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veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


mllaneza posted:

I once had a recruiter meet up with me for an interview, and afterwards smile and shake my hand before getting in his car knowing I had an almost 2 mile walk back to a bus stop.

I have read this like 10 times and I still can't figure out what the implication of it is supposed to be. I'm guessing you thought he should have offered you a ride? But I still can't figure out what that has to do with temp agencies as a business/scam.

veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Nov 30, 2019

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TheKennedys
Sep 23, 2006

By my hand, I will take you from this godforsaken internet

Mouse Dresser posted:

I see them pop up on Facebook marketplace from so many different people in my city. I was also gifted a pair a while back and they aren’t even that nice of leggings. I got better quality ones at Target. And those were half the price my friend was charging for Lularoe.

Lularoe was absolutely baffling to me because Walmart has leggings for $5.99 and they aren't falling apart (though some of them are LLR-level ugly) and they come in sizes that actually fit humans. I have three pairs from two years ago that are still in perfectly good shape. whyyyyyyyyyy

makeup MLMs are mind-blowing too because Sephora/Ulta and drugstores are right there and objectively better quality, but it's ultimately a cult so I guess that explains that. Some people just need to feel like they're part of something, and if they have to spend money to get that rush of positive attention and adulation and feel important by "owning their own business" by god they're gonna join every MLM they see.

the Venn diagram of people who take MLMs seriously and people who fall for 419 scams is basically a circle

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug
Cults, MLMs, terrorist cells, and hate groups tend to target the same demographics, actually. Now, not everybody in those demographics will potentially fall for all of them but they use the same tactics and hunting grounds. Usually what they go for are the disaffected, the disappointed, and the lonely. Like you said; the need to belong to something is a big thing. People need tribes. The tribe is basically an evolutionary superpower and is why we won the biological arms race. Forming tribes is inherent in what people are. We can't get away from it; it's how we survive. This is why loneliness stresses people right the hell out and ultimately kills them. It's also why the threat of social rejection is such a strong threat against people. It isn't that people are threatening to throw you out of the group; they're threatening to throw you out of your tribe which is extremely dangerous in the wild surroundings people evolved in. People actually pick up little tribal identities like quirks in how they move, talk, dress, and what have you. We can't not.

So they target people whose lives kind of suck, who don't have a lot of friends (or any, really), or who are disappointed with how their lives are turning out. This is why MLM meetings resemble cults. They use the same recruiting tactics and know precisely what they're doing. They're finding people without a tribe and they're offering them one. That's a siren song that's difficult to deny. They also target people who are struggling and clinging to anything that might let them get out of the situation. Somebody strolling along and saying "hey we'll help you start your own business and get you rich" is extremely tempting. Of course they go after people who don't have a head for numbers or who don't have the math skills to see how impossible the odds actually are. This is also why they do that whole "oh but you are a hard worker that will totally claw your way up to that half of a percent that actually makes money." Well, no. Those slots are already filled by the time you've even ever heard about the MLM.

MLM bullshit should be 100% illegal.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

mllaneza posted:

Now that I think about it, temp agencies are scamming part of the workforce: the recruiters. A recruiter who is actually good at their job is still managed by horrific metrics. And they're under an enforceable NDA. Ever wonder why the cool person at Agency X you dealt with never called you again ? They got churned out of their job for having a bad week, and the one element of a non-compete agreement that's 100% enforceable in 50 states is taking any kind of sales list with you. They can't re-use industry contacts and they can't re-use worker contacts. This makes it almost impossible for an actually good recruiter to strike out on their own.
You argue that temp agencies aren't an MLM but then you say this, which absolutely sounds like some MLM bullshit.

MisterOblivious
Mar 17, 2010

by sebmojo

Yawgmoth posted:

You argue that temp agencies aren't an MLM but then you say this, which absolutely sounds like some MLM bullshit.

Protecting sales lists sounds absolutely nothing at all like an MLM and I have no idea how you could even begin to make that stretch.

hyperhazard
Dec 4, 2011

I am the one lascivious
With magic potion niveous

ToxicSlurpee posted:

So they target people whose lives kind of suck, who don't have a lot of friends (or any, really), or who are disappointed with how their lives are turning out. This is why MLM meetings resemble cults. They use the same recruiting tactics and know precisely what they're doing. They're finding people without a tribe and they're offering them one. That's a siren song that's difficult to deny.

