Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/13/samantha-bee-looks-at-facebook.html
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Great as usual from her.
I was shocked to learn that one of our good friends - who makes a shitload of money working full time in a C suite job - was involved in one of these things. Rodan + Fields.
She’s so damn smart in just about every way, I couldn’t believe it. It appears to have been short-lived however. I’m sure she wised up to the fact that it’s a complete scam.
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I assume smart people know the con, but also have a reinforced self-image of themselves as a game-master and are pretty sure they’ll be near the top of the pyramid, where the real money is.
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Let’s see…a shit ton of hard working people that are scrapping to get by, topped by a few wealthy people that sit back and do jack shit else than ripping off the base layer. Where have I seen this model before?
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Want to learn how to make lots of money just by posting dank comments on message boards?
Send Me $100 via pay-pal and I’ll send you complete info!
(/s: The grift is that the secret to earning money by posting comments on Message boards is to trick people into sending you money via pay pal.)
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And the MLM shit takes that to the nth degree - in so far is that at least if you have a job, no matter how shitty, at least you get a paycheck.
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Jane Krakowski in Go.
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Yep, that’s what I was thinking of!
It’s always amusing to watch people accuse MLMs of feeding easily demonstrable BS to their gullible “victims” who ignorantly accept whatever they’re told at face value – while feeding easily demonstrable BS to their gullible audience who ignorantly accepts whatever they’re told at face value. Like this easily demonstrable load of crap from Samantha Bee. For example…
The Trump Network was not “launched in 2009” nor was it owned or “run by” Donald Trump, in any way, ever. A 10 year old company called Ideal Health simply changed there name as part of a licensing deal, with no change to ownership or management, which are facts that can be quickly and easily known by merely Googling “The Trump Network” – so Bee’s (and the Beast’s) claims are either the result of gross incompetency, or are outright lies.
Contrary to Bee’s assertion, no MLM company pays their reps based solely on the number of those they recruit, but rather only when products are sold. In fact, if a LuLaRoe rep were to personally recruit 10,000 other reps she would earn absolutely nothing – until one of them purchased or sold a product.
Bee also conveniently (or ignorantly) failed to mention that virtually all of the over 1,000 MLM companies in the US will take back and refund 90-100% of the cost of any unsold inventory (and in most cases sales aids) for at least 90 days and often up to one year, with just one exception – LuLaRoe (what an ironic coincidence).
The document “Chapter 7: MLM’s Abysmal Numbers” which Bee briefly flashes on the screen with no accreditation, but cites several claims from, is from chapter 7 of a long discredited 50,000 word anti-MLM manifesto entirely written over a decade ago by a single avid MLM critic, from his home, while calling himself “The Consumer Awareness Institute”. Within this document, for example, the “1% of MLM participants profit” claim was derived in part by the author simply pulling his absurdly high “estimated” total monthly expenses straight out of his… thin air.
My point here is actually very similar to Bee’s, and most other MLM critics: Don’t let other people do your thinking for you. Form your own opinions, then make your own decisions, based on your own objective evaluation. That way, people with biased, self-serving agendas can’t deceive you with their BS.
Samantha Bee is so unfair, calling these MLMs pyramid schemes when many of them are totally reputable reverse funnel systems.
De-toxifying super Abana berry juice, anyone? It’ll reduce your stress units.
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Can I interest you in a investing in my hedge fund that offers a derivative that hedges against the risk in the MLM market by investing in a market basket of select rated MLM stocks on the futures market?
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Back in the day, when I was a member of a pentecostal church*, I knew a woman who was entangled in one of two pyramid schemes that never seemed to make her any actual money; they just dominated her extra time and took up space in her car/house.
*I only mention this because church-goers seem to be prime targets for such grifters.
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But do you know who my best customer is?
It’s you isn’t it?
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I haven’t. I’ve been a victim of an MLM. They’re fucking scum, preying on people’s gullibility and desperation. Like any other con.
I won’t tell you which scam it was, because you’ll try to weasel your way out of condoning the obvious scams MLMs are.
Suffice it to say, they advertised that it’s quick to start selling, that they would provide leads, and that you can do it from home.
It turns out they REQUIRED me to buy on installment the full line up of their product offerings, in order to demonstrate them in a 6 hour class, that they would provide leads after 6 months of regular sales on my own leads, and that you can absolutely do it from home by “making sure to try and sell all of your friends and family on the product! Make sure that you leave no stone unturned and don’t take no for an answer.” “if your friends won’t buy then are they even really your friends?” “I made hundreds of dollars a day selling this stuff, you’re not trying hard if you can’t do it.”
A real job pays you for your time and output. Not for access to your private resources of friends and family. That’s a scam.
And I can see we have @MWave typing here for a solid ten fifteen minutes now. Whatcha working on there Hemingway?
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Got it. There are hundreds, and depending on how long ago you were involved possibly thousands, of MLM programs (which include AVON and Tupperware), but you’re absolutely certain that every single MLM program that existed then or now is “fucking scum” because this single conveniently unnamed one was that you joined some unknown time ago, based on a BS pitch that could have easily been exposed as such with just the slightest due-diligence. This includes the claim that you were “REQUIRED” to buy their products. Unless it was LuLaRoe (as I said in my original post, which was flagged and deleted for “spam”), whatever MLM it was did not require you to buy any amount of their products to be accepted as, or maintain the status of, a distributor for that company. Numerous legal cases and FTC guidance have made it very clear that such a requirement would, in fact, very likely cause the operation to be deemed an illegal pyramid scheme, therefore no legitimate, substantial MLM program without a death wish would ever do this.
They do illegal trickery all the time bro. That’s what a scam is. The whole point is, the first line of investors get to make money, while everyone else down the line makes less and less.
Usually sales are thwarted because they offer expensive shit products, and they pressure their associates aka MARKS to buy product. It’s claiming you’ll be able to make money hand over fist, but first you need to buy a bunch of shit in order to get started.
At real jobs you don’t have to buy anything to get started because there’s an element of quid pro quo. In an MLM it’s one-sided and designed to bilk money out of the lowest rung.
How do you think my career in MLM ended? After a few weeks I went back to the office, and guess what? It was EMPTY. Not a stick of furniture left. I wonder why that was? In anycase I kept my product, never spoke to them again, and ended up much happier and better off not working for an illegal scam.
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“People wouldn’t do illegal things and not get caught! That’s illegal! They’d be caught!”
Why do you even bother defending such shitty and generally exploitative business models?
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