A Near Fatal Eclipse in NLP

Last week, a total solar eclipse occurred, with the moon's positioning blocking sunlight from reaching earth. In the Arctic regions and some parts of Europe, temporary darkness was experienced, and in other places a dusk-like shadow was cast over the region for a period during daylight time.

It could be said we are experiencing a type of eclipse in NLP, where currently a group of unscrupulous people are publicly creating propaganda in an attempt to block out the original sources of our field, discrediting its co-creators and dumbing down the rich intellectual underpinnings and incredible practical applications NLP delivers.

The consequences of the above for the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming will cast an eclipse-like shadow over our field, festering away into the mediocrity propagated by the project being promoted.

You may be asking, what the hell is the intention of the NLP festerers?

1. Money: it seems money is their number one value. NLP mediocrity is easier to package and promote to the naive masses when selling NLP training as a network marketing package.
2. Power: the meta festerers are seeking to control NLP by presenting false narratives to the naive public.

Let's look at the false narratives the festerers are presenting to accomplish their mission of bringing mediocrity to NLP for fast sales.

1. Part of their narrative is a targeted smear campaign against NLP co-creator Richard Bandler, in an attempt to destabilise the authority of the NLP co-creators and, in the hierarchy of NLP, impose people they call 'NLP pioneers' at a higher level than John Grinder and Richard Bandler, the original co-creators. The only pioneering the festerers are doing here is spreading disinformation about NLP.
2. Presenting fake news, claiming they are the biggest and best, and that their event is the largest ever seen in NLP. This is not true, far from it, and is on par with modern politicians who claim much higher than the real numbers for attendance at their rallies — and, in a well-known case, an inflated inauguration ceremony.
3. Devaluing the modelling methodology which was deployed by the 'real NLP pioneers' in the early NLP testing groups at the University of California Santa Cruz and later at 1000 Alba Road, the estate where so much of the NLP modelling was tested.
4. The narrative is presenting NLP as if it's a cult. I watched a 'festering propaganda video' where 18 NLP Trainers who have joined the festering club repeat the same 6-syllable phrase one after the other.

Their narrative is a claim to a superior modelling method than that used by Grinder and Bandler and their collaborators in Santa Cruz. The NLP festering miracle modelling method claims you can model anyone by asking them just 4 questions.

The fact that the person making this bizarre claim will be presenting it at a festering masterclass, where apparently at least two people who were in the original NLP modelling groups will be in attendance, is beyond me.

It takes a lot more than state management to pull off the claim you are better than Grinder and Bandler at modelling, especially when you have no published modelling projects to your name, and to claim you can do it with just 4 questions is comedy central.

'Some' of the trainers were high-profile and well-respected people (not sure if they will continue to be), and two of whom were in the original NLP testing groups, and as part of the festering propaganda, they parrot the phrase over and over, the same 6-syllable phrase.

The video is painful to watch and listen to.

When I was 10 years old, one Christmas, I attended a travelling circus which was visiting my home town in Croydon. In the beginning, I was enthralled by the lights and sounds of the circus.

Soon into the show, the dancing elephants came on and, in a line from a forced sitting position, each of these majestic animals arose and performed the same dance one after another, and they completed the act of cruelty, all dancing the same steps together.

I felt sick watching it. Those poor animals had no choice but to dance the dance of their ringmaster, all too programmed and fearful to do anything different, and anything elephant-like, as they would if they were in their natural habitat.

And sadly, in the NLP festering circus, well-known and respected trainers are acting out the equivalence of the circus elephants dancing to their ringmaster's commands by repeating the same phrase over and over, for propaganda of the ringmaster's brand, and the trainers are now known as the 'Festering 18'.

Brand is everything to these boys and girls and somehow, they thought getting high-profile trainers to parrot the same words over and over would give them brand credibility and unity to save a sinking ship. You could not make this shit up.

I have reposted snippets of some of the NLP festering propaganda videos on my social media to highlight their unethical practices, false narratives and their dumbing down of NLP. However, I would not repost any part of the NLP circus video; it's a total embarrassment and reposting would damage my business through association. This video is being used to promote NLP and is seriously damaging our credibility, and all to save a sinking ship — the NLP festering production, as one of the NLP festerers says.

I would say to the 'Festering 18' trainers, whatever they are paying you, it's not enough. The circus video is public and will be around for a long time after this shit show is done, if it goes ahead, that is. I have heard it may be cancelled, as some of the Trainers feel they were misled and want to withdraw. Who could blame them?

Their ship always had holes in it, and that's why they needed to make up bullshit about Richard Bandler, in an attempt to publicly discredit him, unfairly and unethically making false allegations about his past, to divert attention away from their sinking ship.

Thankfully it didn't work, because I campaigned publicly against their fake news and their purveying misinformation about the sources of NLP and their smearing of Richard Bandler.

And what did the 'Festering 18' do in response to the eclipse their ringmasters are casting on our field? They did what they were told, of course, and they shot the 6-syllable video, supporting their ringmasters' brand.

Not only is this the worst video for NLP that I have ever seen, and I have seen some terrible videos, but the 'Festering 18 Trainers' in the video are complicit in the false allegations against Richard, in which one marketing video for the festering brand, published on their ringmasters' social media, alleged Richard was guilty of murder.

This does not surprise me: that the very high-profile trainers in the 'Festering 18' group said or did nothing in support of Richard, to speak against an allegation everyone in the field knows is false. What the fuck happened to NLP, when it is considered acceptable to totally defame its co-creator as a strategy to sell a shit show?

After all, none of the people in the festering project gave any support for the biggest and most significant event ever hosted in NLP, which was NLP 50. The NLP 50 event held on 27^th September 2025 saw John Grinder and Richard Bandler appear at the Official Celebration of NLP's 50^th anniversary, where they affirmed their respect and acknowledgement of each other as co-creators of NLP and told the real story of the creation of NLP.

You can watch The NLP 50 videos on this link and hear the real story of NLP directly from its co-creators.
https://www.nlpacademy.co.uk/nlp50/

You can read about the rich background behind NLP in this article, 'The Academic and Intellectual Antecedents of NLP'.
https://www.nlpacademy.co.uk/articles/view/the-academic-and-intellectual-antecedents-of-nlp/

The NLP festerers and many others seek to hide the real story behind NLP from their audiences and spread misinformation about the origins of NLP and dumb down its rich sources.

Thankfully, eclipses are temporary, and the shit show the festers are selling as an NLP revival is sinking; it's more like a Ted Jones revival event, the original circus ringmaster in NLP.