|
TLG James posted:Do men fall for this poo poo? It seems like every couple of weeks my wife tells me that one of her coworkers is having some party for *insert crap here* and I always tell her to cancel since it's high pressure sales and to just blame me or something. Men are desirous of status and envision themselves at the top of the pyramid making money off all the suckers under them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUqo5tPZjrM&t=40s There are a lot of Ed Harrises who envision themselves as Alec Baldwins.
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 18:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 04:12 |
|
|
Bad with Money - being born as literally anything but a Saudi Prince. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/...WT.nav=top-news
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 18:58
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:aren't the cutco knives the only non-poo poo mlm product? Cutco isn't really an mlm in the herbalife or amway sense, they're just abusive and depend on their salespeople burning out after they buy a "starter kit" and guilt their friends and family into a few purchases.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 19:07
|
|
|
Space Gopher posted:Cutco isn't really an mlm in the herbalife or amway sense, they're just abusive and depend on their salespeople burning out after they buy a "starter kit" and guilt their friends and family into a few purchases. That sounds like pretty standard MLM to me.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 19:42
|
|
|
Family friends are real deep into an Amway energy drink MLM, and it seems like the whole business strategy is to record videos of the CEO and higher-ups doing things like jetsking, snowboarding, and motocrossing in salt flats. Then these videos are shat down the distribution line to dudebros with dollar signs in their eyes who purchase pallet after pallet of this overpriced toxic chemical bath and leave it in their garage because no one will buy it. So yeah, plenty of MLMs (maybe most?) are geared towards men. It's just that the makeup and weight loss and leggings ones do a lot of their garbage advertising on social media, so you always see those living room makeup party events with like 400 people invited and 2 confirmed going (the mark and her sympathetic mother).
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 19:43
|
|
|
Square Peg posted:That sounds like pretty standard MLM to me. Cutco doesn't encourage their salespeople to recruit other salespeople by giving them a cut of their recruits' revenue, instead they recruit directly and just charge the recruit money up front. Encouraging you to recruit people and rewarding you for doing so is the distinguishing feature of the MLM.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 20:16
|
|
|
Drunk Tomato posted:Family friends are real deep into an Amway energy drink MLM, and it seems like the whole business strategy is to record videos of the CEO and higher-ups doing things like jetsking, snowboarding, and motocrossing in salt flats. Then these videos are shat down the distribution line to dudebros with dollar signs in their eyes who purchase pallet after pallet of this overpriced toxic chemical bath and leave it in their garage because no one will buy it. I think more are geared toward women, but there are a bunch that are essentially gender neutral.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 20:25
|
|
|
I live in a very rural area and the MLM stuff really veers between funny BWM and just really sad. We have a buy/sell FB group with about 8500 people in it (only about 10k people live in the entire county) and there are always going out of business posts from women selling Scentsy and Lularoe. I think it's more prevalent with women in areas like this because there are actually quite lucrative jobs available but they tend to skew male--mining, construction, drilling. Even if a women is interested most of them have kids by the time they're 21 and good luck getting your rural baby daddy to actually watch kids while you go work 12-hour shifts driving a haul truck at the mine. So women get stuck at home with kids and working lovely part time service jobs/trying MLM to make money.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 20:40
|
|
|
Drunk Tomato posted:
A friend of mine from back in high school was (maybe still is, I dunno, I blocked event invites from her), doing some kind of Chocolate MLM. 300 friends invited. 0 would RSVP. She'd cancel and try again. Ad Nauseam.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 20:40
|
|
|
