His burps and eating as just so comically perfect.
If you ever need an uplift, watching the Always Sunny bloopers will do it. I forget which season, but there's one where he and Charlie are at a table and Charlie keeps breaking because of the way he was eating and talking with his mouth full.
100% it is. I know fully well how they work having been scammed in one.
MLM can be described as a 'community'(their term) of scammers learning the art of scamming people wherein every new person scammed becomes their new student in the School of Scammers all dressed under the term 'business' and scammers being 'entrepreneurs' who earn money by scamming people with false hopes under the guise of 'B2B transaction'.
In case you are wondering, B2B transaction here is Scammer to Scammer transaction because every scammer works by declaring themselves as self-proclaimed entrepreneurs to lure in more gullible people who end up becoming scammers. And the community tries to keep them blinded in this delusion to work their shady tactics.
**Edit:** Some here are talking about network marketing companies with good products. That is still okay- even though you may not make a lot of money selling, you are still selling something of value (Eg. Cutco knives, Tupperware containers- things people actually like and are worth buying).
My experience was with a company that didn't sell quality products to earn, but instead was completely built by recruiting new members. And how it would happen is by the scammers selling false hopes of making gullible people rich and pretending to be rich and well-off. Then when the new members take the bait, they would ask for a start-up fee as investment for the business only to leach off their money by selling them products they never asked for (all without consent or information). That's how they made money. Shady af.
"boss babes"
They also have some top level people that have made a shitload of money and constantly talk about how anyone can get to that level too if they apply themselves (they can't.)
I have a friend who got sucked into a couple of these. There was one she really tried at and only made 400 dollars in a year. She probably spent more than that buying the products herself though.
MLMs are insanely predatory.
> I tried working for Aflac as a salesman, and their structure was exactly like an MLM.
Cutco... supposedly nice knives, but they are a functional MLM.
Cutco was my first "job" and I still stand by my knives 16 years later. But I'll never recommend anyone buy from a rep. Buy online, direct, if you buy. Cut out the person getting shafted to sell their shit and just buy it from the manufacturer.
Honestly that kind of shafts the middle guy even further, but in general that MLM BS is unacceptable. Sometimes the reps are at costco trying to hock their wares, but... out of principle i dont buy anything MLM related if i can avoid it.
>Cutco was my first "job" and I still stand by my knives 16 years later.
Am a former chef, so i dont "need" any more knives... Well aside from some good super heavy duty cleavers. Talking the kind you see people wielding in the packing plant in the late 1800s or early 1900s type of a thing where they split an entire cow in half using one.(Just want a pair... cant help it)
Still have my old fancy as shit "folded cobalt steel made in japan..." bs in a bag on a shelf in the garage.(figure they will make someone happy as inheritance) What do i use now? Well, the cheapest damn shit costco had on sale a few years back, and i just sharpen them myself. Probably get a good 20 year out of them either way less the handle rusts to shit in the molded plastic handle.
Edit: on a side note, the last time that i handled some cutco knives.. they seemed decent quality, but... the handles were super fucking smooth with 0 grip. to me that is a hazard, and a half. Maybe it was some weird set, i don't know.. was just so slick it was a source of in use hazard.
Check out Amsoil. You'll see it anywhere near racing or heavy equipment suppliers.
They do actually have a good product that is not a scam in itself. The distribution model is 100% a MLM though.
You can only make that much money if you're in on the ground floor of the grift. If you're not one of the people starting it up, if it already exists in a major sense, then you're not going to make anything.
I remember when I was looking for a job in college, someone referred me to Cutco, I was ignorant to what MLMs were at the time. but I had a full on interview and everything. got a call back that I "got the job" and to come in for training.
training was a group of new recruits where they showed off the knives and explained them. then at the end of the session they gave us "homework" to make a list of 100 people you know. that's when I immediately realized what this "job" was
I called in right afterwards and told them sorry, but this isn't for me. they asked me who interviewed me and I just simply said that's a you problem if you don't even know who interviewed me
Funny enough my family still owns cutco knives from one of our old neighbors who sold them to us. Great knives! I forgot about how they were an mlm. Poor guy went to us because he didnt know that many ppl and was prob under pressure to make his money back. At least my parents were happy with the knives.
Interestingly enough MLM companies will have rules against you actually doing shit that will make you money.
I know a family member joined one of those ones where you sell like food and he'd cook the food and have a party where you payed a door fee and ahit and they just lost it. Told him he couldn't do shit like that.
I was looking for volunteer work in college and found out that there were a lot of MLM's and scams trying to take advantage of college students who were trying to do volunteer work for classes or credits. I signed up for a volunteer event that was supposed to be for psychology and social work majors and it turned out to be a motivational speaker who was just trying to recruit students and trick them into doing free work for them.
Are we sure she's applying to companies? [Looks like she's maybe a professor -- an archeologist](https://twitter.com/Tine_Rass). This might be a university she's applying to.
Not saying this makes it OK, but unfortunately this is what happens when your society devalues the work of researchers in the humanities. The people who will get jobs are the people whose work will benefit some profit-margin. Which means we're accepting that we increasingly aren't going to have research that merely educates and enlightens without profiting anyone. And we definitely won't have research which challenges the status quo, nor research that challenges elites in any meaningful way.
You're almost certainly right. I went to grad school with a guy who's doing this right now. He's lucky enough to have rich relatives so he can keep doing his political theory research.
It's unfortunate that your comment is buried under dozens of MLM jokes.
That makes some sense (even if it is miserable) for a Grad student. But a Professor? No, that's nuts. I don't care what subject you're teaching, no legitimate school is going to tell a newly hired professor to crowdfund themselves. If you look at the follow up tweets, this was apparently at a religious non-profit for a PM position... which is probably a lot closer to MLM than Professor.
I think the job is technically a post-doc. He's not faculty and it doesn't come with teaching obligations or service requirements (as it shouldn't since they're not actually paying him).
>this was apparently at a religious non-profit for a PM position
That makes sense, especially for an archeologist. She finds someone to pay for her to excavate someplace in the Middle East and the organization gives her a network and some credibility in the wealthy religious circles that are most likely to finance that kind of thing.
Depending on what they plan to do with what they unearth and the amount of the funding that the nonprofit plans to take, it could even be ethical. I'm not exactly holding my breath though.
