#Multilevel Marketing Business

[soleta]

"i need an LLM to write emails for me. i am the exception because i speak bad english/i have anxiety/i don't know buisiness speak/i'm bald" can i introduce you to my good friend the world wide web fucking search engine

[directsellingnow]

Brilliant Compensation: Ideal Global Home Business by Dr. Debi Prasad Acharjya

Direct Selling Industry: आज के समय में हर कोई एक ऐसा व्यवसाय चाहता है जो न केवल वित्तीय सुरक्षा दे, बल्कि जीवन की गुणवत्ता को भी बेहतर बनाए। इस आर्टिकल का उद्देश्य आपको एक ऐसी व्यावसायिक अवधारणा से रूबरू कराना है, जो practical है और सही दिशा में काम करती है। यह उन लोगों के लिए है जो कुछ नया करने ��ी चाह रखते हैं, और अपने काम को 100% देने के लिए तैयार हैं। लेकिन यहां एक महत्वपूर्ण बात यह है कि आपको…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/05/power-of-positive-thinking/#the-socialism-of-fools

In her unmissable 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein paints a picture of a "mirror world" of right wing and conspiratorial beliefs that are warped, false reflections of real crises:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, Qanon's obsession with "child trafficking" is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about "immigrants stealing jobs" is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-waged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about "decentralization" is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.

Klein is at pains to point out that other political thinkers have described this phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, leftists called antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Socialism – the idea that working people are preyed upon by capital – is reflected in the warped mirror as "working people are preyed upon by international Jewish bankers."

The mirror world is a critical concept, because it shows that far right and conspiratorial beliefs are often uneasy neighbors with real, serious political movements. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, in other words:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Once you understand the mirror world, you start to realize that many right wing conspiracists could have been directed into productive movements, if only they'd understood that their problems were with systems, not sinister individuals (this is why Trump has ordered a purge of any federally funded research that contains the word "systemic"):

https://mamot.fr/@Lazarou@mastodon.social/113943287435897828

This also explains why the "tropes" of right wing conspiratorialism sometimes echo left wing, radical thought. I once had a (genuinely unhinged) dialog with a self-described German "progressive" who told me that criticizing the finance industry as parasitic on the real economy was "structurally antisemitic." Nonsense like this is why Klein's "mirror world" is so important: unless you understand the mirror world, you can end up believing that "progressive" just means "defending anything the right hates."

Historian Erik Baker is the author of a new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, which has some very interesting things to say about the mirror world:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674293601

In a recent edition of the always-excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, the hosts interviewed Baker about the book, and the conversation turned to the subject of pyramid schemes, the "multilevel marketing systems" that are woven into so many religious, right-wing movements:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-the-entrepreneurial-ethic/

MLMs have it all: prosperity gospel ("God rewards virtue with wealth"), atomization ("you are an entrepreneur and everyone in your life is your potential customer"), and rabid anti-Communism ("solidarity is a trick to make you poorer").

The rise of the far right can't be separated from the history of MLMs. The modern MLM starts with Amway, a cultlike national scam that was founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos (father-in-law of Betsy DeVos).

Rank-and-file members of the Amway cult lived in dire poverty, convinced that their financial predicament was their own fault for not faithfully following the "sure-fire" Amway method for building a business. Andrea Pitzer's gripping memoir of growing up in an Amway household offers a glimpse of the human cost of the cult:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/amway-america/681479/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZxYkntna5M_rYEv4707Zqqs

Amway – and MLMs like it – don't just bleed out their members by convincing them to buy mountains of useless crap they're supposed to sell to their families, while enriching the people at the top of the pyramid who sell it to them. The "toxic positivity" of multi-level marketing cults forces members deep into debt to pay for seminars and retreats where they are supposed to learn how to repair the personal defects that keep them from being "successful entrepreneurs." The topline of the cult isn't just getting rich selling stuff – they're making bank by selling false hope, literally, in Hilton ballrooms and convention centers across the country, where hearing an MLM scammer berate you for being a "bad entrepreneur" costs thousands of dollars.

