Amway and other multi-level marketing cults

I was mad about getting into trouble for dancing at the meeting until I was a little older and started reading about cults.

One of the first and biggest MLMs, Amway Corp., recently made news for successfully lobbying Congress for a $283 million tax break in the new budget. Records show that the company and its executives contributed at least $4 million to the Republican Party over the last four years. What a return on investment! But that's not the scary part or the new part. Political payoffs for campaign contributions are hardly a novelty.

No, what's novel about Amway's political influence is that the virus has spread into Congress itself. Four Members of Congress are in fact Amway distributors: Jon Christensen (R-Nebr.), John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), and Richard Pombo (R-Calif.).

No fucking shit. While I was having lunch today, someone stuck a MLM flyer (you can always tell it's one because they all promise "the secrets of wealth" and encourage you to attend a seminar at some loser convention hotel). Then I saw that NYT article when I got home and got to thinking...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385495382/qid=1084050633/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-4129145-6769405?v=glance&s=books

Opponent: So you're stupid then?
Congressperson: Er... yes?

That's all They want you to remember.

Pombo, who is probably the worst or second-worst Member of Congress on "the environment," is part of the Congressional Moron Caucus that thinks that 200 years of judicial review didn't turn out so hot and wants not only to allow Congress to overrule any Supreme Court decision limiting its powers, but to do so without amending the Constitution.

CINCINNATI — Procter & Gamble Co. has won a jury award of CINCINNATI — Procter & Gamble Co. has won a jury award of $19.25 million in a civil lawsuit filed against four former Amway distributors accused of spreading false rumors linking the company to Satanism to advance their own business.
The U.S. District Court jury in Salt Lake City on Friday found in favor of the Cincinnati-based consumer products company in a lawsuit filed by P&G in 1995. It was one of several the company brought over rumors alleging a link with the company's logo and Satanism.9.25 million in a civil lawsuit filed against four former Amway distributors accused of spreading false rumors linking the company to Satanism to advance their own business.
The U.S. District Court jury in Salt Lake City on Friday found in favor of the Cincinnati-based consumer products company in a lawsuit filed by P&G in 1995. It was one of several the company brought over rumors alleging a link with the company's logo and Satanism.

Forgot to mention this earlier... I was in Century City a couple weeks ago and there was a huge Amway (they're calling themselves Quixtar/Alticor now) convention going on with about 8000 attendees. Apparently, they're focusing on a new scam product called Perfect Water. The ad copy reads like a SNL fake ad... My favorite bit from the FAQ:

What’s the deal with Microstructuring? I’ve heard its just bunk.
Some call it science, others call it pseudo-science. The only thing really certain is that there is no certainty among the scientific community on Microstructuring—just as there is no scientific agreement over the “Big Bang”, Global Warming, and whether or not California is going to someday fall into the ocean. (We sure  hope that doesn’t  happen since we really like the beaches and the weather there!) What we do know and believe in is what our customers tell us which is that they can feel the difference with our water.

That’s why, despite the costs, we’ve included as part of our proprietary processes the best Microstructuring technology we could find so that Perfect Empowered Drinking Water will always stand taller than any other bottled drinking water on the block. You might even find yourself holding your own head a little higher knowing Perfect Empowered Drinking Water is the result of researching, testing, developing, and combining what we’ve concluded are the best of the best water technologies and processes from around the globe.

The only thing missing is Dr. Spaceman complaining about the Evil Bread Lobby.

Anyway, at least museumofhoaxes.com is the #2 and #3 search result on "perfect water"

well I own my own business but it feels like the business owns me
need a revenue stream so I don't have to dream to be free
I'm a lump of coal right now but I'll be a diamond soon
gonna be a success like those professionals in Cancun

just as there is no scientific agreement over the “Big Bang”, Global Warming, and whether or not California is going to someday fall into the ocean.

just as there is no scientific agreement over the “Big Bang”, Global Warming, and whether or not California is going to someday fall into the ocean.

just as there is no scientific agreement over the “Big Bang”, Global Warming, and whether or not California is going to someday fall into the ocean.

just as there is no scientific agreement over the “Big Bang”, Global Warming, and whether or not California is going to someday fall into the ocean.

I hope they get Tool to write a song about how they can't wait for Perfect Water, ala "Aenima."