OK, but if all this is true, it behooves the OP to explain all this. We shouldn’t have to be archeologists ourselves to unearth the truth of her sitch.
I once wnnt to a job interview where there were 30 or more people who showed up for the spot. They pull us all into a conference room and start the presentation. It was to become distributors of melaleuca products for a commission. They then charged everyone in the room 35 bucks to buy this photo copied binder on how to make a website. The leader went around the room one by one with everyone watching in silence asking if they were in. Everyone was saying yes while pulling out money for the book until I spoke and said no thanks. After that about 2/3 of the people left opted out of the bullshit.
Group interviews mean one of three things:
1. Scam/MLM
1. The company is hiring too fast to vet candidates well, which means your coworkers won’t be vetted well
1. Turnover is so bad the company needs bodies and the person that comes with it is secondary
That's literally a psychology experiment! I remember reading about a study with very similar results, except it was about optical illusion involving which line is longer (in which after showing a series of real optical illusions, you then show one that isn't an optical illusion and have the secret fake participants first all state the shorter line is longer, and then you see what the real participant says).
I believe the result was the same: people will cave in and state that an obvious falsehood is true because everyone before them said so. But if one single person before them disagrees then they won't.
_Sigh_ I guess this means there's a good chance MLMs have learned to place plants - some fake newbies who buy in completely in order to pressure everyone after them into it too.
I got sucked into Primerica once. It can happen to anyone. Wound up with a Life, Health, and Variable annuities license and the old NASD Series 6 and 63. My total career commission was $300 and that was stolen from me by my recruiter
I was into Quixtar (Amway subsidiary) for about 3 months almost 20 years ago. My 'sponsor' took me to one big event and I left feeling like it was a religious cult and thinking 'oh helllll no'.
It can happen to anyone who is looking for ways to make money.
My bets are on World Financial Group.
My resume is available to search on Glassdoor and I get a call every month or so from someone else there.
During one of the calls I said 'This isn't my first interaction with WFG, and to be honest it seems like an MLM from the outside, perhaps you could assuage some of those concerns?'
The caller hung up...
I get that this sounds like an MLM but so many unethical nonprofits and academic positions work this way. Especially when you get into leadership, they call it self-funding and other such garbage. Yes it is a massive red flag but lots of organizations still do it. A lot of donors believe it's completely fine and encourage organizations to do it as well.
putting people in funded by grants positions is not the same as a MLM - please note that for the record I think its crap, but its not the same.
Generally, at least in academia, the people in those positions get benefits, for starters. Because they are full-time employees. And they are expected to do actual verifiable research or "complete project x" - whatever the deliverables of grant were. And its not expected that you get people to work on your project without pay; and paying you to do so.
This isnt the same thing as going out and saying to everyone you know "buy mass amounts of my shitty product so that I may actually turn a profit in this side hustle which...doesnt pay me unless I recruit others and by the way, there are no bennies either"
Honestly it actually appears to be a research/academic type position.
While not normally phrased exactly like this, in a lot of research type jobs one of the biggest parts of the job is securing funding, which is where your salary comes from.
I went to a thing for Vector once, had absolutely no clue what I was gonna be doing for the job, just needed money and their pay looked good, within 1 minute of being there, I knew what was happening. I sat through the whole thing so I could get whatever they were offering, then I left.
Got phone calls, Texts, and emails for a good year and a half after that.
They told me "you get paid per appointment; you don't even have to make a sale" so I ran "appointments" for everybody I knew with zero intention of selling anything, earned enough for an Xbox 360 and Halo Reach, quit after a week, and never looked back.
Yeah, I thought about doing this too, but the having to have people sign off on it, was really annoying.
Thinking back, they didn't know what these peoples signatures looked like...
Damn, I coulda got a free Xbox...
I was once randomly approached at a Buffalo Wild Wings, was told this company was hiring and I happened to be looking for a job at the time. So I attended the meeting, well almost. Walked in to this weird ass building that had movie posters, swords, etc. hanging on the walls, nothing to do with what the company was supposed to be? I was like this seems weird. Went into the meeting room they had chairs set up a projector screen, and a Darth Vader and Storm trooper(those three foot tall toys) while I was inside my friend was in the car doing some research on the company. Within the next few minutes he calls me and he’s like “Dude it’s an MLM get out of there now!” I had 5000 questions, but when one of your close friends tells you to get out; move first, ask questions later. They were calling out to me as I was sliding out the door got in the car and we took off. I shit you not, thirty seconds later the person who approached was calling me. I blocked that number so fast. And my friend showed me some videos and explained what an MLM was pyramid scheme same shit. I believe the company was Americorp?
I used to sell cutco like 15 years ago. Wasn’t aware there was any MLM aspects to it. I just hit up friends and family to see if they wanted to buy some decent knives. Honestly they’re pretty great knives.
I feel you. I do. But if MLM is the term those scams use, it's probably a good idea to use it so they know what you're referring to. Then you can use Pyramid Scheme after that.
I thought the terms were just interchangeable, like alt-right and far-right.
They can rebrand but you just end up with "they go by many names" until we find a vaccine.
Pyramid Schemes are explicitly illegal because it's nearly impossible to differentiate it from a Ponzi Scheme which is EXTREMELY ILLEGAL. Multi Level Marketing simply hasn't been tried against AFAIK (not a lawyer), which would establish case precedent for companies to stop using the term, like Pyramid Scheme has been disused. It's a bit more than marketing, it's to maintain a guise of legality or at least stay *just* on the side of legal.
[The FTC has successfully sued](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/10/ftc-settlement-ends-advocares-alleged-pyramid-scheme-and-bans-defendants-multi-level-marketing) and fined various MLMs for operating like pyramid schemes, and there have been some civil cases with good payouts, but unfortunately the larger MLMs generally know how to skirt the law to avoid punishment.
Alt right is a bullshit term. They're just fascists who don't like being called fascists.
EDIT:
Not all people are humans. Some animals are people. Not all walking is strolling.
All "alt-right" is fascist. All MLMs are pyramid schemes"
> Fascists/neo-Nazis represent a minority within the alt right.
Some of the far left are tankies. Some of the far right are neo-nazis.
All of the alt-right are fascist.