Amway destroyed so many lives that Richard Nixon's FTC decided to investigate it. The investigation wasn't going well for Amway, which was facing an existential crisis that they were rescued from by Nixon's resignation. You see, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, was the former Congressman of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, who was also the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbyist in America.

At Ford's direction, the FTC exonerated Amway of all wrongdoing. But it's even worse than that: Ford's FTC actually crafted a rule that differentiated legal pyramid schemes from illegal ones, based on Amway's destructive business practices. Under this new rule, any pyramid scheme that had the same structure as Amway was presumptively legal. Every MLM operating in America today is built on the Amway model, taking advantage of the FTC's Amway rule to operate in the open, without fear of legal repercussions.

MLMs prey on the poor and desperate: women, people of color, people in dying small towns and decaying rustbelt cities. It's not just that these people are desperate – it's that they only survive through networks of mutual aid. Poor women rely on other poor women to help with child care, marginalized people rely on one another for help with home maintenance, small loans, a place to crash after an eviction, or a place to park the RV you're living out of.

In other words, people who lack monetary capital must rely on social capital for survival. That's why MLMs target these people: an MLM is a system for destructively transforming social capital into monetary capital. MLMs exhort their members to mine their social relationships for "leads" and "customers" and to use the language of social solidarity ("women helping women") to wheedle, guilt, and arm-twist people from your mutual aid network into buying things they don't need and can't afford.

But it's worse, because what MLMs really sell is MLMs. The real purpose of an MLM sales call is to convince the "customer" to become an MLM salesperson, who owes you a share of every sale they make and is incentivized to buy stock they don't need (from you) in order to make quotas. And of course, their real job is to sign up other salespeople to work under them, and so on.

An MLM isn't just a pathogen, in other words – it's a contagion. When someone in your social support network gets the MLM disease, they don't just burn all their social ties with you and the people you rely on – they convince more people in your social group to do the same.

Which brings me back to the mirror world, and Erik Baker's conversation with the Know Your Enemy podcast. Baker starts to talk about who gets big into Amway: "people who already effectively lead by the force of their charisma and personality many other people in their lives. Right? Because you're able to sell to those people, and you're able to recruit those people. What are we talking about? Well, they're effectively recruiting organizers, people who have a natural capacity for organizing and then sending them out in the world to organize on behalf of Christian capitalism."

Listening to this, I was thunderstruck: MLM recruiters are the mirror world version of union organizers. In her memoir of growing up in Amway, Andrea Pitzer talks about how her mom would approach strangers and try to lead them through a kind of structured discussion:

Everywhere we went—the mall, state parks, grocery stores—she’d ask people whether they could use a little more money each month. “I’d love to set up a time to talk to you about an exciting business opportunity.” The words should have seemed suspect. Yet people almost always gave her their number. Her confidence and professionalism were reassuring, and her enthusiasm was electric, even, at first, to me. “What would you do with $1 million?” she’d ask, spinning me around the kitchen.

This kind of person, having this kind of dialog, is exactly how union organizers work. In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey's classic book on labor organizing, she describes how she would seek out the charismatic, outgoing workers in a job-site, the natural leaders, and recruit them to help bring the other workers onboard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Organizer training focuses on how to have a "structured organizing conversation," which McAlevey described in a 2019 Jacobin article:

“If you had a magic wand and could change three things about life in America [or her town or city or school], what would you change?” The rest of your conversation needs to be anchored to her answers to that question.

https://jacobin.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-organizing-activism-friends-family-conversation-presidential-election

The MLM conversation and the union conversation have eerily similar structures, but the former is designed to commodify and destroy solidarity, and the latter is designed to reinforce and mobilize solidarity. Seen in this light, an MLM is a mirror world union, one that converts solidarity into misery and powerlessness instead of joy and strength.

The MLM movement doesn't just make men like Rich De Vos and Jay Van Andel into billionaires. MLM bosses are heavy funders of the right, a blank check for the Heritage Foundation. Trump is the MLM president, a grifter who grew up on the gospel of Norman Vincent Peale – a key figure in MLM cult dynamics – who tells his followers that wealth is a sign of virtue. Trump boasts about all the people he's ripped off, boasting about how getting away with cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The corollary is that being cheated means you're stupid. Caveat emptor, the motto of the cryptocurrency industry ("not your wallet, not your coins") that spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected.

