Yep @Trying20 its a cynical strategy to target vulnerability and it’s vulnerability that gets people hooked in, not stupidity. The classic example I come across all the time is the new mum who doesn’t have a well paying flexible career to fall back on and needs a full time salary but wants to be with her baby. Someone sidles up to her at the baby group, love bombs her, builds trust, flashes external signs of success, offers friendship, validates, offers a friendly team and says “I used to be like you, worried I’d have to abandon my child [guilt trip]. But since I’ve been with Arbonne/Body Shop at Home/Younique/Tropic/Forever Living/FM World etc etc I’ve got total flexibility and don’t have to be away from my child and I’m earning good money”. That’s a beguiling story and I feel truly sorry for the people who fall for it.
I don’t think people are that aware @Scurryfunge12 which seems crazy, and it’s amazing how they will aggressively repel any questioning or criticism by worried partners and family members. There is one expert on cults in the USA who refers to MLMs as commercial cults because so much of their recruitment and retention strategies are identical to the sort of techniques used in cults and closed groups, for example love bombing, gaslighting, isolation from family, filling up a persons time to keep them distracted from outside influences, criticising outsiders, financial abuse, bamboozling information about how they are structured, applying pressure to achieve certain group wide goals.
Once they’re in the MLM the pressure is immense to exploit their own friendships and to be their own best customer (yes, most product sales are made within the MLM through sales to downlines or self purchases to achieve promotions). Uplines are not rewarded for their downlines’ sales to real customers who aren’t part of the MLM, they are rewarded for what their downlines purchase (whether those downlines can sell it later - they don’t care about that!). Because it’s so hard to make money desperate and unscrupulous tactics happen, with MLM companies having no interest in ethical conduct among their reps who they say are “independent”. People end up doing things they wouldn’t have dreamed of before they were tangled up in MLM. Here is one typical tactic which was rife during the pandemic; www.talentedladiesclub.com/articles/dont-donate-to-charities-through-mlms-why-their-good-deeds-arent-as-innocent-as-they-seem/
I think a lot of people don’t understand what a pyramid scheme is so they don’t see how MLM is exactly the same in structure (and bad outcomes). The victims enter an MLM and when it goes wrong blame themselves (as they’re encouraged to do) and then the individual company, rather than seeing MLM as one big scam. if they could see that then they wouldn’t go from one MLM to another hoping each time that the new MLM will finally deliver what it promises. I think MLM targets the less financially literate and those with fewer options.
The people I don’t feel sorry for are the ones who know they’re exploiting people, who are signing up vulnerable people by misrepresenting what MLM is and they know that person will lose everything. These exploiters are often self styled ‘coaches’; teaching MLM sign ups how to make six figures when they’ve failed to make any money themselves in MLM. Nothing will change until the Competition and Markets Authority starts to go after these companies but at the moment they don’t seem interested. If you want to know why the law on trading schemes isn’t being used to regulate or close down MLM and why no one can be arsed you’ve only to look at who most of the victims are; women. Yes, MLM sign ups are complicit in their own downfall to an extent but to focus on that lets the MLM companies off the hook.
Sorry for my rambling comment but I absolutely loathe MLM and the more I see the more I’m shocked that they’re allowed to continue.