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Ryan North

11 Aug, 8 tweets, 2 min read

People in MLMs are all, "It's not a pyramid scheme, it's a reverse funnel system!"

"It's not a pyramid scheme, it's a chain referral plan!"

"It's not a pyramid scheme, it's a scheme inspired by a platonic solid that was once covered in a white limestone casing circa 2600 BCE!"

I may have told this story before, but we banned advertising any pyramid schemes or MLMs on Project Wonderful, which led to tons of people explaining to us why THEIR scheme was different. The most memorable was one poor lady who started CCing the person above her in the scheme

We'd write back saying "here's why this is a pyramid scheme" and she'd forward our respond to the person above her in the pyramid scheme, and he'd reply with "no no it's reverse funnel" as if a funnel flipped over, "reversed", if you will, ISN'T A PYRAMID SHAPE

It went like this for a day or two until I got involved and explained how the person saying how this was fine and great was literally profiting off of her believing this, and how we, as an ad company, were actually LOSING money by banning her ads.

I asked her to consider our motivations here, and set her a bunch of links, and so on. CC'd the upstream guy too. I never heard back from either of them so I hope she got out, but gosh, things are bleak inside an MLM, and I hope you never find yourself trapped in one.

The most insidious part is how they pitch their system as foolproof. If you just Put In The Work, you can make money. So when you don't, it's not the MLM that's busted: it's you! And the answer is to always reinvest more in the MLM (which they pitch as "investing in yourself")

Anyway people promoting a pyramid scheme will NEVER describe it as a pyramid scheme, and scour a thesaurus for alternatives. We solved it by saying we banned anything that APPEARED to be pyramid schemey, so even if it wasn't TECHNICALLY one, it was still banned from advertising.

We just refused to have the debate. It worked out well, and I recommend not getting sucked into them - just ban ducks, explain why, and then everyone left with things they're vehemently assured are NOT ducks but that still waddle and quack can draw their own conclusions

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