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As I keep saying, there’s a phenomenal amount of bad information out there about writing and publishing. You have to pay attention to your sources.
Warren Whitlock (see also) is the most aggressively ignorant self-proclaimed publishing expert I’ve run across since Todd James Pierce. He’s got a number of scams going. One is palming himself off as a Marketing Results Coach, whereby he charges for the kind of advice that one normally hears about in spam:
Another major activity of his is setting up those worthless automatically generated blogs that clog up Google searches. His blog about this activity, My Blog about Blog Marketing (subtitled “expert reviews of blogging technigues”) has next to zero original content. On balance that’s a good thing, because when Whitlock puts his fingers on a keyboard, bad things happen, like “alternative health welness health advice that wooks from expert heaylty people.” His most recent post is headed another of my marekting with blogs blog posts.Do you need new profit centers?
Would you like have several times the leads or clients you already have?
How’d you like customers that are evangelists for your company?
Would you like to use proven online and offline marketing to add markets, build sales and vastly improve your profits?So far this year, I’ve used the same methods I used for a 279% increase in sales in one product line at my at my own company to help clients:
Do more than double annual sales in only five daysWant to know how? I’ll be happy to share these true stories with you …
Create a new seminar that did $57k in a weekend
Bring in $110,505 from sending out just one email
Add 37 new clients while the store was closed
Helped a client add $25,607.00 in one hour
He gives a long list of his other blogs. They’re all original-content-free except for one called Sister Whitlock, which he put together for a female relative who’s a Mormon missionary. It’s kind of cute. She’s not responsible for him.
Other enterprises: Whitlock runs BookBonuses.com, a site that offers you the opportunity to read promotional material about writers and buy their books at reduced rates. It’s doubtless a helpful site for him to own, given that he’s simultaneously running a book promotion business. And there’s ZeroCostPromotions.com, which I think is what he was talking about when he said “I’m working on an experiement to cross promote some of my blogs”, and also “I’m putting a list of the sites I use in with some sites I promote.” My impression is that since this is something he’s doing anyway as an experiment, he’s promoting it as a hugely effective way to sell books. Which it isn’t.
My overall guess is that Whitlock started out in the business of selling wildly overhyped sales & promotion advice to people who want to go into the business of selling wildly overhyped what-have-you. Now he’s noticed that the world is suddenly full of gormless self-published authors looking to promote their books (fallout from other people’s scams), so he’s declared himself a Book Marketing Expert, grafted the word “book” onto separate versions of all his basic scams, and started playing to that audience.
He knows absolutely nothing about writing, publishing, or marketing books. He’s either personally dishonest, or he’s wallowed in hype so long that he’s no longer able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood, which amounts to the same thing. Don’t do business with him. Don’t give him money. And for heaven’s sake, don’t listen to his advice.
I could spend days cataloguing the notions he promotes that don’t work and ain’t so, but you and I both have better things to do. Instead, here are my comments on a short excerpt from one of his many websites:
The Secret To Becoming A Best Seller
He’s not a bestselling author, he knows nothing about selling books, and his advice won’t work.
Emerson promised us that the world would beat a path to your door. Trouble is, Emerson lived before the advent of the frenzy of mass media we seen in the past few decades.
I’m not going to be cataloguing his grammatical errors.
The world today demands better mousetraps.. and expects you to fight through the cacophony of marketing messages to get the word out. It’s getting harder and more expensive to create the stampede that will beat a path to your door!
Or his mixed metaphors.
Fortunately, we have a secret weapon that will blast through the noise and get you noticed by the people who can that stampeded, beating a path to the bookstores.
Nothing that Whitlock undertakes to do will generate even a tiny increase in book sales.
Through the technologies of online ordering, ezine and mailing lists,
That is, the spam-and-hype technologies Whitlock’s already been using,
we have successfully set up promotions that compel hundreds or even thousands of readers buy your book in a short period of time.
A fraudulent misrepresentation. A palpable lie. Whitlock can’t compel a single reader to buy or even browse your book; and he’s never set up any such promotions, successfully or otherwise.
Even if he could do everything he claims, almost none of the self-published authors who are his target audience get brick-and-mortar bookstore distribution. A stampede of readers looking for one of their books would hit the shelves at Barnes & Noble, then retreat, baffled, when the book wasn’t there, and wind up buying something else that caught their eye.
Furthermore, many of those self-published authors have gone into print through Print On Demand operations. PODs are physically incapable of generating large numbers of books in a short amount of time. If they did get serious word-of-mouth demand developing for a book, they couldn’t supply the copies to keep it going.
The resulting best selling give a real boost to your sales, acting as a catalyst to attract more attention for booksellers, reviewers and the book buying public.
Take it as an indicator of how little thought Whitlock puts into his “expert marketing advice” that he’s saying that a bestselling book is a good way to attract attention from booksellers and the book-buying public. Say what? If it’s a bestseller, those are precisely the classes of people who already know about it.
Finally, if the book is finished and available for sale, it’s too late for it to get attention from the big reviewers. They want copies months before the publication date—which is no biggie, since they aren’t going to review your self-published book anyway.
That’s getting close to the fabled 1:1 ratio of words to errors. If you’re trying to sell books, Warren Whitlock is, at the most charitable estimate, a worthless waste of your time. Let the writer beware.
I would say that anybody who calls themself a(n) 'XYZ coach' is saying 'I'm clueless and unqualified, but I can help you spend your money.'
hm, uhm, well, when I'm not working as an electrical engineer, I do some work as a life coach. I was trained by Coaches Training Institute. Hopefully that doesn't make me clueless and unqualified.
...whereby he charges for the kind of advice that one normally hears about in spam...
Given that he claims to be an expert in internet direct marketing, are you entirely sure that spam you're talking about isn't his?
