To think that people who fall for this 36 free books thing are daft

175

Anyone who falls for pyramid scams is an idiot.

At least this one is just the cost of a book though!

I had someone on my FB post this, I was surprised as she is an intelligent person. Load of old bollocks, I know many that would fall for it though.

So what happens if your child receives 36 copies of the same book?

There was another thread on this con pyramid scheme earlier. Although it now seems to have disappeared?

You are not wrong. It seems strange to want to include your children in something that is basically encouraging them to exploit the gullibility of others.

People should definitely do this

I'm sure you can buy 'Pyramid selling for fuckwits' on Amazon

I was surprised and disappointed when a friend sent this to me.

I don't understand it! How does buying 1 book ensure we get sent 36?!

Oh bollocks. You've reminded that I need to woman up and explain to a school gate friend that my dc isn't participating in another pyramid/chain thing. I'd rather buy her kid something than join in that stuff.

People used to do this with new knickers. I don't think that worked either.

I think it's a fab idea. You tell your friend and they tell their friend and so on and you only need to pass the message on about 10 times and then everyone gets 35 free books just as long as there are 3,656,158,440,062,980 people at the end who don't mind if they don't get anything.

Have they found life on other planets yet? Would they be interested in this kind of thing?

I tried to discourage a family member on the grounds that it is giving personal details to strangers & that is why I wouldn't be taking part in it. Then I copied a post on here from 2013 with the maths on that says after it has been shared 13 times there aren't enough people in the world to make it happen. I think as it is just 1 book as the outlay, they are going to do it. I cant in all good conscience do something i think will end up with people getting 'ripped off'

Then I copied a post on here from 2013 with the maths on that says after it has been shared 13 times there aren't enough people in the world to make it happen.

That is a fantastic stat!

I privately messaged three separate friends pointing it the mathematical impossibility and the fact that it's letting children down at the best, and at worst possible illegal. I've just given up now though as there are so many people sharing it. I don't know how I'm friends with so many gullible people.

Here is the post I copied. Sorry I haven't saved the clever mumsnetters name

Schemes like this are only good for the first few entries, they quite quickly get out of hand and require more people than exist on the planet to continue.

Let me explain:

You send out a list of 6 names to 6 people - each of them is required to send it to 6 people, so on and so on.

so by the time this list has been passed on 14 times the number of people involved totals 34,465,720,268 (That's 34 billion btw).

The number of people involved steps up like this, which is why its called a pyramid scheme. So as soon as it hits the max (e.g level 13) all of the new people involved in the scheme (4,786,905,600) will lose out. Sounds fair? sounds like you cant do maths to me.

1

There's another one doing the rounds on Facebook, similar idea, send out one thing and receive 36 back, this one is a gift 'over £10' though.
It's been coined 'secret sisters'.
I've chosen to ignore, it's bonkers

Blimey, when I was at school in the 60's the same thing was going round, only it was postcards you had to send, copying out the names and addresses of people higher up onto them, and adding your own at the bottom.

Chain letters were similar. These added dire warnings of bad luck if you broke the chain.

I had no qualms at breaking the chain, and could see the maths which made it ridiculous.

In the 70's there was another one, only it was sending cash to people

The saddest thing was that I am now the bad guy amongst my friends for being cynical regarding their "harmless fun" for pointing out its ridiculousness.

I'm amazed they think they're entitled to have 36 people buy them a book. It's just rude!

Checking into thread for the stats in case anyone I know is stupid enough to try this.

One of my friends posted this last night and a few school mums have got into it I just know that it will end up on my page. I will be keeping the maths handy.

I did this with a chocolate chain letter when I was young. I sent one bar and got two back. I was surprised to see adults participating in this one on Facebook.

Having said that, the people participating in it on my FB wall are FL sellers, so maybe not too surprising...

Sorry if I'm being thick but how are people told this will work?

I've not come acros these before, I've heard of pyramid schemes, poisen pen letters etc but no one has ever tried to get me to join in with one. Or maybe they have and I've just wandered away thinking they have a screw loose

I admit I fell for this. I'm clearly quite stupid, although I didn't think I was. I didn't really stop to think about it, it was just "ooh, books". Oh well. The person I have sent my book to is a friend of a friend and I hope her daughter likes it.

Intelligence? Training looks a lot like intelligence. Trained.

One of my FB friends posted the book pyramid scam onto their FB yesterday. They got a couple of positive replies before I and another person pointed out it was a pyramid. No response to that yet...

If you google you can see that this book one goes back about 10 YEARS. My money is on Amazon resurrecting it every now and again when their profits become slightly less astronomical.