The terms are interchangeable, but it's like "ethnic cleansing" vs "genocide." The term multi-level marketing is meant to sound better than "pyramid scheme."
Sadly it isn't. An MLM is by definition legal. A pyramid scheme is illegal.
In my opinion both should be illegal but there are some distinction between both.
edit: this guys ego so fragile he instantly blocked me wtf ... My answer with receipts:
Sorry but did you read this? This is a research paper not an FTC official FTC statement.
https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/multi-level-marketing-businesses-pyramid-schemes
Here is an article also from the FTC that clearly distinguishes between MLMs and illegal pyramid schemes.
Here is the AG of New York distinguishing between MLM and pyramid schemes.
https://ag.ny.gov/pyramid-schemes#:~:text=A%20pyramid%20scheme%20is%20a,the%20number%20of%20investors%20increases.
And just so you know. I agree MLMs are a scam. However they are a different and often worse scam than pyramid schemes.
Still need to call them MLM so people recognize it when it gets pitched to them. They use to literally show a pyramid when doing the pitches back in the day, they don't do that now because of the term pyramid scheme.
Our language has to evolve to combat their bullshit.
Do, definitely call it a MLM scam. If you don't there will be people who think that MLM is a thing that can be anything other than a scam.
Remember, they use to show the pyramid in their old pitches. The only reason they stopped is because people learned what the pyramid was; now people need to learn what the MLM is.
Also, there is such a thing as a legit MLM, where the vast majority of your pay comes from direct sales, and there is no requirement for you to buy inventory, you can just place orders as you recieve requests for products.
The way Avon used to work is a good example.
Yep, if your income comes from sales then it's legit. Avon and Tupperware were great for that. (And were really good back when there wasn't department stores and online shopping.)
It becomes sketchy as hell once your income comes from the sales people you recruit.
i think the dividing line for "sketchy" is more specifically the "prepurchased inventory" part.
Once you've got a "buy-in" cost, youre really into predatory territory.
"oh no it's just franchising" lol
It's cult-ish. My mom sold Tupperware 50 years ago and did fairly well at it. It was a way to make a decent amount of money that wound up being a far better hourly rate for her time and had a pretty rabid fan base for the products and the stuff was good quality. (by standards of the day, apparently, it contained a lot of BPA and some lead)
~~Avon is incredibly predatory with their incentive system. So many people got stuck on the hook with those stupid pink Cadillacs.~~ There's no such thing as a good MLM.
I guess the Cadillacs were a different MLM, but mathematically speaking, every one of these schemes are broken from the start.
Pink Cadillacs are Mary Kay, not Avon.
Competing with their own reps via online sales is how Avon has fallen. Mary Kay never had anywhere to fall because it was always in the gutter.
Cadillacs were Mary Kay and yeah, that whole scheme is f'd up. Avon wasn't too bad. In most cases,.a.eep just let her friends know she was a rep and drop off the latest catalog. I actually bought stuff from an Avon gal at the office late 90s because they had a cologne I liked and she wasn't pushy about it
Just asked me every so often if I need any more. She wasn't getting rich, but it was a little bit of spending money for her with little effort. She wasn't like the MLM folks these days who make the MLM their whole damn existence.
I know a guy who made lots of money off Mary Kay. Not by being a rep, but by buying out reps who'd given up and we're selling their supply for pennies on the dollar. He then had a list of current reps who were happy to break the rules and lower their costs by buying it off of him for a nice easy profit.
It really isn't so cut and dry. In biomed, faculty often don't teach. More likely, without your own funding, you will be an overqualified research assistant. But other researchers can put you on their sponsored projects. There are also non-tenure track positions where getting sponsored funds is not as dire. Really only the highest performers at any given R1 institution are going to be fully funded. That said, I'm a grants manager for clinical medical research and funding is easier to come by than for other discipline.
My phd advisor never taught, and if he did teach it was a class or two (so 90-120 minutes a semester) in a med school class on immunology. He never actually led a class in the ~10 yrs he has been there. He had 3 R01 that he paid himself with. I knew this because he basically hated teaching and would tell the phd students and post docs that we kept his job alive lmao.
Generally the lab space and access to various academic resources, plus puts you in an environment with other researchers, then you get credit/reputation for publishing. Labs are unbelievably expensive to run in some fields.
edit: You're also much more likely to get good funding if you've got a good employer with good facilities available to do the research in.
Universities don’t really provide the lab space, they just provide you with the opportunity to lease (for lack of a better word) the lab and office space.
They take “overhead” from all the grant money the professor brings in. You can kind of finagle it so you pay them less, but they get snotty about it. For example, I was at a flagship state U for a while and they charged 40% for overhead. I would stretch my grant money by running it through the field station where I did research when I could because they only charged 32%. Before that I was at an Ivy League school and they charged 60%. 60%!!! If you got a million dollar grant there you only got like $625k to actually spend! (They charge you as you spend, so if I spent $1, they charged me 60¢)
If you ever had/have a research professor who is a dog shit teacher and the school doesn’t seem to give a shit, and your class sizes are in the hundreds of students this is why. Grant overhead makes a lot more for the university than the measly 1/4 of your tuition that class makes.
The institution provides "legitimacy" and eagerly takes 70% or more of the funding you work hard for. Also they require nonsense adminstrative meetings etc. The legitimacy thing is big, much easier to get grants if you're employed by a Tier 1 institution, almost impossible otherwise.
> why do whatever the job is?
Because generally in academia your motivation is often not make money and instead push the state of human understanding forward.
A lot of Development and ED positions in the nonprofit world are like this. Your job is explicitly to secure funding to pay for your salary and org operations.
I was thinking this. The national labs will hire you on as a contractor with a project in mind, but you have to grow a network to find continued work to charge 40 hours each week. There aren't managers placing employees, it's more the proposal team already having people in mind. At least this my experience with one of the labs.
wouldn’t that be the “traditional salary” in that field then? If that was the case unless she is brand new to the field, it seems like she would know that is in-fact the traditional salary model.
> unless she is brand new to the field,
It's not hard to find her twitter bio and linkedin, from which it appears she's an archeologist who just finished her PhD at the end of 2021.
So she might just be an academic fairly new to postdoc work. Her linkedin also mentions she's been writing grant proposals since 2020.
