The Joe Schmo Show is a funny near reality show on the Spike TV involving an innocent honest unsuspecting participant, unaware that the entire scenario is a total deception and scam.
Here’s the setup from the show’s website:
The Joe Schmo Show is a one-hour, 10-episode series featuring a real guy who believes he is on an over-the-top reality show looking for Americaâs next bounty hunter and the chance to win $100k. What he doesnât know is the entire show is FAKE. For over a year his entire world was carefully planned by a team of writers, producers, and actors all performing for him. His âcompetitorsâ are actually actors representing every classic reality show clichĂ©, including the Buddy, the Jerk, the Model, and even Lorenzo Lamas, playing a washed-up version of himself. The actors must do their best under these insane circumstances to follow a pre-determined script.
The actors around Chase Rogan, the Joe Schmo for this series, have to keep the deception going for this 28-year-old all around nice guy to convince him he is a viable contestant to change professions from groundskeeper to a full fledged Bounty Hunter. This is harder than you might think, because Chase is a really smart guy who catches on to stuff really quick. One actress is pretending to be deaf with her own “interpreter” but has had three muffed incidents where it’s clear she can hear. The whole production crew has had to cover up and convince Chase it’s all “normal”. None of the production crew know anything about being a bounty hunter beyond watching “Dog”, including the supposed top Bounty Hunter conducting the contest and the actress playing his blonde bimbo wife. There’s slip up after slip up and Chase is getting suspicious.
Chase should have been suspicious since the beginning because the situations are preposterous. Moreover, the language and the little speeches, particularly those at the insane Eliminations replete with a giant gold Blind Justice lady the “contestants” enter to “vote” who will be ejected from the contest after communing with their spirit guide. Chase has a llama as his spirit guide.
This is all done in fun and Chase will be “rewarded” at the end of the show, though it will never satisfy his adventurous nature by bringing him closer to be a Bounty Hunter.
Those of us who have been in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong have lived through our own Joe Schmo Show: It is all fake — the joke is on us.
Sure, none of us like the idea that we are a clueless Joe Schmo, but there’s not much of an excuse these days since the deception is so obvious.
You know, it might be OK if Herbert Armstrong missed one or two of his “prophecies” and we could have given him a free pass, but since they all went south, we should have known we were duped Schmos. The same can be said about the CoG-PKG concerning Ronald Weinland — he’s in Prison now as a convicted felon for five counts of Income Tax evasion to serve 42 months. Hello?!?!
As entertaining as it was every time Gerald Waterhouse came to town, after a few times through everybody should have realized that he was the master of fantasy spin. British Israelism: Fake. Church History: Fake. An apostle: Fake. A prophet: Fake.
Paying up to three tithes should have been a dead giveaway.
If you are honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you have been a contestant on The Joe Schmo Show.
In his new book, Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World, Dr. Phil McGraw points out that the old value of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt is an unworkable ethic and will make you a Loser. He describes the people who are out to cheat you as BAITERS:
- Backstabers
- Abusers
- Imposters
- Takers
- Exploiters
- Reckless
Dr. Phil points out that you need to know these people because they certainly know you. He lists the “Evil Eight” Identifiers of the BAITER:
- They see the world through a lens of arrogant entitlement and frequently treat people as targets
- They lack empathy
- They are incapable of feeling remorse / guilt and don’t learn from situation to situation
- They are irresponsible, self-destructive and disregard the well-being of others
- They thrive on drama and crisis
- They brag about outsmarting other people
- They have a pattern of short-term relationships
- They live in a fantasy world marked by delusion
This list pretty much describes the leaders of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong.
These people are out to take what you have for their own benefit. They may pretend to care about you, but, in the end, you are but a means to their ends and their ethic is always that the end justifies the means. The end is the end they plot out for themselves.
You cannot give these people the benefit of the doubt.
It is deadly.
The bottom line of getting real is to pay attention when the warning bells go off. We tended to trust and turned off our defenses to the people working to harm us all and take advantage of us, while turning on the RADAR to those who might actually alert us to the danger of engaging with the BAITERS before they could turn our world into dysfunctional chaos.
Next time, we will look at bad guy’s BAITER secret playbook.
When you wrote “The bottom line of getting real is to pay attention when the warning bells go off. We tended to trust and turned off our defenses to the people working to harm us all and take advantage of us, while turning on the RADAR to those who might actually alert us to the danger of engaging with the BAITERS before they could turn our world into dysfunctional chaos.”
That is the absolute truth of the matter. No matter what you say to someone, there must be an awakening within that individual before they get it.
It appears that people are just too afraid to face the fact that they have been living a lie for so many years they just cannot give up the fake.
The PKG of Ronald Weinland certainly demonstrates that those of the Herbert Armstrong cult will not abandon their fantasies no matter how much it robs them of everything they have — up to and including having children — they will stick with it even though their cult leader is in prison and his prophecies have all failed.
It is still a mystery why so many people choose to be losers.
Armstrongs whore house was bound to fail when that much money was going around. Way too many ministers saw opportunity over integrity. Look at what Meredith did with Global. There was no way that BAITER was going to let all that money go. No way.
“As entertaining as it was every time Gerald Waterhouse came to town, after a few times through everybody should have realized that he was the master of fantasy spin.”
Most everyone I knew in the Church, including myself at twelve, DID realize this. Really, Waterhouse’s sermons were endurance tests, nothing more. He thankfully didn’t pound the pulpit nearly as much as Spanky did…but Spanky only did that to wake people up. I mean to physically wake us up; I think most of the congregation slept through at least some parts of those sermons.
Velvet,
Yes, I can recall four hour sermons loaded with a bunch of crap by Gerald Waterhouse.
I saw the ass as a blow hard, full of shit minister. He talked but made little sense in his ramblings. But do any of them really make any sense???
The answer is no. They were and are, along with the newest generation of Armstrong ministers, but fools.
I was in attendance at several local churches where Gerald Waterhouse spoke. Now, in the aftermath of the Armstrong problem or fiasco, or whatever you choose to call it, Waterhouse’s marathon sermons seem almost as camp as the movie “Reefer Madness” did to aspiring young hippies back in the day.
However, I never heard one critical word from any of the brethren following a Waterhouse exposition. The congregations largely considered his message to be very inspirational, something that made people long for the kingdom. In fact, in post-service fellowship, members often expanded upon his speculations.
All of this is exactly what one would expect of robotic, brain washed cult members, the kind who would wildly applaud with tears in their eyes as HWA’s jet “buzzed” Olympic Village in Squaw Valley. At Ambassador College, Waterhouse was particularly and nearly universally loved by the student body. In a sense, he made being a robot more meaningful.
Later on, when I realized what he was actually doing with his extrapolation, and outright speculation, my opinion changed of the man. The worst part of it was the racist overtones.
BB