The Birthday Game - Underground Bunker Piece

[Wieber]

Tony Ortega's Underground Bunker had a write up on Scientology's birthday game.
https://tonyortega.org/2018/03/11/scien ... p-directv/
This is described on the page opened by the above link. You'll have to scroll down a bit for it, as it comes after the piece on Scientology TV.
Read the article to find out briefly what the birthday game is about. I'm not going to describe it. I want to give my impression of it instead.

The way Tony Ortega describes the birthday game seems to make it out to be an event that happens on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday and then goes away. If you haven't been involved in Scientology you might get the impression that the birthday game happens on only the one day, once a year. Well it isn't like that.

The birthday game goes on ALL YEAR LONG.

Even when I was involved with Scientology and an almost true believer, I came to see the birthday game as a pain in the ass. I don't even like being reminded of it now, though I must say, I am very happy I don't have to deal with it any more.

Any time some staff member in the org wants something related to their statistic, and the person their dealing with balks at delivering it, they bring up the birthday game. As I recall they almost always did that with a whiny voice. As a public person I wasn't allowed to attend staff musters, which I was happy about when I was involved. (A staff muster is a Scientology term for a staff meeting. They have them at least once a day.) I am sure the executive director must have wielded the birthday game like a flail.

The organization wants public people in the org as much as possible, even when they aren't taking a course or getting a service. On any given visit to the org a public person will deal with the registrar, the book store officer, the public executive secretary, their field staff member, someone from the OT committee, and possibly the course supervisor. That's the minimum. If there's a person visiting from the sea org or a higher org they'll most likely want a piece of every public person who comes into the org. By public person I mean someone who is involved in Scientology. A person who hasn't yet been recruited into Scientology and indoctrinated is a raw public (raw meat) and they'll be exempt from this activity until they have gone through the love bombing and the indoctrination point (my term for it.)

Every one of the staff members seeing the public person will want something related to their statistic. This will always be two or three people wanting money and others will want volunteer labor and the public person's time. Every staff member will use the birthday game in relation to their high pressure demands.

"We need this for the birthday game." "You want us to win the birthday game, don't you?" "You need to do this now to help with the birthday game."

Birthday game. Birthday game. Birthday game. Birthday game. Birthday game.

It's like an incessant broken record. It goes on all year long, every time one goes into the org, almost always in a whiny voice and
IT • NEVER • STOPS • !

Now go and read what Tony Ortega wrote about the birthday game. If you've already read it go back and do it again now that you've read my take on it.