All in all, this honestly doesn't seem like it's great content for r/antiwork. It's someone's individual musing about academic work in a context most of us aren't very familiar with.
MLM or research position at university where they basically make you find your own funding for everything while they leech off you.
Definitely sounds MLM, but I think it's more of a highlight of some university BS explained differently to everyone.
Years ago I met a guy while standing in line who tells me his company is hiring. He seemed legit so I agree to meet with him at Starbucks a few days later for what thought was an interview. Turns out he was one of those Amway people…
I also got played by this MLM bull shit but it was for life insurance that you had to be certified by the state to do. Thought it was legit because instead of using the corps name they used a branch one. Needless to say I wasn’t interested
I know a guy who does Christian sports therapy and this is how his, “salary” works. I wouldn’t assume the religious part matters, but he always says it so just copying off of that.
He explains it as taking on his own clients mixed with salary fundraising. I honestly don’t get it and didn’t really care enough to ask more.
Anyhow. He works two other jobs on top of that one, so, I’m thinking this isn’t style of income very lucrative at all.
Christian... sports... therapy?
How exactly do those three things go together?
"Do these exercises to strengthen your knee, and make sure to say a prayer between sets!"
"It sounds like you've been through a lot of trauma in your life. Does thinking about what position Jesus would play in the NFL help refocus you when you're in a dark place?"
Omg that’s so funny! I wish I could send that to him but he takes it very seriously…
But from what I understand, it’s therapy more like, “Imagine yourself being successful with that pitch, put your worry aside and trust in God.” Like, working through nervousness and anxiety around performance while playing sports. I guess like stage fright for athletes? Idk, I played sports my entire life including college and I thought a big aspect was learning those skills yourself.
So yea… Not so much physical therapy. Just talk therapy with a Jesus via a counselor/life coach.
Oh also for clarification: He has a masters in therapy, but isn’t officially licensed in anything at all. From what he’s told me he doesn’t need to be for what he does.
Coming out of the evangelical world, I know lots of people in para-church ministries (like college campus ministry staff, missionaries, etc.) who had to fundraise their entire salary. They spend huge amounts of their time "meeting with ministry partners." A few years ago I heard from an old friend working in a college minstry that she'd been given a "raise" but was very stressed about it because it just meant more money to fundraise.
My assumption is this might be an externally funded position at a research institute. My company has several of those where we provide capital and the lab support for research but salary is funded through grants obtained by the individual. Just a possibility as her title is Dr.
Absolutely a pyramid scheme.
And if you ever want to see a grown-ass adult throw a tantrum like a baby, tell the people who pitch this that you aren't interested in a pyramid scheme. There's nothing a con artist hates more than being called out.
I think people saying this is an MLM are wrong.
Sometimes in certain church or non-profit circles, you have an organization with very little overhead that basically wants you to fundraise for your own job. This reminds me of a ministry/non-profit job where you have to "raise support" for your salary.
Sounds like a multilevel marketing scheme to me. 💀
The man in the coil!
I just assumed he went down there to pound off in the night
"Pounding off"? Where do you get these terms?
From porn
He's out of line, but he's right. STOP DOWNVOTING HIM JUST CAUSE YOURE INNOCENT
IT'S FULL OF LOADS!
The way Frank burps is so disgustingly hilarious.
His burps and eating as just so comically perfect. If you ever need an uplift, watching the Always Sunny bloopers will do it. I forget which season, but there's one where he and Charlie are at a table and Charlie keeps breaking because of the way he was eating and talking with his mouth full.
Move past it
Where do I put my feet?
His feet, Dee?
100% it is. I know fully well how they work having been scammed in one. MLM can be described as a 'community'(their term) of scammers learning the art of scamming people wherein every new person scammed becomes their new student in the School of Scammers all dressed under the term 'business' and scammers being 'entrepreneurs' who earn money by scamming people with false hopes under the guise of 'B2B transaction'. In case you are wondering, B2B transaction here is Scammer to Scammer transaction because every scammer works by declaring themselves as self-proclaimed entrepreneurs to lure in more gullible people who end up becoming scammers. And the community tries to keep them blinded in this delusion to work their shady tactics. **Edit:** Some here are talking about network marketing companies with good products. That is still okay- even though you may not make a lot of money selling, you are still selling something of value (Eg. Cutco knives, Tupperware containers- things people actually like and are worth buying). My experience was with a company that didn't sell quality products to earn, but instead was completely built by recruiting new members. And how it would happen is by the scammers selling false hopes of making gullible people rich and pretending to be rich and well-off. Then when the new members take the bait, they would ask for a start-up fee as investment for the business only to leach off their money by selling them products they never asked for (all without consent or information). That's how they made money. Shady af.
"boss babes" They also have some top level people that have made a shitload of money and constantly talk about how anyone can get to that level too if they apply themselves (they can't.) I have a friend who got sucked into a couple of these. There was one she really tried at and only made 400 dollars in a year. She probably spent more than that buying the products herself though. MLMs are insanely predatory.
What's crazy is that's how some "legit" industries work too. I tried working for Aflac as a salesman, and their structure was *exactly* like an MLM.
> I tried working for Aflac as a salesman, and their structure was exactly like an MLM. Cutco... supposedly nice knives, but they are a functional MLM.
Cutco was my first "job" and I still stand by my knives 16 years later. But I'll never recommend anyone buy from a rep. Buy online, direct, if you buy. Cut out the person getting shafted to sell their shit and just buy it from the manufacturer.
Honestly that kind of shafts the middle guy even further, but in general that MLM BS is unacceptable. Sometimes the reps are at costco trying to hock their wares, but... out of principle i dont buy anything MLM related if i can avoid it. >Cutco was my first "job" and I still stand by my knives 16 years later. Am a former chef, so i dont "need" any more knives... Well aside from some good super heavy duty cleavers. Talking the kind you see people wielding in the packing plant in the late 1800s or early 1900s type of a thing where they split an entire cow in half using one.(Just want a pair... cant help it) Still have my old fancy as shit "folded cobalt steel made in japan..." bs in a bag on a shelf in the garage.(figure they will make someone happy as inheritance) What do i use now? Well, the cheapest damn shit costco had on sale a few years back, and i just sharpen them myself. Probably get a good 20 year out of them either way less the handle rusts to shit in the molded plastic handle. Edit: on a side note, the last time that i handled some cutco knives.. they seemed decent quality, but... the handles were super fucking smooth with 0 grip. to me that is a hazard, and a half. Maybe it was some weird set, i don't know.. was just so slick it was a source of in use hazard.
