To delete friend who has joined an MLM

[lastqueenofscotland]

A lady I know from work has joined an MLM selling some sort of laxative coffee.
Her FB and instagram are covered in posts for it and about her promotions/trying to get a car etc etc.
She very much fits the profile of people they poach, she’s a SAHM and it’s been a squeeze of late for her.

I think MLMs are poisonous and I hate seeing her posts flogging this nonsense.
AIBU to remove her from my friend list

I have a couple of friends who signed up as Arbonne reps quite a time ago. They are both intelligent, bright, nice women and I am frankly surprised about their choice. Initially, their FB posts to me would be along the lines of ... let me know if you want to take the stress out of your Christmas shopping, next time you cover over, well show you our range of lovely gifts’ .....to which I’d reply sunnily, oh, but I love Christmas shopping and selecting al kinds of different things that in know my family and friends would like.’

After a few posts like this they stopped the direct approach, and I just ignore any Arbonne-related posts (you can spot these a mile off, they’re always for ones waxing lyrical about shiny white cars / exciting sales conferences with lots of fabulous like-minded women / #livingthedream etc).

They’re still my friends but there’s o way I want to get sucked into their parallel arbonne universe!

Hunbots, they are like wasps... swat at one and it sends out a distress call to its mates.. before you know it, hunbots all over the place!

Multi Level Marketing is not a business, it's a rip off.

I run a REAL business, I have never had to lie to friends, con friends, fill my personal timeline with lying bullshit or photos of things I am pretending I bought with my amazing income.

This idea that you can make anything work if you do enough work is bollocks - some business concepts do NOT work, if there isn't a market for a product, you won't sell that product.. unless you create a market for that product by lying to people and insisting there is a market ready to buy it if they will only invest in a few £100 worth of products and throw a party and lie to all their friends....

Smoke and mirrors huns, smoke and mirrors.

If you find a product you really like, get a shop, get a wholesale account, buy that product in at trade prices and sell it, like any other shop does.

I was feeling pretty low tonight...but then I read queen of herts posts. Literally the funniest thing I've seen for a long time.

So much so, I shat myself laughing and negated the need for a laxative coffee.

My sister is a HUGE fan of mlms. She ran up huge debts with Avon. Now she is on juice plus!
Why would I spend £35 on a bottles of capsules of fruit extracts!. Unfortunately she has taken over my mum's financial affairs as my mum has gotten dementia so now she has access to funds and pretends that the money she is spending is from juice plus. Time bomb waiting to go off. She has no conciense!

Wowsers, CoffeeQueenOfHerts

You’re sounding rather paranoid if you think that the other poster was having a dig at your weight!
No one has the slightest idea of how you actually look, because you can effectively hide behind your username.
As for these pyramid schemes, they have probably been around since the real pyramids in Egypt themselves were built, the idea is that ancient!
Whenever I’ve had friends who have joined these schemes in the past, and they’re so sold on the idea that can’t talk about anything else, I’ve tended to steer clear of them until they’ve come to their senses.

@femfemlicious
Are you seriously going to let your sister steal off your mum. That’s what it sounds like.

Quick question, a friend has recently become a rep for a well known high street store that sells skincare and makeup. As it's a well known brand and she's a sahm, I was excited for her new venture... however my news feed is now littered with posts about products. How can I know if it's a MLM scheme?

Also an acquaintance did something similar for Usborne books... Are Usborne also running a mlm scheme? I hope not because I love their books, but I have a feeling it was mlm.

Sleeplessinsouthampton2019

Sounds like Kangen maybe?

Love the MLMers flocking to parrot that people fail because they haven’t put in enough hard work 😂 do you think that a business model where less then 1% of participants can make any money at all is completely down to the laziness of its participants? Or... perhaps... a flawed business model? You make more money working at McDonald’s. A LOT more. Without alienating everyone in your life to boot.

To be fair as a business model it’s not technically flawed, you could argue it works perfectly for those at the top, keeps money flowing upwards at the expense of everyone who isn’t in the top couple of layers. It’s flawed for everyone below, who have to lose money in order for it to work. Why anyone wouldn’t do even the most cursory amount of research before signing up I do not know.

IAmALazyArse just type younique into your Facebook search bar and enjoy the huns. Or you can find local reps on their corporate site and then search them by name. It’s fascinating. Make sure to read Elle Beau’s blog first! Or just hang around on reddit’s Youniqueamua or antiMLM subreddits. I was quite giddy when the real life saladmaster huns showed up at my door!

