A few days ago, an acquintance approached me with a "business offer" that would of course require a noticeable initial deposit, but "don't worry" I'll get it back many times over. All I had to do to be paid off was to bring new people into the "business". You can bet that individual is off my party list...or at least, would be if I ever organized any parties.

So, ever been approached by someone who tried to get you into some "business" but failed to tell what the "business" is aside from being, of course, "business"; required a hefty initial deposit and required you to bring in new people in order to be paid off?

Oh and if you EVER do get approached like that, never, ever, EVER attend any of their seminars. 4 hours of carefully micromanaged brainwashing has broken many nerves of steel.

So yeah, all those people achieve around me is wanting to die so I can come back as ghost or some other sinister entity and haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Luckily, no, I have never been approached by anyway trying to get me into a pyramid. I can't believe people still fall for that silly junk!

As I said, they do some careful brainwashing. The numbers and charts they show around and try to get you believe them...they're insane, so insane people actually start believing.

And I'm not talking Amway or Oriflame - those are legitimate business systems that don't rip people off (I'm not a member of either, just saying).

Amway/Quixtar is probably the worst of them all, it is a full-blown cult.

http://www.merchantsofdeception.com/ - very informative, please read.

i dunno how you can trust either side.....the guy selling the book could be a fraud too, just trying to take down the company, and possibly make himself some money, o.O


/shrug

Never been approached by one, and never would be taken in if I was. Was just vid browsing on youtube and found this though - I found it amusing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpdlZtVMIuQ

A few points...
- He is not selling the book, you can download it for free
- There are quite a few strikingily similar acounts from ex-Amway dealers.
- Nothing I have read in the book contradicts what I can witness through a friend of mine who is in Amway. The reapearing patterns are alarming at the least.

Yeah, you're right, they'd have to seriously brainwash people to convince them any of that crap is for real. I guess people who attend those seminars are usually deseperate to "get rich quick" and will be even more easily won over.

I feel (somewhat) sorry for them. If something seems too good to be true, then it most cases, it IS!

I mean, if you could just get a whole ton of money doing nothing, why would ANYONE be working a legitimate job?

A couple my parents used to be friendly with fell for this sort of thing -all- the time. The husband was forever coming up with get rich quick schemes and the wife was..dippy enough to believe everything she was told.

Rule of life: If it seems too good to be true then it probably is. Oh, and there's no such thing as free money/drink/lunch.

what about free womenz?


and sadly, the womenz are always too good to be true as well,

Free women too..unless you like seafood <bad >< >

I had the awesome luck to have a great business teacher, who actually never once looked at the course guide, and he basically taught us everything we need to know in order to not only suvive, but possibly thrive from our 20's (college and begining of adulthood) to our 50's (begining of retirement)... so i have never fallen to a pyramid scheme.

Not most cases, always.

There are a lot of amazing things in this world. It's just that most of them are bad.

Just so you know Verbose, I'm collecting your multiple quotable remarks so that one day I may cause people to implode from the sheer depression of reading what you say here every day.

It's not all doom and gloom. I do believe in miracles.

For example: One woman was impaled to death by a frozen icicle of urine that was dropped from a plane that was flying over head. The sheer statistics that this would not only hit her but wound her fatally are miraculous.

Nobody ever said that miracles have to be positive.

Example: A man won the Kentucky lottery jackpot, a chance of 1 in 150 million, and latter that afternoon was killed by a small meteor (about the size of a fist), a chance of 1 in 150 million... so you can say he had pretty average luck.

Lots of people are lucky.

It's just that good luck is rarer than bad.

Not really Verb.

When people fail they tend to blame it on bad luck, when they succeed, they tend to blame it on their own awesomeness.

Many cases of so-called bad luck are in fact only cases of genuine human error/failure.

Never fallen for any of these, but they are what popped into my head when I think about scams.

Notable scams, -

Scientology, many people know L. Ron Hubbard is a science fiction writer but what's lesser known is he was a scam artist before becoming a science fiction author(in the same vein as Kevin Trudeau who wrote the fake cure book). He even ripped off a priest of Aleister Crowley's(but not Crowley himself), and made off with the guys girlfriend and a good chunk of the donations for the Church of Thelema which Crowley had recently founded. ** Scientology perfectly matches the definition of a cult(great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad), and a scam at the same time.

PETA, they use the majority of their donations to line their own pockets and fund homegrown terrorism. They routinely kill between 85 and 90 percent of all animals they save.

Cures They Don't Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau, a known scam artist(criminal record) and even a sleazy used car salesman before he suddenly became an expert on herbalism, and supposed natural cures.

Penis Enlargement Pills, most notably Extenze. I am still giving a buddy of mine hell over ordering these.

Kinoki Footpads, and similar products. These people really think the pad turns black because it's sucking out toxins.

Q-Ray bracelets, debunked time after time but people are confusing the power of the mind with something supernatural in the bracelet. It's a placebo, pure and simple just like the footpads.