Years ago an acquaintance from college asked me out of the blue to hang out. Out of politeness I did. My first suspicion was when he asked me what I did for work and then I asked him. He responded that he doesn't want to live the 9-5 job life with a boss and wants to be an entrepreneur. Finally after a few hours of hanging out he whipped out a laptop and said remember what I was saying about being your own boss? He showed me this 5-10 minute video about some stupid mlm. I think it was the one where people hold up the signs "You should be here". I politely declined but out of curiosity I asked him how much he was making a month. He claimed he makes anywhere from 200-2000 a month but I could tell from the sadness in his eyes when he said it that it wasn't true. After the guiltiness wore off I suddenly felt very angry that 3 hours of my time had been wasted on an overly long sales pitch.
No offense to anyone here if you've fallen into one of these but I think the people who join these are gullible 'tards with no morals who are willing to exploit there friendships for personal gain.
Random fact: The guy who murdered his wife and two kids and put his two kids bodies in oil tankers, his wife was a mlm junkie.
I have a great distaste for the type of idiots who could get suckered into a MLM. I mean the videos of some greasy idiot standing in front of a tacky McMansion with a flashy car to lure people into XXX MLM lifestyle shows you the type of people they are aiming to attract. However, there are some really evil tactics these companies use and they tend to target people who are poor and lonely. Young single moms with little children have become the new target demographic. These women tend to feel lonely, overwhelmed and isolated because they've gone from carefree young adult to struggling mom cooped up with babies all day who can't pay her bills. These MLM love bomb people just like cults do. They provide people with a sense of community, one totally contingent on towing the party line. So these women (and men) suddenly feel like they have all these new friends. They also preach that the only reason you fail is because you don't work hard enough. So all these people who drop out or bad mouth the MLM are losers who don't want financial independence!
Your friend who targeted you probably believed they were really doing you a big favor by showing you this opportunity. If people don't sign up the MLM tells them these people are lazy losers so you don't need them in your life anyway. You only want to surround yourself with other "successful" people, not loser satisfied working for someone else (#ladyboss). MLM ppl are never allowed to be honest with each other and the "fake it till you make it" BS is pushed super hard. So victims of MLM think they are the only ones who aren't making money and going into debt for the scam - and then taught that it's their fault they aren't successful because obviously they just aren't working hard enough. They probably need to buy this motivation guide or coaching session from superstar MLM double diamond award winner Shasta Smithers to figure out why they are failing when everyone else is rolling in money! If they start questioning or doubting the MLM then they are shunned by all their new "friends" and they burnt the bridges with all their old friends by using them to recruit. I mean they operate just like cults do and are just as evil.
Social media actually made MLM's explode again when they had been dying out. When people get introduced to a MLM and have concerns they will try to google "MLM name + scam" or "MLM + pyramid scheme" etc... These MLM's have rigged the SEO and have paid dozens of bloggers to write articles called "Is MLM name a scam???" and guess what all these bloggers have found after "lots of research" ? That XXX is actually a legitimate opportunity if you are willing to put in the work! These companies invest big money to ensure search results bury useful, truthful information and muddy the waters as much as possible. (Comically some MLM's will actually do posts about a competing MLM being a total scam BUT lucky for you here is this MLM that's the real deal that will totally make you rich!)
Amway and some of the older MLM's have actually made a big push for the last decade or two into China, SE Asia and India. Just check out this Amway Maylasia YT:
They hold these huge MLM cult rallies and the "top performers" are treated like movie stars. They literally put out red carpet and hire paparazzi types to run up and photograph them entering the big event to a cheering audience. All the rubes watch this and think "that will be me one day." MLM's have fine tuned ego blow job into an tacky art form.
So yeah, while MLM's certainly appeal to the ego and greed of people, they also take advantage of loneliness, desperation, people who feel like losers, people who feel lost and uncertain, depressed people, etc... They pretend to give all the answers to what you need in life if you just follow this formula. People want those easy answers and instant community and money so badly they will believe epic amounts of obvious BS and ignore reality.
Years ago an acquaintance from college asked me out of the blue to hang out. Out of politeness I did. My first suspicion was when he asked me what I did for work and then I asked him. He responded that he doesn't want to live the 9-5 job life with a boss and wants to be an entrepreneur. Finally after a few hours of hanging out he whipped out a laptop and said remember what I was saying about being your own boss? He showed me this 5-10 minute video about some stupid mlm. I think it was the one where people hold up the signs "You should be here". I politely declined but out of curiosity I asked him how much he was making a month. He claimed he makes anywhere from 200-2000 a month but I could tell from the sadness in his eyes when he said it that it wasn't true. After the guiltiness wore off I suddenly felt very angry that 3 hours of my time had been wasted on an overly long sales pitch.
No offense to anyone here if you've fallen into one of these but I think the people who join these are gullible 'tards with no morals who are willing to exploit there friendships for personal gain.
Random fact: The guy who murdered his wife and two kids and put his two kids bodies in oil tankers, his wife was a mlm junkie.
I immediately picked up on the fact Christopher Watts's wife was a MLM junkie too. She peddled a MLM called Thrive - its actually hard to find the name of the MLM she was associated with because they have tried damn hard to keep the association of print. The family had already gone through one bankruptcy and looked to be headed for another, due in no small part to Shannon trying to be a #ladyboss. When the murders happened there was a lot of media coverage due to all the videos and photos available of the family - because Shannon used her kids and Chris in a lot of her recruiting pitches. She was just returning from another "Thrive convention" the night she was killed. A convention she probably spent thousands she couldn't afford to attend. MLM's encourage people spend big and go into debt in order to show how successful they are, which Shannon certainly did. I got the idea that Shannan always thought she was really close to making it big in her MLM and if she just a few thousand more on this conference and XXX inventory to meet sales quota she would finally get to that magic level where you just sit back and get checks for $50k a month. The idea that you will build a "downline" that enables you to sit at home and get paid $50k a month for a few hours work a week is the dream they sell with complex charts showing just how easy it is to do - and how close you are getting to it.
MLM's destroy marriages all the time. Many men and women have ruined their marriages and families buying into this shit. Unfortunately, Shannan married an evil psychopath who decided to murdering her and their children was a better option than divorce. (He also had started boning a new crazy woman, which seemed to be the stick that broke the camel's back.)
Eh, I've gone on long enough, but I find cult's and MLM's really fascinating from a psychological perspective. The truly evil people are the con artist who understand how all these manipulative tactics work and either found their own MLM or look to find new ones they can hop onto and be near the very top of the pyramid.
The only people who ever make any real money on these scams are the founders and the people the people near the top of the pyramid founders recruit to get the scam going. In most cases these people have been through many MLM's and are just looking for the next one to get in on early, rake in money, then bale before it all implodes. Some of the blogs that follow MLM's scam will point out how many "top earners" or founders of MLM's have very long histories in the MLM industry. Many near the top of the pyramids will be on their 12th or 15th MLM. Some are in several at one time, or are building up the next one because they know the one they are currently in will be bust soon enough. These are the truly evil scumbags who understand exactly how the scam works, and have no issue suckering people in to bankrupt themselves and alienate everyone in their life, so that they can get rich.