Midjack posted:Cutco doesn't encourage their salespeople to recruit other salespeople by giving them a cut of their recruits' revenue, instead they recruit directly and just charge the recruit money up front. Encouraging you to recruit people and rewarding you for doing so is the distinguishing feature of the MLM. ehh anything that doesn't pay you a steady base pay where you can easily break down money earned per hour, has you pay upfront for an intro package, and encourages you to burn all your bridges and alienate your friends is effectively an MLM even if the nitty-gritty varies toss in buzzwords like "be your own boss," "the hustle,' "financial independence" to round out the package. As they say, if it talks like a bird, etc
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 20:42
|
|
|
KingSlime posted:ehh anything that doesn't pay you a steady base pay where you can easily break down money earned per hour, has you pay upfront for an intro package, and encourages you to burn all your bridges and alienate your friends is effectively an MLM even if the nitty-gritty varies All MLMs are bad companies but not all bad companies are MLMs. Cutco only has one level, therefore they are not a multilevel marketing company. I agree with you on the rest though and it's every bit as predatory, it just wants you to sell stuff to your friends, not sell the company to your friends.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 20:57
|
|
|
Cutco will pay you for giving a demo to someone, but there are a bunch of conditions (they have to be a married couple over thirty, maybe a few other things). They'll pay you this base rate or the commission, whichever is higher. Back in the early 2000s they'd pay $17.50 so they'd make it look like the job paid that much per hour. This encourages the salespeople to grovel to their families by framing it like 'you don't have to buy anything, just sit through a 1hr demo and fill a survey'. Still a ripoff though.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:03
|
|
|
What is everyone's favorite "value for money" on knives? Like, I get that I should not be paying Cutco prices but they do make a pretty nice product.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:15
|
|
|
There’s a knife thread in GWS with a lot of low priced recommendations.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:22
|
|
|
EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:What is everyone's favorite "value for money" on knives? Cutco are kind of lovely knives for the money, honestly. Wustof is decent for the money if you want a european knife. I like my Global knives but the consensus in GWS is that you can do better for the money. If you want Japanese knives go ask GWS. I want to say they really like Shun knives. The best advice I can give you is do not buy a set of knives, but instead buy the ones you are going to use. Chef knife, santoku or utility knife, paring knife, maybe a cleaver. This will do it for most people cooking at home.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:23
|
|
|
I'll mosey on over to GWS thanks for the recommendations I sometimes forget we have forums outside of the 25 threads I have bookmarked in my UCP.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:35
|
|
|
Victorinox makes really nice kitchen knives for a good price. The handles are plastic so they don’t have the nice weight of other knives, but the blades are incredibly well made. And they’re one third the price of a Wusthof. My MLM story is a friends wife who got into Beach Body and started making GBS threads up my facebook feed with posts about how much energy she had from those shakes and how she wanted everyone to get in shape with her. This was a year ago. I ended up blocking her because of that poo poo so I have no idea if she’s still doing it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:51
|
|
|
I'm a fan of my Victorinox Fibrox 10" Chef's knife. I might have been better off with an 8". My favorite at my in-laws' house was 9", so I figured I would rather go up than down. Definitely not as nice as a knife you could get for $100 or so, but for $30-40 it was good. Was. And then my goddamn roommates kept putting it in the dishwasher and I haven't taken it to get sharpened since. I'm also really bad at honing because I have done it maybe twice. Seriously, you cut with it, put some soap on a sponge, rub each side a bit (blade out), rinse it off, dry it off, and put it back in the drawer (blade protector on). It takes like 45 seconds tops, and that's if you're going slow because you're afraid of cutting yourself. Maybe I just got in the habit because the knives at my in-laws' were not stainless, so my father in law was very specific that I had to clean them immediately after use. I had (have but misplaced) a Cutco paring knife. That gave me a good sized scar on my finger when I was cleaning it the wrong way (seriously, blade out) and slipped. It definitely had a decent blade. Chef's knives are better for most situations, though. People get intimidated by a big knife, but having a larger flat side of the blade helps you guide more reliably with your off-hand.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:54
