On Monday 27 August 2007, chandranova wrote:
> Researching MLMs and finding the positive, as well as the negative,
> is no guarantee that a person will stay away from them. I give you 3
> cases studies:
No, it isn't. There is never a guarantee that common sense will
prevail.
> 1) My brother, who introduced me to the Quixtar MLM, told me an
> interesting story about how he got convinced to join. Despite the
> fact that he also did prior research and found some negative info on
> it, when he told his soon-to-be upline sponsor about it, his upline
> responded by saying, "Yeah, I saw those websites, too, at first, but
> I joined anyway because this is the real thing." The fact that
> someone would join despite "negative" info (haha, I still speak like
> an Ambot!!) really impressed my brother, and this is one of the
> factors that actually convinced him to join!
Your brother, in this case, if it is this simple, fell for a major logic
flaw. He was impressed that they acknowledged the sites, but notice he
didn't follow through on it. He took the upslime's word when he
said, "But this is the real thing."
That would be about like me going out on a date with a woman, hearing
both good and bad about her before the date, then on the date
saying, "I have to admit, I've heard some people say you use men."
Then she says, "Oh, I know. There's always someone people that say
things like that, but I don't worry about them because I'm a good
person and a good girlfriend." Why, in the name of reason, would I
take that woman's word about herself as meaning anything other than her
opinion?
If this is valid reasoning, then I'd like you to subscribe to the data
mining services my company provides. Sure, you might have read there
are others that are better or cheaper, but I'm the best. I set it up
because my company is the real thing. Sure, some say otherwise, but
trust me, I'm the best and you should listen to me and not them.
Do you see this? It's also a standard sales tactic. They took a
negative and made it sound positive. They didn't deal with it
directly, but instead they gave a response, but not an actual answer.
The upslime never answered your brother's objection, he only
acknowledged it and gave him an answer that gave him an emotional sense
of closure and an answer, but it wasn't an answer.
If your brother's joining were due ONLY to this, then it comes down to
him not following through on his research and him allowing himself to
be manipulated by this person before he joined. He was making an
important decision and accepting what one person said about his own
organization.
This reminds me of the line, "No man looks under the bed unless he has
hidden there himself." Most people are trusting because they wouldn't
rip someone off. That used to describe me, but I've been ripped off
enough that I've learned one simple rule: DO NOT trust what someone
says about himself or any organization he represents. Remember
Reagan's "Trust but verify?" It's the same thing. Verify people's
claims.
> 2) I, too, did read positive as well as negative prior to join
> Quixtar, but after hours and hours of researching, I said, "Screw
> this, everyone on both sides sound biased, so I can't really know
> anything from these websites."
Then it's your own fault. You saw research, but didn't accept it.
I've said, many times (and so many others have as well), that joining an
MLM is more an emotional decision than an emotional one. This seems
very much in line with that. While you said both sides looked biased,
what did you do in terms of working out the numbers? I know both sides
can be biased, but I've seen a fair number of sites out there with
facts on the con side, far more than I've seen sites with facts on the
pro side.
> 3) This kid, who I contacted, despite watching the NBC Dateline on
> the Quixtar scam and having initial apprehensions, after being
> contacted by 5 different people in the same day, at the mall where he
> worked, went to the meeting and went out enthusiastic. His take on
> it was, "If so many people are doing this thing, then there must be
> something to it!"
By that reasoning, since so many people in the 1930s were following the
guy with the funny moustache, it would mean that the Nazis were right
because so many people were doing it. That's a logical fallacy called
argumentum ad populum. Basically, "Everyone else is doing it so I
should, too."
Considering the reasoning you and your brother showed in joining, you
might want to read up on logical fallacies, which are flaws in
reasoning. Here's a good link in the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia
There is a better page that someone once linked to from this list, but I
don't remember where I filed the link.
This is a case where people were looking at facts but did not pay
attention to making sure their reasoning was solid. Both are important
and MLMs depend on people reasoning emotionally instead of logically.
While the facts are important, the reasoning and logic is just as
important.
> So my point is, just getting the information isn't enough. The
> turning point for me was wrong I kept feeling that something was
> wrong or off (which, btw, they tell you is a "normal" feeling when
> first starting out), and that led me to revisit my research, when I
> stumbled upon Merchants of Deception.
Another point: MoD comes up quite easily and quickly on most anti-MLM
and almost all anti-Quackstar sites. I don't want to criticize you,
but if you had done thorough research in the first place, you could not
have helped but to have found MoD. I know I found links to it many
times within my first few hours of researching Quackstar.
> Reading that really did it for
> me. Prior to that, the people I contacted kept asking me about the
> negative websites that they saw, which prompted me to actually look
> them up in hopes of doing "damage control". I am thankful for these
> people because each time I did this, the cult's hold on me loosened a
> bit.
Which also is a reminder that it is the questions that make people
think, not statements or arguments. I've been saying, for a year or
more, on this list, that if I tell you something you can doubt it but
if you find it on your own, you know it's true. That's why telling
MLMers facts doesn't help them but using questions to lead them to it
does. I was glad to see someone else use this phrase recently since it
means it's catching and I think it's a good, short summary of a major
part of the situation and needs to be repeated and absorbed.
Hal
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