It is true, however, that anyone can call themselves a "coach". there is no licensing to be a coach like there is licensing to be a therapist or doctor or lawyer or whatever. But then, coaching isn't intended for someone who is suicidal, is bleeding from an artery, or is facing life in prison. You sort of need a minimum level of expertise for those sorts of things. Coaching is more for people who want more out of their lives, for whatever definition of "more" they want to use. Personally, I like helping people get more in their relationships and people who want to pursue something artistic. Not something that you can really license. Well, you could license, but it wouldn't be an indicator or competence, it would be an indicator that the license holder paid their $20 to city hall.
we have successfully set up promotions that compel hundreds or even thousands of readers buy your book in a short period of time.
A fraudulent misrepresentation. A palpable lie. Whitlock can't compel a single reader to buy or even browse your book; and he's never set up any such promotions, successfully or otherwise.
I wonder what "compel" can mean from a legal point of view. THe Cambridge Online dictionary defines "compel" to include "to produce a strong feeling or reaction, sometimes unwillingly". Got a lot of limbo there.
I'm amused by the fact that he's set up all these blogs, but he hasn't bothered changing the default link Blogger provides, thus leading to two "Edit-me" links and a link to Google News on his various blogs.
I also found his reading blog rather amusing -- a few legit business books, a bunch of books on direct marketing, and the one-two punch of The Prayer of Jabez and The Book of Mormon.
Greg London: No offense intended (to you, certainly). I was thinking of this chap who had an office on the floor below mine until he was discovered to have, ahem, slightly exaggerated his qualifications.
Fragano, no worries, none taken. People use all sorts of titles to con others. The link was good for a chuckle, btw.
Back to Whitlock, is there a "snopes" equivalent website that would list hoaxes for new authors to be wary of?
Or, more specifically, con artists to be wary of?
There is always Writers Beware on the SFWA Web site. They are pretty up-to-date on Bad Things.
http://www.sfwa.org/beware/
(I've never had luck making linking text despite the instruction, you will have to cut and paste... sorry)
I have to say, as a life-long Mormon, I was neither shocked nor surprised to find out that Mr. Whitlock is L.D.S. There seems to be some odd connection between being able to believe in ole' Joe Smith, and being a sucker for pyramid schemes, MLMs, and pretty much any get-rich-quick "method". I would say, at a conservative estimate, 50% of the adults in my ward are either currently involved in some sort of MLM, or have been/will be. Unfortunately, that even includes my wife (stamps, cursed be their name). In our previous ward, the Bishop was involved in some magnet selling business, and pressured almost all of the other leaders in the ward to become his "down line". It's kind of creepy, very annoying, and overall just frustrating. The third or fourth time that you go over to some "friends" house because they invited you to hang out and play games, and end up having to turn down an amway sales pitch, you start to become cynical...
"50% of the adults in my ward"
For a brief moment after writing that, I found myself wondering: "Gee, they let people in mental institutions participate in MLMs?"
Between this Whitlock fellow, folks like Mr. Bishop mentions (my aunt and uncle, also mormons, have always been involved in one MLM or another) and the recent dust-up with Thomas Kinkade, it seems to me that the first thing a person should do upon getting the slightest whiff of religion in a sales pitch would be to RUN THE OTHER WAY!!!
I don't know if it's a naive belief in the miracles of MLM or a cynical attempt to appeal to others' naivete, but the outcome is the same.
This Whitlock guy sure has the ability to use an awful lot of words while saying absolutely nothing - I'll give him that. His sentences are like mobius strips.
What happened with Thomas Kinkade?
Well, there was his public marking of his territory . . .
Re: Kinkade:
Is this 'dust-up' in any way related to his assembly-line way of producing 'original' artwork?
Thomas Kikade, Painter of Shite
He's accused of using the "Christian" thing as an inducement for the original investors to invest. Now that he's proven himself insufficiently Christian, his investors are suing. He's being accused of deliberately acting to devalue his Kinkade Galleries shortly before swooping in and buying them out cheap.
Many investors seem to be generally surprised that a Christian could do that, but they are much more disturbed of his drunken behavior, including groping women at signings, peeing on a Winnie The Pooh figurine (?) at Disney, and being thrown out of a Siegfried and Roy show for loudly and repeatedly shouting "Codpiece! Codpiece!" (OK, so that was hysterical)
No one seems to be upset that he can't properly use perspective, figure out what direction in the painting the light is coming from, or indeed, that even the expensive schlock out there is merely mass-produced and "highlighted" with blobs of paint by random people who are not Kinkade.
Greg London: Thanks. I have learned from this not to trust 'life coaches' who drive Range Rovers....
I've got a half-written post about Kinkaid. I should just finish it.
"...it seems to me that the first thing a person should do upon getting the slightest whiff of religion in a sales pitch would be to RUN THE OTHER WAY!!!"
That is 100% true. I *detest* it when a sales(sub-hu)man tries to ferret out my religion so that they can give me the "just trust me, I'm Mormon, too!"-routine. Living in southern Idaho, it's all too common.
Wow. I just had to delete a paragraph of bile and tell myself to calm down. Apparently this is much more of a hot button issue with me than I thought :-) Let's just say that people who convince themselves that whatever they do is justifiable because they're "one of the good guys" (they have to be, they're religious!) are worse in many ways than someone who knows that they're despicable and are fine with that.
A LOT of outright scams (as opposed to "soft" scams like MLMs) are perpetrated by sincere-seeming outsiders (as opposed to pushy members of the in-group) on congregations of trusting religious people.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote:
> I've got a half-written post about Kinkaid. I should just finish it.
Please do.