|
|
|
the generic rec is victorinox fibrox and a goddamn honer. maybe some stones i have my fibrox that i got on sale for $25 and a $100 sharpening stone and a $30 honer, lol
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 21:56
|
|
|
If you want something slightly nicer than Victorinox then Tojiro DP line stuff is pretty reasonably priced and very good. https://www.chefknivestogo.com/topr2pcset.html
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 22:09
|
|
|
With MLM, you see one gender doing one or the other more based on what's marketed to them. And to what feeds in to their fantasy. So Lularoe, Scentsy, ItWorks, etc... all marketed towards women who love their social media and are health nuts. Often the demographic is young moms looking for an extra income and wanting to become that #BossMom In my experience when I was a young guy in a lovely job, it's guys trying to talk me in to some "new" industry. Solar energy, VOIP, etc. The fantasy fed to men is that they can be smarter than all the other suckers.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 22:38
|
|
|
Many "new-school" (social media-based) women-targeted MLMs are intrinsically linked to Mormonism - notice that LuLaRoe, Younique, Young Living, doTerra, NuSkin, Jamberry, LifeVantage, Modere, Usana, and Zija (and several smaller MLMs) are all headquartered in Utah. Mormon women are much more likely to be stay-at-home mothers and the religion discourages married women working outside the home. These types often have marketing material/Facebook posts that directly reference traditional gender roles/a husband who controls the pursestrings in the household. Sometimes they even reframe it as rebelling against the husband and disobeying his orders, which is interesting.  On the other hand, to market towards non-Mormons these MLMs hijack feminist language about ~women supporting women~ (see also Boss Babe/Boss Mom) while guilt-tripping working mothers (don't you wish you could stay at home with your kids?). So they're covering all their bases. The podcasts Alt-Wrong (focusing on the connection with Mormons), That's a Cult? and Stuff Mom Never Told You all have great episodes on MLMs that are worth listening to if you want to learn more about their women-targeted marketing. That's not to say that there aren't MLMs explicitly directed towards men, of course. I think I posted Simple Man (shaving supply MLM) here a while back. They're a bit on the nose with their marketing language - "Be A Man", "Keep it Manly", "Join the Front Lines". Their teams are called "squads". They have a "Dude Speak Blog".
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 22:58
|
|
|
Moneyball posted:With MLM, you see one gender doing one or the other more based on what's marketed to them. And to what feeds in to their fantasy. *Posts in thread about how we enlightened goons are better than all those suckers* Maybe Lowtax should increase the registration fee and then promise residuals from people you get to join the forums. If you aren't getting rich yet, post harder!
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 23:03
|
|
|
I got burned once in a MLM thing by a cousin, which is why I mention the VOIP thing. That was a good decade ago and gently caress if I can even remember what I was supposed to be selling. At least it wasn't much more than beer money. MLM for men definitely plays on their desire to beat some kind of system. Correct me if I'm wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 23:14
|
|
|
therobit posted:*Posts in thread about how we enlightened goons are better than all those suckers* SACoins! When is the ICO?
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 00:17
|
|
|
Wasn’t there another one of these in this thread recently? I made $40k on YouTube last year quote:So usually, I do my taxes on Turbo Tax. However, in 2017 I decided to start making YouTube videos as a side hustle. I quickly gained a following and started making google Adsense money. This totaled around $40k by the end of December.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 00:21
|
|
|
White Chocolate posted:SACoins! When is the ICO? Yesterday. Zuckerberg is ponying up $500 million. It's disrupting the disruption market!
