A big shock to many of you (wishing I had the sarcasm font) is that I’m not a big fan of multi level marketing. Pyramid schemes simply aren’t sustainable as a business model. And that means fraud. So although this is about Herbalife, substitute a generic crank ideas in place liberally throughout as you read this.
There are a mix of representatives of Herbalife on Facebook. Culturally and socioeconomically it seems to be rampant among lower class people. Yes, it’s going to be insulting so I’ll just come right out and say it. Face it, some people aren’t bright enough to avoid researching that Herbalife might not be a good idea to get involved in. Even my ex-boss’s daughter is a Mary Kay consultant, so it’s not just the poor and not bright. Some Herbalife salespeople seem to intend to use FB as marketing while others may just have it as part of their profile as a side business to their main job. Some may be in desperate need to move product as they’re losing too much money. The negative press about Herbalife in regards to poor and not well educated is all over the Internet and if forced I can find lots of links. And Facebook is part of the problem with MLMs because they’re are too many sellers, not enough buyers and the pyramid can’t possibly be kept up. A couple people make a lot of money, some break even, the vast majority of people lose a bunch.
If you send a friend request to an Herbalife sales rep, you will get more suggested Herbalife friends. These aren’t even necessarily in the same geographic area. My personal record is seven Herbalife friend suggestions with the Herbalife logo as their profile pick all at the same time, with a couple others in the suggested friends that just mentioned it in the profile.
Bad ideas come from somewhere, and although the source may simply be trying to not lose too much of their investment other people see “Herbalife works, this must be a good idea”. Well, it least you have a batch of kindred spirits to whine about losing money with. The kind of person that puts Herbalife in their profile pick that is losing money and trying to stop the bleeding isn’t likely to open up about losing money in their FB posts. Their more likely to be looking for new recruits because if you make any money on MLMs it’s through recruitment, not sales.
As a control to the Herbalife experiment with Mexico I sent friend requests to Mexicans that weren’t obvious Herbalife representatives and only had a few new suggested friends from Herbalife show up, easily explained based on probability. While if I sent a request to a single Herbalife representative I could count on at least one usually several in the next batch. FB’s perfectly valid defense is that people seek out others with common interests and aren’t responsible for who requests what friends and who accepts those requests for whatever reason. Which really doesn’t help at all if the interaction has some dishonesty within it.
As another control I sent batches of friend requests to Mexico that included not Herbalife salespeople and got some hits. In the meantime I latched to the Berkeley Conservatory and not a single one of the presumably smarter people decided I was worthy of bothering with. All in all it seems pretty easy to dupe not bright people into being your FB friend.
So with gematria, even the users have FB friends that aren’t into that scene. All it takes is one FB friend that is and even if you aren’t intentionally looking for a conspiracy theorist an impressionable 13 year old may get their first exposure to it. Although I think YouTube requires far more active seeking the crazy out than FB.
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