I may have originally got this from the Particles sidebar - apologies if so - but there's a Kinkaid themed residential community:
http://salon.com/mwt/style/2002/03/18/kinkade_village/print.html
Gack.
And then there's the friends who invite you to see the slides from their just-finished vacation and instead try to sell you Amway. I didn't bother staying for the slides.
If they invite you over to make a commercial profit from you, you're not their guest, they're not your hosts, and this is not a social occasion. Implying otherwise is misrepresentation, aka fraud and lying.
I do not remain friends with people who tell me lies for the purpose of defrauding me.
Mousetrap... stampede... ouch.
I wonder what sort of a world he lives in, what he thinks other people's motivations are. Not that it isn't obvious, but I have trouble believing it. He really thinks everyone's like *that*?
I wonder if he's making a profit from being this annoying. It seems to me like it'd take quite a lot of boring, meaningless work to scam people in that many different directions. Is it his primary job, or a sideline?
I quite badly want to believe that it's a sideline, and that he fondly hopes that it'll pay off one day but no one's buying it. Yeah, I'm an optimist.
I'd love to see his tax return.
I too have received pitches from my LDS neighbors. Vacuum cleaners, knives, e-commerce... My wife and I got a call out of the blue from some people we used to live by; we visited them once or twice, but I would call them acquaintances.
I'm not a Mormon, so I can only speculate, but maybe it has something to do with the two-year missions, a sort of marketing baptism-by-fire.
Vassilissa, if what I read in Brian McWilliam's "Spam Kings" is right, and if Whitlock is like the others described there, then it's most likely that he's partly a solipsist and partly simply incapable of shame. It's not that these people don't think about what they're doing. Often they do. It's just that they do it from an alienated point-of-view. They think of themselves as predators in a world of prey, and are secretly (sometimes openly) proud of that status.
Thus, if one taxed Whitlock with the fact that he profits from selling something he knows quite well is worthless, he would only be amused. If he were actually prosecuted or sanctioned for it, he would be indignant. "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it", not so? If the sheep line up to be clipped, why should he not clip them?
Much better than the originals.
I am ignorant -- what's MLM mean? (I really am stupid about blog abbreviations; it took me six months to figure out LOL. So now I ask. Thanks.
MLM is "multi-level marketing."
Amway is the best-known model. Someone recruits you to sell a line of soap products in your spare time. You sell soap, that someone gets a slice of the money. You recruit friends, neighbors, or relatives to sell soap. They sell soap, you get a slice, your patron also gets a slice.
The more people you have in your "downline," the more money you make. Especially as they recruit more people for their own downlines.
Eventually, they run out of vassals to recruit...
There's a similarity to pyramid schemes, but it's all quite legal.
The talented and tireless Rob Cockerham did a great investigative series on the Herbalife MLM:
http://www.cockeyed.com/workfromhome/workfromhome.html
There's a letter section buried in there that has messages from scary True Believers taking on Rob for his expose. One of the correspondents wrote back, months later, after her "home business" failed.
Teresa, I would also like to see your article on Kinkade. I'm afraid my own take doesn't get much beyond, "Oh, bleh." It's pretty unsophisticated, I admit, but I'll point out in my defense, I'd rather study artists who interest me and who do interesting work - and I've always thought of Kinkade as the artistic equivalent of, well, Harlequin romances.
You recruit friends, neighbors, or relatives to sell soap. They sell soap, you get a slice, your patron also gets a slice.
But why would I want a slice of soap? Oh, I see.
My brother works for Avon cosmetics. In Russia. Possibly he is evil. I try not to think about it.
Warren Whitlock isn't the only person plowing these fields. There's also Shaun Fawcett, M.B.A. and his acolytes:
http://instantbookwritingkit.com/
http://instantcollegeadmissionessay.com/
http://www.writinghelp-central.com/
http://www.howtopromoteaproduct.com/
http://www.readingwritinggenius.com/
(Ohh, I feel dirty. I feel like a comment-spammer.)
And last, this one (make sure you have your speakers turned on -- must be heard to be believed): http://www.awakentheauthorwithin.com/
Please notice the similar formats on these web pages. The similar pitches. The similar colors. As you look around the slimy underbelly of the web you'll be able to spot sites like this for what they are without reading a word. The template gives them away.
Had a friend did Herbalife for awhile. They make the very best brownie-flavored protein bars I have ever tasted. Then she decided it was no longer a good use of her time, and I lost my crack dealer.
Pampered Chef is another MLM too, isn't it?
And regarding this: it seems to me that the first thing a person should do upon getting the slightest whiff of religion in a sales pitch would be to RUN THE OTHER WAY!!! :sometimes it's a lot more than a whiff. Anyone else get the letters from that church that sends you a paper "prayer rug" with a pic of Jesus on it and a letter telling you that if you don't act now and tell them you want them to pray for you and thus make good things happen in your life, they'll just have to give that offer to the next person on their list...?
Once in a long while, some direct mail sales pitch annoys/offends me so badly that I stuff their propaganda into the postage-paid envelope and send it back to them. This was one of them.
Writers Beware on the SFWA Web site
But these con games work on any and all genres, so some author who is about to pay Whitlock a chunk of money to do nothing with their Romance novel probably won't be checking the SFWA site.
It almost feels like there is actually a technical solution to this problem: a single, industry-wide response website that has some sort of "author beware" list of scams and scam artists. And with sufficient legal departments to give everything the once-over to make sure the likes of Whitlock can't sue.
The site wouldn't even have to say much of anything negative about Whitlock, instead, the site could simply announce that all the publishers who sponsor said site refuse to accept any manuscripts touched by Whitlock.
While a mistatement of fact about Whitlock could open the group to a lawsuit, a declaration of censure and/or boycott against Whitlock (without saying much of anything that could be defaming), would, I would think, pretty much dry up his customer base as far as potential authors go.
