Friday, December 9, 2016

MLM and Holidays

 Today's blog post is going to focus on upcoming family events pertaining to the holidays. I recently read a very sad story on a different blog about a woman struggling with a partner that is currently involved with WWDB and Amway. The change in her partner's behavior happened rapidly and it seems her partner has already been fully indoctrinated. One of the key components when being involved in MLM is isolation from the outside world, hence the cult-like stigma that surrounds MLM. It is important to keep the MLMer motivated, and part of that motivation is surrounding them with like-minded people and pumping them with endless jargon and love bombing. Unfortunately for the woman, her partner has already stopped most contact with her as well as friends and family, and has now missed an important family life event.

It is important to keep your professional life separated from your personal life, because business is meant to support your personal life and not become it. However, MLMers try to do the opposite and make the professional life become the personal life and make them inseparable. They will provide friendships, guidance, and romantic relationships in an effort to keep a person isolated from the rest of society. This is inherently bad for a multitude of reasons, but mainly it corrupts the individual from having their own identity and free will.

As a recruit gets more enmeshed in an MLM they become more dependent on the group. They start to rely on the group to schedule their life, and they become less available for unrelated events. Over time, it becomes easier to make an excuse to miss less pertinent moments, and that builds into missing all major events. The partner of the woman who told her story on the other blog became so enveloped in the MLM that she ended up missing her brother's wedding, because her value system had completely changed, and she was no longer able to find value in moments outside of the MLM. She felt everyone from her personal life became a hindrance, and it was imperative to keep them away.

I had a similar situation occur when I invited my former sponsor to my bachelor party. We had grown very close very quickly, and I still wanted to have him as a friend. Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual as I became a part of the "negative", and interacting with me would be a waste of his time. He was taught that anything unrelated to the "business" was going to interfere with his progress, and he was better suited to stay away from me.

The holidays are right around the corner, and it is a great time to remind members of MLMs that it is important to take a step back from their "work" to spend time with their family and friends. Money is wonderful and it can help to make life easier, but at the end of the day it is friends and family that mean the most, and they don't have a monetary incentive to keep you around.

If you have a story involving abuses from your upline and would like me to share it on this blog as a guest post, then please e-mail me and I will be more than happy to post it! Your stories are not as unique as you may think, and your stories are some of the most impactful resources we have to fight MLMs. I will keep your anonymity upon request.

9 comments:

  1. When you begin missing your brother's wedding, or birthday parties in the name of an MLM function, you have really gone off the deep end. If one would stop and think about what they actually gained by attending a meeting or function in the name of MLM, they would probably say they gained nothing if they were honest, because a meeting or function is a non income producing activity.

    Amway IBOs and MLMers spend way too much time in activities that do not produce income. It's for that reason the vast majority fail, not to mention that MLM is already a flawed system where most fail be design. MLM structures are by design, set up for a few successful people while the majority fail while sending money up the chain (pyramid).

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    1. In pernicious cults, in the futile pursuit of future redemption, core-adherents are required to perform private ritual devotions, to attend group ritual meetings and to go on the equivalent of pilgrimages. All these required activities vacuum the devoted core-adherents' time, and/or money, whilst destroying their capacity to think as an individual.

      In the devoted core-MLM Bot's controlled mind, absolutely nothing has more importance than the requirements of his/her group and its leaders. However, core-'MLM' Bots are so deluded that they are completely convinced that they are not being controlled and that they are making free-choices.

      In reality, in 'MLM' cults, 'Visualising dreams and goals' (at a set time each day) corresponds to praying.

      Images of 'dreams and goals' (placed in strategic places where they will be viewed regularly) correspond to religious icons.

      Exemplary 'MLM' leaders, correspond to Saints - once 'negative' sinners who have surrendered themselves to the 'positive plan,' achieved redemption and whose perfect unquestioning attitude, and gung-ho behaviour, must be duplicated exactly.

      Finding and contacting vulnerable 'prospects' and pretending to be excited and happy (with good news), corresponds to Evangelical proselytising.

      Classically, 'MLM' adherents are made to feel systematically guilty about failing to perform their private ritual devotions or failing to attend group meetings and major functions.

      Ritual group meetings with 'Upline' (where the 'MLM' controlling fiction is acted out as 'fact' and no debate is permitted) corresponds to attending church and being preached to and counselled by your Pastor.

      Decades back, the 'Amway' bosses introduced 'major functions' which punctuate the traditional calender and mirror major Christian holidays like, Xmas, Easter, etc.

      Eventually, an 'MLM' Bot's model of reality becomes controlled by his/her group's parallel calender rather than by the traditional calender.

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  2. Dear John Doe --

    Your post is pertinent and true, but there is something even more troubling to me about this entire matter.

    It's not just Amway or other MLMs that are pushing this sick idea that your personal life is unimportant compared to your work, and that you shouldn't even have a personal life of any substance. This pernicious notion is now very common in many businesses which aren't MLMs.

    How many businesses now require employees to be available 24/7 if necessary? How many bosses now want employees to carry beepers, and to come in for overtime at a moment's notice? How many of them demand that you carry your cell phone with you at all times, in case they want to contact you? How many of them have no compunction about sending you all sorts of stupid e-mails at all hours of the day and night?

    It's not just Amway and the MLMs. There is a strong notion percolating in corporate minds that every employee is a virtual slave, and has to act like one if he wants to keep his job.

    I myself refuse to carry a cell phone, have no answering machine on my telephone, and I deliberately refuse to look at my e-mail after I have come home from work. My personal private life, and the time I have for it, belong to me, not to some fucking boss.

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    1. Anonymous,

      I haven't personally encountered any of this in the work place, and I consider myself lucky after your post. I believe there are some jobs that need 24/7 attention, but not many, and certainly none that pertain to MLM.

      I'm glad you have found ways to distance yourself from work, but am also saddened by the fact that you have to go to extreme measures to do so. It seems ridiculous that you have to essentially "take yourself off the map" in order to have privacy (assuming this is the NYU anonymous). I couldn't imagine what kind of pressure is being placed on you to be available, and also couldn't imagine what kind of "emergencies" would arise for a college professor to need to be available at odd hours.

      One of the problems I had with school was the demand for homework after attending a full day. It seemed outrageous to demand a student be available, on average, for a 7 hour school day + 3-6 hours of homework afterward. Scientific studies have proven this is not a good way for children to learn, and yet the work load seems to be increasing.

      http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Instruction/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-At-a-glance/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-Research-review.html

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    2. The problem of demanding that an employee serve his employer 24/7 is due to an unholy alliance of convenience between greedy capitalist businessmen and liberal social idealists. Whenever these two groups come to an agreement, human freedom is threatened.

      Businessmen support the new idea simply out of their lust for profits, and their desire to squeeze every last second of time from a salaried worker. That's in the DNA of rapacious businessmen, and we shouldn't be surprised by it.

      But the idea is also supported by liberal social idealists out of the fatuous conviction that everybody on the planet needs to "work harder" in order to "make the world a better place." These liberals play on your sympathy, with manipulative questions like "Don't you think you owe it to the world to make a greater effort?" or "Surely you see the need for energetic commitment on everyone's part to do a better job?"

      This manipulative, emotionalized bullshit is standard issue from social idealists, who are always trying to dragoon persons into "doing more" or "giving more" or "sacrificing more." And it plays right into the hands of corporate types, who certainly do want all of us to slave harder and harder.

      Asa teacher, I heartily agree with you about homework. It is a silly waste of time, and a gross imposition on students who have already spent a full day at school. And here's a bit of insider information: practically no students actually do their homework. They copy it from the few nerds who do, or they merely grab something off the internet or out of a book. Students know very well that a teacher who handles 150 students a day is NEVER going to look at those handed-in homework assignments. All the teacher does is check off in his grade book if a piece of paper was handed in. He simply does not have the time to do otherwise.

      I never give homework. My students simply have to pass a midterm and a final, and write two short papers. That's it.

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    3. Anonymous,

      Interesting point about capitalists meeting liberal social idealists. It is bizarre how these liberal social idealists want everyone to work the same amount for the same pay, but turn the other cheek to those who reap the benefits at the higher positions. My mother, a lawyer, is pro socialism and it still boggles my mind. She was feeling the Bern, and believed that everyone deserves an equal shot with equal benefits. I asked her why she deserves the same pay and benefits as someone who works at a grocery store, and the conversation immediately got hostile.

      It is funny you brought up the "work harder" because I just did a post on Animal Farm. That was almost an exact quote from the book as Boxer, the strongest worker in the group, had two maxims, "I must work harder", and "Napoleon is always right". Boxer was then sent to the slaughter house when his usefulness ended.

