How much is your fear worth?

Ever since a small group of researchers claimed, with very scarce evidence, that the Maya civilization predicted the world as we know it would come to an end in 2012, the media have been capitalizing on the fear factor, and some scam artits have even begun selling products by so-called “experts” to gullible consumers.

The best example I could come across is this website. I want to take some time to analyze the text in there because, to me, the sales copy in this page is a piece of art. Good sellers know not only how to create a need in the prospect for their products, but are also familiar with “dirtier” tricks that originated from NLP (neuro-linguistic programming, the notion that we structure the world around us through language) and hypnosis, which in the case of a sales pitch need to be covert.

This page does exactly that. While on the outside it is meant to be perceived as a heartfelt story full of touching anecdotes, it’s really just using NLP and covert hypnosis to get you to buy their product. It starts very innocently, making the point across that they’re not just trying to sell you a bunch of ridiculous doomsday predictions:

This is not another “sky is falling” warning like y2k… It’s not some rallying cry for the lunatic fringe. And it’s certainly not something dreamt up for a Hollywood movie…

In NLP and hypnosis this is known as “pacing,” and it refers to the practice of relating to your listener’s beliefs and state of mind in order to gain rapport as well as their trust. The pacing continues:

Bold claims… absolutely. Anyone claims to know what’s going to happen in the future… that’s pretty bold on its own. But to predict something this huge… this life-changing… That’s super bold.

Strong words indeed. And now that some level of trust between the reader and the “expert” has been established, we can go from pacing to leading (leading the conversation by making a bold claim, which the reader with most likely agree with, at least in part, because of the trust that has just been established).

There is one thing that remains completely undisputed by anyone who is truly informed… Every Major Religion… Minor Religions You’ve Never Heard Of… Non-Religious Spiritualists… And Even Atheists And Agnostics Agree… In 2012… something will happen. [...] The disaster we’re facing in 2012 will make the one Todd and Gene lived through seem like just another Monday morning.

Maybe we're all just part of a bigger plan.

Ok, now we’re starting to contradict ourselves with the very first sentences of the sales pitch. But it doesn’t really matter, because by writing in huge bold letters creates an emotional impact in the reader, who is now gaining trust in the “expert” (I encourage you to check the site out for yourself to see what I mean here).

Now, the main, real difference between face-to-face hypnosis and Web advertising is the lack of feedback that the person doing the hypnosis has. Normally, once the “leading” phase has started, it just keeps going to the end of the session. But in this case, the scam artist doesn’t know whether the claims he just made were too much and actually broke the previously established trust. So, just in case, he goes back to pacing, only to resume leading again a bit later:

“But… isn’t this just another scare like Y2K that will just fizzle out and die?” [...] “UFOs… End Of Times Predictions… Men In Black… Secret Government conspiracies… isn’t all that Hollywood bunk?” [...] I’m not going to force feed you an answer. By the time you devour the information you’re getting, you’ll be able to tell me the answer.

If you’re careful, you’ll also notice how the objections become progressively weaker as you scroll down the page. And then, the very dirty coup de grace:

If you won’t do it for yourself… Do it for your family.

After, which the “expert” (who in his defense claims to have researched the topic for 15,700 years, or over 14 years, 8 hours a day, day in and day out) proceeds to try and sell you a $50 e-book. Or you can choose to subscribe to the free newsletter like I did (thankfully on a secondary e-mail), and be literally inundated by spam.

Ouch.

There really is a lot more I could be dissecting here, but let me just quickly mention another time-proven technique: a textbook application of the so-called “law of contrasts.” When it’s time to mention the price of the product, the guy starts by inferring that it’s worth a whole lot of money — much, much more that he could realistically think to price his product at.

Why? Because, once it’s time to mention the actual price, it will look that much smaller in comparison. If you’d like to learn more about the law of contrast and other proven ways to influence people, take a look at the excellent book Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.

Am I just being an obtuse asshole? Could it be that this guy genuinely believes that the world is going to end in 2012? No chance. This is a clickbank site, and its sole purpose is to sell a product and make money. It is written using super-standard and well-known sales techniques.

Just think about it: if you really did believe you had the secrets to save millions of people’s lives, would you charge each person $50 (plus VAT) for it?

Maya Chichen Itza temple pyramid

The kind of progress and scientific discoveries made by the Maya civilization is quite impressive for their time, especially considering their isolation from neighbouring civilizations.

As with many other prehistoric civilizations, the Mayans’ concept of time was cyclical. They built a series of calendars based on naturally occurring cycles observed in the sky, such as a 365-day cycle that approximated the solar year, one to record the lunation periods of the Moon, and even one to track the synodic period — the time a planet takes to assume twice the same position with respect to both the Earth and the Sun — of Venus, which the Mayans managed to measure with surprising accuracy.

All of these calendars can then be synchronized and interlinked with one another, generating further and more extensive cycles. One of such composite calendar, the so-called Mesoamerican long count calendar, forms the basis for the belief that a cataclysm will take place on December 21, 2012, a forecast that mainstream Mayanists consider a crude misinterpretation.

Maya stucco glyphs in Palenque, Mexico.

According to the Popol Vuh, an important mythological book in the Mayan culture, we are living in the ‘fourth world’. The book narrates how the gods attempted for three times to create a peaceful and harmonius world, but eventually failed. As they created the fourth world, men were placed on Earth.

All of the three previous worlds ended on a speficic date in the Mayan calendar, which coincided with the end of the cycle in the long count calendar. Each of those cycles lasted an impressive 1,872,000 days — over 5,125 years — and the fourth cycle is set to end on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of a ‘new era’ on the following day.

By following other clues within the Mayan culture and interpreting them in their own way, some researchers have come to the conclusion that a worldwide cataclysm — e.g. a pole shift — was predicted by the Maya on this date, a view that even the vast majority of experts in Mayan culture disagree with.

Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., commented:

For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle [...] To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.

The hype has also been alimented by reports by NASA that sometime between 2010 and 2012 we will very likely experience violent solar storms:

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming—the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,” she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

Some believe that, if the storms reveal to be strong enough, they could under the right circumstances black out the electrical grids of a few cities and fry satellites. But as far as an apocalypse… well, let’s just say it doesn’t look that likely.