The Staggering Bullshit of “The Secret”

I hate The Secret. There, I said it. I know I’m a self-development blogger and I’m supposed to keep everything light and airy and full of poop jokes, but fuck it — I hate it. It’s an awful book. And it needs to be said.

Every generation in the past century has had a breakout self-help book that sells a bazillion copies and bulldozes through a few million people’s wallets. Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich did it first in 1936. Then it was Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive...