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Blake Cousins (Twins Who Shall Not Be Named -- TWSNBN)

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Here is my followup letter to Blake:

Blake:
Thanks again for coming on the Paracast. I apologize if it seemed a bit rough — Gene and I (and our listening audience) are quite passionate about the subject.
We've been called the "60 Minutes" of the Paranormal and we're extremely serious and dedicated to finding answers and bringing to our vast audience the best
possible guests and information to help move the field of paranormal studies forward toward a better understanding of these wonderful mysteries around us.

You mentioned during the show that you had never heard of me. Well, I'm not surprised. I have never made a single call to the media to promote myself or to
attempt to create a cult of personality around myself. However, I have been approached by the media and I would be surprised if you've never seen me on TV. I've
included a brief bio. FYI: I conducted an intensive study and investigation of the San Luis Valley in SoCen CO/NoCen NM from 1992-2002.
I have written 4 books about my personal investigative work and written an unpublished biography of one of our founding pioneering ufologists.
If you are interested I can send you copies to bring you up to speed on my work.

As I mentioned on the show, I would be happy to put you in touch w/ some of the best video analysts in the field to aid you in your quest of gathering the best
possible UFO video and photographic evidence. There is no substitute for informed knowledge and this knowledge can be a very powerful tool to educate and entertain.
Keep up the good work and try not to inspire the hoaxers too much ;)
Regards,
Chris

Biography
[SNIP]
 
Gene Steinberg said:
Blake strikes me as the sort of person who won't respond unless he's hit in unexpected ways between the eyes. All he does is repeat the same tired patter, and we had to break him out of the mold. Despite that, he went right back into his routine at the end of the episode.

Chris has written a lengthy letter to Blake offering to help, but I'm not expecting much.
Click to expand...

But Gene, you really just need to leave it up to the people to decide.
 
red_pill_junkie said:
Finished listening. *Pheew!* That was painful...

But I'm glad the show ended in a somewhat positive & conciliatory note —huge props to Gogs for that.

The thing that worried me though is trying to discern why Stan Friedman & Rich Dolan decided to accept this fellow's invitation. It was alluded that they were possibly motivated to make use of this huge platform for purely promotional reasons, and IMO that's not a fair claim to make unless they're given the chance to respond.
Click to expand...

Thanks Redpill - I don't believe many people are 100% this or that, and most have the capacity to change/adapt/grow. It's undeniable that TPOM has a large base of interested people subscribing and submitting videos. I have to believe that amongst all the dross, there are nuggets of gold. It would be a wonderful thing if Blake goes in the direction of more discernment and uses his existing base to, as Chris said perfectly 'educate your viewers.'

I remember having to critique people (and being critiqued myself) while in the Navy - we were taught that even if someone did pretty poorly in a task, it is vital to end on a positive note and to point out what they did right. Both to encourage the positive, and also for them not to go away having a negative personal view. I'm all for pointing out what's wrong, but to not offer advice on how to possibly change that would be totally remiss and against my personal beliefs.

Whether Blake changes anything, looks for outside help remains to be seen but I'm quietly hopeful we may see at least some small steps in the right direction, be it a rating system or proper analysis.
 
Burnt State said:
P.S. I would like to echo what others have said here; it was great to have Goggs on the show! Shows that give really strong airwave access to the listeners, whether it's Greg Bishop's casual call in conversations for Radio Mysterioso or hearing forum participants on The Paracast, are to be greatly commended. There's a kind of democratizing of the discussion, and diversifying of the personalities that i'm sure many here appreciate and could make up for what some might feel is lacking in hearing a consistently clear signal.

I especially got a kick out of hearing Goggs call out the commercial break with his version of , "the paracast." Somehow, it became that much more entertaining, which is the other reason why people are here.
Click to expand...


Haha, during the roundtable with Ufology, Pixel and Jeff (Sandanfire) - there was a hard break in which Chris' mic lead messed up and he couldn't do the 'The Paracast' outro, you'd better believe that on our own initiative, a few of us blurted it out, in the hope of it being used. Unfortunately things were fixed in time for Chris to do one.:rolleyes:
Anyway, after that I'd given up all aspirations to do the outro, but during the Blake episode, Gene asked me to do the next break bit, I complied.

Trust me, it's the biggest feather in my cap to date!
 
Christopher O'Brien said:
Here is my followup letter to Blake:

Blake:
"...You mentioned during the show that you had never heard of me. Well, I'm not surprised. I have never made a single call to the media to promote myself or to
attempt to create a cult of personality around myself. However, I have been approached by the media and I would be surprised if you've never seen me on TV. I've
included a brief bio. FYI: I conducted an intensive study and investigation of the San Luis Valley in SoCen CO/NoCen NM from 1992-2002.
I have written 4 books about my personal investigative work and written an unpublished biography of one of our founding pioneering ufologists.
If you are interested I can send you copies to bring you up to speed on my work.

As I mentioned on the show, I would be happy to put you in touch w/ some of the best video analysts in the field to aid you in your quest of gathering the best
possible UFO video and photographic evidence. There is no substitute for informed knowledge and this knowledge can be a very powerful tool to educate and entertain.
Keep up the good work and try not to inspire the hoaxers too much ;)
Regards,
Chris

Biography
[SNIP]
Click to expand...
Very cool chris, please let us know if Blake takes you up on your offer ::rolleyes:

I edited this as I did not know if my original post came across the way it was intended...it did...chris did not change it
 
Christopher O'Brien said:
Here is my followup letter to Blake:

Blake:
Thanks again for coming on the Paracast. I apologize if it seemed a bit rough — Gene and I (and our listening audience) are quite passionate about the subject.
We've been called the "60 Minutes" of the Paranormal ...
Click to expand...