Whitlock: Pay me beaucoup bucks and I'll get your manuscript in a publishable state.
Author: Yeah, but Tor says right here (link) that they won't accept any manuscript that you've worked on.
It might not make the con games stop, but at least it might make him move to other pastures, like selling driveway sealcoat or something.
Just a thought.
yeah, I'm solution oriented, if anyone hasn't noticed...
When my nephew was born earlier this year, my brother wanted to name him after a character from The Brothers K, by David James Duncan. It's due to the Painter O'Light (tm) that he's named Everett and not Kincaid.
Greg, if a really good author fell into Whitlock's hands, the big question would be how many minutes it took for me to succumb to temptation.
That said, a central info site for authors of all sorts wouldn't be a bad idea. I've been under the impression that Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors both get traffic from mainstream writers.
Teresa,
I found something deliciously over the top on Thomas Kinkade:
From Jin Wicked's Crap I Drew on My Lunch Break
Scroll down for jesusfish goodness.
-r.
Greg, you're probably looking for Preditors & Editors.
Just a couple of comments:
In American legal usage, "compel" means "require," and most often implies "against the will of the person compelled." Specific example: "compelled testimony" comes from a witness who would refuse to testify but for a subpoena. That's the basis for Teresa's comment—the only "compelled" buyers of books are students and the occasional management-seminar junkie (who needs his fix of Tom Peters… which is relevant here because it's one of the common "self-publishing success stories," but originated as a compelled purchase in management seminars, not a trade book).
MLM is not inherently "perfectly legal." In fact, Amway has been fighting against changes in its taxation treatment for several years now precisely because the IRS said Amway has crossed the line to pyramid schemes. If the majority of income of early participants does not come from sale (or shares of sales) of a real product or service to end-users (as opposed to resellers inside the system), the system will probably be treated as a pyramid scheme. Thus, a scheme (such as Interplanetary Unlimited back in the 1970s) in which the early advocates earn a lot of money by charging "distribution fees" to those under them in addition to the cost of goods to be sold is probably a pyramid scheme.
BTW, as far as drying up customer bases, I have a bit of experience in warning young writers about various scams, near-scams, and Very Bad Ideas.
A very, very common reaction is this: they listen patiently then say, "Yes, but my book is different."
Dave Luckett's ...they're not your hosts.... brings me back to my favorite joke: "You're the host, they're the parasites."
Sorry if you've heard this one too many times. That's the problem with favorite jokes.
Fortunately, we have a secret weapon that will blast through the noise and get you noticed by the people who can that stampeded, beating a path to the bookstores
My head felt like it was going explode when I read this...
Theresa, please finish that article on Kinkade -- I'd love to hear your take.
As someone else commented, I'd love to see "Thomas Kincaide Heckles Sigfried and Roy" done as an allegorical painting.
Meanwhile, back to Mr. Whitlock: this is what I feel the deal is with those Marketing Blogs. It cuts out the middle man when you start a blog in order to post your own comment spam to yourself.
He's got links not just to other things he's promoting ("Cure Diabetes," for example, a book that's undoubtedly getting a mousetrap stampede, when you, and I, and the guy over there all know there isn't a cure for diabetes) but to tiny little pages filled with keywords whose only purpose is to display Google ads, in an attempt to bring in cash from clicks on those ads.
Fraud? Not really. Pathetic? Definitely.
Greg: the solution you're proposing would simply build a layer of lies into the situation. Whitlock would tell people something like, "I'm so good at what I do, publishers are scared of me, just don't tell them I worked with you." And writers would believe it.
A large amount of damage done to new writers has been observed by several people. Said person doing said damage is one Melinda Jane Harrison. She recruits people who know nothing about writing, charging some of them a good bit of money and others, she charges nothing. She claims to have been in publishing in NYC, although that is highly doubtful because of her gross evasiveness with any direct questions.
Anyone questioning her is met with condescension and scorn, insults and told they must not want to be published bad enough because her way is the only way.
Her guarantee is to turn these poor people into minions, anxiously awaiting her negative criticism like a starving animal waiting for food.
Fortunately, some people are able to get away from her venomous persona before their marriages and families are torn apart by this woman who is literally brainwashing people into her cult of ego.
(She's certainly not a bestselling author that anyone has ever heard of in any genre.)
Thanks, Teresa. It's been a while since we've seen you tear someone a new one. I hadn't realized how much I missed it. >8->
On my podcast a couple months ago I coined a new word for link farms and blog farms: Webfungus. I felt that "farm" was too positive a word.
The amusing part to me is that when you Google it, you get a couple of original citations back to my podcast commentary, and a greater volume of webfungus reposting the original blog posts.
The first time I heard the brand name "Kinkade" I thought, "Sounds like they sell a sports drink... or is it sex toys??"
Jim wrote:
> I have a bit of experience in warning young writers about various scams, near-scams, and Very Bad Ideas.
>A very, very common reaction is this: they listen patiently then say, "Yes, but my book is different."
Melissa wrote:
>Whitlock would tell people something like, "I'm so good at what I do, publishers are scared of me, just don't tell them I worked with you." And writers would believe it.
There will always be those who take whatever bait is dangled before them by Whitlock and his type. The question is would a central site endorsed by all the mainstream publishers who list all the individuals whom they censure, would a site like that cause Whitlock to catch more or less authors than he is now? I think it would be substantially less. I could be wrong. WOuldn't be the first time. But I think it would be a big dent in his catch.
If it saves a significant number of new authors who are savable, and doesn't save the authors who are unsavable (the "yeah, but my book is different" types), then wouldn't that be the best you could expect anyway?
I'd LOVE to see a post ripping Kinkade to little shreds.
