I'm from Poland and here we have a meme joke, that your friend from primary school reaches out to you to say sorry for bullying you and then they go straight to "do you want anything from avon?" xd
This happened to me except it was just an ex-friend and they wanted to sell me mushroom tea. Hurt my feelings so bad at the time. Now I feel embarrassed for him lol.
My friend: I don’t understand why people don’t discipline their cats… Me: No, no, no. You don’t understand. A dog may get yelled at and learn a thing is bad. A cat will get yelled at and just learns not to get caught…unless they want attention, in which case they get yelled at and learn that this is particularly fun because you pay attention to them when they do that and you look funny when you’re upset
MLMs oversaturate so many mediocre markets (beauty supplies, weight loss, vitamins, essential oils) these days - I'm seeing many of these "boss bapes" turn to real estate, NFTs and Crypto currency instead to try to get their friends' and online aquatainces' money. Scammers gotta scam :/
@@nathanielcraig3588 I agree - I just feel like all my former MLM hun friends are suspiciously trying (and failing) to become real estate agents. It’s not a lucrative income if everyone and their dog is trying to make it happen :)
I work in the localization industry and the amount of money these MLMs spend on hosting multilingual conventions and discussions are insane... and they never talk about their product, it's more like group pep talk sessions 😂
My ex-boyfriend tried to convince me that MLMs aren’t problematic at all and that they’re actually a good business model if you want to start a business. As in start your own MLM and then go from there raking in money for basically free labor… Just one of many red flags 🙂 Edit: he also argued that the people who fall for MLM schemes are just morons who really should be using the MLM training to start their own company. I pointed out that most people who fall into it are mothers with no way to make money while still raising their children and he basically went “🤷♀️ well….. case in point”
Thats absurd because no MLM is gonna let you get "training" and then just walk away. They suck you in hard. There's plenty of ways to learn business skills besides MLM....
I worked at the headquarters for an MLM and it was a case study observing everything behind the scenes. It’s very off-putting how people fall into the “look at the lives being changed” narrative instead of seeing everything for what it really is. This was so informative and very well researched! ❤
From what I've seen irl MLMs also target disabled women. Women who are oftentimes isolated socially and unable to work via conventional means. Offer them empowerment and community only for it to come crashing down when they're unable to keep up with the expected sales numbers/fees for products/constant advertising. [edit: Reading through all these comments makes me wonder if there's a connection between cult recruitment tactics and mlm recruitment tactics]
My mlm cringe story 😩 when I was 18 and first out on my own there was a friend of my moms that introduced me to Mary Kay. I was the perfect person to target for it. Really unknowledgeable about finances, super bubbly, didn’t have a support system, and I was of course gullible at that age. The first thing the director talked me into was opening up my first credit card to purchase a bunch of product and then they teach you to never take no as an answer. That Mary Kay becomes your whole life and to always put on a salesman’s face wherever you go. I was in it for almost a year and cringe to think about that time! I mean what woman in her late forties talks an 18 year old into opening up a credit card with zero other credit knowing that there’s a good chance it will screw her finances up to just go up another link in the chain? Glad people seem to know better now but the women in it don’t want to hear a bad word about it. They train you to ignore all of the bad signs.
I was recruit, together with my best friend, by Avon back in 1997 when we were 18. It didn't last long because we were loosing money very quickly but we both thought it was our fault because we just didn't know how to sell things. It took me many years to realise what it really was and how lucky we were to get out of it that quickly. I feel for those women that still think that anything good might come out for them from one of these MLMs. Oh yes, I'm Italian. Many of the MLMs that Mina mentioned reached us too.
Yeah! Recently found out about the ones putting up adds on job sites targeting students into selling life insurance under an mlm scheme. Many young men appear to be victims of this one
I always feel weird with these sorts of things, particularly since the products are usually based in a cishet patriarchal structure, and then the salespeople are often so desperate for people to buy from them that they will really talk to anyone, which just feels unsafe for all involved? Like the idea is it's family or friends who are selling this to you, but like we once did a Mary Kay thing at our house and the saleswoman was my mom's boss's wife's sister. My mom didn't even know this woman but she brought her into our dining room and had her teach her young daughters about makeup (because girls in middle school have to wear makeup, right?)
Weirdly I think that may have been the biggest positive of the MLMs was the expanding community of people they created. Social connection was a huge part of it! I'm sure there was some risk, but now we're so much more isolated from even our neighbours I think it's actually less safe. (However, the communities are ultimately predatory.)
All video i was thinking about my family's experience with herbalife and then it turns out they ARE very involved with latino communities! I'm from South America and went to a christian school. We had teachers that came from the US to teach english and do missionary work and one of them was involved in herbalife. My mom almost became part of it (she got asked to hold some reunions at our home) but cut ties with said teacher and unfortunately some of my classmates' moms when it clicked what was happening. Great video!
A lot of us (well, the older ones of us perhaps) can remember either our mothers or other women around us being an Avon Lady, or similar. My mum was a Nutrimetics lady. This was the 90s. We had Bessemer cookware “parties” and Tupperware parties. (Lots of food. Boring for us kids- as the eldest girl there, I always had to entertain the other kids.) My mum taught me to use makeup and a lot of it was based on Nutrimetics stuff. I also went along to a few “training events” with my mum. And of course, mum didn’t really make money. Because it was about constantly finding new recruits and sales. You’d think I’d have been wary myself. Yet I had friends into Tupperware. And myself got into NewWays (supposedly healthy personal care products etc). Frankly, that was a lot of money and sure I got use of the products but yikes. Just very not great. We were even told to set up our own websites to sell the stuff. As if people wouldn’t Google it. 🙄
My mom was an Avon lady when I was a kid, she had moved up to filling in as a district manager at one point. Politics and her not being offered the job full time caused her to quit. Fast forward a few years later a coworker brought a book in and I realized how much I missed the product, signed up to sell about a month later mostly for the discount. Have met some great people who found me online (or their kids found me because they are older and like the old school delivery 😂)
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Once I got a dm from an old friend from high school asking me if I wanted to earn money from home, working with social media. The thing is, I work as a full time influencer, from home…
I haven’t finished the video yet but i have to type this or i’ll forget lol i often see Avon ads on youtube and they make me sick to my stomach because they ALWAYS target single moms, for example they say something like “i’m proud of myself that i work for my children’s happiness” and they also want to make you believe that there is this whole community where you can find other women and support. it’s so sickening that they prey on single mothers loneliness and their need to provide for their kid especially since we know that joining an MLM can easily make you lose money.
i live in utah and…. yeah there are so many mlms here constantly recruiting people. i can’t tell you how many times i’ve gotten dms from girls i knew in high school. also, i work at starbucks and there are so many mlms who come in with a group of people they’re trying to recruit, claiming to live in luxury. meanwhile, they’re waiting for those people to leave first so they don’t see them drive away in their non-ferraris
I just want to touch on the comment about stay at home moms (sahm's). You had said that stay at home moms were more mainstream and could afford things with a single earner household and that ever since we started becoming double earner households, the price of things have gone up to reflect that. The price of things, ie inflation, didn't go up because more people were working. Inflation happened but wages stagnated. Wages have not gone up in proportion to inflation since the 60's and as a result, more women HAD to enter the workforce to help make up the gap in their income. This is a subject I'm very passionate about since I have been a single earner household without dependents, a single earner household with a dependent (child), part of a double income household with more than one child. I've lived it all. It's so hard. I remember being a single mom and had to live with my mom because I couldn't afford rent on my own PLUS the cost of child care. I couldn't be a SAHM with two kids because I didn't make enough and needed help with childcare from my MIL. And I currently can't work a job because I have 4 kids now and child care for them out of school is more than my mortgage. One thing you touched on that a lot of people without kids might not realize is that our modern work culture isn't very friendly to moms. I had to work at Home Depot for about 5 months last year and had to ultimately leave because they just aren't a family friendly employer. The attendance policy is very rigid: I had 3 infractions due to my kids being sick twice, and then I got sick. My house has some sort of bug from the fall they start school, until the spring when they get out of school. We are constantly sick. Making doctors appointments and dentist appointments were near impossible with a schedule that is random and the hours are awful. Working during the weekend when your kids are home sucks. So, you can see how MLM's are so attractive to these women. I was part of Mary Kay as a young mom. It didn't last long. I saw it for what it was and got out without losing much except my time, thank god. I make it my crusade to rally against them when I see them target vulnerable people now because they are so predatory. The people they target, for the most part, can't lose that start up money. Losing $100 to start up Mary Kay back in 2013 for me was painful. I made it back in the first round of sales and left after that. My upline tried to persuade me to spend $6,000 on products, saying if I were really serious about making money, I'd take the risk. She also tried to persuade all of her downline to sell as much as possible after her husband died to help her deal with the grief so that should tell you who these people are.