Way to go Chris. You're the kind of person that the field needs more of. Now the ball is in Cousins' court, so let's hope he responds positively. If he needs help setting up a ratings system, I'd be willing to provide the framework. Some years ago I setup a Confidence Rating System, which ( as you suggested during the interview ) is a five star rating system. It's based on a breakdown of criteria adapted from the Hynek/Vallee systems. It would be great to see this system introduced in a constructive and consistent manner. It can be reviewed on the USI website under the Sighting entry.

The only problem I see with implementing it is that based on what I've seen on Cousins' site, a high percentage of the reports would end up with very low scores, and this might cause Cousins' not to implement it. Anyway, any encouragement you can offer to Cousins ( or anyone else ) to adopt this system would be greatly appreciated. There is nothing else like it in ufology. At some point I'm going to start rating the classic cases based on this system, but as you know, it's very time consuming to do this kind of work without any assistance. I don't suppose anyone here would care to volunteer?
 
The key about Blake is that it doesn't take any skills, other than a desire to promote oneself, to set up a YouTube channel and populate it with whatever junk you can assemble. If it catches a wave, and people find the content interesting, the potential shared Google ad revenue might sustain it for a while. But eventually the edifice can fall from the weight of junk. Or, not seeing enough income, the promoter decides to find something that's more profitable. Remember, this is Blake's full-time job, and if anything has the potential to hurt his income, which could happen if there was a real rating system and a closer examination of content, which would sharply limit uploads, he might not want to upset the revenue stream.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
The key about Blake is that it doesn't take any skills, other than a desire to promote oneself, to set up a YouTube channel and populate it with whatever junk you can assemble. If it catches a wave, and people find the content interesting, the potential shared Google ad revenue might sustain it for a while. But eventually the edifice can fall from the weight of junk. Or, not seeing enough income, the promoter decides to find something that's more profitable. Remember, this is Blake's full-time job, and if anything has the potential to hurt his income, which could happen if there was a real rating system and a closer examination of content, which would sharply limit uploads, he might not want to upset the revenue stream.
Click to expand...

Well I guess we'll just have to see which wins out, popularity or principle. Chris has made his offer, and I've offered to help implement the ratings system. Now all we need is Cousins' cooperation. He couldn't have much better offers from people in the field, so I really hope he was sincere.
 
Secretbanana said:
Wow... Bitter much?

Of course, your argument is somewhat weakened by the fact, that you belong to the previous generation of "spoon fed, unread, sensationalistic, face value, celebrity, radiofeed, face ache false friend me, Geraldo Rivera generation."

Every generation of youngsters is soooo much worse than what young people used to be like. At least that's what old folks ever since Aristoteles have always been saying...
Click to expand...
You confuse bitterness with passionately pissed off. some of us here are kind of sick of the dog and pony show that kids are lapping up as fact.
Like the dude said in the show, if your access to a phenomena or a subject of study is limited to a crass money controlled woo woo portal, your going to grow up with some crazy ideas.

Let me use the analogy of "hip hop". Kids today actually think hip hop is a form of music that kanye west makes. Why? Because they are not aware of hip hop history and culture, and because MTV and business men sold the most marketable element of the culture ie. rap music to kids as the culture and defined it as the whole culture. Kids who are outside the culture with impetus and no direction found that the voice they could have had experientially had been co-opted by a corporate conglomerate.

Project Camelot, Sirius Cseti, the disclosure project , David Ickes, dan brown.......

So yeah I am pissed off that people can take a subject which requires serious study and can be dry and boring and plain and turn it into ridicule and entertainment and a money making ego trip. Particularly as people have dedicated, time, money, relationships, mental health, friendship and life in search of the truth. So yeah it's a big fucking deal.

It certainly comes across as "you pesky kids" but Its an opinion , not an argument, and its not devoid of the fact that yes, we were the kids are parents warned us about.

But that's ironically the point gene and Chris were making.
Do your home work. Read. Understand the difference between reality and fantasy. Remember the college is invisible and there are a lot of false tutors. Perhaps then you won't be doomed to repeat the same mistakes that we did.


Anyway can you take this guy seriously in this field when he said "I don't know who you are" to gene and Chris . Do your fucking home work fool.ufo 101.ffs
 
Up until the last 5 minutes of the interview, I kept hoping the trio would just hop off the nuts for a minute. The fact is, the Cousins (at least as far as I'm aware) never promised the site to be anything other than entertainment that might offer some genuine insight into the phenomena. I kept hoping Blake would just say as much -- "look we're a business, not a research organization" -- but he never did. His refusal to do this made him look guilty of something -- not sure what, but something -- even if the boys are just trying to monetize YouTube like so many others. Should have just proudly said so instead of his defensive posture reinforcing the guilty charges proffered by our illustrious hosts.

If the opinion of the people to rate things has no weight due to a lack of education, then by extension what is the political process? The Zucotti Park mindset of calling a capitalist venture "PT Barnum style behavior" is a little distasteful and frankly, unnecessary. All of that said, Chris' offer to help with ratings and research strikes me as a potentially positive way for the community to learn more, and for Blake and his brother to be even more successful.
 
nameless said:
...Anyway can you take this guy seriously in this field when he said "I don't know who you are" to gene and Chris . Do your fucking home work fool.ufo 101.ffs
Click to expand...

It's nothing but a dismissive attempt by a small person to make himself think he's worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as guys like Gene and Chris
 
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