Estrangements

Family Estrangement inspired by online philosopher

I found a startling news article online today about family estrangements that were influenced and/or inspired by the writings and podcasts of a man, Stefan Molyneux, who considers himself to be a philosopher. He has been blamed for a number of family estrangements initiated by followers of his writings and podcasts. He makes some money from subscriptions to his podcasts, from sales of his books, and from donations. His wife is reported to be expecting their first child. One wonders how that will work out in the long run, whether he will continue to vilify parents or what he might do once he becomes a parent himself.
This is the first that I had heard of him. Apparently there is a lot of information on the internet about him.
I looked around on the web and put together a collection of links on Molyneux:

1. "How a cyberphilosopher convinced followers to cut off family" by Tu Thanh Ha, Dec. 12, 2008 in the globeandmail.com
2. Comments in response to "How a cyberphilosopher convinced followers to cut off family"
3. Family and Friends of FDR-ers on Liberating Minds
4. FDR Liberated: A continuing analysis of the FreeDomainRadio Community
5. Liberating Minds Forum Discussion of FreeDomainRadio on the LiberatingMinds website.
6. FreeDomainRadio, Stefan Molyneux's site
7. FreeDomain: The Logic of Personal and Political Freedom - The FreeDomain blog
8. 'Website Led Teen to Quit Family' by Robin Powell, Sky News Online, Dec. 29, 2008
9. "A fearful mother reveals: the internet cult that stole my son" Dec. 12, 2008 by Kate Hilpern, The Daily Mail

Update Dec. 31: Stefan Molyneux and his wife are the happy parents of a baby girl with whom they are besotted. This stands in stark contrast to the grief of parents whose children have "deFOOed". DeFOO is a term meaning that they have left their familys of origin (their FOO). FOO and deFOO are terms used frequently in discussions on the Freedomainradio website.

Molyneux has uploaded 297 YouTube videos as of today's date. His latest video has had 211 views in the five hours since it was posted. His YouTube name is stefbot. On his Freedomainradio site it appears that he has over 1,000 podcasts. The numbers for the podcasts go over 1,000. I haven't checked to see if that means that there really are over 1,000 podcasts.

More links about FreeDomainRadio and Molyneux:

1. Like a moth to a flame, Nov. 18, 2008
   
2. I have been signed out from Free Domain Radio, Nov. 17, 2008
3. FDR at Sky News - video and print coverage, Dec. 30, 2008
4. My brief experience with Stefan (in four parts), Dec. 28, 2008 (The experience of someone who calls himself Dash. Scroll down in the page to where Part 1 begins.)

Proof that you are not alone. Part II

On October 7, 2007 I wrote a post titled "Proof that you are not alone" and then provided data about visitors to my website, Estrangements.com, and the Estrangements blog. Let's see what has been going on since then.