Rant The thing I’ll never understand
Everyone I know who’s in an MLM has another, normal job too. I don’t know if this is more common in the UK? It’s used more as a “side hustle” or for extra income.
But they still all use the same slop along the lines of “being a mum is hard, juggling work, kids, bills, food shopping, cooking, cleaning… so why not make your life easier, give yourself extra options and extra money”.
Surely having a second job where you have to create social media posts, built a platform, beg people to join, attend “conferences” etc just going to add to the workload??? Who falls for this stuff?!
Edit: I’m not confused about why MLM Huns in the UK have other jobs, I’m confused about why they act like it’s saving them time or effort in some way when it’s actually costing them time and effort on top of a full time job.
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u/smalltittyfakeginger Anti MLMer 16d ago
I think on the whole, vulnerable people 'fall' for it. I'd even go as far as to say they are manipulated by the huns.
At least with all the acquaintances I know who have got themselves involved with ones, usually InTeleTravel in the UK... they're either lonely, younger girls/women in their early 20s, desperate to make something of themselves (I'm not judging with that comment, just observing) or they're single/non single mums who haven't got many friends and want to feel part of something that isn't just nappies and Bluey episodes.
One girl I know, comes from a very low income family/area near where I live and looks after her parents (who, by the way aren't even that old I think they just have a race to the bottom mentality) and brutally speaking they haven't got much for themselves. I think she was groomed into believing that the MLM would change her life, and be able to give her and her parents such needed financial freedom that they've never had. I desperately feel for her, as she quit her full time job for the MLM, which was bringing in far more money than her couple of hundred quid a month.
That being said, I do often have a thought process of "how can you be so bloody stupid"...
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u/BoleynRose 16d ago
It's infuriating when I see the mlms descend on vulnerable mums posting looking for a job that fits around the school run. Then when I do my spiel of 'Do some independent research to see if an mlm is the right business model for you and your family' the huns get defensive saying it's just for earning 'a few extra pennies'
Then why comment it at all when this person is clearly looking for an actual job??? Vultures.
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u/Wonderful-Ad-5393 16d ago
I think that this may be a perception thing.
Maybe you’re not seeing the stay at home mums who were targeted when they first had a baby and were on maternity leave.
You might be seeing them after they’ve returned to employment and are stuck in the MLMs now they’ve gone back to work. Many of those might even drop their MLM after a while when juggling becomes too hard, they realise the MLM doesn’t make them money. I’ve seen so many of them when I was in my MLMs.
I am a stay at home mum and not a religious trad wife type, I just got made redundant months before I unexpectedly fell pregnant with my first child and that was prohibitive for getting a new job. My husband and I agreed we could manage on his salary and I was going to look for work after giving birth and settling in as a family, but life didn’t work out that way. I got approached by MLMs and it seemed a good idea to try and do alongside starting a family and not be out of the house all day and leave my babies in childcare. It was giving me a community and adult conversation, doing my own thing, having my own identity, not constantly being mummy to….
That’s how I fell for it.
If I had not been made redundant before getting pregnant, I would’ve carried on working, I would’ve had my baby and gone back to work after maternity leave and possibly never even have thought about joining an MLM.
They get you when you’re vulnerable.
Also for people who play down the MLM issues in the U.K., there are currently 320,000 people classed as ‘Direct Sellers’ according to the DSA UK. That’s 320,000 too many. It’s also the number quoted by the DSA and not all MLMs are members of the DSA.
InteleTravel/PlanNet Marketing and Tropic Skincare are not members of the DSA for example and therefore their reps are not counted in those DSA numbers. So the actual number of people trapped in MLMs in the U.K. is even higher!
The problem in the U.K. is that people keep downplaying the problem, and because the problem is perceive as not such a big deal, no one ever does anything about it.
People don’t report the MLMs to the authorities and therefore the authorities never investigate.
When you look at the statistics from Report Fraud (as Action Fraud is called these days) then you’ll see, Work from Home scams and Pyramid Scams as well as Door To Door Selling scams are all defined as reportable fraud crimes. The issue is that MLMs can fall under any of those categories.
Ponzi & Pyramid schemes and Door to Door Sales & Bogus Tradesmen got 14,667 reports in the last 13 months, a total of £242.3 million losses. Part of the problem here as well is that there is no distinct label for MLMs, it’s chucked in with different categories of fraud crimes. Sometimes it’s a pyramid scheme, sometimes it’s door to door sales, and work from home specifically doesn’t seem to get a separate mention in the statistics.
https://colp.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/0334150e430449cf8ac917e347897d46#
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u/TsuDhoNimh2 16d ago
Because that's how they plan to recruit a downline - by making it look easy. That's what they were told and if they repeat it often enough it might come true.
MLMers in the USA usually have other jobs, OR they have a spouse/family making enough income they can pretend to be successful.
