MLM Bot Watch 36 - Those who think it's ok to tell white lies soon become colourblind

[ReformedBot]

36 Lies to reel you in...

1. They will tell you that you will have time freedom in this business. Two weeks later they will tell you the business won't work unless you do.

When it's a business event they will not accept excuses for you missing it and will set an example by missing their child's first birthday or telling you a story of how they once shit themselves in white trousers on the front row at success day because they were poorly but didn't want to miss it.... You will know quickly that the unspoken rules is 'no excuses on success day's.

Please add your own below!

Bloody hell Twenty, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Partners and families become victims just as much as the person who falls into the trap.

I’ve been spending more and more time Bot watching the really slick ones, who take selfies to rival lifestyle bloggers and are articulate and persuasive in their posts. I’m becoming increasingly angry at these savvy, intelligent women who are (surely) fully aware that their success comes at the expense of their downline.

@Twenty - thank you for coming in and telling your story. It's a good reminder of why threads like this exist. I've often wondered how partners who weren't involved in the "biz" feel about the whole thing and how many relationships have foundered.

I'm glad you've found us on here @twenty

A lot of us have seen friends and family disappear into the Forever Living cult, but your story seems worse than most

Yeah, our relationship pretty much breathed its last when she posted “woohooh, just been promoted, soooo excited!!!” on FB a couple of minutes after I’d taken the call informing me that my mother had died. To this day, I think she resents me bringing negativity to her big moment which, as far as I can gather, involved travelling at her own expense to some soulless arena in order to walk across a stage wearing a tacky nylon sash (along with a few dozen others), while a bunch of overexcited huns whooped and eeeked (oh, and the percentage takings from her dowline increased by some paltry amount, but nowhere near enough to cover the products filling our house that we never had a need for before - ‘substitution’, apparently)...

twenty thank you for sharing. It must be so hard and please don't feel forced to say more than you are comfortable with. If she ever feels ready to hear the truth there are links we can send you to help the conversation. Good luck.

Thanks Tizzle, it’s actually a relief to start talking about it. Until now, trying to explain the MLM rabbit hole that victims get dragged into has proved quite difficult. The nature of it is so insidious that you end up sounding a bit like a mad conspiracy theorist when you talk about brainwashing etc.
What doesn’t help is that, quite early on, socialising stopped happening, as I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of her trying to recruit friends and strangers alike, all the while projecting some version of reality I didn’t recognise.
At least on this forum, I know that I don’t have to overcome the “surely it can’t be that bad” skepticism.
In terms of links I might turn her to, there are plenty of relevant ones, e.g. on botwatch, or ElleBeau’s site, but she is so far gone that all of it is just dismissed as ‘haters’ rubbish’.
It’s totally a cult- there are the ‘initiated ones’, who know the truth; there’s the world out there, waiting to be converted; then there’s the enemy, either those who dare to raise questions, or those who have left the true path...

I am glad to be among the latter category on here.

Crikey Twenty.

I hope you find a way through. She seems like she’s very far gone. I’m assuming you’ve looked at what benefits/ housing you’d be able to get if you split? It should be enough for you to both life (frugally) off.

Thats terrible to hear,these things really are such a load of bollox, a money making racket is all they are. Reading what u said there it occurred to me these things really are like gambling addiction, throwing money down in the expectation that one day u will make alot of money, but that day will never arrive. I have a brother who went thru a betting addiction,putting down €1k-2k on bets!, the occasional short lived euphoria im sure when a bet pays off ,must be like when someone in MLM gets the occasional sale (of tubs of shit , I mean aloe) or gets to walk across the stage thinking their important. My brother broke my mothers heart, stealing money in the house from my father & taking money out of a credit union account which belonged to my father (my father had put him on the acc when he was very young,just as a saftey measure in case he died, and the money cud go to him more easily).Like betting ,theres only one winner in these mlms and it ain’t the “Bot”

@ Janice, one of the symptoms of being 'botted' is an inability to be honest about money. Because we are both self-employed, we therefore declare our incomes jointly for tax credit purposes. This is the only reason I know that she is making very little money (although she must be one of the only people in the world to inflate their declared income to the taxman, not that it matters as she is so far under the threshold).
She inherited some money from her father four years ago, but has refused to even give a ballpark figure (thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds?), mainly because it would give me hard facts to pitch at her (i.e. how much of the inheritance is being spent on subsidising her Forever lifestyle).
Not knowing the figure means I am unsure, but she probably has savings that would preclude her getting any means-tested benefits. I am in a position where I could not bear for the kids to leave for an uncertain existence, and I hold out a hope that she will not end up spending all of their potential inheritance (which she would if she had to lead any sort of 'independent' life).

So it's the children?

@ Sean, sorry to hear that, pretty grim.
Yes, I believe there is some similarity with a gambling addiction- the ONE big win is just around the corner, you've invested so much in it (8 years, thousands of quid and your relationship) that to stop feels like you are throwing that 'investment' away, as well as admitting you've been living a lie for so long. Every form of deceit, theft or other means to feed the habit become acceptable because your moral compass has been overwhelmed by the prize being dangled just out of reach (I'll pay it all back when the BIG one comes in, so it's ok)...

@ Cozie- basically, yes.

How old (roughly) are they?

I guess I meant - are they teenagers or still knee high?

10 & 14 Cozie. We started relatively late,I'm in my 50s

Achhh. Still young then........

Aye, not babes in arms, but pretty well-balanced kids coming up to some challenges; puberty for the eldest, the move to secondary school for the little one. Unwilling to force dramatic changes on them.

Just caught the end of Broke’s Latest live.. sounded like a bit of a grovelling apology to Organo bosses for slagging off the company. He’s still going to be selling the products. He’s also a step away from becoming a gold consultant with Evolution without seeming to have been booking any holidays...

Watched it again, Count Arthur Strong would be proud of his constant malapropism. “Alignments” instead of “ailments”.. 😂

I thought that when he wrote "aliment", it was a misspelling of "ailment", but that is actually what he says. Inspires my full confidence in his fitness to dispense medical advice.

@twentytwentyhindsight, I can so relate to your feelings. At least I didn’t have any children with my ex. You’re right, she is a victim despite not knowing it, though I know it’s very hard to remember that when feeling frustrated with the astonishing fact of seeing someone who has lost the ability to see reason. I find myself surrounded by others involved in various MLM’s in my day to day work doing a real job, which is so infuriating! On top of the frustration of seeing it so widely accepted as just a different “business model” I fear I will be labeled as difficult at best, and a nutcase at worst, for trying to explain the reality of MLM.

Looks like he's removed it. I wonder if he realised that he might have offended some of his downline/clientele by saying that the travel Ponzi scheme attracted a "better class of people" than the coffee one...

@twenty

It is this sort of post, by a top bot who recruits non stop, that makes my blood boil. It is saying ignore your instincts, riches are around the corner
I imagine your wife has been fed a lot of this guff

i've been offline for a few days, is it me or have the arriixx bots more or less stopped posting about this new holiday scam?