Note: This story has many versions.

What do you think?

Bodybuilding.com Is Still The Biggest Disinformation Agent

“We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.” - Judy Garland

If you control media, you control people. Period. When the eyes don't see and the ears don't hear – it does not exist. Today, I posted information on the forum of bodybuilding.com explaining logically why Layne Norton is not a natural bodybuilder. Received a ton of “reps” in a matter of minutes, only to be banned and my thread to be deleted.

Bodybuilding.com is no different than the corrupt and paid “journalists” in the mainstream media. Here are the three main reasons why bodybuilding.com is one of the biggest disinformation agents in the world of bodybuilding.

1.Bodybuilding.com has power and reach

I had a link to one of my posts and in a matter of minutes there were 200 new visitors, which means that there are thousands of people on bodybuilding.com every single hour of the day. This is power, because mainstream information reaches more people, and logically affects the mindset of the majority.

2.Bodybuilding.com is exploiting and misinforming beginner bodybuilders

I've read a lot of the threads in the teen section only to find out that most people there are so deep into the matrix that they won't be able to see the truth, even if Jesus descended from heaven and told it to them. The majority of the topics are still about creatine, protein powders and other equally pointless ideas such as: “is my forearm too big for my dick”, “how to make a girl that does not like me like me”, “should I inject amino acids in my ass”, “can I have the physique of Ronnie Coleman if I drink my sperm”, “should I shave my nails”, “what size thongs do you wear”, “why is there no scoop in my 10lbs bag of whey protein”, “does mom think I am gay”, “I want to fuck mom but my sister is hotter”, “is Dorian Yates natural”, “can I become Gregg Valentino if I drink sun oil”, “Christmas countdown”, “I have small arms and I am going to kill myself”and too many more to count.

3. BIG BROTHER is watching you

By the looks of it you are banned on bodybuilding.com unless you glorify the placebo effect of supplements. The minute someone tries to break the dogma a ban occurs. Unless your opinion has been approved by the BIG BROTHER it's considered unworthy. How is that different than Stalin's regime ?

The moto of bodybuilding.com is: bow, blow and keep the flow.

Some people are so deep into the rabbit hole that they wouldn't be able to recognize reality, even if it bites them in the ass. They continue to bow to self-proclaimed experts like the Hodge Twins or other YouTube “brahs” who don't have a drop of integrity and would blow anybody for a small amount of FEDERAL RESERVER NOTES.

To be honest, I've been in similar position when I didn't know any better. It took me a lot of time to learn very SIMPLE truths. Thanks to the amount of deception I encountered in the muscle world I was able to open my eyes about many other avenues which are technically not related to weights at all. But the principles are the same.

BIG BROTHER is watching you.

The Gay Mafia In Bodybuilding

There are a lot of homosexuals in the sport of bodybuilding. The sport is, after all, based on men wearing a thong and flexing their muscles on stage. While this may seem like a dream come true for many women and sort of a striptease experience, the majority of the crowd consists of males. It would be foolish and naive to believe that there are not many homosexual people among the fans. It's like going to McDonald's and expect not to see overweight people.

There are many homosexuals who occupy important position in the bodybuilding industry – magazine editors, promoters, personal coaches, CEOs of nutritional companies and many more to count. Homosexual secret societies are not at all limited to just bodybuilding. They are everywhere – in every sector and every industry.

Unfortunately, there is a lot happening behind the curtains that the eyes of the masses never see. To get to the top, you have to pay the price and sometimes it involves things and actions that are not necessarily moral or honorable. One of those things in bodybuilding is G4P (gay for pay, described in details HERE) which consists in the offer of homosexual related services for money – a phenomenon widely spread not only in bodybuilding, but in many others branches. To understand how all of this operates, one must first learn how ordinary people are being poisoned and manipulated into turning their backs to true human morals and rights.

The 3D world we live in is based on material possessions – paper money, houses, sex, muscles, drugs, food...etc. Those are the things that we NEED in order to live today. Enlightened, but unfortunately also evil, individuals have figured how to use those desires to enslave the unaware population of the planet. In every sector where there is money and fame, there is also poison waiting for you. Venom meant to crush your soul and spirit.

When you want to poison a person you don't place a bottle of poisonous substance on the table and label it “danger”. No! You place the poison in food or water – something that we consider good. This is the bite and today the poison is paper money and fame. People are convinced that the celebrities live pure lives and ordinary men should aspire to reach those levels no matter what:“get rich or die trying”. This is how the rat wheel keeps on spinning.

In this life you cannot have something for nothing. No! When an athlete or a musician signs a contract with a popular team or record label, they are selling themselves for fame and gold. The performers (singers) you see today can be described very well with a verse from Charles Bukowski's poem: The Man At The Piano.

the man at the piano
plays a song
he didn't write
sings words
that aren't his
upon a piano
he doesn't own

The idea in this case is that the performer is just a front, a puppet – a phony paid to do a job. Virtually, all of the celebrities you see on TV are sellouts used to spread the ideas of evil and corrupt psychopaths, and it just happens that many of those people are homosexuals who often abuse their position of power and knowledge. You may think that they are selling you a candy “for a good price”, when in fact they are taking much more from you than you think.

Of course, it would be stupid to say that all of this is precisely due to the sexual orientation of the individual. It's not. There are many straight men who do actions from the same level. What is characteristic for homosexuals, however, is that for some reason their actions often remain undetected. In brief, the gay mafia a.k.a. The Velvet Mafia is in a way even more “stealth” than the “straight” mafia. The people part of that circle seem to always have each other's back, and a group of 10 united individuals is STRONGER than a group of 100 divided ones, although the number of homosexual people is much higher than we know.

Before labeling this article as homophobic understand that all I wanted to say was this: bodybuilders often forget what TRUE money is and sell their dignity, soul, moral principles and body for fake success in this care deprived world. WE all do it, and this is just their way.

We are all just another man at the piano.