In other news, Amway is apparently into wireless transmission of power

Amway/Quixtar have TELEVISION COMMERCIALS now. My poor jaw is just laying around in the living room bcz it's DROPPED so many times after seeing this TELEVISION COMMERCIAL.

is there anything more sad than a friend having a pampered chef party? I think not. anyway they're not ever really close friends who have these; but it seems like, "feel sorry for me, give me money, I am running a 'business'". yeah no.

home party selling events are all about towards leveraging personal relationships & the standards of hospitality towards profit -- it is only natural to resent them!

There is an Amway store five minutes' walk from my flat, yes in London, but I have never seen a single person inside that didn't work there. The store is situ'd in very expensive commercial real estate.

"feel sorry for me, give me money, I am running a 'business'"

OTM. My wife bought a $100 pair of Cutco scissors from a single mother friend of a friend as a gesture of support. They're actually really good scissors, but I think the salesperson would be wiser to use her time looking for a real job. jesus I sound like someone's conservative dad, but fucking come on, why do people allow themselves to get sucked into this patently stupid shit?

Amway meets China

Amway's approach works well in a society that values personal connections and word of mouth.

this. ugh, in a way this really depresses me - amway is sort of the perfect storm for china.

I know someone who worked for something called the C0Br4 6R0UP which seemed to use a similar approach.

My sister joined Cutco for two days when she needed a bill-paying job fresh out of college. She said that they gave her "homework" to bring in the names and phone numbers of 100 people she knew. She couldn't be a part of it and quit.

Nanananananana LEADERRRR!

Last fall, I had a customer come into work and try to get me involved in some sort of makeup/beauty thing. I thought she was just trying to sell me stuff, so I just gave her my email to get rid of her. But the email she later sent sounded like such a scam.

And, oh hey, googling NuSkin totally confirms my suspicions.

Last month there was a woman selling spa treatments to raise money for cancer, but something about it sounds a little off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxxGNtRG-_o

Wait is Cutco one of these schemes?? I just got given on of those knives as a birthday present.

yeah cutco is def. one, and iirc their knives are considered to be pretty shitty by those who care about such things.

it's a serrated carving knife that i'm not supposed to sharpen myself; i'm supposed to "send it back to the factory"

http://www.discusscooking.com/forums/f90/cutco-knives-1325.html

Cutco's salespeople swear up and down double-d edges are neither straight, nor serrated but unique (don't all salespeople?). The Double-D edge is in fact another type of serrated edge. Cutco calls their serrated edge "Double D" just like Spyderco calls their serrated edges "Spyderedge." Except Spyderco isn't trying to fool anyone and markets their as a superior serration pattern while Cutco tries to claim theirs is different.

But anyone who knows anything about knives can tell you the ^^^^ pattern on the edge (take a look at the cutco.com website for an explanation and drawing, currently at: http://www.cutco.com/jsp/catalog/features.jsp ) makes it a serrated edge. The whole double-d thing is just hype like everything else about the knives. The Double-D edge is not patented and never was.

The problem with the serrated pattern is that it doesn't make a clean cut- little nicks and tears in the food is made. Serrated knives are generally only good for fibrous vegetables and bread- where it is needed. Cutco reps may claim that it makes a clean cut, but this is only true for cutting stuff you can press straight down on (like butter), but for things you need to slide the blade back and forth on (like meat) the teeth will tear it up. Serrated edges are also somewhat more difficult to clean.

As for sharpness, you may think they stay razor sharp but in reality only the crevices of the blade edge are. You see serrated edges like the Double-D's look like this: ^^^^^^ when contacting the food the points get worn down rather quickly but the crevices stay sharp, so it may seem like it is razor sharp but in reality only the crevices are. It can never be as sharp as a well maintained plain edge, the edge preferred by cooking enthusiasts and professionals. Maybe a serrated edge is better at cutting rope (the rope a dope trick), but the best kitchen knives are not made to cut through rope, they are made to make a good, clean cuts on food. Master chef Wylie Dufresne just recently told GQ magazine in their Sept '03 edition, "I have plenty of friends whose parents have Cutco in a knife block. You pull them out and they're all as dull as can be."

my roommate had a small set of cutco knives he got for college (lol) - I remember once he tried to eat peanut butter straight off the jam knife (spatula type thing) and cut his tongue. we all lol'd heartily (except for him).