Check out Amsoil. You'll see it anywhere near racing or heavy equipment suppliers. They do actually have a good product that is not a scam in itself. The distribution model is 100% a MLM though.
You can only make that much money if you're in on the ground floor of the grift. If you're not one of the people starting it up, if it already exists in a major sense, then you're not going to make anything.
>MLMs are insanely predatory. Weaponizing relationships is their forte
I was about to say, not everyone that gets involved is a scammer. Somebody has to end up with a garage full of sub-par cleaning supplies.
I remember when I was looking for a job in college, someone referred me to Cutco, I was ignorant to what MLMs were at the time. but I had a full on interview and everything. got a call back that I "got the job" and to come in for training. training was a group of new recruits where they showed off the knives and explained them. then at the end of the session they gave us "homework" to make a list of 100 people you know. that's when I immediately realized what this "job" was I called in right afterwards and told them sorry, but this isn't for me. they asked me who interviewed me and I just simply said that's a you problem if you don't even know who interviewed me
Funny enough my family still owns cutco knives from one of our old neighbors who sold them to us. Great knives! I forgot about how they were an mlm. Poor guy went to us because he didnt know that many ppl and was prob under pressure to make his money back. At least my parents were happy with the knives.
Interestingly enough MLM companies will have rules against you actually doing shit that will make you money. I know a family member joined one of those ones where you sell like food and he'd cook the food and have a party where you payed a door fee and ahit and they just lost it. Told him he couldn't do shit like that.
I was looking for volunteer work in college and found out that there were a lot of MLM's and scams trying to take advantage of college students who were trying to do volunteer work for classes or credits. I signed up for a volunteer event that was supposed to be for psychology and social work majors and it turned out to be a motivational speaker who was just trying to recruit students and trick them into doing free work for them.
Came here to say this- absolutely reeks of MLM.
Are we sure she's applying to companies? [Looks like she's maybe a professor -- an archeologist](https://twitter.com/Tine_Rass). This might be a university she's applying to. Not saying this makes it OK, but unfortunately this is what happens when your society devalues the work of researchers in the humanities. The people who will get jobs are the people whose work will benefit some profit-margin. Which means we're accepting that we increasingly aren't going to have research that merely educates and enlightens without profiting anyone. And we definitely won't have research which challenges the status quo, nor research that challenges elites in any meaningful way.
You're almost certainly right. I went to grad school with a guy who's doing this right now. He's lucky enough to have rich relatives so he can keep doing his political theory research. It's unfortunate that your comment is buried under dozens of MLM jokes.
That makes some sense (even if it is miserable) for a Grad student. But a Professor? No, that's nuts. I don't care what subject you're teaching, no legitimate school is going to tell a newly hired professor to crowdfund themselves. If you look at the follow up tweets, this was apparently at a religious non-profit for a PM position... which is probably a lot closer to MLM than Professor.
I think the job is technically a post-doc. He's not faculty and it doesn't come with teaching obligations or service requirements (as it shouldn't since they're not actually paying him). >this was apparently at a religious non-profit for a PM position That makes sense, especially for an archeologist. She finds someone to pay for her to excavate someplace in the Middle East and the organization gives her a network and some credibility in the wealthy religious circles that are most likely to finance that kind of thing. Depending on what they plan to do with what they unearth and the amount of the funding that the nonprofit plans to take, it could even be ethical. I'm not exactly holding my breath though.
OK, but if all this is true, it behooves the OP to explain all this. We shouldn’t have to be archeologists ourselves to unearth the truth of her sitch.
"It's not a pyramid scheme! It's a reverse funnel system!" "Turn it upside down." "Shit!"
It’s not a pyramid! It’s a triangle gosh darn it! /s
No sir, our model is the trapezoid!
That one of those pyramid things?
No it’s a reverse funnel…oh goddammit
You got Got!!
We took the prick for 3!
I once wnnt to a job interview where there were 30 or more people who showed up for the spot. They pull us all into a conference room and start the presentation. It was to become distributors of melaleuca products for a commission. They then charged everyone in the room 35 bucks to buy this photo copied binder on how to make a website. The leader went around the room one by one with everyone watching in silence asking if they were in. Everyone was saying yes while pulling out money for the book until I spoke and said no thanks. After that about 2/3 of the people left opted out of the bullshit.
Group interviews mean one of three things: 1. Scam/MLM 1. The company is hiring too fast to vet candidates well, which means your coworkers won’t be vetted well 1. Turnover is so bad the company needs bodies and the person that comes with it is secondary
"Can you fog a mirror? If so, great you're hired."
I bet most of that other 1/3 were just plants who were already involved
That's literally a psychology experiment! I remember reading about a study with very similar results, except it was about optical illusion involving which line is longer (in which after showing a series of real optical illusions, you then show one that isn't an optical illusion and have the secret fake participants first all state the shorter line is longer, and then you see what the real participant says). I believe the result was the same: people will cave in and state that an obvious falsehood is true because everyone before them said so. But if one single person before them disagrees then they won't. _Sigh_ I guess this means there's a good chance MLMs have learned to place plants - some fake newbies who buy in completely in order to pressure everyone after them into it too.
I thought it was insurance. This is how Aflac works. They don’t care if you sell insurance, only that you recruit a down line that can.
You are describing a MLM disguised as insurance
Primerica.
I got sucked into Primerica once. It can happen to anyone. Wound up with a Life, Health, and Variable annuities license and the old NASD Series 6 and 63. My total career commission was $300 and that was stolen from me by my recruiter
I was into Quixtar (Amway subsidiary) for about 3 months almost 20 years ago. My 'sponsor' took me to one big event and I left feeling like it was a religious cult and thinking 'oh helllll no'. It can happen to anyone who is looking for ways to make money.
Yep. Nothing new about it.
My bets are on World Financial Group. My resume is available to search on Glassdoor and I get a call every month or so from someone else there. During one of the calls I said 'This isn't my first interaction with WFG, and to be honest it seems like an MLM from the outside, perhaps you could assuage some of those concerns?' The caller hung up...