Don't remember if it's been posted here or not, but the Elle Beau story of how she got sucked into and then escaped an MLM is a perfect example of this (Ignore the terrible bitstrips art). She talks about how the second she joined Younique, she was flooded with facebook friends, added to a billion group chats, and immediately welcomed into the fold by all of her upline's peons. The longer she was in the MLM, the more her previous friends and family distanced themselves from her -- the uplines told them to cut out everyone that wasn't supportive of their "business," so she was only left with Younique friends. When anyone quit Younique, the rest of them would immediately block them and start talking poo poo about them. So if you left, you lost your entire support network.

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

hyperhazard posted:

When anyone quit Younique, the rest of them would immediately block them and start talking poo poo about them. So if you left, you lost your entire support network.
Sounds like being a salesman married to a salesman, tbqh.
Like even ostensibly "legit" sales jobs with a proper storefront.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


The grocery store had a big red STOP sign sticker at the till telling people not to buy gift cards for paying a fee they got an unsolicited email about.

TheKennedys
Sep 23, 2006

By my hand, I will take you from this godforsaken internet

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Cults, MLMs, terrorist cells, and hate groups tend to target the same demographics, actually. Now, not everybody in those demographics will potentially fall for all of them but they use the same tactics and hunting grounds. Usually what they go for are the disaffected, the disappointed, and the lonely. Like you said; the need to belong to something is a big thing. People need tribes. The tribe is basically an evolutionary superpower and is why we won the biological arms race. Forming tribes is inherent in what people are. We can't get away from it; it's how we survive. This is why loneliness stresses people right the hell out and ultimately kills them. It's also why the threat of social rejection is such a strong threat against people. It isn't that people are threatening to throw you out of the group; they're threatening to throw you out of your tribe which is extremely dangerous in the wild surroundings people evolved in. People actually pick up little tribal identities like quirks in how they move, talk, dress, and what have you. We can't not.

So they target people whose lives kind of suck, who don't have a lot of friends (or any, really), or who are disappointed with how their lives are turning out. This is why MLM meetings resemble cults. They use the same recruiting tactics and know precisely what they're doing. They're finding people without a tribe and they're offering them one. That's a siren song that's difficult to deny. They also target people who are struggling and clinging to anything that might let them get out of the situation. Somebody strolling along and saying "hey we'll help you start your own business and get you rich" is extremely tempting. Of course they go after people who don't have a head for numbers or who don't have the math skills to see how impossible the odds actually are. This is also why they do that whole "oh but you are a hard worker that will totally claw your way up to that half of a percent that actually makes money." Well, no. Those slots are already filled by the time you've even ever heard about the MLM.

MLM bullshit should be 100% illegal.

This is a good post, y'all read this

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

ToxicSlurpee posted:

MLM bullshit should be 100% illegal.
Same but with all economic parasitism such as planned obsolesence, rentseeking and landlordism.

peanut
Sep 9, 2007


;_____;

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007

Tubgoat posted:

Same but with all economic parasitism such as planned obsolesence, rentseeking and landlordism.

You can just say Capitalism.

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

Captain Monkey posted:

You can just say Capitalism.
A fair cop.

Inceltown
Aug 6, 2019

Tubgoat posted:

A fair cop.

'fair cop' is an oxymoron.

PhazonLink
Jul 17, 2010

hyperhazard posted:

Lularoe? You send then money, they send you whatever they feel like. Then you're stuck trying to figure out how to sell 5 medium and 20 XXS santa-themed leggings in June. They also require you to buy an insane amount of product when you join, we're talking multiple thousands of dollars for their smallest starter pack.

They're currently busy being sued into bankrupcy.

yeah it was Lularoe. Also the video essay i watched was from KnowingBetter.

MightyJoe36
Dec 29, 2013

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:

Almost all of the major cable providers have MLMs as a core part of their marketing strategies. Look up Cydcor. They spam all the job sites using keywords like Sports Marketing and use a bunch of fake shell companies literally just to prevent desperate saps from googling them and figuring poo poo out before they've gotten a month or so of work out of them.

quote:

Ok, this explains the two dudes selling ATT cable/phone packages door to door that showed up to myself a while ago. It was so off putting and weird that I thought they were casing my house or something.