Another group that MLMs target are military spouses. Many military families move around every couple years, so MLMs scheme their way into saying "you can work from anywhere." Or the service member gets deployed, leaving the spouse and children at home, and unfortunately, the spouse becomes even more of a target as they may feel lonely, desire to seek community, or want to try and earn extra income without needing to leave their children.
As an active Mormon, I knew MLMs were a huge thing but I had no idea that I was in the center of it lmao, my mom always hated them but I never really got the point, tysm for helping me understand it all Mina, love your videos
I remember 'Lean In' by Sheryl Sandburg. I worked at a book store in the 2010s, & 'Lean In' would often be purchased along with 'Keep Calm and ___' stuff, planners that said stuff like 'Not all who wander are lost' or anything involving Chip & Joanna Gaines. Ahh the 2010s lol
My grandma sold Avon forever. As a stay at home mom in the 70’s and 80’s she had time on her hands. Didn’t even consider that she might have been the target audience for a an MLM for this very reason. Aww. Shoutout grandma
When I was on maternity leave I got so many messages from MLMs that preyed on my very real vulnerabilities at the time about being a bad mum for returning to work, wanting to do the best fornmy child and wanting some friendship with other mum. I can see how women can get caught up in them because they become so pervasive. Every baby group I went tonwould have a little stand with one of the members selling their "business opportunity". I believe they are very common on military bases too, as military wives often struggle to hold down a job if they are required move about a lot.
Thank you for highlighting this topic, Mina, and how gracious you are to those who have gotten sucked in for legitimate personal reasons. Truthfully, I have hoped for a long time that this "business model," which is actually a pyramid scheme and inherently predatory, could just be made entirely illegal in the USA where I reside. Our government is tasked among other things with protecting the consumer from predatory schemes like this, and the "downline" IS the consumer! We must recognize that lawless markets trample the already impoverished and exploit the vulnerable. This is why regulations exist.
Also just so you know, Body shop is mlm too. Avon and Oriflame are still really big in Serbia, my friend is Avon lady and I was so sad when she told me she got into that. Even my mom asked "she got into that"? But I understood why she did. She was a targeted audience. She was a stay at home mom, in rural area (village next to the small town, and even town I live in is half an hour drive from big cities) and she doesn't drive so she was limited on everything. And also she is quite successful since a lot of women in village would get absolutely anything they see since they don't have things available to them. It's really sad actually how they target these kinds of vulnerable people
There was a woman in my hometown who successfully got the Mary Kay car. We were always floored when we saw it around town….like how did you sell that much? Fascinating to know she must have bought it outright to have owned the car so long.
i’m from utah. my mom used to be apart of a MLM, i know multiple people apart of an MLM. When i went to a birthday party in elementary school the birthday girls mom gave us the Avon run down and gave us (8 yr olds) free samples.
as someone who used to work door to door, it really annoys me when people mock the victims of these shitty "jobs" - its many peoples only employment option and it seemed good at the time! the people being cruel to the victims of these schemes are not immune to propaganda and need to realise that
It’s worth adding that MLMs would likely be illegal if it weren’t for the politics in the US. Many that operate overseas even started in the US. It’s a money issue
A major part missing from this video is disability. Disabled people are targeted by MLM's and are more likely to sign up due to employers being ableist, the wage gap between what is truly a living wage and what people actually receive for SSI and SSDI, and many jobs refusing to be accessible. Many of them are home bound too and face isolation
Hola Mina! This is the account of my sister but I don't mind, hahaha, and we are fascinated with the way that you make your topics as a historical criticism, and I agree with the position. Here in Mexico, the phenomenon Herbalife in the 2000's was such a big thing!, people buying milshakes as a diet, or supplements instead of food due to the working days; time after has been shown that products increase link to liver damage, tca and other diseases. Nowadays continues to operate but no longer with the same impact in the first twelve years (approx). Comparing USA to Mexico (cuz I can't take all situations for granted in LATAM), the concept for consumers is to have the 3B (bueno, bonito, barato = good, pretty, cheap) hahaha💅. Traditions prevail over it, and the mothers usually see for basic needs such as food, clothing, hygiene and health. Other point to consider is having more one job, even if they are very small as the way to secure income anddd, well for "las jefas/señoras/dueñas de la casa", yasss, is helpful when you want a few extra pesos (unos pesillos no le caen mal a nadie) or it's an access to buy some discounted products for their families, so it's not so applied to the marked strategy. When I was a child, at home, my mother, a teacher, I remember in that time she had Andrea, Terra and Avon catalogs for buy to us shoes, makeup or perfumes by of the quality of the product and sometimes we bought some Jafra's stuff that aunts sold with their catalogs. 🤭😋 For this reason, in the context of certain MLM companies, they work, there are also many that scam (it happens more with services and supplements, the horrorr) or stop operating.....definitely is a hole theme to think, share and add points to question more than consumer behavior as a part of social phenomenon. And well, well, greetings and saludos chica, muy D+ todérrimo!
Ergh how did you not know Avon? My Mom used Avon lipsticks when I was little. She only bought in stores though, not from an Avon lady. Amway and Mary Kay are the biggest MLMs I know. Amway is also super cultish. They prey on lonely people, get you into a friendly group, bleed dry your wealth. If you leave, they'll follow you and try to get back at you. Those poor victims with stocks of Amway products they can't sell. The products are fine, but the fact that it's a bloodthirsty MLM is disgusting. Somehow they manage to stay legal?!
I'm discovering today that AVON is an MLM, I grew up with my aunts, grandmothers and neighbors sitting on our doors and asking who had a new magazine to look at, this is something we do religiously here in Brazil and to this day I love and use Avon nail polish 😂😂When someone moves cities, it is a priority to find a trustworthy seller to continue having access to magazines too
My mom was actually a Mary Kay distributor when she was in college but luckily she managed to get out before it got bad for her. We still have some of the makeup products around the house
My sister is part of a mlm company but she’s not required to stock pile products . Her challenge I would say is keeping up with using the product and the marketing of it .
i grew up in a household with a single stay-at-home mother who sold tupperware and hosted parties. my mum wasn’t even aware that she was contributing to an MLM, and now that she’s not doing it anymore, we have got a crap tone of tupperware!
I will say that there are a lot of mlm’s where it is hard to make money without having a down line, but there are some companies that you can make money without recruiting anyone if you’d like to work hard and get your own sales. Nor do they all require you to keep your own product inventory. I hate that the way the get rich “schemey” mlms have made it harder to have a legit done for you business with a small buy in 🤷🏻♀️
I think the right question is not "Why do women still join MLMs?" but "Why do we still have MLMs in the first place and how to fight against their existence". We mock the women who join MLMs effectively shifting the blame from the company onto a regular person who bought the scam who is also sort of a victim in this situation. The truth is these companies employ armies of psychologists who's only job is to come up with manipulation tactics for attracting customers and employees to the company, making themselves sound as appealing as possible. How does a one regular, often desperate for money person is expected to stand against this and not let it affect them? I do empathize with these women, but also like get out of my DMs, girls 💅
This is so true! It's important to show these insidious tactics because they are weaponized by not only MLMs but other get rich quick schemes like NFTs.
Because how else are they going to find a job and they suck at setting up their own enterprises? (Disclaimer: I'm not excluding men from this as well, there are some that are tempted). As a jobseeker, I thought about going into MLMs myself, but I can see that it benefits the main company oppose to actually helping me. It's no different from me buying a random item from a department store and selling it on ebay for a much higher price than what I bought it for. The main difference is that, the company has basically tricked me into paying for a whole heap of crap which I could've bought from one of their retail branches who sell for much cheaper. Honestly, I'm glad I'm in a country which gives welfare to people. It reduces the pressure on me needing to go into the more "shadier" and crappier businesses. I just keep volunteering, helping my community to meet my job seeking quotas, planned by my job service providers in order to meet my requisite of getting the job seeking welfare payment from the government (my job service provider is getting paid by the government too, I don't pay for anything). Easy!
To also add on my point without editing the comment. Some people are also peer pressured into these jobs. I myself can put up with rumours and accusations that I'm "not trying", but some people can't and I worry one day, I won't be able to any longer if I have to live with people under the same roof who does thee things (in those situation, I would suggest fake having a job and make sure those dumbasses think I have a job by doing "job" related things).