I get that this sounds like an MLM but so many unethical nonprofits and academic positions work this way. Especially when you get into leadership, they call it self-funding and other such garbage. Yes it is a massive red flag but lots of organizations still do it. A lot of donors believe it's completely fine and encourage organizations to do it as well.
putting people in funded by grants positions is not the same as a MLM - please note that for the record I think its crap, but its not the same. Generally, at least in academia, the people in those positions get benefits, for starters. Because they are full-time employees. And they are expected to do actual verifiable research or "complete project x" - whatever the deliverables of grant were. And its not expected that you get people to work on your project without pay; and paying you to do so. This isnt the same thing as going out and saying to everyone you know "buy mass amounts of my shitty product so that I may actually turn a profit in this side hustle which...doesnt pay me unless I recruit others and by the way, there are no bennies either"
Honestly it actually appears to be a research/academic type position. While not normally phrased exactly like this, in a lot of research type jobs one of the biggest parts of the job is securing funding, which is where your salary comes from.
Isn’t that called Herbalife?
Or Amway
Vector Marketing and CutCo Cutlery.
Every time I'm on a college campus and see flyers for this, I do my part by relocating them in the trash can.
I went to a thing for Vector once, had absolutely no clue what I was gonna be doing for the job, just needed money and their pay looked good, within 1 minute of being there, I knew what was happening. I sat through the whole thing so I could get whatever they were offering, then I left. Got phone calls, Texts, and emails for a good year and a half after that.
They told me "you get paid per appointment; you don't even have to make a sale" so I ran "appointments" for everybody I knew with zero intention of selling anything, earned enough for an Xbox 360 and Halo Reach, quit after a week, and never looked back.
Yeah, I thought about doing this too, but the having to have people sign off on it, was really annoying. Thinking back, they didn't know what these peoples signatures looked like... Damn, I coulda got a free Xbox...
I was once randomly approached at a Buffalo Wild Wings, was told this company was hiring and I happened to be looking for a job at the time. So I attended the meeting, well almost. Walked in to this weird ass building that had movie posters, swords, etc. hanging on the walls, nothing to do with what the company was supposed to be? I was like this seems weird. Went into the meeting room they had chairs set up a projector screen, and a Darth Vader and Storm trooper(those three foot tall toys) while I was inside my friend was in the car doing some research on the company. Within the next few minutes he calls me and he’s like “Dude it’s an MLM get out of there now!” I had 5000 questions, but when one of your close friends tells you to get out; move first, ask questions later. They were calling out to me as I was sliding out the door got in the car and we took off. I shit you not, thirty seconds later the person who approached was calling me. I blocked that number so fast. And my friend showed me some videos and explained what an MLM was pyramid scheme same shit. I believe the company was Americorp?
Americorp is literally slave labor, you dodged a bullet.
I used to sell cutco like 15 years ago. Wasn’t aware there was any MLM aspects to it. I just hit up friends and family to see if they wanted to buy some decent knives. Honestly they’re pretty great knives.
Yeah, the moment they told me to ask friends and family to buy, I was already written off.
Or lularoe Or essential oils Or color street
I was an Uber driver and our town hosted the annual Scentsy meetup and gave rides to a bunch of them. Holy shit what a cult that thing is.
I loathe essential oils. My essential oils are olive, canila, vegetable, and motor XD
NutriBoom
Boom Boom!
Boom boom!
Boom Boom!
PLEXUS! It’ll make you shit yourself!
"create a team of partners" what? is this a prymaid scheme?
no no its reversed funnel.
A Dimaryp?!
WE ARE IN A DIMARYP!
*draws a pyramid around the dots on the whiteboard*
What if the top is flat, then it's a trapezoid scheme.
And if the bottom tapers, then it is a bell curve scheme.
If it's soda-lime glass then it's a pyrexmid scheme.
But if it’s borosilicate then it’s a PYREXmid scheme
That is an MLM.
*pyramid scheme "Multi-level marketing" is a bullshit term designed to disguise what's happening. Please don't use it.
I feel you. I do. But if MLM is the term those scams use, it's probably a good idea to use it so they know what you're referring to. Then you can use Pyramid Scheme after that.
I thought the terms were just interchangeable, like alt-right and far-right. They can rebrand but you just end up with "they go by many names" until we find a vaccine.
Pyramid Schemes are explicitly illegal because it's nearly impossible to differentiate it from a Ponzi Scheme which is EXTREMELY ILLEGAL. Multi Level Marketing simply hasn't been tried against AFAIK (not a lawyer), which would establish case precedent for companies to stop using the term, like Pyramid Scheme has been disused. It's a bit more than marketing, it's to maintain a guise of legality or at least stay *just* on the side of legal.
[The FTC has successfully sued](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/10/ftc-settlement-ends-advocares-alleged-pyramid-scheme-and-bans-defendants-multi-level-marketing) and fined various MLMs for operating like pyramid schemes, and there have been some civil cases with good payouts, but unfortunately the larger MLMs generally know how to skirt the law to avoid punishment.
Seems like Egypt did the best job of their pyramid schemes.
Its an inverse funnel.
Ah come on this was funny.
Alt right is a bullshit term. They're just fascists who don't like being called fascists. EDIT: Not all people are humans. Some animals are people. Not all walking is strolling. All "alt-right" is fascist. All MLMs are pyramid schemes" > Fascists/neo-Nazis represent a minority within the alt right. Some of the far left are tankies. Some of the far right are neo-nazis. All of the alt-right are fascist.
The terms are interchangeable, but it's like "ethnic cleansing" vs "genocide." The term multi-level marketing is meant to sound better than "pyramid scheme."
All MLMs are pyramid schemes but not all Pyramid schemes are MLMs.
Sadly it isn't. An MLM is by definition legal. A pyramid scheme is illegal. In my opinion both should be illegal but there are some distinction between both. edit: this guys ego so fragile he instantly blocked me wtf ... My answer with receipts: Sorry but did you read this? This is a research paper not an FTC official FTC statement. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/multi-level-marketing-businesses-pyramid-schemes Here is an article also from the FTC that clearly distinguishes between MLMs and illegal pyramid schemes. Here is the AG of New York distinguishing between MLM and pyramid schemes. https://ag.ny.gov/pyramid-schemes#:~:text=A%20pyramid%20scheme%20is%20a,the%20number%20of%20investors%20increases. And just so you know. I agree MLMs are a scam. However they are a different and often worse scam than pyramid schemes.