I've had this happen; two in the same week. I've also had the "You're paying too much for your gas/electric" guys who want to look at my utility bills.

BIG FLUFFY DOG
Feb 16, 2011

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.


MightyJoe36 posted:

I've had this happen; two in the same week. I've also had the "You're paying too much for your gas/electric" guys who want to look at my utility bills.

Do you live in the one city in America where utilities aren't a monopoly?

MightyJoe36
Dec 29, 2013

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:

Do you live in the one city in America where utilities aren't a monopoly?

No. That's how I knew it was a scam.:colbert:

Guest2553
Aug 3, 2012


The Lone Badger posted:

They concealed the fact that they took the money, giving the appearance that it did not dispense.

All of the non-US ATM's I've seen in recent years dispense the cash only after you take the card. I guess this was why?

hellotoothpaste posted:

In case anyone hasn't heard of it, the children's book is Just Wait Til We're Diamond, and holy poo poo is it depressing. I found a copy online somewhere a while back and it basically excuses away parents-in-Amway behavior on the parents' behalf, why they're working so hard, etc. - Pretty bastard level way to get the kids to share the just wait mentality.

It sort of makes sense since the kid is likely reading by themselves because their parents are acting like the ones in the book. Some real meta poo poo.

A goon scanned the book onto imgur and linked it somewhere in the Bad With Money 2018 thread. I'll see if I can find it.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute

BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:

Do you live in the one city in America where utilities aren't a monopoly?

California has a thing where you can choose to buy natural gas from a third party seller. Usually the pitch is that you're buying it at a lower price than you would from your energy company, which is true, but if you do it then a) your energy company starts charging you a transmission price (since they're still the ones sending gas through your lines) and b) the third-party seller will usually charge a "procurement fee" or similar, and you'll end up paying more in totality than you would just sticking with your utility.

I get 2-3 a year and they're always pretty aggressive salespeople. They also pretty much always wear PG&E badges even though they don't actually work for PG&E.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Sydin posted:

California has a thing where you can choose to buy natural gas from a third party seller. Usually the pitch is that you're buying it at a lower price than you would from your energy company, which is true, but if you do it then a) your energy company starts charging you a transmission price (since they're still the ones sending gas through your lines) and b) the third-party seller will usually charge a "procurement fee" or similar, and you'll end up paying more in totality than you would just sticking with your utility.

I get 2-3 a year and they're always pretty aggressive salespeople. They also pretty much always wear PG&E badges even though they don't actually work for PG&E.

Same in Illinois. It's weird, I don't get them every year more like every 4 years or so. But when they do I get a TON of them. Most for electric but I get gas every now and then.

And those fees are how they get their margin (and then some) back. Admin fees, delivery fees, procurement fees, transport pass-through fess... It's just like the bullshit mobile carriers and cable companies do. I'm reminded about how up until about 10-15 years ago everyone was still paying a gov't fee to pay off the Spanish/American War.

Craptacular
Jul 11, 2004

Proteus Jones posted:

It's just like the bullshit mobile carriers and cable companies do. I'm reminded about how up until about 10-15 years ago everyone was still paying a gov't fee to pay off the Spanish/American War.
That was a tax. Blame Congress for that, not the private companies.

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

Inceltown posted:

'fair cop' is an oxymoron.
Aware, but it's also the original usage of the phrase, as in when someone was arrested for actually committing a (usually property) crime.

bird with big dick
Oct 21, 2015

MLM chat: a woman I went to HS with was pretty high up the chain in Advocare (mostly sells energy drinks and powders and poo poo). High enough that she started doing it and then after a while was making enough that her husband quit his job and they were just an MLM power couple. I assume they were making 6 figures at the peak.

She made roughly three trillion Facebook posts about how she made CEO level money at home in her pajamas being a small business owner and you could too!

Then Advocare stopped being an MLM (I think due to SEC involvement) and all her income disappeared in an instant, which is of course why it’s really nothing like being a small business owner because ultimately you have zero control over it.

She posted a teary 60 minute Facebook live video about how everything was totally fine and the real treasure was the friends she made along the way and she trusted gods plan for her.

