Nor are they more out there than many of the threads on this forum.
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This guy has some very good points about how English should be properly taught and how most schools fail miserably at it, in addition to how the broader culture makes learning English (or probably any other language for that matter) incredibly difficult. However, it is clear to see he probably has a few screws loose, and it’s not clear precisely what a lot of the content he puts out there is for… for the relatively small English speaking expat community in Taiwan? is he just taking the piss? Why spend so much time doing it? I think it must go over the heads of locals. I have a theory that this guy must be a trust fund baby of sorts or otherwise have access to a bunch of cash. Perhaps he can turn a profit with his business, if so, good for him! But it seems clear that any schmuck can succeed in a second tier city like Taichung.
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came here to post this, you beat me to it!
Sometimes the only reason why a business can keep the lights on for so long (and no-one knows how on earth it is possible) is this. That, and/or it’s a front for something else and he is probably flying to close to the sun here with how ludicrously conspicuous his marketing is.
Some of his statements are extremely discriminatory. He wouldn’t last two seconds operating anywhere else. Actually there was a foreign gym owner whose biz failed after his anti homosexual views became known. This fruitcake gets away with it because he is in Taichung I guess , and maybe he has fewer homosexual clients than your average gym.
But he is also anti Jew and a whole bunch of other stuff if I recall rightly. Right piece of ****.
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Oh wow yeah I didn’t mean to quote as much as I did in my previous post. He really makes other expats look bad and his website/publication is full of terrible, misleading, and discriminatory trash.
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I’ll call it The Alexander Jones School for Kids Who Can’t Read Good or Count Numbers and Other Smart People Stuffs.
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Yeah, but everyone who has worked in the field knows that.
It appears to be for everyone but especially for students. I’ve followed his stories because it’s stranger than fiction and I’m waiting for the day something pops off and he makes national news. I also suspected he has support from somewhere else. He doesn’t appear to be married, so it’s not in-law money. But, he may actually be profitable. He said once his current rent was in the neighborhood of 35k, or maybe he wanted it lowered to that in his landlord dispute. He also lives at his school, so he just needs food and utilities besides.
The best bit is that despite all the “thinking outside of the box” claims, he’s gone along with the Taiwanese requirement to provide a photo with the job application.
You know, so that he and potential employers can discriminate candidates based on age/race/looks.
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He seems to love this guy…It’s scary how some people are dumb as shit but seem to think they are geniuses.
Jeez. Some people can hide out here a loooonnnngggg time.
Should not be teaching children.
Surely TW media knows about this guy by now. If not, they should…so sketch. I suspect if parents knew this guy’s content sans language barrier, they prob wouldn’t put their kids in a 500m radius of him
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I gave up at “I can go on and on about it…”. I think that was 40 seconds if Owen Benjamin is interested.
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He has a few hard-to-find pages on his site. On one where he blasts his landlord over and over until they sue him (all documented) he posted a clip from local news in which they interviewed him after a metal security door collapsed as he was opening it. So they’ve heard about him and his behaviour seemed normal on TV. So they’ve heard of him, and nothing weird was brought up.
In the videos that followed he showed hours of CCTV footage of the office to prove all the problems that followed. He also recorded mediation meetings between himself, an agent, some other guy and his landlord. In his writing, which is on an Apple Cloud document, words like stalking, abusive, evil, CCP-style, and other ramblings were often used. He doesn’t appear to be using the office to teach very much. There’s one kid there sometimes. He plays flat-earther cartoons on a loop on a TV.
I doubt he has many kids classes. Most of the people in pictures who may be students are adults. I’m guessing he does some business-English classes on or off site, and probably some tutoring. He may have some less obvious business model, but I don’t think many kids cross his path.
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Every time I see someone like this I find hard to believe that they aren’t trolling. Like flat earthers. I just assume they are taking the piss or just fucking with people.
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Yeah, but it’s a business which has been there for years. He’d have to be hiring actors and buying props. That’s a pretty elaborate troll considering no one is publicly paying attention except this thread which started only a year ago.
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I don’t really know all the details, but he seems to issue a magazine and upload some videos all with the stereotypical conspiracy bullshit. Maybe he just likes the topic and does it because he finds it funny, and not for trolling specific people.
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Can you really call it a joke if you’re the only person laughing?
Yes. It happens to me all the time.
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That’s about 75% of my jokes, but I’m not funny. The problem is, Mr. Cline seems very serious.
I still think Forumosa should raise 5k to place an ad in his next magazine.
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I’ve been watching my favorite conspiracy-based English school for the past year. I was waiting for the business to crash and burn and the owner to possibly get thrown in jail. Against all odds, he stayed in business until now. In the meantime, it seems he continued his dispute with the landlord through legal mediation and after no joy with the landlord (who was undergoing chemo?) he continued making demands, I think not paying his full rent. In the end the landlord pursued criminal charges for publishing his/her personal information, which was a while ago when he scanned some mailed court documents. At one point, he changed the /landlord page to ask for forgiveness and a new start, but that was soon changed to the original and he continued his demands. Then he went quiet for awhile, and it seems he back in (what he describes as) the horrible New Brunswick in what seems like beautiful country making videos about his ESOL service to new immigrants and refuges and flat Earth and saying he’ll return to Taiwan when there’s no more masks and he is properly compensated for the services he provides.
This is just a guess, but maybe there was a judgement against him that garnished part of his wages. Or maybe some people just took classes and didn’t pay and he ran out of money and left. But iLearn.tw (THINK! It’s not illegal yet!) as an actual school seems gone from Taiwan.
So if something this mad doesn’t make it into IRL news, how many others like him are out there?
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