The company’s that everyone knows are MLM trash (HerbaLife, JuicePlus, ect). When I was looking for a job I naively joined a seminar discussing CutCo Knives. Come to find out these dud muffin companies have been around since my mom was growing up, and are somehow still operational? Wouldn’t the BBB or whatever business bureau operates in the US (FTC?) have these scams shut down by now? I understand that new ones are popping up all the time but im referring to the ones that have been around forever now.
In: Economics
Do a deep dive on these MLMs – its entertaining to learn how they work and it will very quickly answer all your questions.
In short – they prey on the desperate. People who are desperate, in difficult financial situations are the perfect mark and these “systems” are designed to perfectly answer all of their needs. Remote work, “easy money”, low skill ceiling, charismatic and robust support structure. All they need to do is front the cost of the product and they are away. It’s all so simple. Almost too good to be true (because it is).
Almost immediately information about “The Secret Method™” that all good sellers are employing is passed on – namely, roping in other marks to sell this useless shit and pass the profits on to you (as you pass your profits onto the mark above you and so on).
This secret makes you feel special, like you’ve identified a trick. But you are the trick. What’s worse is that when they start to really roll you into all this – they layer on the rhetoric “You can be a winner if only people believe in you”, “Anyone who doubts you is a hater”, “You aren’t succeeding because people in your life secretly don’t want you to succeed” just like a cult, all of this is designed to separate you from your actual real life support structure. Friends, family or anyone else who cares about you enough to warn you that what you are doing is bad news.
By the time you’ve figured out what’s happened, your already likely meager bank account is now completely dry, you have a house full of absolute bullshit you can’t sell and you may have even told the only people who care about you to fuck off because they didn’t believe in you enough and secretly wanted you to fail.
For those that find any modicum of success… the “Inner Party” if you will – they will have seminars and all kinds of high energy conventions with useless prizes and recognition designed to blow smoke up their ass and keep them energized for recruiting more rubes. They are encouraged to post lots of pictures of them on vacation and living the high life to encourage potential recruits and show them how wonderful their life has been since joining this bullshit (even if they are riding the line towards bankruptcy).
It’s cruel and plays on ignorance and desperation.
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