Before I wrote off graduate school as a bad idea, I used to work nights at a Wal-Mart to pay for it. Every Christmas season, without fail, a pallet of "Thomas Kinkade: Painter Of Light Christmas-Themed Scented Candles" would arrive, with Kinkade scenes attached to the candles via cellophane. Not only did they smell foul ("Apple Cinnamon" smelled like a piece of dirty cardboard that had been smeared in apple sauce, sprinkled with cinnamon, and left out in the sun for two or three days), but the packaging disintegrated if you looked at it the wrong way, the glass cracked at the touch of a feather, and you needed a wrecking ball just to get into the pallet itself.
So I don't care if Kinkade's a hack or not, but his Official Licensed Products suck and are a pain in the butt to unload.
All right already, I'm finishing it. Hold off on the comments until.
Bob Oldendorf, thank you for the Kinkade parodies! Wonderful stuff.
A friend of mine once had the brilliant idea of hiring an artist to add Disney characters and Nazis to one of Kinkade's town scenes. The only prob, though, was the price the Kincade gallery charged for the "painting." Who knew crap could be so expensive?
The world today demands better mousetraps.. and expects you to fight through the cacophony of marketing messages to get the word out. It's getting harder and more expensive to create the stampede that will beat a path to your door!
This is the bit that winds me up: it admits that his activities, and those of his fellow spammers, don't in fact sell good products to people who are crying out for them, they erect a barrier between the producer and the market.
Well, yes, we knew this: but I wasn't expecting him to boast about it...
"I'm not a Mormon, so I can only speculate, but maybe it has something to do with the two-year missions, a sort of marketing baptism-by-fire."
I've speculated about that before. I didn't go on a mission, detest (almost) all salesmen, and have never fallen for a work-at-home scam. But it doesn't explain why Mormon women are so susceptible. Only a small fraction of them go on missions, but (at times it feels like) every single one of them is hawking soap, or stamps, or cookware, or - in one interesting case - sex toys.
mormon ... sex toys ... can't compute ... mormon ... sex toys ... can't compute ...
Marilee -- there's a Ramsay Campbell story about neighbours who invite people round to see their holiday slides, and the holiday slides progress to "And here's where we got lost in the catacombs, and this is the nice zombie we met who converted us, and now let's talk about converting you..."
Great story.
So true.
"mormon ... sex toys ... can't compute ..."
I believe the mlm is "Essense of Romance". It might even be Boise-specific (at least, the first google result was for a Boise address).
But if you're surprised that mormons and sex toys go together, well, where do you think all those 8-kid families come from? Hell, last Christmas my sister-in-law gave my wife and me a "doggy style support harness" and a bottle of "strawberry flavored skin spray". And those were far from the first things to go into our "kids stay out" drawer...
oooooooh, I so should not read this on my lunch hour. OOOOOH.
But mlm sex toy operations are everywhere. Toy sales parties are a blast!
Imagine if instead of posting signs reading:
LOSE WEIGHT FAST -- ASK ME HOW!
MLM distributors nailed up notices advertising:
DOGGY STYLE SUPPORT HARNESSES -- FREE DEMO!
Once you start looking, the Web underbrush is full of sites (and they honestly all do look the same) promising Vast Amounts of Something For Nothing (for a small fee).
Take this one, for example:
Just imagine how pleased all those Thousands of Potential Customers will be to find that they were Diverted from the websites they were looking for to yours!
Stefan Jones: DOGGY STYLE SUPPORT HARNESSES -- FREE DEMO!
I have the URL if anybody needs it.
But mlm sex toy operations are everywhere. Toy sales parties are a blast!
(sigh) I never get invited to the popular parties (mournful look)
"This is a side of Schtupperware I never imagined."
"Oh, be honest, Sue Ann."
"Well, you're right. This is a side of Schtupperware I imagined a whole lot."
MLM Mormon sex-toy parties? In Boise?
Greg, if you think you're having a "does not compute" moment ...
If they invite you over to make a commercial profit from you, you're not their guest, they're not your hosts, and this is not a social occasion. Implying otherwise is misrepresentation, aka fraud and lying.
Right on, Dave Luckett!!! I'd add that guest-host courtesies no longer apply, and that leaving at once is not rude; in fact it's the most polite thing you can do in the circumstances—letting someone be that exploitive of your alleged friendship being automatically wrong.
I do not remain friends with people who tell me lies for the purpose of defrauding me.
Even without the last six words, I agree.
David Bishop - a..."doggy style support harness"? The mind fairly boggles. Surely if you need a support harness, you're either not doing it right, or are too out-of-shape to be engaging in sex in the first place?
No, no, don't answer. Mormon kink. Eyes wide open. Soon to be shut. Moans escape from mouth (no not that kind).
I poked around that http://www.cockeyed.com/workfromhome/workfromhome.html herbalife expose' site, and apparently enough people who are considering becoming mlm marketers find it that they don't buy anything or get out before they get in too deep. So I think it's reasonable that an all-genre site warning writers about publishing scams is likely to do some good, even if writers tend to be more gullible than the average.
In re Mormons and mlm: My impression is that part of the culture (and possibly the religion) is to work hard and make money. This might make people more vulnerable to scams that promise money in exchange for hard work. For all I know, Mormons are less vulnerable to things like the Nigerian scams which promise lots of money for no work.
I figured "this stuff happens in Boise because people get bored out there." This is the same theory I use to explain why the Midwest has all the bizarre serial killers.
Then I thought, "No, I'm just really a provincial New Yorker, mocking the rest of the country when we're all watching the same TV and reading the same magazines."
Then I remembered the stories of a couple of my friends about the stuff they did during their teenage years in small towns.
They really ARE bored enough for multi-level sex toy parties out there.
