Originally published at: Pearl parties: The multi-level marketing scam that just won't die | Boing Boing
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Hype is real. It sort of feels like that phenomena where people value Ikea furniture highly because they assembled it themselves. Somehow getting that sense of being part of the production makes it feel more valuable, even if it is all a sham for low quality goods.
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Whatever the twist or gimmick, every last one of these MLMs is a pyramid scheme. Except for Amway, because old man De Vos bribed Gerald Ford into declaring it not legally a pyramid scheme.
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You can do the same thing at Epcot in the Japanese area (IIRC). We got one and had it set in a charm, as my kiddo’s birth stone is pearl.
I mean, I see the appeal. It is like buying a geode, or a blind bag/box, or those little bars you chip away at for a diamond or fleck of gold. It is the childlike wonderment of finding “treasure”.
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… At least with Tupperware (or Pampered Chef for those that are like “WTF is tupperware?”), you got reasonably useful stuff? This is just a scam. 
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Lol, Kiddo received something similar (chip away “like a real scientist” to reveal plastic toy) a few years ago. Within minutes she was bored with the tap-tap-tap and smashed it on the driveway instead to free the toy. Much more efficient 
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so like poker night, except everyone loses
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I’ve seen videos of people opening a case of them and they soak them in water and can then crumble them with their hands.
There is a new line of toys out there where you have to go through a process to reveal the toy through finding it in slime, or putting it in water, or sawing through some of the plastic. I have to admit, the whole process I have seen on these things I think is interesting and I am sure young me would have loved it. There are even more blind bag type toys out there.
Here is an example of one opening:
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Or in Texas fundraising, you could fill the Abbott with preserved oysters, and everybody leaves.
Pearl Jam parties, you play Pearl Jam real loud and dance.
Or, you know, maybe the host eats everybody out if you’re into that.
Or, the host takes a bunch of pearl jam (a substance,) and transforms the cells into oocytes in spectator reproductive microbiology. Whaaaat? If you can get that in a starter kit, maybe you can get the mRNA version where you start with someone stuck with horrid dietary restrictions (because MS,) and give them instead chloroplasts or that nitrogenous goop they got corn stalks to make. Who gets to take them home, dunno. YOU get a lay medicine tradition, and YOU get a lay medicine tradition, and EVERYBODY…well, maybe and maybe not.
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(beaming) See? There are worse investments than crypto!
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yes! Aunt Pearl’s Hallucinogenic Jam! there’s your party, folks!
Flossi, you genius, you!
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Yeah, Tupperware’s way better, and the Tupperware party I attended was actually a blast! 
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I inherited some of my mother’s Tupperware when she was downsizing; most of it was still in good shape, but others had the dreaded ‘sticky lid’ disease which made me sad, because the bowls they went to were still good.
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What a pity!
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Ah, the Indiana Jones method of archeology. I hope that afterwards she turned and said “Can you put this above the fireplace? It belongs on a mantle”
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Huh. I had heard a completely different story about the origin of the name
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early on, they leaned in on this story, but have since denied it was ever true.
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Denied the one that you posted or the one that I am obliquely referring to?
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oh. my post has been debunked by the band themselves.
i’m no fan of mr. vedder et. al. so i don’t mind being a little devious in my use of their “origin story”.
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I stopped listening to commercial radio in the mid-90s when a station played Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots back to back. I need more variety
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