CocoLoco - Bodyshop at Home? Yeah, they're all variations on a theme.

CocoLoco87 Body Shop by any chance? Yes, they run an MLM arm of the company. Goes completely against their portrayal of themselves as an ethics conscious company. They advertise for example for local ‘area managers’ which then turn out not to be real jobs, just signing up to the MLM and then saying if you recruit x number of reps you automatically become an ‘area manager’. So you’re actually joining just as a hun and immediately buttered up with the notion you could be a manager if you hit the ground running and suck in several people under you immediately.

Usborne books are also MLM, yes.

A friend of a friend sells Arbonne, has been doing it for over a year now. Frankly I thought she had more sense, but I just hope she doesn't lose too much money from it.

Some would argue that Body Shop and Avon aren’t too bad because they have actual quality products and an established brand and aren’t extortionately priced, and compared to MLMs like saladmaster and younique etc. I see where they’re coming from. But ultimately they’re the same. You can’t make any decent money as a job from either, maybe a tiny bit of pocket money but nothing like the earnings potential they recruit by talking about. Most MLMers fail to take into account hours spent to accrue net profit too, they’ll graft (annoy everyone) for hours and hours on end then celebrate when they’ve made a tenner without realising their time is worth something too and they just essentially got paid 50p per hour if that, and it was never guaranteed at the outset. But a little taste of a sale and lots of positive reinforcement from their upline and ‘team’ keeps them going. Not realising it’s never going to be a return on investment.

Sadly a lot of MLM participants lack any business sense whatsoever at even the most basic level, while MLM culture is very much built around infantilising women and encouraging them to ‘play boss’: all of the nonsense about being a ‘girl boss’ and ‘mumtrepreneur’ etc. a genuine female business owner wouldn’t need to bolster their self worth banging on about. You see people sign up to younique for example by paying for a kit and immediately change their Facebook to ‘CEO of lucy’s Lashes’ unironically. They genuinely believe they’re a CEO because they paid £100 for some makeup. It’s all fostered in the culture by playing at business with pointless ‘team meetings’ and training events that are usually built around the law of attraction. Instagram shots of a glittery notepad and pen ‘working my business!!’ lol. It’s really sad to see the echo chamber that develops around someone and it’s often lonely isolated new mums and women who get sucked in as it provides them with a brand new social group too heaping on praise and support at every turn while encouraging the participant to ignore the ‘negativity’ of anyone else in their life questioning what they’re doing. They end up almost addicted to chasing sales cos each one is such a huge relief and brings such a huge dose of positive reinforcement from others in the MLM and when they’re not selling they’re being pressured.

It’s truly horrible.

Usborne definitely is. My DH got suckered. Luckily, he is a teacher so managed to flog some books to his school (ones they wanted and would have bought anyway) so made back his initial outlay. I made him read the poonique story and he dropped out of it pretty quick. His former up line has a sponsored ad on facebook with details 50 reasons why she loves usborne; Big shiney car, earning thousands, works from home, spends time with her kids, has been to the Taj Mahal.....utter bollocks.

Personally I would go for muting her rather than deleting her. At some point she will stop doing it and then you could continue the friendship as normal. We've all made mistakes and done silly things, it seems a shame to delete your main line of communication with her over this.

Then again, MLM is intensely annoying... So it's up to you.

Weirdly angry and aggressive post. Which MLM are you with? I am teaching my kids about suspect business models and how to avoid them.

I had a friend who works for a investment bank, really lovely lady. She's now a consultant for Arbonne. Her fb has gone from no posts whatsoever to weight loss almost overnight. I've declined invites to her groups and parties, and have muted her on fb and Instagram. Would suggest doing the same so you can still be friends?

Do these MLM sellers keep data on how many people they potentially hospitalise with dehydration? It sounds incredibly dangerous stuff!

@EntitledLittleBrats what are you selling then?

What were you googling to come across this entitledlittlebrats? I'm surprised this would make the top 1000 results on any search . You clearly don't spend much time online if you think this thread is bad, I suggest you don't search MN for other mlm threads

I firmly believe if your target market is friends and family, that is not a business.

We've got another one!

You're not as funny as Coffee, @EntitledLittleBrats

I'm ginger too, btw 😎

You sound abit unhinged. Maybe you haven’t had your morning coffee yet?

The Bodyshop at home thing, what's the point?

We live in a town with two of the shops so why do people try and flog it via MLM? I don't get it.