Scientology growth spearheaded by... Albuquerque?!

onceuponatime

Well-known member
thanks for the info about Tampa in particular, that gives me some additional insight into what's going on. though given that it appears Belleair is being poached now as Flat is promoting more lower level services, i still wonder if the situation at Tampa might be going downhill.

looking at Tampa's social media feed what i see are occasional postings of individual enrollments or completions, and those largely of foreigners and/or graying old-timers. also notable there and elsewhere in the last year or two are more staff going clear or doing OT levels, which in the cruel world of the co$ i assume means they have been left with virtually nothing better to do and a lack of paying customers.

and yeah, i'm sure some people with insider knowledge have to have left -- but they're still not showing up for us, for whatever reason. i suspect any real high-up ones with detailed knowledge of the big picture are now being given 'retirement' packages with NDAs and gag clauses, sort of like what DM figured out belatedly to do with Debbie Cook.
For awhile Flag was delivering lower level services pretty extensively, at least on the auditing side. It was the only place you could go to get "pilot grades" (more or less GAT II grades, pre-GAT II) and you could kind of do SRD. But that mostly came to an end with Super Power and the opening of the Flag building. I'm sure they still do some of it but Super Power, L's, OT levels, etc. is what they focus on. I'm sure there's still conflict between Belleair, Tampa and Flag, to some degree at least. They fight over some public no doubt.

Wouldn't shock me if Tampa has gone downhill a bit, but I think the decline there will be the slowest. As long as they have a steady stream of Scientologists moving to the area they are going to do okay. The places where the Scientologists are moving from, not so much.

You can't look at Scientology/orgs social media feeds to get an idea of how they're doing. Various orgs over the years have tried to create a social media presence and it always gets shut down, way too much criticism. Not to say that they aren't active on social media at all, but it will usually be in closed groups that you have to get invited to. So if you're just going on what's publicly available/posted you won't get much. Even in the private groups it can be hard to get an idea of what's actually going on, everything they post will be filled with PR and BS. You won't find a picture of a staff muster or something posted to social media. It will be comps/staged photos. Hard to get an idea of how an org is actually doing, really the only way is to talk to someone in the know (and have them give you an honest, non-PR answer) or know yourself.

Looking at these org pics I wonder if they're not above just pulling random public out of the org for photo's? "Hey, we got a shoot, who can we use that's presentable enough?"

Is that something org's do? To bolster the (apparent) number of staff?
Nah, those are staff. They are all wearing the staff uniform. Scientology isn't above using stand-ins to make it look like they have more going on than they do but those pictures are staff. Now if it was a picture of a full course room I'm sure you could look through it and about half of the "students" would be staff members.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
For awhile Flag was delivering lower level services pretty extensively, at least on the auditing side. It was the only place you could go to get "pilot grades" (more or less GAT II grades, pre-GAT II) and you could kind of do SRD. But that mostly came to an end with Super Power and the opening of the Flag building. I'm sure they still do some of it but Super Power, L's, OT levels, etc. is what they focus on. I'm sure there's still conflict between Belleair, Tampa and Flag, to some degree at least. They fight over some public no doubt.
i think i've seen that Flag has recently been promoting lower level services more, and the ship has even been pushing going there to do the purif. so i'd guess that general decline and then the pandemic have left the upper level orgs poaching any business they can from local orgs to keep their own stats and cash flow up.

also, there's been a report over at Mike Rinder's that Belleair has been gutted by Flag's expansion into the services the mission offers, thought that appeared to be a second hand observation at best and i'd want to see it better confirmed.

and i know that social media isn't necessarily indicative, but there have been enough cases where i've been able to correlate what could be seen in orgs' postings with better information about their level of activity, that i think it can be somewhat telling. also, i look at event photos like ideal org fundraisers, and figure they are showing as many people as possible because they try to put the best spin on things -- and even the head counts in those are fairly dismal these days, down a good bit from what they were a few years ago.

i do really, really wish that we had better information to go off of. sometimes it seems almost like reading tea lives -- or trying to figure out what's going on with Schrödinger's cat in the box.
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Looking at these org pics I wonder if they're not above just pulling random public out of the org for photo's? "Hey, we got a shoot, who can we use that's presentable enough?"

Is that something org's do? To bolster the (apparent) number of staff?
If it's just a crowd pic, I can see that. I don't think they would put public into staff uniforms though.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
If it's just a crowd pic, I can see that. I don't think they would put public into staff uniforms though.
My thoughts exactly. Make a group photo with staff up front and some public in the back for better effect? Sure.
But putting public in staff uniforms or SO uniforms... that would be over the top even for the CoS I think.
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
My thoughts exactly. Make a group photo with staff up front and some public in the back for better effect? Sure.
But putting public in staff uniforms or SO uniforms... that would be over the top even for the CoS I think.
I wouldn't put it past some Scn PR person using non Scientologist models in PR pics.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
I wouldn't put it past some Scn PR person using non Scientologist models in PR pics.
I imagine this sort of stuff could happen in some generic: "Come join the Sea Org!" or "Auditors are on the front lines of progress" etc.

But for agroup photo of a specific org? Doubt it.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
I wouldn't put it past some Scn PR person using non Scientologist models in PR pics.
yeah -- but the pics they put out these days from orgs, are pitifully under-populated if anything. i can imagine they might use models in some of those really overproduced promo pieces so they don't have to worry about someone whose face looms large blowing and leaving them having to pull all their work.
 
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