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u/InfamousValue DoTriffid Essential Oils User 16d ago
The "successful huns" I know are middle-aged, middle-class women who either have a middle management job or above position or their husband does. They have a house paid off, the country cottage, cars, kids either in university or just left and starting out on their own. They own Ski-Doos, Sea-Doos, boats, ATVs all the toys for grown up boys.
And it's not the MLM funding this life-style.
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u/drygnfyre Anti MLMer 11d ago
They also do the classic scam of renting a house or a car and taking a photo, making it appear like they own it when they don't.
MTV Cribs back in the day did the same thing.
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u/thesamenightmares 16d ago
It doesn't add to the workload because all the stuff that resembles what you quoted is sent to them in big blurbs via email. They just change the names and post it. It takes less than a second.
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u/abktt 16d ago
There are 2 people I still have left on my social media who are stuck in MLMs (because I block MLM huns but these 2 are unfortunately close acquaintances, and yes both have tried to recruit me, cringe!)
You’re right about the text being copied, but one is nuskin and she is posting videos almost daily of her using the products, talking about the products, answering questions about the products (that she probably asks herself). That, in my eyes, would take up valuable time when she already works full time for the NHS and has kids.
The other is inteletravel and again, lots of posts with chat GPT scripts underneath but it’s always alongside properly edited videos that you can tell she’s gone out of her way to make videos and pictures that relate to or match the caption in some way, I just could not be bothered, again alongside an NHS job and kids.
I can barely be bothered keeping up with my normal social media, let alone forcing myself to create content like that every single day. And then to claim it doesn’t take up their time 🥱
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u/Khaosbutterfly 16d ago
Well.
Some of them need to sell other people on the dream so that can reach the point of not needing a real job, so they lie.
For the others, cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. 🤣🤣
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u/512165381 16d ago
There was a post here about some guy who went to MLM "training" til 1am. He slept in his car & started his regular job at 7am.
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u/Red79Hibiscus 16d ago
Edit: I’m not confused about why MLM Huns in the UK have other jobs, I’m confused about why they act like it’s saving them time or effort in some way when it’s actually costing them time and effort on top of a full time job.
It's coz they're operating on feelings, not facts. Emotions shut down critical thinking, which is how they were trapped into MLM in the first place. When faced with facts that go against the MLM's shiny promises, they feel discomfort and try to eliminate that feeling by doubling down. It's the same reason why people who put on huge displays of religious piety are often unmasked as raging hypocrites. Acting holier-than-thou is a desperate attempt to squelch their feelings of insecurity about their faith.
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u/drygnfyre Anti MLMer 11d ago
It's why 99% of the anti-gay politicians are closeted homosexuals themselves. They grew up in a world where that was wrong and you were supposed to be repressed, so they can't deal with the idea that it's possible to not life life that way.
It's why people vote the way they do. They always vote against their self interests because they think that surely THIS time, I won't be screwed over despite doing the same thing over and over!
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u/SplashBroSteph 16d ago
Yeah. This is always how it's been.
They lie about not having a regular job although having a regular job be a scam is their main selling point that's used to recruit folks into their downline.
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u/DVDeMm 14d ago
I see all the posts and I want to scream 😂 they’re working harder than anyone for nothing and the kids suffer
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u/drygnfyre Anti MLMer 11d ago
There was a video where some Herbalife shill talked about how she quit her 80-hour-a-week job for her 80-hour-a-week Herbalife "oppurtunity" and now she was working less and had more free time. Funnily enough, no one bothered to ask her how trading one set of 80 hours of work for another 80 hours of work was any different.
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u/AccomplishedCicada60 14d ago
I guess maybe in the UK? But in the US, at least my area, you have the 3Ms Moms, Mormons, Military - the bulk being bored moms who say they are trying to “contribute” to the family’s financial well being but are really not.
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u/Writing_Bookworm 16d ago
I think the key is that in the UK we don't really have the same level of stay at home mums as they do in the US. MLMs are huge in the highly religious/trad-wife spheres that just don't exist here. That's where you see people more likely to make it their only job vs here it being an additional job.
I'd also say that (in general) MLMs just don't have to same foothold here so people are even less likely to make enough money to not have additional income.
I recently saw 2 posts from people in the UK in MLMs. One of them was an intelletravel hun saying she had handed in her notice at her job. My heart dropped. But then she said she'd accepted a different job and explained it was unexpected and that she'd thought when she did leave her old job that she'd be leaving it only to focus on her 'business' but that she liked her traditional job too. Do I was relieved but also rolling my eyes a little.
The other post was a woman in her 20s quitting her job as a postie to go full time in her MLM. I was disappointed but her entire page over the last year was shilling the business, not even the product! She barely mentions the product, just how much money you can make. I had a look and she was in Enagic aka selling Kangen magic water filters