Tech has its own mirror world. The people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and make delightful and wonderful things are mirrored by the people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and call for fascism, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps.

In Picks and Shovels, my next novel (Feb 17), I introduce readers to a fictitious 1980s religious computer sales cult called Fidelity Computing, run by an orthodox rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Mormon rabbi:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Fidelity is a faith scam, a pyramid scheme that is parasitic upon the bonds of faith and fellowship. Martin Hench, the hero of the story – a hard-fighting high tech forensic accountant – goes to work for a competing business, Computing Freedom, run by three Fidelity ex-employees who have left their faiths and their employers to pursue a vision of computers that is about liberation, rather than control.

The women of Computing Freedom – a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family, a Mormon woman who's renounced the LDS over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who's left her order to throw in with the Liberation Theology movement – are all charismatic, energetic, inspirational organizers.

Because of course they are – that's why they were so good at selling computers for the Reverend Sirs who sit at the top of Fidelity Computing's pyramid scheme.

Hearing Baker's interview and reading Pitzer's memoir last week made it all click together for me. Not just that MLMs destroy social bonds, but that within every person who gets sucked into an MLM, there's a community organizer who could be building the bonds that MLMs destroy.

[mariacallous]

A groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing: a massive money-making scam and radical political conspiracy that has remade American society. “Gripping and instructive . . . lucid and engaging . . . [Bridget Read] sketches a vivid portrait of a cultish culture.”—The Washington Post Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and—most precious of all—financial freedom. If, that is, you’re willing to shell out for expensive products and recruit everyone you know to buy them, and if they recruit everyone they know, too, thus creating the “multiple levels” of MLM. Overwhelming evidence suggests that most people lose money in multilevel marketing, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes. Yet the industry’s origins, tied to right-wing ideologues like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, and teachers—anyone who has been left behind by rising inequality. In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net, then profiting from the chaos. Along the way, Read delves into the stories of those devastated by the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn. A wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism’s stealthiest PR campaign, a cunning grift that has shaped nearly everything about how we live, and whose ultimate target is democracy itself.

[adyophene]

I got a few people saying they wouldn't mind seeing a run down of my unfinished work and sketches! So this is gunna be just a big ol post of that and just explaining what the doodles would have ended up being!

First off is just some sketches of Alastor, Husk, a really uncanny Blitzo, and an unfinished voxhusk sketch

Left Husk was reffed off a pose that i've since lost, and right was going to be a little comic of Husk bugging Vox and then Vox bugging Husk in return. :( I don't remember what dialogue I was going to use.

Next is just some unfinished couple sketches! Some Chaggie and Angel/Sir Pentious that I might still use at some point. TuT I think Angel and Pentious could make such a hilarious couple and it kills me that I can't find almost anything for it

and this husk was just going to be a redraw of this

but with Al, Vox, Angel, and Lucifer petting him

next is one I did already post but this one here; left was going to be a short comic where Lilith comes back and is enamored with Husk while also vaguely threatening to Alastor as she is. Right is the only doodle I have so far for a comic about Husk and Charlie getting caught hiding out from the rain, and Husk trying to talk to her about her making a deal with Alastor. Ugh. I need to even just thumbnail out that comic. Its been in my mental queue for literal months!

Next up is a bunch of sketches of my own Hazbin OC, Shiv! I've never posted anything about him alone before, but he's featured in a lot of the backgrounds of my pieces! He was a carnie in voxhusk fake dating, and then a waiter in the diner piece, and ticket booth attendant in the movie theater one!

I always love putting him in just whatever job the art calls for because he is a '1980's cocaine and bourbon grindset hustlepilled business fuck'. I don't know if I will ever expand his story in artwork, but if I did I would draw something about him trying to get a Soul-Based Multilevel marketing scheme going. Shiv is short for 'Shiver' because he froze to death after drunk wandering naked into the woods while on a skiing trip. He's in hell because he made his money doing shitty business practices like scamming old people out of their money with phone scams. If he saw Mad Men he'd think it would be about him, but he'd fit better in Its Always Sunny

Lastly, I have some sketches from a comic I am literally fighting myself not to make, where Husk ends up kidnapped by a ring of criminals that smuggle sinners to other Rings of Hell. Husk would be captured to be an exotic pet for a Ostrich theme'd Goetia, but would quickly escape. The main plot would be him running into and then helping out Blitzo in return for help getting back to the Pride ring!