I was a part of the MLM for a several years during High school. I'd be aware of anyone who is trying to sell you MLM as an "easy way to get rich". I only have good memories of this times and I am sill in contact with some friends I made though this experience. I was able to earn some money on side, which was fine for me as a student still living with my parents. But to build a business though MLM and earn some real money is work and a hazard, the same way it is to build any other business. You need time, invest money into the marketing (website, parties, travel expenses, online ads - whatever is your way). And it still might not work for you (maybe there is a too much of this brand in your city, maybe a big competitor will enter the market few months after you sign up) I can't say that MLM is bad thing on it's own, just be careful for what company (the conditions may wary from country to country) and what type of a person is recuting you. Is it someone who is actually there to help you and support you no matter the numbers you bring (maybe your actual friend you trust), or just someone ready to "nudge" you into doing more. (For example an Facebook star posing next to the new car talking about a "passive income").
wait - i haven't finished watching yet, but have we talked about how f'd up the girl scout cookies sales model is? AND THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WITH THOSE THIN MINTS TOO!
The amount of times I've been messaged from people from High School (that I didn't even know well) the exact way you did in the beginning. I am Triggered.
Another reason why Mormon women are more inclined to join MLM (I was raised Mormon) is that women are (very strongly) encouraged to out a future family in front of a career (this goes along with being encouraged to be stay at home mothers but adds another aspect) Oftentimes when I was in youth group I would hear leaders and my peers say to get a degree just in case you don’t get married and make sure it is compatible with having children. Oftentimes if it’s not you just put your career on hold for your husband. I believe this has changed recently but the church is also very regional so different people may have had this drilled into their head less or more. Especially with how families can no longer get by on one income. Anyways if you’ve been taught from a young age that you should only get a degree/invest in your career that will accommodate a family and that it is ‘just in case’ you are put in a situation where you are more dependent on your husband and have less opportunities in the workplace.
Also side note: I’m not surprised they quoted the Book of Mormon at company events. They quote that book at every opportunity, even if it’s inappropriate because you’re taught if you don’t spread the gospel then you’re being selfish and preventing people from going to heaven.
The worst part is really the blaming. These companies take advantage of systemic issues to recruit vulnerable people and then blame their victims. Which just reinforces the system of viewing women (and other marginalized people) negatively
Mormon here- I think that another reason that our women tend to be more vulnerable to the MLM thing is that the church teaches self sufficience, and MLM reps pitch these things as "owning your own business". That combined with the other manipulative selling tehcniques makes a lot of us think, "oh awesome! Another way I can contribute to the family!", especially if said family is struggling financially.
i’m not from the americas but i grew up with several of these MLM’s in my general vicinity. my mum n her friends def had several tupperware parties and herbalife was known to be the “get thin the healthy way” company for a while. luckily no close family member ever joined in as a seller, but usually only attented sessions of friends n extended family to help thme out. my most noticable memory however, is of a MASSIVE Amway convention my grandma took me to because her sister (who lived several hours away from us) was a seller there. i was maybe 8?9? and the convention was filled with 50+ people (wheras tupperware n herbalife where usually mum brands). even as a kid i understood that all this was sketchy af n buying from them usually just ment more clutter in the house n constant invitations to buy more
I have wanted to work on my own time and be my own boss for years now (still do) and people kept telling me to not do so. The way I envisioned it was like being a RUclipsr, twitch streamer, music/art producer that does commissions, etc. It took me years to realize that people thought that I wanted to join an MLM 😂 Like, I didn't even know what they were. I just saw people on RUclips or Instagram making their own stuff and selling it as their business and thought that was cool. I wanted to be an artist and work from home on commissions. Later I added on the "and I'll also upload SpeedPaint videos or music covers online as an extra income", but it's always been about me making cool stuff that I'd then sell without having a boss tell me when to do what and looking over my shoulder the whole time. Then I learned what mlms are, how they work and how you practically never make money in them. That's when I realized "oh, these people were thinking I wanted to join that!" I didn't find it stupid or anything, just hilarious that they thought the artsy kid who dreamed of being a superstar wanted to settle for selling essential oils and holding selling parties when I very much don't like people visiting my place 😂
I just remembered that when i was a child my mother was invited to a Tupperware garden party to which me and one of my siblings tagged along,,, but we only went to the one and never again and now i understand why 💀 my mother kept saying she got "weird vibes" from the host and attendees, she probably didn't know how to explain MLMs to her children lmao
Oh Avon......I buyed some stuff from them in like first half of the 2000's, I was like in middle school.... and one of my classmates was a 'vendor' and she was like 14....and another classmate was the competence, she was a 'vendor' for Oriflame. Again, we were in middle school Both of them tried to recruit me, but because of my social anxiety, I refused XD
My mother got caught up in one of these for some sort of caffeine/coffee appetite suppressant, and even got involved in helping someone set up and build furniture in their office. I don’t think my mum sold a single thing but she would not stop waxing lyrical about it for so long. It was so frustrating to witness. She was also struggling with finding decent paying full time work at that time and they absolutely preyed on my mother’s anxiety. Garbage people.
I only realised recently that when I was 19 I almost joined a MLM. My mum's friend invited her and my sisters to one of those at home presentations and we attended more out of politeness and for the social aspect (most of the ladies were my old primary school teachers). I was about to start uni and jobless and ended up signing up to the interest list - I remember having like an hour long online presentation shown to me and a few phonecalls from the higher-up who hired my mum's friend and I don't even know how I got out of it, I think it just dawned on me how strange the situation was. Thank god lol
Another group that MLMs have a chokehold on is military wives. My mom used to sell Avon, Tupperware, Melaluca, and I had no clue what those were till I was older. But it's in the same vein as the new mothers, being married to someone in the military makes it hard to maintain a career when you're moving states or even countries every 3 to 4 years so the MLMs see those women as prime targets, I mean a career that can go with you anywhere, and lets you stay home with your kids? Sounds like a dream come true
A good friend of mine fell for these nft, trading bullshit and is now part of such a scheme. I tried talking to her about it but she won’t listen. I feel really bad for her. This toxic hustle culture that comes with it made her sick several times. Sometimes I can’t believe that these things are legal 😢
Hi Mina! I think women still join mlm because they are in the risky group. And by “risky group” I mean they need to take care of themselves and also their children and elderly parents. Nobody’s going to babysit their children for free. Women don’t have that option. So we often look for any chance to make money. I said it as a woman from extremely poor family
The part towards the end where Mina was talking about people making comments on social media posts calling specific mlm-involved individuals "stupid" has me thinking; is it ever okay to use an individual's perceived lack of intelligence against them as an insult? Furthermore, do those who call mlm-participants "stupid", "dumb", etc do so on the basis that being stupid in this regard is a choice? IQ is -- to a large extent -- inherited and can only be changed so much through training. So yes, perhaps many people who get sucked into mlm schemes are stupid, but then again they cannot [completely] help it.
Might be worth saying that makes the mlm car gift thing even more sketchy is that, for at least most mlms, how you qualify for the car is reaching a certain rank by recruiting a certain number of people/making a certain dollar amount in sales each month. Once you qualify, you can sign up to get a monthly check specifically to go toward whatever car you, yourself, decide to go to the dealership and sign a lease for (the company will tell you which cars qualify for this deal, make/model, etc) So if you don't keep your rank each month by selling a certain amount/having a certain number of ppl in your downline, then you don't receive your monthly car payment check from your mlm, leaving you on the hook for your own expensive car payment. The way mlmers talk about the "free car" thing is often very (intentionally) misleading bc this is hardly ever explained up front. Hope this was helpful for those who were curious
for the title i was so confused what the whole thing had to do with men loving men 😭 ngl bc of the women and mlm thing i thought it was gonna talk about straight women fetishising mlm relationships but that wouldn’t make sense with the rest of the title 💀
There was a boom of MLM's in Mexico in the 90's. They had a lot of success, probably because of the economic crisis, currency devaluation and gender politics of the time. There were even some Mexican MLM's such as "Arabela". They never went away. I would say they are still thriving within the country.
In my country in latam, avon, l'ebel, cyzone, esika, are seen as a side job, at the salon, some daughter and sister help each other and they have cheap products and can be as good or better than drugstore. The other ones, amyway, herbalife, are expensive af, and often, the sale person target people with some illness like cancer, but in the end people stop buying from.then and block them 😅
I'm pretty sure MLM:s haven't just gone global, they've BEEN global for a while now. At least going by my anecdotal evidence lol. Here in Sweden, my dad was a Tupperware distributor briefly in the 90's, and another relative (who was a stay at home mom) was a distributor for the Swedish clothing brand Lingon & Blåbär in the early 00's. I don't think Lingon & Blåbär exist anymore (I only get results from second hand stores if I google), but I think they were popular back then. I was a young kid at the time though so I'm not a hundred percent certain of course.