I did that once with a butter knife. u_u

Ultra-thorough dossier on the Herbalife pyramid scheme (there's a summary on Metafilter)

Fortune Magazine article on the Nu Skin MLM (and their ties to Mitt Romney)

bah my bestie invited me for a 'business opportunity' tonight and I knew damn well it was going to be one of these. He's a great dude tho so I went to the info session just to be nice.

The guy presenting was supposedly a baller who is making $250k a year yet he dropped "uh" every three seconds, his powerpoint was amateurish Comic Sans nonsense, and used some really chintzy clipart that often had no relation to the content on the slide. Plus he got sidetracked easily. and yet people were wowed by his 'speech'.

fortunately my friend is a good dude and didn't get too upset when I said this wasn't for me but yow, cult-mentality for sure. what made me LOL is that the company's fucking logo WAS IN THE SHAPE OF A GODDAMN PYRAMID!!!

I know a woman in Hungary who was a former client running a really successful chain of businesses across the country who sold up and invested in MLM. She was getting a pretty raw deal from the international franchise organisation she was originally working with, but would have been making pretty good money in her original ventures. She's now hawking 0rg@n0 G0ld and various "health supplements". It's so depressing.

Got Amwayed by a work buddy a few months back. Asked me out to lunch like nbd then his wife joins and I knew something was up. All buttery and lame small talk, acting overly interested. Cheap perfume, extensions. Small talk turns into what I like to do in spare time, if I'd wished I had more money (WHO DOESNT). Then in comes old white haired dude who happened to be in town leading a conference about this stuff. Supposedly some super high up in the company idk idc. So dude hands me an old laptop and some cheap ass skullcandys and asks me to watch this dvd, it'll only take a few minutes. So i turn on the dvd, comic sans, crap vector art, MONEY, EVERYONE WANTS MONEY. Own YOUR BUSINESS, ITS YOOOOOOUR BUSINESS. anyway i zone out after 15 seconds and plan my words. not interested, no thanks, what you don't want more money? nope Im good. but earlier you said you did, well now i don't thanks my parents did amway and it ruined a lot of their friendships and zapped them of time with us I've seen it first hand and friendships and free time are more important than an extra grand a month. The rest of the lunch was spent either deflecting or in awkward silence. they didn't pick up my tab. haven't talked to dude since.

it's always a good sign that a program is on the up and up when your friends have to trick you into telling you about it.

and they're all like showing the range of salary you could make with a little elbow grease and I'm like "yeah I make $20k more than that currently in a job I like and making that much w/ Amway would force me to be a horrible human being peddling crap I don't believe in to friends and colleagues so yeah no thanks"

this always makes me think of william fitchner and jane krakowski in "go"

haha that scene was in my head all night but I couldn't remember what movie that was from!

even worse than Amway was Pr!merica back in 2002-2003-ish. They were a subsidiary of C!tigroup that peddled really terrible insurance to gullible folks.

the person that invited me to this was my bestie at the time (no longer, for reasons like these, and the fact that he spent 3-4 months hitting on my girlfriend in front of me in 2009). He was like "Man, I got you a job interview, I know you hate your current job, so come check this out". Gave me only a brief description, that it involved insurance, told me it'd only take a little time...and I was making less than 10k a year waiting tables and going to school, so y'know...I said what the hell, an interview is only an hour, and maybe it's a good company.

Within 5 minutes I knew the 'interview' was a sham (they asked me really idiotic questions like "is it better to have less money or more money" and overcongratulated me when I got one 'right', telling me "not everybody gets that question right, wow!"). Of course, at the end, they tell me I passed muster (congrats, you're hired!), so I'm expecting to get to the 'ok here's what we pay' line when they start to tell me about having people under you and having to sell this and that and at this point I was kinda naive and had only cursory knowledge of pyramids but it reminded me of the phone-card scam my parents fell for in the 90s. So I'm eyerolling, but like 'ok fine, I'll just soldier through, what's it gonna hurt'. Zoning out and not listening to the guy the entire time until I hear the words "so in order to participate we'll need $200 from you, will that be cash or check?"

Bestie of course 'conveniently' forgot to tell me about this in advance, knowing full well that at the time, $200 was like, everything I had in the bank. I said I might need some time, and they were all like "OH WELL GEORGE HERE HAS TO TAKE THE CHECKS IN A TRUCK TO ATLANTA TOMORROW" (ok?). In an obviously rehearsed moment (one lots of people parrot in the industry), my friend offers to front me the money "if I get 5 people below me". Nowadays, I woulda said "fuck this" (hell, nowadays, I wouldn't have even shown up to begin with), but then, being naive, and letting people take advantage of me, I said 'ok', thinking hey, maybe I can get some money.