I would have also got to include my other OC, the little Egg lamb, Sunnysides!

Literally would have just been a huge excuse for me to draw Husk going through Situations and hanging out with the Helluva Boss cast and my OCs.

[tzifron]

Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and—most precious of all—financial freedom. If, that is, you’re willing to shell out for expensive products and recruit everyone you know to buy them, and if they recruit everyone they know, too, thus creating the “multiple levels” of MLM. Overwhelming evidence suggests that most people lose money in multilevel marketing, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes. Yet the industry’s origins, tied to right-wing ideologues like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, and teachers—anyone who has been left behind by rising inequality. In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net, then profiting from the chaos. Along the way, Read delves into the stories of those devastated by the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn. A wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism’s stealthiest PR campaign, a cunning grift that has shaped nearly everything about how we live, and whose ultimate target is democracy itself.

[separatist-apologist]

Lovers book club ask, have you read any good non fiction this year?

Yes! My commute home has become my audiobook time, and I find audiobooks much easier to listen to when it's non-fiction. I think because it feels like a lecture? It keeps me better focused on the road, too. I have a 30 minute morning commute and some afternoons nearly a 50 minute commute, so having an audiobook is so nice!

Also, most non-fiction reads tend to be 4-5 stars for me. They're usually well researched and if I learn something, it was a good time!

This year I've done:

The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity (this did take me a long time because horses kind of freak me out) by Timothy C. Winegard.

I saw it on a shelf at amazon but didn't want to buy it and it came included in my spotify premium subscription.

Five Days At Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

Asked some really interesting questions about deciding who lives and dies in disasters, as well as the nature of humanity imo. I had a very hard time sympathizing with the staff at Memorial and I still disagree with the actions some of them took.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

This was a v difficult read, but worthwhile. Discusses the known atrocities committed by Belgium in the pursuit of empire building. If you've ever seen some of their national museums and monuments built by King Leopold, it's likely slave labor funded them.

Hey HunL Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson

This was 2 stars for me. It's autobiographical and it would have been so interesting if the narrator/author wasn't so insufferable and also a liar. The end of the book is just another sales pitch for her sobriety program that she has NO BUSINESS TEACHING!!!

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Very cool mystery style book on how they discovered Cholera

Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green

I would recommend this book over nearly everything else I've read this far. Really informative, incredibly good bibliography, and despite how short it is, gives a very thorough look at how Tuberculosis shaped society- from fashion, to literature, to infrastructure- and how even now it's a curable disease (were it not for the greed of megacorporations)

Epidemic and Society: From the Black Death to the Present by Frank M. Snowden III

This was more of a textbook for a college class, I think- the author says it's for the lay person but I disagree with him. It was a lot to get through. It was in John Green's bibliography and I did really enjoy it. Discusses both disease and the impact on society and it's very well done (if a little dry at times).

Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come by Richard Preston

This was so well done- its told through the lens of the healthcare workers on the front lines in West Africa, Western researcher's and their race for a cure, and everyday people living in the regions affected. I was captivated by it, and cannot recommend it enough. There were points I was yelling at my steering wheel about decisions being made.

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Civilisation to Independence by Zeinab Badawi

I am currently reading this. I really like history and this year I wanted to diversify what I was reading about and my knowledge in general. This is, so far, a brief overview of the different empires/regions/countries in Africa so it's not in-depth. That's not possible, BUT it's a really good jumping off point for anyone interested in learning more about African History that isn't sure where to start- you can use this to help refine what you're interested in learning more about, I think, which is never a bad thing!

The only way for Haters Book Club to work is to also read things you enjoy. I like history, so I read a lot of it, along with fiction books I also enjoy! You gotta balance being a hater with a lover!