      I think people are too focused on everyone putting in an equal effort based on time allotted and are not focusing on the complexity involved in defining real effort. The best example I can come up with is, two people studying for the same test and one of them studies twice as much as the other. Most people would hope the person who studied twice as hard would be more successful, but that is not always the outcome and it needs to be noted that this is how the world works. There are people with certain genetic gifts that others don't have, and it must be noted that if a person doesn't have certain gifts then they may have to work harder. That does not mean that a person who does have those gifts also has to work harder because it is the fair thing to do.

      That is an interesting note about your personal experience with homework. I was not so fortunate as I had many teachers that graded homework vigorously, and I even had one teacher that would assign homework BEFORE teaching the subject the next day. I can understand reading about a particular idea beforehand, but to grade a homework assignment before it is taught in class is ludicrous. At that point, what was the purpose of coming to the lecture?

      My best scores were in classes that involved papers, because I could formulate my opinions better without the bizarre time constraint of a test. I never understood classes that insisted on timed essays, especially when they graded grammar as well, and expected these flawless answers. You wouldn't go to someone in the real world and say, "I need you to write about your findings based on these results from the study in the next hour, and if you don't finish in time, turn in your results anyways." This makes no sense to me.

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  3. There are a lot of affluent persons who are "pro-socialism" as long as the actual economic consequences of socialism don't affect them personally. Such hypocritical types are often referred to as "limousine liberals."

    Lawyers, doctors, academics, media figures, financial types, middle management, and other white-collar professionals are frequently found in this camp. Their "socialism" is essentially a fashion accessory, like a Cartier watch or a Gucci handbag. They can spout their liberal idealism at cocktail parties while getting richer and richer from their huge salaries and investment portfolios. The most egregious examples are stupid Hollywood celebrities, who are multimillionaires but who spout fatuous drivel about their dedication to revolutionary or subversive movements.

    Hillary Clinton and her husband are even better examples. They are rapaciously greedy scum who have amassed millions via political extortion and manipulation, but their mouths are always dripping with social-idealist rhetoric about equality and fairness and human rights.

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  4. I haven't seen my family (save for Christmas and ONCE to see siblings reach a big milestone) in nearly 3 years because I was convinced living in the same city as my upline would be worth it in the end.

    I was asked to be a groomsman in the wedding of someone that was as close as a brother and the week before the wedding I pulled out because some Double Eagle Rubies decided to speak that weekend and "the story of resistance would all be part of my rally someday"

    I was let go from a good paying job because I quit trying at that "stinking Just Over Broke" and passed over multiple job offers for well paying careers all in the name of WWDB/Amway.

    I've pushed away SO many friends and "negative influences/dreamstealers/poopy heads" all in the name of "moving forward"

    It wasn't until a few months ago I stopped listening to my audios/propaganda and the cracks began to show, thanks to blogs like yours and Married to an Ambot (Ironically, blogs I had been taught to avoid because what would you know about owning a business) those cracks have EXPLODED and I'm slowly recovering my life.

    I'm scared, but I'm so happy to finally be honest with myself. I'm happy to say I'm home today spending much needed time with my family and this post and many like it are helping me be able to spend life with them and those I love rather than trade time always straining for a make-believe life where I MAY live with them.

    Sorry for the long post but this was the first time I've thought/typed all this out, thoughts that were probably pushed deep for many years.

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    1. Eth,

      Thank you for your comment! I'm a new kid on the block compared to Anna, and Joecool's blog is also a great source for help with Amway and WWDB in particular. I'm glad you found value in this post, and it really helps to hear I'm moving in the right direction.

      I can only imagine what you are going through since my experience was relatively short-lived, but it was also very scarring. I wrote out an extensive version of my story and posted it to the front page of the blog if you ever want to take the time to read it.

      I'm glad you were able to pull away from the regiment they put you through. It's amazing what happens once the flood gates open and the truth starts to show again. It happens very quickly, and sometimes you are left wondering, what the heck just happened.

      It will definitely take some time and effort to sort through the emotions and traumas that are lying under the surface. I can't say it will be a terribly easy road, but it sounds like you are much more introspective than most. The way you verbalized your comment leaves me with a great deal of confidence that you will come out of this experience just fine, and eventually it will become a weird distant dream.

      This blog is designed for people like you and I to bring attention to MLM and its cult-like persona. The more words we can get on the page the better, so please feel free to write as much or as little you are comfortable with. Also, if you need to write something personal, or want something off the internet records, you can always e-mail me at thedude2488@gmail.com (Huge Big Lebowski fan).

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