Go to Religion in the Modern World
- Add a comment
- Go to Escaping the cult - a true story
gome
excellent piece! You beautifully illustrate many of a cult's defining characteristics...
posted by
Nautikos
on April 13, 2007 at 6:42 PM
| link to this | reply
David1Spirit - these people applied the cult environment to MLM
And they were nothing short of a full blown cult. They had a ridiculously overpriced product line of detergents and general purpose soaps that ultimately were unsellable. What they were selling was distributorship packages via mind control. Seriously, they brainwashed each other to a point where no one would speak up and say: "hey, wait a minute; no one is actually using this product?" The entire sell job was orchestrated from the very first introduction to the careful control of all persons involved. 3 guys became multi millionaires, hundreds of thousands of people ended up with basements full of cartons of unsellable soap products. It is scary how easily the human mind can be manipulated by those who know how to pull the right strings and push the right buttons.
posted by
gomedome
on March 26, 2007 at 6:24 PM
| link to this | reply
Yes, your last line caught me on that one gome
I had the same experience with several groups like that. One that sticks in my mind were the Scientologists. I read the book Dianetics and was interested in knowing more. Not about any religion, but the concept seemed interesting enough. Man, did I ever regret that! They hounded me for nearly 3 years.
Also had an experience with an MLM company. This one was Cutco (selling knives, etc). They were pretty much like the group you described in your post. Gungo-Ho people they are, that's for sure.
But I then again heard Jim Jones was a pretty gungo-ho type of guy too!
posted by
David1Spirit
on March 26, 2007 at 8:48 AM
| link to this | reply
strat - back in the mid 70's an outfit called Bestline was Amway's biggest
competitor.
By the early 80's it collapsed in on itself, as most schemes relying on perpetual subscription do.
posted by
gomedome
on March 25, 2007 at 8:17 PM
| link to this | reply
Ah. The Right Reverend Am Way?
posted by
strat
on March 25, 2007 at 7:42 PM
| link to this | reply