I get home and read the nasty reviews on Primerica and immediately regret it. I went to one of the meetings, and like Amway, it was pure cult-behavior, lots of high-fives and LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH type slogans. (ok not that bad but you get waht I mean).

Basically never showed up again, never took the test required to sell insurance, and never paid the friend back. In later years this dude was no longer my bestie cuz of frequent dick-headed shit he pulled like this.

so gross

I mentioned them in therapy last week and my therapist had a pronounced facial reaction to the name, one of revulsion. she broke in to say "I hate those people. They used to be located in my own building and tried to solicit my patients".

So there's a new MLM going around with Japanese titanium(-coated) cookware? $5k for a set that would cost ~$1000 for a top of the line stainless set.

I can see conning people into a couple of hundred bucks here and there on essential oils but how the fuck do you convince someone to drop $5k on pots and pans?

Via Facebook, I've been watching the daughter of a family frend getting sucked into one of these travel multi-level scams. She's just constantly bragging about how her life is going to change and how she'll soon be independently wealthy soon, yadda yadda yadda. I'd almost feel sorry for the inevitable crash and burn, if she wasn't so annoying aggressive with trying to rope others into it too. The travel club is W0rldV3ntures, lots of talk about how it's a scam. One example here.

Point being, if someone on your FB feed starts posting pictures of themselves holding a blue "YOU SHOULD BE HERE" sign, keep your distance, they'll soon get very annoying about wanting "to share this awesome adventure!" with you.

You can buy a pure titanium 1.3 liter cooking pot for about $80 at REI. Titanium isn't an especially good heat conductor and tends to have hot spots, but it is a bit lighter and stronger than aluminum, but backpackers mostly just use their ti pots to boil water in.

Meaning, $5K is utterly ridic and who wants titanium cookware anyway?

Adamantium cookware or GTFO, bub.

The only way they'll take my cast-iron cookware is from my cold, dead fingers

There's a creepy overlap between this stuff and motivational speaking/self-help. I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGbAh95jtP8

Fake crying at 14:30.

found it: http://www.saladmaster.com/display/router.aspx

Apparently they set you up with cast iron, stainless steel, teflon and SALADMASTER with water and baking soda or something, then you taste each one and recognize how amazingly neutral the SALADMASTER pans are.
The person who told me about it said their host had tried selling them on the flavor angle but I imagine a bunch of them do it because of chemicals leeching into your precious fluids.

These particular hucksters are really good at SEO, if you search for Saladmaster and scam/MLM it comes up with 'reviews' about how it's so totally not a scam.

someone on my FB feed asking 'all (his) friends who sell juiceplus / herbalife' how many people they were expected to recruit in order to set themselves up as distributors. I said it was a pyramid scheme but no one really took notice. Never mind.

This American Life segment on the Wake Up Now cult
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/543/wake-up-now?act=1

man, reading about that smallville sex cult this morning...so crazy.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/smallville-actress-allison-mack-arrested-for-alleged-role-in-sex-slave-cult-nxivm-2018-04-20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsxHKDgvhYY

this is the inspirational pyramid sex cult leader's FIRST pyramid scheme. an infomercial featuring Eddie Albert! say it ain't so, Eddie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7kZBQCIrQM&t=469s

http://static-30.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/935d7d6a-049a-49fb-a836-920f61f2f5c3-large16x9_AllisonMack3CreditJaneRosenberg.jpg?1524277151918

the perp's face in that sketch deserves a spot in santorum.jpg

so my sister is deep into ItWorks, which is some pure bullshit, keto coffee and body wraps and the like. I can't imagine she's making any money off it; my sister is morbidly obese and the #bossbabe pictures she posts of herself are heavily filtered. She seems to have no innate conception of how to sell this shit either; for instance, she posted a picture of overdue bills with a long note about how she's so glad she has her #supplementalincome to help with that. Yeah, if it was doing so well for you why do you have collections notices at all? I've not broached the subject of any of this with her because we're honestly not that close, and she only tried to add one friend of mine on FB and rope them into it (she was ignored), but the whole thing is a bit depressing.