My parents are currently working in what seems to be identical to MLMs and everything you've mentioned from recruitment, selling methods, and practice clicked in my head. They always pretend to be rich to recruit members but in reality we can barely pay our rent and we dont eat sometimes lmao
This happens fairly regularly. It's not uncommon for gay men to think anti mlm spaces are just where homophobes congregate online and get a pleasant surprise that they are in fact anti pyramid scheme and not inherently anti queer rights.
To be clear, the MLM "business owners" don't actually purchase the product at a wholesale price. The actual company purchases the products at a wholesale price and sells it to their distributors for a huge profit, and then the distributor's upline also takes a large percentage of whatever sale the distributor makes. The issue here is that the distributors ARE the customer, the company survives off of turning their employees into customers, and often set a mandatory amount of stock that the distributors have to buy regularly in order to stay with the company regardless of whether they've sold their previous stock or not.
@@themagicknightress7132 If you start your own business, you would source the ingredients yourself at a wholesale price and work with a lab, a manufacturer, or create the product yourself, essentially only paying the price of these services, and then adding your own profit on top of what you spent on manufacturing before you sell it. When you work for an MLM, you're not just paying sourcing and manufacturing costs, the company's profit is included, which is often three times or more the cost of manufacturing. At that point you're literally just their customer, you're not starting your own business. It's like if I bought a lipstick from MAC and then resold it for a higher price. MLMs also have clauses that don't allow you to open your own personal website or storefront, they only let you do things through their own website or storefront where they can advertise recruitment, because they don't want actual customers, they want their employees to be their customers.
When I heard about MLM, my first thought was yours as well. I thought they meant men-loving-men but then I learned of the pyramid scheme that they meant
@@themagicknightress7132 they’re explaining how in lots of mlms, people higher in the “upline “ are making a higher profit margin on products sold than those lower in the downline.
As a disabled person I feel like MLM's severely prey on my community. Many of us struggle to work outside of the home, getting disability benefits is a nightmare to go through that I would not wish on my worst enemy, and even when you do get those much needed benefits the amount still leaves you well belove the poverty level. Legitimate work from home jobs are hard to find and I feel people turn to MLM's thinking they might be "safe" option. They aren't and then people who have the most to lose end up losing what little they have. Not to mention how one of the major sections of the MLM market is sketchy health stuff that promises to make all your issues better if you only drink these oils or take this shake. I once was stuck at an MLM party at salon and the woman hosting told me that the Young Living oils would stop cancer and Ebola among other things that someone else might believe like drinking the oils would help my acid reflux. I thankfully had a mom who worked in health care and pharmaceuticals and knew right away her claims were false. Still there are many people who don't know these things and could easily fall victim in their desperation for better health.
Exactly! My mom got caught up in thrive several years back (and while it does legitimately help her with her specific disabilities) she had to stop being so involved in it because all her thrive 'friends' were coming out as anti-vax/essential oilists
@@starcasita That's so scary! It's awful how a lot of these mlm's will even intentionally go after people with health issues and disabilities claiming to have cures for all kinds of things. I hate to think of the physical, emotional, and financial harm they do. The way our culture tries to sell and brand wellness is actually a whole thing. Like look at Goop.
@@abrenn I'm glad she stepped back from them and that at least the product she was getting was helpful to her. Its scary thinking those people are selling their products as alternatives to real safe medicines.
In the list of 10 reasons why the LDS dominate pyramid schemes, there's an important omission: these companies have a stranglehold on local and state governments in Utah. Their lobbying is so intense that the representatives in these government organizations routinely push to keep them legal even while they impoverish their employees
exactly. it’s not just seeing individuals participating in MLMs, but entire institutions supporting them (i.e. university buildings donated by doTERRA). MLM culture defines *physical space*, not just social media and “hey hun!” DMs from that girl in your high school bio class.
@@norwhals.norwhals I once read of a hospital that allowed doTerra for "therapeutic use" and I wanted to rip my fucking hair out. I hate those people so much
And before it gets that big its starts off small. Teachers and moms sign up with a MLM so make more money. They push their MLM at their jobs and in their neighborhoods. MLM products then become seen as a legitimate products and even good. How bad can MLMs be if a valuable member of the neighborhood is selling them?
Even though MLM uniquely targets women, a lot of its slander end up framing women overall as naive or selfish when we completely overlook the companies’ deliberate recruitment strategies and gendered marketing. Especially with the rise of NFT and AI bros, it goes to show that although women can be more vulnerable, they’re not any more delusional than a man when it comes to get-rich-quick schemes.
I really hate how they use "feminism" as a way to convince women they are getting "empowered" by joining MLMs and make the company richer. *sits in the soap box* Which is a great example of how capitalism is damaging to any human rights movement by a way of making it into a product or a driving force to simply sell shit.
@Heleen Wolf There is gender specific dominance in those fields, but other industries (e.g. IT) also have similar problems. It's how these organisations market and WHO they market. I do feel that the video is biased, but when I look at the subject a bit more the focus is on MLMs and what tends to be in those (which happen to be women). I just take these videos as descriptive third-party analysis of how ONE group of humans behave by and remove the bias by thinking "these groups of humans do X, who's to say the OTHER group of humans don't do the same thing and maybe in different ways"? I try not to put too much pressure on content creators on their crap. They're worth listening to as much as an academic, but they're not invincible from scrutiny.
I'm from Poland and here we have a meme joke, that your friend from primary school reaches out to you to say sorry for bullying you and then they go straight to "do you want anything from avon?" xd
AHAHAHA HELP-
This happened to me except it was just an ex-friend and they wanted to sell me mushroom tea. Hurt my feelings so bad at the time. Now I feel embarrassed for him lol.
WOW post-soviet Avon/Oriflame/Faberlic moment xd
yeah Avon is pretty much just a meme in Poland
Moja ciocia opychała kosmetyki z avonu
me thinking mina paused to elaborate more on her gay fanfic referencing but she instead is just defending her curtains
Exactly what I thought
Omg same lol
Same, I was more than ready for MLM fiction discourse!
Thisss! Would not have noticed the curtains also.
@@ThatWeirdFinn it was honestly kind of a waste of time. No one cares about the curtains, at all.
Every person who owns a cat: “Let me preface this by saying that my cat does as she wants whatever I say or do...” 😹😸 I feel ya.
❤❤❤
Absolutely guilty on this one 😟 I just kind of live here and pay the bills but the cats run the place
@@khopper2004 Same here! And loving it 😆
I’m my cat’s human slave so whatever her holiness does, I submit to her will🙇🏻♀️🙇🏻♀️🤣
My friend: I don’t understand why people don’t discipline their cats…
Me: No, no, no. You don’t understand. A dog may get yelled at and learn a thing is bad. A cat will get yelled at and just learns not to get caught…unless they want attention, in which case they get yelled at and learn that this is particularly fun because you pay attention to them when they do that and you look funny when you’re upset
MLMs oversaturate so many mediocre markets (beauty supplies, weight loss, vitamins, essential oils) these days - I'm seeing many of these "boss bapes" turn to real estate, NFTs and Crypto currency instead to try to get their friends' and online aquatainces' money. Scammers gotta scam :/
Real estate isn't a scam unless you make it one though, that's the only one I'm willing to defend lol
@@nathanielcraig3588 I agree - I just feel like all my former MLM hun friends are suspiciously trying (and failing) to become real estate agents. It’s not a lucrative income if everyone and their dog is trying to make it happen :)
@@nathanielcraig3588
Even a shit house is overpriced.
A house is a house. No wonder the housing market is so bad
@@alohatigers1199 That depends on local markets and a lot of other factors...
A girl I know from high school went into real estate after doing an MLM for years
Herbalife: "We don't target the Hispanic Community"
Also Herbalife: ✨ E X T R A V A G A N Z A L A T I N A ✨
😂 that's why they're huge in south America. Fckng colonizers 😂
😂
I feel like “extravaganza laMina” is just sitting on a platter for this one Mina to coin.
Caliente, exótica, empoderada.
I work in the localization industry and the amount of money these MLMs spend on hosting multilingual conventions and discussions are insane... and they never talk about their product, it's more like group pep talk sessions 😂
My ex-boyfriend tried to convince me that MLMs aren’t problematic at all and that they’re actually a good business model if you want to start a business. As in start your own MLM and then go from there raking in money for basically free labor…
Just one of many red flags 🙂
Edit: he also argued that the people who fall for MLM schemes are just morons who really should be using the MLM training to start their own company. I pointed out that most people who fall into it are mothers with no way to make money while still raising their children and he basically went “🤷♀️ well….. case in point”
BIG yikes 😬 I’m not the best person but I can’t even imagine thinking it’s okay to take advantage people and being so proud as to promote it
Lack of empathy and greed driven personality - caustic.