I saw a promo recently for a newscast about sex-toy marketing (I'm in Logan in northern Utah). Here's a similar report. "Who is coming to these parties? According to Monica [sex-toy party host], the age range is 18 to 80. 'I've been at parties when it's been daughter, mom, and grandma,' she said."
They call them "slumber parties". If you Google, it comes right up.
As for LDS women, perhaps there is a certain desire to be fiscally independent, coupled with the demands of mothering large families and some social pressure to stay at home. I imagine religion is the common thread, but you'd have to ask LDS women.
I also happened upon some pages about Utah's MLM problem. Utah leads the nation in MLM firms per capita. There is also a law passed two weeks ago, awaiting the governor's signature, that would significantly weaken state anti-MLM laws. [pdf] I hadn't heard a peep about this in the news.
Xopher, I disagree strongly with your premise that people who are too out-of-shape to have sex without assistive devices shouldn't be having sex.
the age range is 18 to 80. 'I've been at parties when it's been daughter, mom, and grandma
er uhm... well... ahem... (cough)
Gees, I suddenly feel awfully squarish...
Even brief imaginations of me, my dad, and his father all in the same room having discussions about... cripes, I don't know... for example... the best lubricant to use... is... well, it's causing bits of my brain to try and tear itself off from the other bits doing the imagining.
all rather unsettling, I'd have to say...
is this the thread were we dump all our comment spam?
I was at a writer's conference not that long ago where the goody bag for the attending professionals included KY lubricant . . . .
Rather surprising to have it fall onto the table when I dumped out the goodies; I felt suddenly even more prudish than usual.
Greg, you and me both. Especially because if you could get me, my dad, and my grandfather in the same room it would be kind of fragrant, on account of gramps having died in 1963.
I was about to formulate a comment about the "good old days" on the internet when you popped a couple of words in a search engine and actually got fairly close to what you were looking for without having to wade through scammers and porn first (in fact, you actually had to work to find the porn. Um, so I'm told) and most of the people were fun to hang out with.
How can you not love a conversation that includes sex toys, Mormons, bad art, spam and wit. At least I can still find fun people.
My grandfather died when I was a kid. I still remember him though, through the overly simplified emotional filters that a kid would have. Attempting to translate those memories to my current vocabulary, the word "stern" comes to mind, followed by "stoic" and "distant". I have no memory of my grandfather smiling. Overall, when I take that memory and try to put it into a "slumber party" setting, well, like I said, bits of the brain attempt to disconnect from other bits. If I push really hard, I can hear a "swick"-like noise that I can only assume is the sound of neurons tearing.
sex toys, Mormons, bad art, spam and wit
I was just thinking that this thread is gonna get hit by the weirdest set of google searches, 99% of which will have nothing to do with Whitlock or writer scams.
This internet thing is groovy man.
It's been a long time since I received any spam that promised to show Brittney Spears doing the dirty deed with barnyard animals. Am I the only one in that situation? Maybe she's become passee.
oh no, gramps would be nice and dessicated by now.
I doubt that he'd have much to say, though.
I'm shuddering at the thought of agressive Mormon missionaries doing MLM of ANY product but the image of a LDS wife with a broad cheery smile and a messenger bag full of oddly shaped devices is deeply disturbing.
However, even if they are selling 'slumberwear' I'm sure that the point is to avoid the awful sin of moving into the public sphere. Rather like Tupperware ladies. Even if you are working 8 hours a day, you're still not leaving home to do it.
Oh, and P.Z. Myers has a couple of killer posts on the "Painter of Light", himself.
Xopher, I disagree strongly with your premise that people who are too out-of-shape to have sex without assistive devices shouldn't be having sex.
And I disagree strongly with your premise that I said any such thing!
I said it seemed to me that someone who needed a support harness to do doggy style (not one of your more athletic positions IME, especially for the, um, receiving partner) might be in shape bad enough that having sex might be unhealthy. (But perhaps I overestimate the ease of that position.) In other words, I meant that people too unhealthy to have sex probably shouldn't have it, though I (of course) would never tell them how to run their lives.
In any case, I'm entirely in favor of technological solutions to human limitations. I consider the reach extension provided by a riding crop invaluable, for example.
My paternal grandfather ran two entirely separate families (one 'legitimate', that's my side, one not), about six miles apart, commuting between the two by bicycle. If I found myself in an MLM sex toy party with him and my father (whose photograph you'd find in the dictionary next to 'prude'), I think I'd be the most shocked. (Of course, I have to note that my granfather died in 1989, at the age of either 99 or 103, and my father died in 2001 at 81. There's a lesson here somewhere...)
Some years back I replied to an ad for an MLM (never having heard of the things before and needing work), after about 5 minutes my mind started looping the name 'Carlo Ponzi' continuously.
Never heard of MLM but knew who Carlo Ponzi was? That's an interesting combination.
Xopher, I'm afraid that your original post commits bifurcation: Surely if you need a support harness, you're either not doing it right, or are too out-of-shape to be engaging in sex in the first place?
There is at least one other alternative where someone is too out of shape to be engaging in sex au naturale, but somehow could perform the act just fine withthe assistance of a "doggy style support harness". Whether that alternative is plausible, I'm not entirely sure, but thus far it appears possible.
Now, the bits of my brain still connected are sitting here, pondering whether they dare ask, "what the heck is a doggie style support harness?" They have since decided some doors are best left unopened.
an interesting pattern recognition just kicked in. It's a YASID, actually. A story by Hemingway. I can't remember anything about it, other than there was a line in it that went something vaguely to the effect of:
"He felt like he had just opened a door to a room in a church and just saw something he shouldn't have seen."
I assume it was a reference to priests and alter boys. I think. Then again, I'm not entirey sure it was Hemingway. I think I've had a few too many neuron tears today....