[themoonweaversden]

Messeges that were found so far: NAITSUAF (spoilers)

This is just to collect all the codes that you can type in in thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com and their effects only (please click images for better quality)

Masterpost with all messeges / codes

Transcript:

"SELLING YOUR SOUL For FUN nad PROFIT!

There are some who believe that beneath your skin, nerves, and meat hides a unique spark of electric ephemera that religious types call a "soul." This invisible cloud of will is theorically the most eternal, sacred part of any being. Does it exist? WHO CARES! The important thing is, people believe in it, which means it has MARKET VALUE, BABY! That's why I've purchased as many souls as possible through history just in case I need to CRASH IN one DAY!

WANNA BE A SOUL BILLIONARE LIKE ME?

Look, I wouldn't tell my secret to just anyone, but if you got this far you're smart enough for a golden oportunity! It's simple! First you sell your soul to me, but you get it back as soon as you get three people to sell their souls! Then each of your soul customers buys three more souls, and if you get a commision on each soul, and I only get a small fraction of that commision, it's basically money that prints itself! And souls probably aren't real anyway so there's NO WAY to lose!

Trust me, you're gonna LOVE not having a soul. A soul's like a Jet-ski: sounds cool in theory, but then it just gathers dust in the garage. That junk could be making YOU money! And all you have to do is sign on the dotted line! Pleasure doing business with ya Pal, and may God have mercy on you... uh. You know. On your whole general vibe.

Got any questions? Look, I'll let my lawyer, MultiLevel Mark, explain it.

By reading this paragraph to completion you are agreeing that Mr. Cipher is not liable for any distress, infinite purgatorial torment, profound regret, loss of joie de vivre or vibe shift following the sale of your soul. Bill might be dead but his team of lawyers cannot be killed, praise be to the Legal System, Amen.

ARE YOU READY?"

Once you click ARE YOU READY?:

Transcript:

"SOUL CONTRACT This Certifies That:

X_________________________________(YOUR NAME) hereby grants ownership of their everlasting soul in perpetuity throughout all timelines, realities, and simulations to Bill Cipher Soul Holding LLC. Signing this contract waives any further right to seeing your soul, visiting your soul, soul-searching, wearing a soul patch, or watching the movie "Soul Plane." Your career in the arts is formally over, but your career working for network television Standards & Practicies has only begun!

Furthermore

I. Singee may continue to eat Chiken Soup but any spiritual comfort in offers will be transferred instantly to Bill Cipher LLC. If any other deities or demigods dispute ownership of this soul from a prior sale, they will have to bring their fiddle, chess board, and/or paperwork to our HQ for meditation to determine the Soul Beneficiary. II. "Old Souls" may be subject to remodeling for hiegher resale value. III. Souls are to be stored in our soul containtment unit in the Astral Plane. We are not liable for damages in the event that some kind of "Ghost Busting" team releases your soul and others from our containment in a wacky montage throughout New York City. IV. If Anubis comes by with his scale for our annual Soul Weight Audit, tell him we are all home sick.

This Soul is hereby transfered to: X__Bill Cipher__ (BILL CIPHER, CEO) WITNESSED BY: X_________ ("OPTOR" THE ALL-SELLER)

[CODE IN THERAPRISM]

[CODE IN CIPHER FONT]

SIGN

PRINT

or

BE A COWARD"

Theraprism decoded: "You are now twenty one grams lighter"