Never been so relieved to see the word 'ex' before boyfriend in a story. That amount of deliberate malice.. good lord
Jesus on a bike. Was this exceptional fellow also a fan of Ayn Rand?
Thats absurd because no MLM is gonna let you get "training" and then just walk away. They suck you in hard. There's plenty of ways to learn business skills besides MLM....
I worked at the headquarters for an MLM and it was a case study observing everything behind the scenes. It’s very off-putting how people fall into the “look at the lives being changed” narrative instead of seeing everything for what it really is. This was so informative and very well researched! ❤
From what I've seen irl MLMs also target disabled women. Women who are oftentimes isolated socially and unable to work via conventional means. Offer them empowerment and community only for it to come crashing down when they're unable to keep up with the expected sales numbers/fees for products/constant advertising.
[edit: Reading through all these comments makes me wonder if there's a connection between cult recruitment tactics and mlm recruitment tactics]
Oh, there absolutely is. That's why mom's are called "commercial cults". They are incredibly manipulative.
mlm's, not moms!
My mlm cringe story 😩 when I was 18 and first out on my own there was a friend of my moms that introduced me to Mary Kay. I was the perfect person to target for it. Really unknowledgeable about finances, super bubbly, didn’t have a support system, and I was of course gullible at that age. The first thing the director talked me into was opening up my first credit card to purchase a bunch of product and then they teach you to never take no as an answer. That Mary Kay becomes your whole life and to always put on a salesman’s face wherever you go. I was in it for almost a year and cringe to think about that time! I mean what woman in her late forties talks an 18 year old into opening up a credit card with zero other credit knowing that there’s a good chance it will screw her finances up to just go up another link in the chain? Glad people seem to know better now but the women in it don’t want to hear a bad word about it. They train you to ignore all of the bad signs.
I grew up with female relatives of mine coming over to our house to sell us MLM products. I remember a relative of mine had the Mary Kay pink car
I was recruit, together with my best friend, by Avon back in 1997 when we were 18.
It didn't last long because we were loosing money very quickly but we both thought it was our fault because we just didn't know how to sell things.
It took me many years to realise what it really was and how lucky we were to get out of it that quickly.
I feel for those women that still think that anything good might come out for them from one of these MLMs.
Oh yes, I'm Italian. Many of the MLMs that Mina mentioned reached us too.
There are also MLMs that are more male focused - like Prepaid Legal/Legal Shield, Cutco and ACN.
The knife selling ones come to mind as well!
Yeah! Recently found out about the ones putting up adds on job sites targeting students into selling life insurance under an mlm scheme. Many young men appear to be victims of this one
I love that MLMs are banned on TikTok yet they’re seeing such a resurgence ❤
When I found out that they were banned I started reporting them as they came by me and TT does nothing.
@@JustHarperGray it does take down their accounts sometimes. I report every single one I see but they used to enforce it more back in 2021 :/
Keep an eye out and your gaurd up - there's an MLM for *every* good and service!
Thanks, Mina, for using your platform to educate about MLMs.
I really love the retro design you used for the graphics, quotes, and titles.
I always feel weird with these sorts of things, particularly since the products are usually based in a cishet patriarchal structure, and then the salespeople are often so desperate for people to buy from them that they will really talk to anyone, which just feels unsafe for all involved? Like the idea is it's family or friends who are selling this to you, but like we once did a Mary Kay thing at our house and the saleswoman was my mom's boss's wife's sister. My mom didn't even know this woman but she brought her into our dining room and had her teach her young daughters about makeup (because girls in middle school have to wear makeup, right?)
Weirdly I think that may have been the biggest positive of the MLMs was the expanding community of people they created. Social connection was a huge part of it! I'm sure there was some risk, but now we're so much more isolated from even our neighbours I think it's actually less safe. (However, the communities are ultimately predatory.)
All video i was thinking about my family's experience with herbalife and then it turns out they ARE very involved with latino communities! I'm from South America and went to a christian school. We had teachers that came from the US to teach english and do missionary work and one of them was involved in herbalife. My mom almost became part of it (she got asked to hold some reunions at our home) but cut ties with said teacher and unfortunately some of my classmates' moms when it clicked what was happening.
Great video!
A lot of us (well, the older ones of us perhaps) can remember either our mothers or other women around us being an Avon Lady, or similar. My mum was a Nutrimetics lady. This was the 90s.
We had Bessemer cookware “parties” and Tupperware parties. (Lots of food. Boring for us kids- as the eldest girl there, I always had to entertain the other kids.)
My mum taught me to use makeup and a lot of it was based on Nutrimetics stuff. I also went along to a few “training events” with my mum.
And of course, mum didn’t really make money. Because it was about constantly finding new recruits and sales.
You’d think I’d have been wary myself. Yet I had friends into Tupperware. And myself got into NewWays (supposedly healthy personal care products etc). Frankly, that was a lot of money and sure I got use of the products but yikes. Just very not great.
We were even told to set up our own websites to sell the stuff. As if people wouldn’t Google it. 🙄
My mom was an Avon lady when I was a kid, she had moved up to filling in as a district manager at one point. Politics and her not being offered the job full time caused her to quit. Fast forward a few years later a coworker brought a book in and I realized how much I missed the product, signed up to sell about a month later mostly for the discount. Have met some great people who found me online (or their kids found me because they are older and like the old school delivery 😂)
Once I got a dm from an old friend from high school asking me if I wanted to earn money from home, working with social media. The thing is, I work as a full time influencer, from home…
I'm too familiar with wlw (women love women) as a thing that every time I see mlm I also think of 'men love men' or even 'moms love moms' 😭😭
I haven’t finished the video yet but i have to type this or i’ll forget lol
i often see Avon ads on youtube and they make me sick to my stomach because they ALWAYS target single moms, for example they say something like “i’m proud of myself that i work for my children’s happiness” and they also want to make you believe that there is this whole community where you can find other women and support. it’s so sickening that they prey on single mothers loneliness and their need to provide for their kid especially since we know that joining an MLM can easily make you lose money.
i live in utah and…. yeah there are so many mlms here constantly recruiting people. i can’t tell you how many times i’ve gotten dms from girls i knew in high school. also, i work at starbucks and there are so many mlms who come in with a group of people they’re trying to recruit, claiming to live in luxury. meanwhile, they’re waiting for those people to leave first so they don’t see them drive away in their non-ferraris
I just want to touch on the comment about stay at home moms (sahm's). You had said that stay at home moms were more mainstream and could afford things with a single earner household and that ever since we started becoming double earner households, the price of things have gone up to reflect that. The price of things, ie inflation, didn't go up because more people were working. Inflation happened but wages stagnated. Wages have not gone up in proportion to inflation since the 60's and as a result, more women HAD to enter the workforce to help make up the gap in their income.
This is a subject I'm very passionate about since I have been a single earner household without dependents, a single earner household with a dependent (child), part of a double income household with more than one child. I've lived it all. It's so hard. I remember being a single mom and had to live with my mom because I couldn't afford rent on my own PLUS the cost of child care. I couldn't be a SAHM with two kids because I didn't make enough and needed help with childcare from my MIL. And I currently can't work a job because I have 4 kids now and child care for them out of school is more than my mortgage.
One thing you touched on that a lot of people without kids might not realize is that our modern work culture isn't very friendly to moms. I had to work at Home Depot for about 5 months last year and had to ultimately leave because they just aren't a family friendly employer. The attendance policy is very rigid: I had 3 infractions due to my kids being sick twice, and then I got sick. My house has some sort of bug from the fall they start school, until the spring when they get out of school. We are constantly sick. Making doctors appointments and dentist appointments were near impossible with a schedule that is random and the hours are awful. Working during the weekend when your kids are home sucks.
So, you can see how MLM's are so attractive to these women. I was part of Mary Kay as a young mom. It didn't last long. I saw it for what it was and got out without losing much except my time, thank god. I make it my crusade to rally against them when I see them target vulnerable people now because they are so predatory. The people they target, for the most part, can't lose that start up money. Losing $100 to start up Mary Kay back in 2013 for me was painful. I made it back in the first round of sales and left after that. My upline tried to persuade me to spend $6,000 on products, saying if I were really serious about making money, I'd take the risk. She also tried to persuade all of her downline to sell as much as possible after her husband died to help her deal with the grief so that should tell you who these people are.
Another group that MLMs target are military spouses. Many military families move around every couple years, so MLMs scheme their way into saying "you can work from anywhere." Or the service member gets deployed, leaving the spouse and children at home, and unfortunately, the spouse becomes even more of a target as they may feel lonely, desire to seek community, or want to try and earn extra income without needing to leave their children.