Having a gaming acquaintance who's an MLM guy [he only invited me to a "business meeting" once; we pretty much don't talk about it] is very. . . frustrating. I think it's because I'm a programmer and I want to deprogram him.
Can someone confirm that I need to keep walking away from the "you're getting looted" conversation?
Greg: "I saw something nasty in the woodshed."
And my original post was intended primarily to convey my extreme bemusement over what a "doggie-style support harness" might be. One of the things I can imagine would enormously limit the mobility of the um...receiving partner, thus making the sex less fun. And THAT doesn't make any sense to me.
Perhaps the doggie-style support harness is not so much for people who need the support as it is for people who can appreciate a well-made harness.
It's the "support" part I keep getting stuck on. The doggie style part I get. The harness part I get. But the support part just keeps making me think of one of those macrame plant hangers only in leather. I don't know if that makes the sex any less fun, but it sure does make it funny.
... less fun.
From work, I have resisted googling. I'm getting an image, involving a hook through a support beam. In my head, it LOOKS like fun. However, now the Superman theme music is stuck in my head.
dan-dananNA! DA na na NA!
My vengeance is vast and indiscriminate.
Not to stop your over-scwicked brain from inventing even more reasons for the d-ssh, but here's one that you may not have though of: I'm 6'2", and my wife is 5'2". That is, I am naturally a few inches "too high". With some tilting and pillows, we can get into the approximately right position, but it still hurts her back. Add the d-ssh, and she is less likely to say "Well, that was fun, now it's time to go to sleep" pre-, um, liftoff.
Xopher, I was just pointing out that your text does allow for interpretations that you did not intend. One reading of what you wrote can produce the "out-of-shape people should not have sex" interpretation. That's all.
As for the YASID query, there's a neuron way in the back that's trying to tell me it is from "For whom the bell tolls" by Hemingway. Been a while since I read it. may have to skim through it again. I seem to remember not disliking it.
And then there was the guy who sold an old backhoe by painting it pink and selling it as a "Badger Style Burrow Kit."
We sure miss Aunt Sal and Uncle Mort.
David,
I don't have a problem with the harness itself. It's the mormon "slumber party" with daughter, mom, and grandma, in Boise Idaho all discussing the benefits of said harness that is causing the right half of the brain to attempt to cecede from the left.
I read a True Crime book a while back. I can't remember the criminal's name, but he was a nice Mormon boy, forged new papyri of the Book of Mormon, coins, signatures of signers of the Declaration of Independence, etc. When things fell apart, he started killing people. Since the LDS church had bought and authenticated some of his papyri, things got very tense, and he ended up getting very little actual jail time.
The author of the book said that Mormons are statistically more likely to fall for scams than anyone else in the country. He had some FBI data in there showing that Utah has more con men than anywhere else. He also stated flatly that it was because LDS is irrational bunk, and Mormons are taught from childhood not to ask any questions, and also to be nice and trusting of other people. (Note - he said, not me.)
If this is true, it would help explain the prevalence of MLMs.
Question - is Avon an MLM? Is Mary Kay? Since the revenue comes AFAIK from selling to customers rather than from getting a percentage of downline sales, I would guess not. But I could be wrong.
Question - is Avon an MLM? Is Mary Kay?
When I've met people selling these, and Tupperware, they've been interested in selling products, not in recruiting more salespeople. So I figure they're legitimate businesses. I'm always leery of MLMs, under whatever guise they're using. They always feel just a bit ... off.
I don't know if the Cult of Mary Kay qualifies as an MLM, but their recruiting meetings are...uncomfortable. One of my friends begged me to go with her to one so she could see what it was all about, and she ended up by Three Thousand dollars of their products to start her business off. "But it's *half* off retail," she explained patiently when I asked her if this was the type of situation she'd asked me along to keep her away from.
I just couldn't stop looking at their skin. Sandblasted smooth and perfect. You could actually tell who'd been selling the longest by the amount of visible pore.
I think they're more bi-level than multi-level, in that you're working for The Man directly, but I have no actual knowledge to back this up.
On the other hand, I'm attached to the largest source of information ever, anywhere.
* Mary Kay tried to show me fluffy video which I did not watch.
* Avon gives you a recruiter's fee for dragging in friends, looks like a one-time-only fee.
* Pampered Chef site makes it sound like you get a cut from people one & only one level below you, so less binary tree and more linked list [? my metaphor-thingy is failing me.] May be a pyramid.
That's "buying." Ended up buying $3,000 worth, sorry.
Juli, was it one of these?
There's also a book called "Salamander" out there, that appears to deal with the same events.
Well, I can see some sort of "support harness" being *ahem* rather pleasant for those of us who are well-endowed enough that a certain vigor on the part of one's partner can cause unpleasant bouncing and oscillation and "okay, this isn't as fun now as it was when I was younger and flat as an ironing board." Depends what exactly the harness is supporting, I suppose...
The MLM thing is scary. My daughter's best friend's parents got sucked into one (Re-Liv?), and since we won't bite, the friendship has been somewhat cooled, I think by parental fiat. It's like the lottery, a mug's game, only worse because the sucker has to sucker other people to win.
"He also stated flatly that it was because LDS is irrational bunk..."
Well, without trying to make this thread take (yet) another 90 degree turn, I would say that all religion is irrational bunk. As an atheist, I don't really see a big leap from "wandering street magician dying for our sins" and "farmboy find ancient manuscripts, and then dying". *shrug* And unlike comet cults, or whatever, at least Mormons have something tangible (the BOM) to read and reread, to convince themselves "It must be true!".