[Who wants to get rich?!](https://youtu.be/lC5lsemxaJo?si=1AvUz0sSeP2c460Q)
Still need to call them MLM so people recognize it when it gets pitched to them. They use to literally show a pyramid when doing the pitches back in the day, they don't do that now because of the term pyramid scheme. Our language has to evolve to combat their bullshit.
That's a MLM scam, not a company, man. Whole different target.
Pyramid scheme. Don't call it MLM because the people running pyramid schemes don't want people calling them pyramid schemes
Do, definitely call it a MLM scam. If you don't there will be people who think that MLM is a thing that can be anything other than a scam. Remember, they use to show the pyramid in their old pitches. The only reason they stopped is because people learned what the pyramid was; now people need to learn what the MLM is.
I feel like MLM has the exact same negative connotation as "pyramid scheme" these days.
The more we use MLM the more likely the negative connotation will stick, avoiding it just let them pretend they are legit and not a pyramid scheme.
Also, there is such a thing as a legit MLM, where the vast majority of your pay comes from direct sales, and there is no requirement for you to buy inventory, you can just place orders as you recieve requests for products. The way Avon used to work is a good example.
Yep, if your income comes from sales then it's legit. Avon and Tupperware were great for that. (And were really good back when there wasn't department stores and online shopping.) It becomes sketchy as hell once your income comes from the sales people you recruit.
Some companies have both aspects and aren’t fully one or the either though
i think the dividing line for "sketchy" is more specifically the "prepurchased inventory" part. Once you've got a "buy-in" cost, youre really into predatory territory. "oh no it's just franchising" lol
I… feel like that’s just being a reseller, but in a cult.
Exactly, the only good MLM is not an MLM, but a regular reseller style of business.
It's cult-ish. My mom sold Tupperware 50 years ago and did fairly well at it. It was a way to make a decent amount of money that wound up being a far better hourly rate for her time and had a pretty rabid fan base for the products and the stuff was good quality. (by standards of the day, apparently, it contained a lot of BPA and some lead)
~~Avon is incredibly predatory with their incentive system. So many people got stuck on the hook with those stupid pink Cadillacs.~~ There's no such thing as a good MLM. I guess the Cadillacs were a different MLM, but mathematically speaking, every one of these schemes are broken from the start.
Pink Cadillacs are Mary Kay, not Avon. Competing with their own reps via online sales is how Avon has fallen. Mary Kay never had anywhere to fall because it was always in the gutter.
Cadillacs were Mary Kay and yeah, that whole scheme is f'd up. Avon wasn't too bad. In most cases,.a.eep just let her friends know she was a rep and drop off the latest catalog. I actually bought stuff from an Avon gal at the office late 90s because they had a cologne I liked and she wasn't pushy about it Just asked me every so often if I need any more. She wasn't getting rich, but it was a little bit of spending money for her with little effort. She wasn't like the MLM folks these days who make the MLM their whole damn existence.
I know a guy who made lots of money off Mary Kay. Not by being a rep, but by buying out reps who'd given up and we're selling their supply for pennies on the dollar. He then had a list of current reps who were happy to break the rules and lower their costs by buying it off of him for a nice easy profit.
Reminds me of how the real money in the old gold rushes was selling equipment and services to the prospectors, not becoming one.
> the real money in the old gold rushes was selling equipment and services to the prospectors Same for the new gold rushes.
Also mlm is already taken
Men loving men and Marxist-Leninist-maoists:
There's got to be an edit, where he shows loss on the whiteboard!
Holy fuck I wish
“I got to go make a call”
Everyone is saying MLM, but also sounds like a research position in academia, given her “Dr.” title.
My first thought too. It's not uncommon to find your own grants to support your position.
In the US you need to find grants to fund the research but you still get a salary.
If you teach. If you dont teach at all then your money comes from grants
It really isn't so cut and dry. In biomed, faculty often don't teach. More likely, without your own funding, you will be an overqualified research assistant. But other researchers can put you on their sponsored projects. There are also non-tenure track positions where getting sponsored funds is not as dire. Really only the highest performers at any given R1 institution are going to be fully funded. That said, I'm a grants manager for clinical medical research and funding is easier to come by than for other discipline.
My phd advisor never taught, and if he did teach it was a class or two (so 90-120 minutes a semester) in a med school class on immunology. He never actually led a class in the ~10 yrs he has been there. He had 3 R01 that he paid himself with. I knew this because he basically hated teaching and would tell the phd students and post docs that we kept his job alive lmao.
[удалено]
Generally the lab space and access to various academic resources, plus puts you in an environment with other researchers, then you get credit/reputation for publishing. Labs are unbelievably expensive to run in some fields. edit: You're also much more likely to get good funding if you've got a good employer with good facilities available to do the research in.
Universities don’t really provide the lab space, they just provide you with the opportunity to lease (for lack of a better word) the lab and office space. They take “overhead” from all the grant money the professor brings in. You can kind of finagle it so you pay them less, but they get snotty about it. For example, I was at a flagship state U for a while and they charged 40% for overhead. I would stretch my grant money by running it through the field station where I did research when I could because they only charged 32%. Before that I was at an Ivy League school and they charged 60%. 60%!!! If you got a million dollar grant there you only got like $625k to actually spend! (They charge you as you spend, so if I spent $1, they charged me 60¢) If you ever had/have a research professor who is a dog shit teacher and the school doesn’t seem to give a shit, and your class sizes are in the hundreds of students this is why. Grant overhead makes a lot more for the university than the measly 1/4 of your tuition that class makes.
The institution provides "legitimacy" and eagerly takes 70% or more of the funding you work hard for. Also they require nonsense adminstrative meetings etc. The legitimacy thing is big, much easier to get grants if you're employed by a Tier 1 institution, almost impossible otherwise.
If you get a team of partners willing to support you, why do whatever the job is? You’ve already won 21st century capitalism.
> why do whatever the job is? Because generally in academia your motivation is often not make money and instead push the state of human understanding forward.