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 00:22
|
|
|
Remember going into Best Buy and having the pitch you like 50 different awful sign-up products so they could get the referral? I think that's where I learned to immediately shut down anytime someone starts pitching me something I didn't already have the intent to buy. Netflix was good though. That was one good thing Best Buy offered.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 00:45
|
|
|
Cacafuego posted:Wasn’t there another one of these in this thread recently? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ&t=19s
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 01:04
|
|
|
My MLM story: I got mixed up with herbalife as a 15 year old when a high school biology teacher had a friend pitch her bullshit to a class I was in. I was in the middle of some mystery illness and there was just enough rudimentary science in the woo that I thought it could help. Told my parents about it who were then cajoled into buying a few months worth of pills by the distributor. Figured it was bullshit after maybe three months of not feeling any different and getting invited to sit through some culty "seminar". Final straw was visiting an applied kinesthesiologist who told me my blood was turning poison and organs were shutting down after doing some sort of seance. Being a distributor never came up, so we were only ever out a few hundred bucks. I guess sick kids are just an easy mark. I stopped being sick shortly after and a few years later we figured out I had a really uncommon allergy. I like the really intense beachbody workout videos and lost a shitload of weight from doing them, but lol at the idea of doubling your grocery bill to buy shakes every month instead of just eating a goddamn carrot every once in a while.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 01:08
|
|
|
White Chocolate posted:SACoins! When is the ICO? When Lowtax gets out of the hospital.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 01:12
|
|
|
Moneyball posted:I got burned once in a MLM thing by a cousin, which is why I mention the VOIP thing. That was a good decade ago and gently caress if I can even remember what I was supposed to be selling. At least it wasn't much more than beer money. a bunch of ex-coworkers once got really into an mlm selling those hacked roku things that have pirated content available. all men
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 01:37
|
|
|
I sadly fell for an MLM scheme back in college. It was Amway, but online, I actually forget what it was called. This would have been 1999, so really riding the dot com wave. Cost me $100 to get in, but it was buying $100 worth of stuff from the online store, mostly household goods like detergent, or clothes. I guess it didn’t really cost me anything because I needed that stuff anyway. Did end up sitting through a couple seminars. I should have known better because those seminars were terribly dumb. God I was a stupid college freshman. I managed to catch on how dumb this was once I attempted to get a friend into it too. I am still ashamed of it, and I never mention it to anyone I know in real life.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 01:40
|
|
|
Bird in a Blender posted:I sadly fell for an MLM scheme back in college. It was Amway, but online, I actually forget what it was called. This would have been 1999, so really riding the dot com wave. Cost me $100 to get in, but it was buying $100 worth of stuff from the online store, mostly household goods like detergent, or clothes. I guess it didn’t really cost me anything because I needed that stuff anyway. Did end up sitting through a couple seminars. I should have known better because those seminars were terribly dumb. Quixtar. One of my friends tried to pitch it to me around that time.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 01:58
|
|
|
Cacafuego posted:Wasn’t there another one of these in this thread recently? There was, but that guy never talked to an accountant, and had already filed his taxes, writing off everything in his life (including his house) as business expenses. The IRS was already auditing him, and he was trying to use his YouTube fame to fight them with plaintive videos.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 02:49
|
|
|
Still, it doesn't sound like this guy prepaid his taxes and are you even able to deduct business expenses if you don't have a "business"? I thought you had to have a LLC or something. So hopefully he banked some of that money.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 02:58
|
|
|
No, you don't have to be an LLC, if you are just freelancing or whatever on your own you can still deduct legitimate expenses. The trick with these guys seems to be that they have a really hard time grasping that turning themselves into a product doesn't mean everything is now deductible: quote:I’m not sure how to go about filing my tax returns. I made $40k from YouTube but I probably spent $10k on cameras, software, travel etc for making the videos. Also, I “vlog” so literally every aspect of my life is a part of the videos, so shouldn’t everything be a write off? Sadly the original post looks like it has been deleted. Always copy it over so we can enjoy when someone realizes how dumb they are!
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 03:07
|
|
|
quote:literally every aspect of my life is a part of the videos, so shouldn’t everything be a write off? Oh honey
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 03:14
|
|
|
I'd like to present some classic OG BWM: 11 easy steps to get out of debt Not recommended for those suffering from high blood pressure.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 03:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 04:12 |
|
|
Reminds me of this scene from Go “It’s Confederate Products, it’s, it’s a different company, it’s a different quality of product.” https://youtu.be/OkdLWuCRe0c Back in the 90s I was involved in a MLM for IT consultants, they were a reseller of products; computers, accessories and components. It was called HandTech and I could have built a downstream but all I cared about was being able to purchase stuff at a discount and gaining some commission on sales. I still have an HP1100 Laserjet that I got from some of the sales credits. I only did it for a year or two and probably made a few buck, I don’t remember having to keep inventory or any of that stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 03:48
|
|