Cipher font decoded: "This contract is legal and binding. We reserve the right to use your likeness, face, voice, and small-town pluck in whatever nefarious manner is deemed necessary. Sans soul, your soulmate will not recognize you and will walk right past you on a cold autumn day, never making eye contact, not even processing that you have eyes at all. No amount of interaction will move them to a place where they can remember, in feeling, the thousands of lifetimes you have already spent together, each time choosing whatever form would keep you closest. Like otters holding hands in a tumultuous river, you were birds; you were trees with roots entangled, drinking in the sunlight together. Wherever we go next, whatever you choose, I will always be right with you. That's done, buddy. Congratulations, you have chosen Bill instead. McDonald's reserves the right to put a giant yellow "W" on your torso and forehead and send you walking through a crowded Times Square while you scream, "The fries! The fries! They don't degrade in nature! It's an immortal food! They will be in the landfills long past our deaths! Good God, the things I've seen! Me? Who am I? Oh, I'm Bill's previous lawyer. He put my soul into a quill pen so I can write his legal documents until the sun snuffs out like a candle in this sick universe. I used to be hot; I was so fine. Now I'm fine print. Speaking of which, Bill reserves the right to put your soul into an inanimate object, a strange creature, a concept, a sentence, a tasteful but rustic mason jar with wildflowers in it. If at any point you wish to have visitation rights with your soul, you will be swiftly denied, unless you had a cool day planned for the both of you. Then Bill might want to come along. By signing this document, you forfeit any rights to eating soul food; it will turn to ash in your mouth, a fitting punishment for a fool who squandered the only true gift life owes you. Bill reserves the right to dress your soul however he deems necessary, especially if your soul was a nerd before acquisition. Soul makeover! Your soul may become fractured and placed into different objects; this has no purpose and will not resurrect you if you die. Signee has forfeited all rights to any afterlife, including but not limited to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Big Corner, Flow State, the Dream House, the Reincarnation Processing Center, Axolotl's Tank, and Consequences Hold. Signee can no longer board the Soul Train and is advised to discard all bellbottoms. Signee can no longer have a puppy as a best friend; they can sense what is gone. Cats are indifferent. Signee may experience occasional demon possessions from Horculus the Red, Plabos the Merciless, Morbus son of Mortum, Plaga the Oozing, and other such common demons roaming Earth searching for weakened, empty vessels. Tips for ripping your soul out at home: matching YouTube commentary channels, attending an extended family event with an open bar, using generative AI and asserting that you are creating, turning a blind eye to human suffering, amassing more wealth than needed, purchasing a blue checkmark."

If you click BE A COWARD nothing happens

If you click PRINT it just let's you print it

If you click SIGN:

Transcript:

"PLEASURE DOING BUSINESS WITH YOU"

Once you close it the flame from the candle changes to blue:

From now on all the words that didn't seem to do anything (audiolog, bubbles, clear, contract, etc...) will play a selection of videos/audios when you click the nob on the computer

[mitchipedia]

There is no such thing as an ethical multilevel marketing business, Cory Doctorow argues in a book review of “Little Bosses Everywhere,” by Bridget Read. They are all cults and Ponzi schemes — Amway, Mary Kay, all of them. Trump, of course, has attached his name to two separate pyramid scams.

[soleta]

my opinion about the whole "making fun of people (telling them not to use AI) who can't write emails is abelist/racist" is like. large language models are like 2 years old. and before that everyone else also managed to write emails even tho writing emails fucking sucks. you can google "business speak email guide" and spend a few minutes coming up with your own damn email. you have to learn this eventually sorry but in 5 years tops this economic bubble is gonna burst and you won't have your multilevel marketing machine anymore.

[cantsayidont]

January 1987. Perhaps the quintessential '80s comic, the long-running Marvel G.I. JOE series is a loopy mixture of flag-waving American interventionism, shameless marketing hustle, mindless violence, berserk obsession with ninjas, and the lingering specter of the Vietnam War. Ideologically indefensible and remarkably silly, it's redeemed mainly (if barely) by longtime writer Larry Hama's streak of weird deadpan humor and flashes of genuine eccentricity.

It also stands as an unexpectedly prescient preview of a whole category of today's real-world villainy. The main bad guys in G.I. JOE are mostly a motley collection of grifters, opportunists, and mountebanks whose greed, ego, buffoonery, and backstabbing would be laughable if they were less heavily armed. Cobra Commander (deliberately never named or unmasked on panel) is a former used car dealer who's built a terrorist organization as one part multilevel marketing scam to two parts Libertarian/AnCap militia, with a philosophy that's pure Gordon Gekko. Destro is an old-money arms-dealing aristo who turns up his nose at the Commander's incoherent faux-populism and lunatic underlings, but not enough to not do business with them. Most of their named lieutenants are ridiculous bottom-feeders driven by petty grudges and the urge to talk big and dress up. No one ever accused this book of being sociopolitically astute, but almost any of its recurring villains could easily have a thriving political career today. What a world we live in …

[maria-the-ghoul]

Everytime I see someone say "I want to support a small business! I'm looking for someone who sells *Multilevel marketing Scam*!", I want to scream that they aren't a small business.