As an active Mormon, I knew MLMs were a huge thing but I had no idea that I was in the center of it lmao, my mom always hated them but I never really got the point, tysm for helping me understand it all Mina, love your videos
I remember 'Lean In' by Sheryl Sandburg. I worked at a book store in the 2010s, & 'Lean In' would often be purchased along with 'Keep Calm and ___' stuff, planners that said stuff like 'Not all who wander are lost' or anything involving Chip & Joanna Gaines. Ahh the 2010s lol
Wait, is this really where I learn that you actually need to 'burp' a Tupperware for it to close properly??
23:59 I think it’s honestly reflected the other way. Costs have risen, so family structures have changed to reflect those rising costs.
Watching this while making toast with my four year old lmao, thankyou queen I appreciate how you're shining a light on this
My grandma sold Avon forever. As a stay at home mom in the 70’s and 80’s she had time on her hands. Didn’t even consider that she might have been the target audience for a an MLM for this very reason. Aww. Shoutout grandma
When I was on maternity leave I got so many messages from MLMs that preyed on my very real vulnerabilities at the time about being a bad mum for returning to work, wanting to do the best fornmy child and wanting some friendship with other mum. I can see how women can get caught up in them because they become so pervasive. Every baby group I went tonwould have a little stand with one of the members selling their "business opportunity". I believe they are very common on military bases too, as military wives often struggle to hold down a job if they are required move about a lot.
Thank you for highlighting this topic, Mina, and how gracious you are to those who have gotten sucked in for legitimate personal reasons.
Truthfully, I have hoped for a long time that this "business model," which is actually a pyramid scheme and inherently predatory, could just be made entirely illegal in the USA where I reside. Our government is tasked among other things with protecting the consumer from predatory schemes like this, and the "downline" IS the consumer! We must recognize that lawless markets trample the already impoverished and exploit the vulnerable. This is why regulations exist.
Also just so you know, Body shop is mlm too.
Avon and Oriflame are still really big in Serbia, my friend is Avon lady and I was so sad when she told me she got into that. Even my mom asked "she got into that"? But I understood why she did. She was a targeted audience. She was a stay at home mom, in rural area (village next to the small town, and even town I live in is half an hour drive from big cities) and she doesn't drive so she was limited on everything. And also she is quite successful since a lot of women in village would get absolutely anything they see since they don't have things available to them. It's really sad actually how they target these kinds of vulnerable people
That's so good to know! I've only ever seen Body Shop stores never independent sellers, so I would have never guessed it was an MLM.
@@thenopedetective Yeah, it's not really known, but there are information about it
There was a woman in my hometown who successfully got the Mary Kay car. We were always floored when we saw it around town….like how did you sell that much? Fascinating to know she must have bought it outright to have owned the car so long.
i’m from utah. my mom used to be apart of a MLM, i know multiple people apart of an MLM. When i went to a birthday party in elementary school the birthday girls mom gave us the Avon run down and gave us (8 yr olds) free samples.
as someone who used to work door to door, it really annoys me when people mock the victims of these shitty "jobs" - its many peoples only employment option and it seemed good at the time! the people being cruel to the victims of these schemes are not immune to propaganda and need to realise that
It’s worth adding that MLMs would likely be illegal if it weren’t for the politics in the US. Many that operate overseas even started in the US. It’s a money issue
A major part missing from this video is disability. Disabled people are targeted by MLM's and are more likely to sign up due to employers being ableist, the wage gap between what is truly a living wage and what people actually receive for SSI and SSDI, and many jobs refusing to be accessible. Many of them are home bound too and face isolation
I'm currently doing my thesis on exactly this, connecting pyramid schemes / MLMs to gender income inequality basically. This video was great.
Hola Mina!
This is the account of my sister but I don't mind, hahaha, and we are fascinated with the way that you make your topics as a historical criticism, and I agree with the position.
Here in Mexico, the phenomenon Herbalife in the 2000's was such a big thing!, people buying milshakes as a diet, or supplements instead of food due to the working days; time after has been shown that products increase link to liver damage, tca and other diseases. Nowadays continues to operate but no longer with the same impact in the first twelve years (approx).
Comparing USA to Mexico (cuz I can't take all situations for granted in LATAM), the concept for consumers is to have the 3B (bueno, bonito, barato = good, pretty, cheap) hahaha💅. Traditions prevail over it, and the mothers usually see for basic needs such as food, clothing, hygiene and health. Other point to consider is having more one job, even if they are very small as the way to secure income anddd, well for "las jefas/señoras/dueñas de la casa", yasss, is helpful when you want a few extra pesos (unos pesillos no le caen mal a nadie) or it's an access to buy some discounted products for their families, so it's not so applied to the marked strategy.
When I was a child, at home, my mother, a teacher, I remember in that time she had Andrea, Terra and Avon catalogs for buy to us shoes, makeup or perfumes by of the quality of the product and sometimes we bought some Jafra's stuff that aunts sold with their catalogs. 🤭😋
For this reason, in the context of certain MLM companies, they work, there are also many that scam (it happens more with services and supplements, the horrorr) or stop operating.....definitely is a hole theme to think, share and add points to question more than consumer behavior as a part of social phenomenon.
And well, well, greetings and saludos chica, muy D+ todérrimo!
Ergh how did you not know Avon? My Mom used Avon lipsticks when I was little. She only bought in stores though, not from an Avon lady. Amway and Mary Kay are the biggest MLMs I know. Amway is also super cultish. They prey on lonely people, get you into a friendly group, bleed dry your wealth. If you leave, they'll follow you and try to get back at you. Those poor victims with stocks of Amway products they can't sell. The products are fine, but the fact that it's a bloodthirsty MLM is disgusting. Somehow they manage to stay legal?!
I'm discovering today that AVON is an MLM, I grew up with my aunts, grandmothers and neighbors sitting on our doors and asking who had a new magazine to look at, this is something we do religiously here in Brazil and to this day I love and use Avon nail polish 😂😂When someone moves cities, it is a priority to find a trustworthy seller to continue having access to magazines too
One of my favourites covering a topic I’ve been interested in recently yay!!❤
My mom was actually a Mary Kay distributor when she was in college but luckily she managed to get out before it got bad for her. We still have some of the makeup products around the house
My sister is part of a mlm company but she’s not required to stock pile products . Her challenge I would say is keeping up with using the product and the marketing of it .
i grew up in a household with a single stay-at-home mother who sold tupperware and hosted parties. my mum wasn’t even aware that she was contributing to an MLM, and now that she’s not doing it anymore, we have got a crap tone of tupperware!
I will say that there are a lot of mlm’s where it is hard to make money without having a down line, but there are some companies that you can make money without recruiting anyone if you’d like to work hard and get your own sales. Nor do they all require you to keep your own product inventory. I hate that the way the get rich “schemey” mlms have made it harder to have a legit done for you business with a small buy in 🤷🏻♀️
I think the right question is not "Why do women still join MLMs?" but "Why do we still have MLMs in the first place and how to fight against their existence".
We mock the women who join MLMs effectively shifting the blame from the company onto a regular person who bought the scam who is also sort of a victim in this situation. The truth is these companies employ armies of psychologists who's only job is to come up with manipulation tactics for attracting customers and employees to the company, making themselves sound as appealing as possible. How does a one regular, often desperate for money person is expected to stand against this and not let it affect them?
I do empathize with these women, but also like get out of my DMs, girls 💅
This is so true! It's important to show these insidious tactics because they are weaponized by not only MLMs but other get rich quick schemes like NFTs.
Because how else are they going to find a job and they suck at setting up their own enterprises? (Disclaimer: I'm not excluding men from this as well, there are some that are tempted). As a jobseeker, I thought about going into MLMs myself, but I can see that it benefits the main company oppose to actually helping me. It's no different from me buying a random item from a department store and selling it on ebay for a much higher price than what I bought it for. The main difference is that, the company has basically tricked me into paying for a whole heap of crap which I could've bought from one of their retail branches who sell for much cheaper. Honestly, I'm glad I'm in a country which gives welfare to people. It reduces the pressure on me needing to go into the more "shadier" and crappier businesses. I just keep volunteering, helping my community to meet my job seeking quotas, planned by my job service providers in order to meet my requisite of getting the job seeking welfare payment from the government (my job service provider is getting paid by the government too, I don't pay for anything). Easy!
To also add on my point without editing the comment. Some people are also peer pressured into these jobs. I myself can put up with rumours and accusations that I'm "not trying", but some people can't and I worry one day, I won't be able to any longer if I have to live with people under the same roof who does thee things (in those situation, I would suggest fake having a job and make sure those dumbasses think I have a job by doing "job" related things).
