Multi-level marketing

He was an attorney over in Washington, D.C., ran an organization called Citizens for Health.

And he had a client in an MLM world, and we were in the MLM world at that time.

And he had been just like an unbelievable attorney.

He was someone in 1993 that kind of founded Citizens for Health.

And I would say it's even worse on the personal purpose side.

Most people have an innate sense of why they're on this earth and they commit to it.

You know, like Peter, you talked a lot about Elmo limbs and I heard your energy go up around that.

And Steven, you know, obviously Captain Cranman.

In a society where work and consumerism are slowly replacing classical religious institutions as a system of belief and belonging, this kind of language is worth keeping an ear out for.

An even more famous example comes from the multi-level marketing industry, aka MLMs.

This is Tupperware.

You can

freeze it, stack it, any which way.

Within pyramid-shaped MLMs, recruits sell products like leggings or health supplements to their family and friends, in turn luring these people to become sellers themselves.

Recruits are regarded as business owners, even though none of the traditional rules of entrepreneurship apply.

MLM acolytes are labeled consultants or distributors, and the higher one moves up the structure, the more grandiose their titles become.

Right, because Myra- ...

Myra's problem with being an MLM-

Yes

... person-

Fuck off.

"Get over it." Which, I mean, she might or might not have done, but it also doesn't matter.

It's also frustrating that the reason everybody hates Myra is because she was doing like an MLM with one of the band members.

Yeah.

I can write a book called Live, Laugh, Love and not center multilevel marketing, right? This too, women know, like this is on the list that they rattle off.

Of course, you're going to be talking about MLMs, right? Of course.

But I think that chapter is so interesting because it shows how like prominent conservative leaders and multilevel marketing gurus were all like, They're all in the room together.

Right.

Again, this hidden truth, this kind of Gnosticism that spreads through these spaces.

And when the really wild conspiracy stuff is kind of shut down, the pastel QAnon inside these spaces still flourishes and really keeps it alive.

And so MLMs, conservative and right-wing politics is a part of MLMs from day one.

That is not new.

And so why does a culture that is – all right, I understand the authoritarian hierarchy structure of it, but why does it lend itself so well to fraudulent schemes that you cannot win in when the theory is this is – you know, if you try hard enough, you can win, right? And yet you're selling a regime in which once you're below a certain level, you are not going to prevail in this.

How does that work And why does the working assumption that people are so dumb that we can trick them into this, why does that have so much, you know, it actually, you know, the world seems to validate that premise with the MLMs all the time.

Yeah.

So to start, for legal purposes, we should probably clarify that, you know, we are not necessarily saying or I'm not necessarily saying that all MLMs are authoritarian projects.

But in the book, I do connect the practices to authoritarian politics.

And yes, we spent some time in legal review on this book.

I playfully say he was like one of our customers like way back when, when I was in the lead generation business.

He was building an MLM company as well.

And we were doing some stuff together, and I always enjoyed working with Irvin.

And I knew he was a basketball coach, but he was a customer of ours first.

I knew that she was a baddie, but I didn't know h- how much.

When I started the book, I thought it was going to end up being a metaphor for MLMs," mid-level marketing scams, I guess.

But then-

Sure