And to forstall the inevitable replies: Yes, I am an atheist Mormon. My family knows, my Bishop knows, all my good friends know, and it doesn't stop me from attending church every Sunday, and even holding various positions in my ward. My mere lack of belief in God isn't nearly enough for excommunication *grin*.
As for why I keep attending church, well, any culture that combines green jello and sex toys has my vote.
What with the family interest and all, I did a bit of looking around (ie. chose the top result on a google for "avon mlm") and got this. It seems like a pretty sceptical site but it suggests that PJ Evans is right: that most of the income of an Avon rep comes from selling actual cosmetics, and that the system is in fact set up to discourage an indefinite pyramid of recruiters. (That is, you don't get commission if there are more than three levels in the chain.)
Oddly enough, I didn't know Avon was an MLM despite the fact that my brother works for them. But then, he works in supply, so we all used to get free aftershave anyway.
(Also, as I may have mentioned, I live in Oregon and he lives in Moscow.)
sex toys, Mormons, bad art, spam and wit
There is, as many of the local crowd will already know, a secondary sexual meaning of "wit." But then, we're so weird about the subject that the whole [insert Anglo-Saxon verb here] language has secondary sexual meanings. And who, these days, can hear the word "coulter" without thinking of the Wife of Bath?
Greg London: I'd never come across the things before, but I did know about Ponzi schemes. At the time I was between jobs, had just moved to a new town, and was just feeling my way around.
Well, I can see some sort of "support harness" being *ahem* rather pleasant for those of us who are well-endowed enough that a certain vigor on the part of one's partner can cause unpleasant ...
Ah, the solution to that problem is a widget sized and shaped almost exactly like a glazed donut but made out of soft pliable rubber. Can't remember where I bought mine, so I'm no help there.
(groucho marx eye brow dance)
oh wait, you meant for her not him. Never mind.
(grin)
Electric Landlady,
Yes. "The Mormon Murders." That was the one. Good Google-fu!
I would say that all religion is irrational bunk
Why do I keep imagining this old sailing ship letting loose with a broadside barage from all its cannons??? Curious.
Anyway, Zen koans are intentionally irrational, but I'm not sure they're bunk. But zen is a religion, so there you have it.
I'd say for much of the Intermountain West Amway replaced the late lamented Sears catalog (for what was in fact useful mail ordering) during the period before Internet marketing conquered all. This led to a certain amount of mutual backscratching by folks who were going to buy things anyway - of the I'll be your Amway downstream if you join the Quality Paperback club on me - with no expectation of actually peddling the Amway products beyond the immediate family at any time; just keeping what amounted to rebates in the extended family.
I'd attribute the majority of the (well attested) LDS susceptibility to a sense of entitlement - reinforced by hearing and repeating I tithe and I am rewarded quite often. Assuming arguendo that they work, some things garments just won't protect against. On the other hand again given opportunities in the intermountain west I've known plenty of Avon/Mary Kay ladies out of desperation and hope- despair really is a sin.
FREX this new franchise opportunity -
a chain of non-pretentious Utah restaurants
named : The Steak Center ("Where There's Never a Dry, Boring Meat-ing!"). Each Steak Center will have one enormous dining area with basketball hoops at either end, and folding metal chairs and long tables covered in plastic tablecloths. The main menu items will be the Porterhouse Rockwell Steak, the Primary Rib and the Poor Wayfaring Pan of Beef, garnished with Parsley P. Pratt, also when it's in season, Eliza R. Snow crab. And let's not forget a whole line of "And It Came to Pasta", including Kraft Moroni and Cheese. Additionally, breakfast items, including Pearl of Puffed Rice and Frosted Minivans, as well as Adam-ondi-Omelettes. Also available, "In Our Lovely Desserts", including Fast Sundaes, Gadianton Cobbler and the sinful Laman Meringue Pie.
The waiters will be 12 and 13 year-old boys wearing white shirts and their fathers' ties. At the end of the night the customers will be asked to help fold up the chairs and tables and vacuum the floor.
Franchises are selling fast..
Dave Luckett, indeed, I was no longer friends with those folks, but a couple years later, the Amway convention was in Virginia Beach and they asked my father if they could stay with him so they wouldn't have to pay for the hotel. Dad knew what had happened with me, but let them stay anyway. He was much less happy when they showed up with 17 people (only three part of the family), all of whom expected meals, showers, and beds.
Xopher, there are other meanings of "out-of-shape" than being fat.
I don't know what's the matter with y'all. I personally wook very hard at staying heaylty. ;-P
The confluence of bad art, sex toys, and spam is conjuring images of replicas of kitsch and odd unmentionable objects fashioned of a glistening pink meatlike substance. So far neither Mormons nor scam artists figure in these images.
Travelling from the Quad Cities to the Twin Cities via the Great River Road, one finds a stretch of twolane somewhere in northeast Iowa where the aggregate in the pavement is a very pink crushed rock, lending the road a mottled pinkish hue. My big sister and I refer to this as the Spam Road.
And re the pink backhoe - there is a construction firm in the Charleston, WV area that has an awful lot of hot pink large earth moving equipment. An amazing and appalling sight.
John M. Ford: I don't think 'Wife of Bath' when I see the word 'coulter'; I think 'B grade high school movie villain'.
Those who are looking for a photo of a doggie-style support harness can find one here.
Mike: Wife of Bath? Are you sure it wasn't the Miller? Then as now, a Coulter is a pain in the ass.
Hmmm.... could we find a spammer and have him tied up in a harness and sodomized by a Mormon dinosaur wearing a strap-on, while his friends look on chanting "Downline! Downline! Downline!"?
Hey, the hot pink construction equipment makes sense. Everyone in the area will know who's working that site, and it's not like anyone is going to take a hot pink generator or excavator. Besides, the owner probably got a really good deal on the paint.
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