Doteera essential oils is the main MLM here in Ireland at the moment.
I was a part of the MLM for a several years during High school.
I'd be aware of anyone who is trying to sell you MLM as an "easy way to get rich". I only have good memories of this times and I am sill in contact with some friends I made though this experience. I was able to earn some money on side, which was fine for me as a student still living with my parents.
But to build a business though MLM and earn some real money is work and a hazard, the same way it is to build any other business. You need time, invest money into the marketing (website, parties, travel expenses, online ads - whatever is your way). And it still might not work for you (maybe there is a too much of this brand in your city, maybe a big competitor will enter the market few months after you sign up)
I can't say that MLM is bad thing on it's own, just be careful for what company (the conditions may wary from country to country) and what type of a person is recuting you. Is it someone who is actually there to help you and support you no matter the numbers you bring (maybe your actual friend you trust), or just someone ready to "nudge" you into doing more. (For example an Facebook star posing next to the new car talking about a "passive income").
my dumbass read this as "M&Ms". sobbing.
in my defence its 1 am
wait - i haven't finished watching yet, but have we talked about how f'd up the girl scout cookies sales model is? AND THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WITH THOSE THIN MINTS TOO!
The amount of times I've been messaged from people from High School (that I didn't even know well) the exact way you did in the beginning. I am Triggered.
Another reason why Mormon women are more inclined to join MLM (I was raised Mormon) is that women are (very strongly) encouraged to out a future family in front of a career (this goes along with being encouraged to be stay at home mothers but adds another aspect)
Oftentimes when I was in youth group I would hear leaders and my peers say to get a degree just in case you don’t get married and make sure it is compatible with having children. Oftentimes if it’s not you just put your career on hold for your husband. I believe this has changed recently but the church is also very regional so different people may have had this drilled into their head less or more. Especially with how families can no longer get by on one income.
Anyways if you’ve been taught from a young age that you should only get a degree/invest in your career that will accommodate a family and that it is ‘just in case’ you are put in a situation where you are more dependent on your husband and have less opportunities in the workplace.
Also side note: I’m not surprised they quoted the Book of Mormon at company events. They quote that book at every opportunity, even if it’s inappropriate because you’re taught if you don’t spread the gospel then you’re being selfish and preventing people from going to heaven.
WHEN SHE SAID 'and you can have it too' IN THAT TONE AND WITH THAT FACE ,,,,,, I LOST IT
The worst part is really the blaming. These companies take advantage of systemic issues to recruit vulnerable people and then blame their victims. Which just reinforces the system of viewing women (and other marginalized people) negatively
Oooh yes! Love this topic and hoped you would discuss it eventually! 😘😊
Mormon here- I think that another reason that our women tend to be more vulnerable to the MLM thing is that the church teaches self sufficience, and MLM reps pitch these things as "owning your own business". That combined with the other manipulative selling tehcniques makes a lot of us think, "oh awesome! Another way I can contribute to the family!", especially if said family is struggling financially.
i’m not from the americas but i grew up with several of these MLM’s in my general vicinity.
my mum n her friends def had several tupperware parties and herbalife was known to be the “get thin the healthy way” company for a while.
luckily no close family member ever joined in as a seller, but usually only attented sessions of friends n extended family to help thme out.
my most noticable memory however, is of a MASSIVE Amway convention my grandma took me to because her sister (who lived several hours away from us) was a seller there. i was maybe 8?9? and the convention was filled with 50+ people (wheras tupperware n herbalife where usually mum brands).
even as a kid i understood that all this was sketchy af n buying from them usually just ment more clutter in the house n constant invitations to buy more
I have wanted to work on my own time and be my own boss for years now (still do) and people kept telling me to not do so.
The way I envisioned it was like being a RUclipsr, twitch streamer, music/art producer that does commissions, etc. It took me years to realize that people thought that I wanted to join an MLM 😂
Like, I didn't even know what they were. I just saw people on RUclips or Instagram making their own stuff and selling it as their business and thought that was cool. I wanted to be an artist and work from home on commissions. Later I added on the "and I'll also upload SpeedPaint videos or music covers online as an extra income", but it's always been about me making cool stuff that I'd then sell without having a boss tell me when to do what and looking over my shoulder the whole time.
Then I learned what mlms are, how they work and how you practically never make money in them. That's when I realized "oh, these people were thinking I wanted to join that!"
I didn't find it stupid or anything, just hilarious that they thought the artsy kid who dreamed of being a superstar wanted to settle for selling essential oils and holding selling parties when I very much don't like people visiting my place 😂
I just remembered that when i was a child my mother was invited to a Tupperware garden party to which me and one of my siblings tagged along,,, but we only went to the one and never again and now i understand why 💀 my mother kept saying she got "weird vibes" from the host and attendees, she probably didn't know how to explain MLMs to her children lmao
Oh Avon......I buyed some stuff from them in like first half of the 2000's, I was like in middle school.... and one of my classmates was a 'vendor' and she was like 14....and another classmate was the competence, she was a 'vendor' for Oriflame.
Again, we were in middle school
Both of them tried to recruit me, but because of my social anxiety, I refused XD
If you want a dark comedy critiquing MLMs you might like the show “On Becoming a God in Central Florida” starring Kirsten Dunst.
My mother got caught up in one of these for some sort of caffeine/coffee appetite suppressant, and even got involved in helping someone set up and build furniture in their office. I don’t think my mum sold a single thing but she would not stop waxing lyrical about it for so long. It was so frustrating to witness. She was also struggling with finding decent paying full time work at that time and they absolutely preyed on my mother’s anxiety. Garbage people.
I went to check high brow for more of ur content and im happily surprised u have a new video up :) love listening to ur stuff when im working
The way you pronounced “Provo” 😭💀 I live 😂
Adore your videos Mina, the mother in Edward Sissorhands was an Avon lady.
That MLM record scratch did NOT go where i thought it was😂😂😂😂
I only realised recently that when I was 19 I almost joined a MLM. My mum's friend invited her and my sisters to one of those at home presentations and we attended more out of politeness and for the social aspect (most of the ladies were my old primary school teachers). I was about to start uni and jobless and ended up signing up to the interest list - I remember having like an hour long online presentation shown to me and a few phonecalls from the higher-up who hired my mum's friend and I don't even know how I got out of it, I think it just dawned on me how strange the situation was. Thank god lol
Anyway great video as usual:-) 💐
Mina Le having Mad Men as her favorite TV show of all times just feels right.
Another group that MLMs have a chokehold on is military wives. My mom used to sell Avon, Tupperware, Melaluca, and I had no clue what those were till I was older. But it's in the same vein as the new mothers, being married to someone in the military makes it hard to maintain a career when you're moving states or even countries every 3 to 4 years so the MLMs see those women as prime targets, I mean a career that can go with you anywhere, and lets you stay home with your kids? Sounds like a dream come true
A good friend of mine fell for these nft, trading bullshit and is now part of such a scheme. I tried talking to her about it but she won’t listen. I feel really bad for her. This toxic hustle culture that comes with it made her sick several times. Sometimes I can’t believe that these things are legal 😢
Excuse me... this suit? THIS SUIT? THISSSS SUITTTTTTT IS EVERYTHING!
Sigma grindset 💅
Stay at home moms used to weave at home while watching the kids for their own money. As a new stay at home mom I wish this was still a thing.
Can I just say that you look AMAZING in that outfit + make up look and the set is also stunning? Very aesthetically pleasing overall
NOT AN AVON AD COMING UP UNDER THE VIDEO 😭😭😭😭
this first example i thought of was avon because when i was growing up pretty much everyone’s mum or aunt were avon ambassadors
Hi Mina! I think women still join mlm because they are in the risky group. And by “risky group” I mean they need to take care of themselves and also their children and elderly parents. Nobody’s going to babysit their children for free. Women don’t have that option. So we often look for any chance to make money. I said it as a woman from extremely poor family
The minute I saw this video, I wondered if you’d feature the It’s Always Sunny Invigoron scene. I was not disappointed!
The part towards the end where Mina was talking about people making comments on social media posts calling specific mlm-involved individuals "stupid" has me thinking; is it ever okay to use an individual's perceived lack of intelligence against them as an insult? Furthermore, do those who call mlm-participants "stupid", "dumb", etc do so on the basis that being stupid in this regard is a choice?
IQ is -- to a large extent -- inherited and can only be changed so much through training. So yes, perhaps many people who get sucked into mlm schemes are stupid, but then again they cannot [completely] help it.