Two weeks later she posted live again talking about how god had told her to “be still” and praise the lord a miracle occurred and god showed her a new MLM that was way better than that old lovely one she’d been shilling for a decade. She’d been “on product” with the new MLM for two weeks (some diet supplement and other random trash) and it was totally life changing. The best was her saying “if i just picked another product and started selling it it would mean I was just doing it for the money but I’m not doing it for the money I’m doing it to change lives which is why I had to be taking this vitamin goop for a whole two weeks before I started trying to convert my entire Downline over to this new scam.”

If you click on any one of her 4,300 Facebook friends there’s a 90% chance they’re hawking the same poo poo by just cutting and pasting random emoji laden advertising poo poo like the one shown below.


BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

bird with big dick posted:

MLM chat: a woman I went to HS with was pretty high up the chain in Advocare (mostly sells energy drinks and powders and poo poo). High enough that she started doing it and then after a while was making enough that her husband quit his job and they were just an MLM power couple. I assume they were making 6 figures at the peak.


No she wasn't.

She can maybe show you a CHECK for 6 figures (but I doubt it) or a big one that might look impressive but I god drat guarantee you it's not NET. Not by a long shot. It's a check she gets that's a "rebate" or a "commission" on "points" she's earned by buying product from the parent company and maybe with a lot kick ups from the suckers she ropes into doing the same thing. Or, she can show you a single $5,000 check without disclosing that she spent $50,000 in 9 years "building her business". They're ALL just buying poo poo from Amway or whoever it is and maxing out their credit to allow for the appearance of wealth.

If she "made" $100,000 in a year doing any sort of MLM horse poo poo, she spent $150,000 or $200,000 attending "training" seminars and "classes", purchasing motivational CD's/DVD's or buying fancy poo poo on credit to demonstrate her "success" and get more people under her. The ONLY people making money on this crap are the companies manufacturing the things they sell who rake in cash from brainwashed, loyal cult members that buy ONLY from them and who think they're making money because they got a $500 check in the mail while ignoring that they bought $1500 worth of garbage they'll never sell.

Quickest way to shut down and MLM huckster is to ask to see their tax returns because NONE of them make any money.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Joke’s on you, they don’t file taxes.

CHECK AND MATE

hyperhazard
Dec 4, 2011

I am the one lascivious
With magic potion niveous

Guest2553 posted:

A goon scanned the book onto imgur and linked it somewhere in the Bad With Money 2018 thread. I'll see if I can find it.

Please do! I saw samples someone posted online, but I've never been able to find the whole thing.

Like, it's just balls to the wall crazy.



Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo
Wow, every part of that book's publication ought to be prosecuted as child abuse. :stare:

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo
America is a scam.

Long Francesco
Jun 3, 2005
Is the smoked turkey a metaphor or is that really the authors idea of a good parting gift?

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

Long Francesco posted:

Is the smoked turkey a metaphor or is that really the authors idea of a good parting gift?
Yes and yes.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

This is what you see when you die.

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

ToxicSlurpee posted:

This is what you see when you die.
For how long???

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Tubgoat posted:

For how long???

Forever.

artsy fartsy
May 10, 2014

You'll be ahead instead of behind. Hello!
Just wait 'til we're dead!

Last Visible Dog
Jul 30, 2015


I found this from the last time that book got brought up in this thread.

For convenience: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3555678&pagenumber=642&perpage=40#post464595967

bird with big dick
Oct 21, 2015

BiggerBoat posted:

No she wasn't.
...
Quickest way to shut down and MLM huckster is to ask to see their tax returns because NONE of them make any money.

Yeah that’s obviously false. The top 0.01% or whatever do, and I think she was legitimately one of them

Happy Thread
Jul 10, 2005

by Fluffdaddy
Plaster Town Cop
From the replies

quote:

That turkeys not even in any packaging. It's just a smoked turkey on his boss's desk.

"I appreciate the job, but I just don't need it any more. But Before I go, I'm going to watch you eat this entire loving turkey," dad said as he held the gun to his boss's temple. "Once you're done, you can shove this watch up your rear end."

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hyperhazard
Dec 4, 2011

I am the one lascivious
With magic potion niveous

Last Visible Dog posted:

I found this from the last time that book got brought up in this thread.

For convenience: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3555678&pagenumber=642&perpage=40#post464595967

You're my hero. It's even worse than I was expecting.

Every single one of those illustrations is a war crime.

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