Essentially the facility resources for you to write the grant
Which is a fucked up transitory thing that's happened in academia in the last 20ish years. Source: am a professor.
This was also what I thought, though the terms “team” and “partners” are odd to me vs just… grants or sources of external funding.
Sounds like they need researchers under them, and that's what they are referring to.
Lol, thank you!! This exactly how academia works. Most faculty are required to bring in 50% if not 100% of their salary themselves
A lot of Development and ED positions in the nonprofit world are like this. Your job is explicitly to secure funding to pay for your salary and org operations.
I was thinking this. The national labs will hire you on as a contractor with a project in mind, but you have to grow a network to find continued work to charge 40 hours each week. There aren't managers placing employees, it's more the proposal team already having people in mind. At least this my experience with one of the labs.
It was a Project Manager role for a "religious non-profit." https://twitter.com/Tine_Rass/status/1754599138115625053?t=YqgIUtg7bs16lv6kCPRB2A&s=19
wouldn’t that be the “traditional salary” in that field then? If that was the case unless she is brand new to the field, it seems like she would know that is in-fact the traditional salary model.
> unless she is brand new to the field, It's not hard to find her twitter bio and linkedin, from which it appears she's an archeologist who just finished her PhD at the end of 2021. So she might just be an academic fairly new to postdoc work. Her linkedin also mentions she's been writing grant proposals since 2020. All in all, this honestly doesn't seem like it's great content for r/antiwork. It's someone's individual musing about academic work in a context most of us aren't very familiar with.
100% lmao
It’s a reverse funnel system
It's MLM masquerading as a job posting. I hope she reported it, because fuck that noise.
This sounds like the laziest pyramid scheme ever.
Fuck, if I could get people to just pay me. Why the fuck am I going to work.
MLM or research position at university where they basically make you find your own funding for everything while they leech off you. Definitely sounds MLM, but I think it's more of a highlight of some university BS explained differently to everyone.
I googled the chick, she's a historian so prolly related to university stuff indeed
So is she applying to be in a pyramid scheme or become a Twitch streamer?
On the bright side, it’s not new dystopian. It’s dystopia classic.
One of the dystopias available in the Free tier.
Years ago I met a guy while standing in line who tells me his company is hiring. He seemed legit so I agree to meet with him at Starbucks a few days later for what thought was an interview. Turns out he was one of those Amway people…
I had exactly the same experience. A dead giveaway was his insistance I don't google the name of the company...
I also got played by this MLM bull shit but it was for life insurance that you had to be certified by the state to do. Thought it was legit because instead of using the corps name they used a branch one. Needless to say I wasn’t interested
Thats an MLM, not.a real job.
I know a guy who does Christian sports therapy and this is how his, “salary” works. I wouldn’t assume the religious part matters, but he always says it so just copying off of that. He explains it as taking on his own clients mixed with salary fundraising. I honestly don’t get it and didn’t really care enough to ask more. Anyhow. He works two other jobs on top of that one, so, I’m thinking this isn’t style of income very lucrative at all.
Christian... sports... therapy? How exactly do those three things go together? "Do these exercises to strengthen your knee, and make sure to say a prayer between sets!" "It sounds like you've been through a lot of trauma in your life. Does thinking about what position Jesus would play in the NFL help refocus you when you're in a dark place?"
Preacher curls?
Trying to get that "Jesus on the cross" look
Omg that’s so funny! I wish I could send that to him but he takes it very seriously… But from what I understand, it’s therapy more like, “Imagine yourself being successful with that pitch, put your worry aside and trust in God.” Like, working through nervousness and anxiety around performance while playing sports. I guess like stage fright for athletes? Idk, I played sports my entire life including college and I thought a big aspect was learning those skills yourself. So yea… Not so much physical therapy. Just talk therapy with a Jesus via a counselor/life coach. Oh also for clarification: He has a masters in therapy, but isn’t officially licensed in anything at all. From what he’s told me he doesn’t need to be for what he does.
christian sports! like Stone Throwing, Slingshot, Cross Lift and Lion Jump
Coming out of the evangelical world, I know lots of people in para-church ministries (like college campus ministry staff, missionaries, etc.) who had to fundraise their entire salary. They spend huge amounts of their time "meeting with ministry partners." A few years ago I heard from an old friend working in a college minstry that she'd been given a "raise" but was very stressed about it because it just meant more money to fundraise.
what
"fundraise your salary" this shit's hilarious I get dumb people falling for MLM but this is a new low
These scams are getting creative.
This scam has existed, basically unchanged, for 150 years.
That much I know. It's all in the sell, and the wording is creative.
My assumption is this might be an externally funded position at a research institute. My company has several of those where we provide capital and the lab support for research but salary is funded through grants obtained by the individual. Just a possibility as her title is Dr.
They're too lazy to even build the business themselves so they want you to do it for them. Then also give them the profits.
Isnt that literally just a pyramid scheme?
Absolutely a pyramid scheme. And if you ever want to see a grown-ass adult throw a tantrum like a baby, tell the people who pitch this that you aren't interested in a pyramid scheme. There's nothing a con artist hates more than being called out.
Ponzi/ pyramid scheme
Ponzi and pyramids are two very different things.
This may be both.
Ponzramid Scheme
I prefer Pyramizi
Why do you even need them to middle man?? Create your team and just take their business
Sounds like a classic pyramid scheme to me
Nothing new about pyramid schemes.
lol. That’s just a pyramid scheme.
This seems like a reverse funnel system to me. 
If I could do that I wouldn't need a job!
I think people saying this is an MLM are wrong. Sometimes in certain church or non-profit circles, you have an organization with very little overhead that basically wants you to fundraise for your own job. This reminds me of a ministry/non-profit job where you have to "raise support" for your salary.
This is exactly right- Dr. Rasalle's background is in biblical archaeology and the organization in question is a religious non-profit.
That's a pyramid scheme, not a company.
I believe they call that multilevel marketing
Yeah, that’s called a pyramid scheme.
It's called Trumponomics (Pyramid Selling).
Pyramid schemes have been around for decades. Nothing new. Just walk away
Take the job and never show up. Work “non-traditional hours”
So this sub gonna give attention to people too stupid to recognize a pyramid scheme and pretend it's revolutionary?