Back in high school, a friend of mine somehow got looped into attending a seminar concerned with spreading the good word about an exciting — though notably nonspecific — job opportunity. In retrospect, everything about the initial experience was less a series of red flags than it was a proverbial flotilla of giant crimson banners emblazoned with the words “obvious scam.” Adding to the aforementioned lack of specificity (just what the hell was this “opportunity”?), the event itself was to be held in a bleak-looking conference room at an airport motel — the kind of vaguely sinister and transitory location one associates with ugly carpets, mandatory office retreats, marital infidelity, and small-time hucksterism.
In retrospect, I don’t think the actual nature of the gig (such as even existed) was ever really made clear. From what I gathered at the time, attendees were shown a series of peppy, Tim and Eric–esque videos featuring would-be salt-of-the-earth types who had supposedly transformed their lives overnight using the One Weird Trick bequeathed to them by whatever shady LLC was hosting the affair. (My friend, to their credit, left after ten or fifteen minutes.) Were I a betting man, though, I’d put all my chips down on saying this was a multilevel marketing (MLM) scheme of one kind or another — perhaps a notch or two away from being downright illegal, but doubtless powered by a mix of sleaze, credulity, and human desperation.
I’ve had MLMs on the brain since I watched the recent documentary LuLaRich, which chronicles the rise and (at least partial) fall of LuLaRoe: a company that successfully ensnared tens of thousands of Americans by peddling a seductive tale of economic independence and personal empowerment. On a basic level, there’s nothing to particularly distinguish LuLaRoe from other schemes leveraging the same rhetoric and business model. In this case, the schtick was mainly directed at women, who were sold on the prospect of selling custom apparel from home and making big bucks while doing it.
The wee wrinkle, of course, was that the hustle-and-grind, rags-to-riches narrative projected by the company’s surreally weird cofounders DeAnne and Mark Stidham was quite literally unattainable for the vast majority of those involved. This wasn’t, as adherents to that narrative would insist, for lack of sacrifice or effort. Many of LuLaRoe’s victims worked themselves to the bone and went badly into debt, only to find the money they’d invested to have the privilege of selling its products yield a negative rate of return. (It’s unclear how often this happened, but LuLaRich also reveals that the company actually advised some women to monetize their breast milk for capital.) In 2016, by which point LuLaRoe’s sales had ballooned by 600 percent to roughly $1 billion, 70 percent of representatives made no money whatsoever from its coveted recruitment bonuses, while a minuscule 0.1 percent at the top took in the equivalent of a lavish down payment every month.
This is more or less the industry standard, by design. Distributors for AdvoCare, a somewhat rare example of a multilevel marketing company officially declared a pyramid scheme by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), mostly made zilch that very same year — with 72 percent earning nothing and 18 percent making $250 dollars or less. An income disclosure statement from Young Living, whose game is selling essential oils, meanwhile, shows that nearly nine in ten distributors based in the United States earned an average of four dollars in 2018. Much the same is true of skincare company Rodan and Fields, where roughly 67 percent of sellers boasted a median income of $227 in 2019, and Color Street, where over half of sales representatives raked in monthly profits below twelve dollars in 2018. According to research from the Consumer Awareness Institute, 99 percent of people recruited to participate in multilevel marketing schemes don’t just fail to turn a profit; they actively lose money.
In the Friday the 13th game there are tapes that you can find that play recordings of some characters like Pamela Voorhees and Tommy Jarvis.
I haven’t found all the tapes playing at myself but I really wanted to hear them and I’m glad I did, because at the end of Tommy’s tapes it’s revealed that he’s not only institutionalized thinking that he’s fighting Jason Voorhees but he’s also in a hospital in Springwood, and I know that’s not a big deal just hearing it, but Springwood is the location that A Nightmare On Elm Street is which is fucking genius!