And it's even worse when it's a military spouse group....because military spouses are SUPER susceptible to Multilevel Marketing Scams (or now as they are calling themselves - Network Marketing).

[razorfst]

Mafia Verse - Andrei Lupei's Compound

Of course there has to be a location where he can fully conduct his illegal business of running a crime family and that is a business compound outside the city. It is three buildings though one looks more like an upscale protected warehouse, the other an office building with few windows, and the third being a connecting multilevel garage. This is mostly referred to as The Compound by Andrei and his associates, aka those in his family. The garage is large enough to fit a fair amount of cars but there is a parking lot mainly around the upscale warehouse looking building for those who are just going there or can't find a space in the garage. He always has a spot reserved for him when he isn't visiting quickly and pulled up in front of the upscale looking office building. Inside the main building, the one that appears to be an office with few windows, there are plenty of office space for those employed by him and in his family to keep track of the various ways he runs his crime family. It is mostly what you think of when one runs a mob like shipping of illegal goods and black market dealings. On top of that this is where he conducts meetings involving all of that as well as with other families. Sure there are overlap of his employees between his legal and illegal assets but overall he tends to keep a majority separate so as to keep those who are innocent, innocent. The main building is meant for the business side and the business side of it only. However some crossovers will happen, though he tends to like to keep the less than savory aspects of his life in the secondary building: the upscale warehouse. The warehouse is rather sound proof for multiple reasons. Here they accept some shipments of what they deal in, making sure it's all there if the order is important before sending it off to where it needs to go. There is also an armory, used to test black market firearms as well their own while sharpening their arm should it ever be necessary. In their life, it most often is. And there are multiple dark rooms, no windows, that have a chair, table, and bed. Those are meant for people his family need answers from, a shakedown or used for leverage. Almost like prison cells without the bars, that is their purpose. It is for that reason only certain people are allowed in the warehouse by his rule. Because again, he likes to keep those not involved or at least those it doesn't pertain to as innocent as possible. It lessens the chances of information being leaked as well.

[enchantingruinscandy]

mlm as in men loving men and mlm as in multilevel marketing . . .

gay men are secretly business men

[fandom-hoarder]

YouTube ads get really interesting after you report multiple ads for hate speech. I got a commercial in Polish because the youtuber i was watching mentioned learning Polish. I keep getting business and consulting course ads on anti-multilevel marketing vids lol.

But how did I end up with a natural diamonds ad, paid for by an organization of multiple diamond mining firms, in 2023?🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

[susiephone]

This ties into why a lot of people fall into conspiracy theories and cults - usually, people trust their friends and family, or fall into something they shouldn't because they need a community, and they're being offered one.

Hey Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson is a really great book if you're interested in this kind of stuff. The author spent several years working for a multi-level marketing scheme, and part of why she got so deep into it was because she was extremely lonely. She was a stay-at-home mom with few chances to go out and socialize, no time to work a traditional job where she could meet people, she was depressed, and she was overwhelmed. The acquaintance who recruited her into the MLM offered her a chance to make new friends and money for her family, and a sense of accomplishment. Paulson also writes a lot about why it took so long for her to really accept that the MLM was not just a predatory business model, but bad for her personally - even though she was one of the top earners. She gets into how it drew her in, even though she was skeptical at first, and how, even when she started to realize it was toxic, it took a long time for her to fully leave.

Generally, if you find yourself asking, "Why do people do stupid shit?", the answer is rarely going to be, "Because they're stupid." Smart, good people fall into stupid shit all the time.

I often think about how grateful I am that I had several wonderful friends who I already regularly spoke to online in 2020, because not only did Covid hit, but my dad died, my anxiety was ratcheting up to the point where I had a full-blown panic attack for the first time, and I was having a harder and harder time managing what I now know to be severe OCD. I couldn't get good therapy until several months after lockdown ended, and I went through a very, very rough year. If I hadn't had my friends, and my mom, if I'd been going it alone - I could've very easily gotten sucked into an MLM or something else cult-ish.

You don’t say.