Might be worth saying that makes the mlm car gift thing even more sketchy is that, for at least most mlms, how you qualify for the car is reaching a certain rank by recruiting a certain number of people/making a certain dollar amount in sales each month. Once you qualify, you can sign up to get a monthly check specifically to go toward whatever car you, yourself, decide to go to the dealership and sign a lease for (the company will tell you which cars qualify for this deal, make/model, etc) So if you don't keep your rank each month by selling a certain amount/having a certain number of ppl in your downline, then you don't receive your monthly car payment check from your mlm, leaving you on the hook for your own expensive car payment. The way mlmers talk about the "free car" thing is often very (intentionally) misleading bc this is hardly ever explained up front. Hope this was helpful for those who were curious
In season 2 of mad men off of a previous recommendation you made in another video. Love it so much so far
for the title i was so confused what the whole thing had to do with men loving men 😭
ngl bc of the women and mlm thing i thought it was gonna talk about straight women fetishising mlm relationships but that wouldn’t make sense with the rest of the title 💀
There was a boom of MLM's in Mexico in the 90's. They had a lot of success, probably because of the economic crisis, currency devaluation and gender politics of the time. There were even some Mexican MLM's such as "Arabela". They never went away. I would say they are still thriving within the country.
Omg i forget that everyone hasn't heard of 'yer da sells Avon'...
In my country in latam, avon, l'ebel, cyzone, esika, are seen as a side job, at the salon, some daughter and sister help each other and they have cheap products and can be as good or better than drugstore.
The other ones, amyway, herbalife, are expensive af, and often, the sale person target people with some illness like cancer, but in the end people stop buying from.then and block them 😅
I'm pretty sure MLM:s haven't just gone global, they've BEEN global for a while now. At least going by my anecdotal evidence lol. Here in Sweden, my dad was a Tupperware distributor briefly in the 90's, and another relative (who was a stay at home mom) was a distributor for the Swedish clothing brand Lingon & Blåbär in the early 00's. I don't think Lingon & Blåbär exist anymore (I only get results from second hand stores if I google), but I think they were popular back then. I was a young kid at the time though so I'm not a hundred percent certain of course.
9:26 oh now you gonna have me disturbing the neighbors at 2 am singing my aching Soul out over tupperware
You are one of my favourite channels on RUclips
girl when is the hair tutorial coming? I still haven't figured out how to make pin curls work.
My parents are currently working in what seems to be identical to MLMs and everything you've mentioned from recruitment, selling methods, and practice clicked in my head. They always pretend to be rich to recruit members but in reality we can barely pay our rent and we dont eat sometimes lmao
After I read the title I spent so long wondering what man love man stories had to do with scamming and grindset culture, I feel so dumb...
HELP
Nah you just got your MLM priorities right lol
I mean they have to deal with a certain type of grinding so I guess you get half points
This happens fairly regularly. It's not uncommon for gay men to think anti mlm spaces are just where homophobes congregate online and get a pleasant surprise that they are in fact anti pyramid scheme and not inherently anti queer rights.
i came to the comments before even watching the video because of this 💀 glad i wasn’t alone
To be clear, the MLM "business owners" don't actually purchase the product at a wholesale price. The actual company purchases the products at a wholesale price and sells it to their distributors for a huge profit, and then the distributor's upline also takes a large percentage of whatever sale the distributor makes. The issue here is that the distributors ARE the customer, the company survives off of turning their employees into customers, and often set a mandatory amount of stock that the distributors have to buy regularly in order to stay with the company regardless of whether they've sold their previous stock or not.
yes, a 100% times yes. The company porfits actually come directly from the sales people themselves
But some MLMs make their own products so I’m confused what you mean. They set the price, but it is still wholesale I think
@@themagicknightress7132 If you start your own business, you would source the ingredients yourself at a wholesale price and work with a lab, a manufacturer, or create the product yourself, essentially only paying the price of these services, and then adding your own profit on top of what you spent on manufacturing before you sell it. When you work for an MLM, you're not just paying sourcing and manufacturing costs, the company's profit is included, which is often three times or more the cost of manufacturing. At that point you're literally just their customer, you're not starting your own business. It's like if I bought a lipstick from MAC and then resold it for a higher price. MLMs also have clauses that don't allow you to open your own personal website or storefront, they only let you do things through their own website or storefront where they can advertise recruitment, because they don't want actual customers, they want their employees to be their customers.
When I heard about MLM, my first thought was yours as well. I thought they meant men-loving-men but then I learned of the pyramid scheme that they meant
@@themagicknightress7132 they’re explaining how in lots of mlms, people higher in the “upline “ are making a higher profit margin on products sold than those lower in the downline.
As a disabled person I feel like MLM's severely prey on my community. Many of us struggle to work outside of the home, getting disability benefits is a nightmare to go through that I would not wish on my worst enemy, and even when you do get those much needed benefits the amount still leaves you well belove the poverty level. Legitimate work from home jobs are hard to find and I feel people turn to MLM's thinking they might be "safe" option. They aren't and then people who have the most to lose end up losing what little they have. Not to mention how one of the major sections of the MLM market is sketchy health stuff that promises to make all your issues better if you only drink these oils or take this shake. I once was stuck at an MLM party at salon and the woman hosting told me that the Young Living oils would stop cancer and Ebola among other things that someone else might believe like drinking the oils would help my acid reflux. I thankfully had a mom who worked in health care and pharmaceuticals and knew right away her claims were false. Still there are many people who don't know these things and could easily fall victim in their desperation for better health.
Exactly! My mom got caught up in thrive several years back (and while it does legitimately help her with her specific disabilities) she had to stop being so involved in it because all her thrive 'friends' were coming out as anti-vax/essential oilists
@@starcasita That's so scary! It's awful how a lot of these mlm's will even intentionally go after people with health issues and disabilities claiming to have cures for all kinds of things. I hate to think of the physical, emotional, and financial harm they do. The way our culture tries to sell and brand wellness is actually a whole thing. Like look at Goop.
@@abrenn I'm glad she stepped back from them and that at least the product she was getting was helpful to her. Its scary thinking those people are selling their products as alternatives to real safe medicines.
@@gigitastic90 it is scary and it’s hard to blame folks who buy into it when they’re desperate
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. 🎉
In the list of 10 reasons why the LDS dominate pyramid schemes, there's an important omission: these companies have a stranglehold on local and state governments in Utah. Their lobbying is so intense that the representatives in these government organizations routinely push to keep them legal even while they impoverish their employees
exactly. it’s not just seeing individuals participating in MLMs, but entire institutions supporting them (i.e. university buildings donated by doTERRA). MLM culture defines *physical space*, not just social media and “hey hun!” DMs from that girl in your high school bio class.
They literally have advertisements for them at our sporting events
Oh damn that’s so interesting and so sad
@@norwhals.norwhals I once read of a hospital that allowed doTerra for "therapeutic use" and I wanted to rip my fucking hair out. I hate those people so much
And before it gets that big its starts off small. Teachers and moms sign up with a MLM so make more money. They push their MLM at their jobs and in their neighborhoods. MLM products then become seen as a legitimate products and even good.
How bad can MLMs be if a valuable member of the neighborhood is selling them?
someone should make a utah "divergent" where the coming of age ceremony involves choosing between mary kay, avon, and herbalife.
dont forget one of the essential oil MLMs
Even though MLM uniquely targets women, a lot of its slander end up framing women overall as naive or selfish when we completely overlook the companies’ deliberate recruitment strategies and gendered marketing. Especially with the rise of NFT and AI bros, it goes to show that although women can be more vulnerable, they’re not any more delusional than a man when it comes to get-rich-quick schemes.
Well said!
I really hate how they use "feminism" as a way to convince women they are getting "empowered" by joining MLMs and make the company richer.
*sits in the soap box* Which is a great example of how capitalism is damaging to any human rights movement by a way of making it into a product or a driving force to simply sell shit.
@Heleen Wolf There is gender specific dominance in those fields, but other industries (e.g. IT) also have similar problems. It's how these organisations market and WHO they market. I do feel that the video is biased, but when I look at the subject a bit more the focus is on MLMs and what tends to be in those (which happen to be women). I just take these videos as descriptive third-party analysis of how ONE group of humans behave by and remove the bias by thinking "these groups of humans do X, who's to say the OTHER group of humans don't do the same thing and maybe in different ways"? I try not to put too much pressure on content creators on their crap. They're worth listening to as much as an academic, but they're not invincible from scrutiny.
@@beth-bi9yv *coffeezilla has entered the chat*
Naive and selfish? 😂 Why? Because women want to make some money for living? 😱 I didn’t know it was illegal
Worried one day that I’ll say MLM like “mulhm” out loud like I do in my head
lmao that’s how i say it too
For me it’s “milim”
For me it's mlum
Idk what MLM stands for so I do say it like that :P
@@isabellabraganca1095 multi Level Marketing, I think