On Sunday 24 June 2007, helen bang wrote:
> As a former brainwashed person perhaps I can explain the mindset?
>
> Re the Internet which became more available in the UK in the late
> 1990s, we were frequently told that there was no editor to police
> what was posted on it so it was easy for 'losers' with a 'grudge'
> who'd had their 'dream stolen' to want to whine about Amway. It was
> therefore better to stay away from the internet (this before Quixtar
> reared its ugly head).
>
> Recently I spoke to one of the kingpins over here - posing as an ex
> distributor looking to get back in. When I said that my husband had
> been neutral until he found negative stuff on the internet he replied
> 'Oh, they put anything on there. Did you know you can find negative
> stuff about Mother Teresa now?' I believe this is called a
> 'thought-stopping' comment.
It's also avoiding a direct question, which these people are trained to
do. It works.
I've told this story before. When I was about 17 I had a friend we'll
call Jed. He continually implied he was quite sexually active but
another friend and I had heard from some of the girls he had dated
about how he was quite the opposite. We got tired of hearing this (and
there's more than that to the story and why we did this). When we were
at a teen disco where all of us like to go each weekend, his
latest "girlfriend" was complaining to us (Jed wasn't around) about
him. We said something like, "Oh, well he's been that way ever since
that incident with the three girls --, oh, we shouldn't have said
that!" Of course it wasn't that exact wording, but you get the
picture.
We made it sound like that comment was a slip of the tongue and tried to
change the topic. Naturally, she kept pushing us for more and the more
we said it was nothing, the more she wanted to hear it. We gave her a
story about Jed and three girls in a dark alley that implied hidden
rage and a dangerous edge of sexuality.
The first point is that we set her up by making it sound like we didn't
want to tell her and trying to ineptly pretend there was nothing to
tell her. This made her so eager to hear what we knew that when she
finally heard it, the logical part of her brain was turned off so she
didn't connect what we said with the facts which, if she had done so,
would have made it quite clear Jed was not the kind of guy to do what
we were talking about.
It's not unlike a lot of the tricks those in MLMs use to interest people
in their group. Then we did one of the most famous tricks that MLMs
do: the preemptive lie or preemptive strike. We said, "We shouldn't be
telling you this because he doesn't like people to know about it and if
you ever bring it up with him, he'll deny it and try to convince you
it's not true because he's not proud of it." With that single comment,
we guaranteed that no matter what Jed said, she would still believe us.
When she told Jed, he denied it and she told him, "Yeah, they said
you'd say that." The more he denied it and insisted on what we knew
was true, the more she was convinced it was true.
That's the same thing Quackstar/Scamway does when they say, "Don't tell
people about this because they want to steal your success. If you tell
them, they'll be jealous and want to steal your success." That's the
same as when we told that girl that Jed would deny it. For many people
telling them one statement like that is all it takes to convince them
that it's true. They predict the behavior of the "detractors" and that
makes people think they know what they're talking about and makes them
believe them.
Oh, and to finish the story about Jed. He finally asked us about that
story and we told him what we had said. He got upset and our response
was, "Well, you keep talking about how good you are with girls, so we
thought this would help you with her." He never bragged or implied to
us anything about his exploits again. I'm not saying we did a good
thing, but it did work.
...
> "If the dream's big enough the facts don't count."
Which is an important point. We have to remember that these people, the
real dream stealers, don't deal in facts at all. They use emotions and
know how to train IBDrones to ignore facts. They use people's wants
and desires against them by keeping them focused on their dreams and
teaching them to ignore their facts. They are also quite sure to link
any negative comments with the idea that listening will keep their
dream from coming true.
...
> Bear in mind that most people were introduced by friends, or by
> people who quickly became 'friends' and the tendency to believe them
> rather than people who wanted to 'steal your dream' is perhaps more
> understandable.
Yes, and it's a shame people don't remember that even if the friend is
trustworthy, that friend can still be fooled. That's why I keep up a
strong focus here on logic. Pure, relentless, focused logic. The idea
is that the more people learn to use logic and to analyze just the
facts and to recognize logical fallacies and to know when someone is
changing the subject without addressing the exact question asked, the
more people will see what a load of crap MLM promises are.
Hal
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