When I attended Amway meetings our sack of shit Platinum used to play this dumb ass game that I call “do you agree”.
Its all part of the subtle brainwashing techniques that are used in the Amway cult.
He’d start off by saying things to get the group to agree with him, things that would be hard to disagree with like does everyone agree that there is a painting on the wall of a lighthouse. Does everyone agree that Washington DC
Now that the Platinum has the group agreeing as one on what he is saying is true he moves on to other points that people may or may not agree with but due to peer pressure and the cult setting you don’t dare disagree with what everyone else in the room is nodding their heads to.
Does everyone agree that its stupid to have a job where you make the boss rich.
Does everyone wish that their boss paid them more money.
Does everyone wish their boss gives them more time off work and still pays them.
Does everyone agree that its better to be a business owner than an employee.
Does everyone agree that if you own your own shop that its smarter to do all your shopping from your own store instead of shopping at someone else’s store and making that other business owner richer.
I can argue all those points though I’d probably look like a moron if I argued that the lighthouse painting looks more to me like a bunch of dogs playing poker or that New York City
Is it stupid to have a job? No not when theres bills to be paid. Who says the boss is getting rich. Maybe he’s just covering all his business and personal expenses and has nothing left over for retirement savings. Not all businesses are high earners and make the owner rich. The real point here is that the Platinum is putting the seed into the Amway cult followers head that having a job is stupid.
As for more money and time off work we’d all like that. Most people think they’re worth more than what they’re being paid. Many times business owners don’t take time off work for vacations especially if they’re a one man show. Didn’t think of that did you you sack of shit Platinum! Those questions don’t do much other than get the Amway cult follower to start disliking their job and their boss because they don’t get enough salary and vacation.
Does everyone want to be a business owner instead of an employee? Not necessarily. Not everyone has the finances, brain power, leadership, drive, interest, physical or mental ability to be a business owner. Not everyones got what it takes. Doesn’t mean they’re any less of a human being. Though that’s how the Amway cult leaders want to make their ambots feel that they’re low life bastards if they’re employees instead of business owners.
As for buying from your own shop, if your prices are too high then you’d be a fucking moron to buy from your own shop if you can get better quality and better prices from a competitor. The sack of shit Platinum wants the ambots to understand that they better do all their own shopping from Amway. They better not sneak off to the drugstore and buy toothpaste.
If you’re a brainwashed ambot and agree with the sack of shit Platinum on simple points that just makes it easier for him when the more intense brainwashing into the Amway cult gets underway.
Ah yes, the infamous "do you agree?" game. You did a great job of showing how it works in the step-by-step method of brainwashing. The mind is more susceptible to being controlled when we are made to believe we agree with someone and have more in common with them than we thought. Sort of a way for them to get their foot in the door of our brain, so to speak. Then they start increasing the dosage and bombarding it with excited doublespeak of "positive thinking" and how it can lead to making all our dreams come true.
ReplyDelete"Do you agree?"
~Dave
Dave - and then the cult leaders up the ante at the next cult meeting. Do you agree it would be nice to have thousands of dollars of residual income every month only working 10 to 15 hours a week and that you can retire from your job.
DeleteWell yeah most people would agree it would be nice to have lots of money showing up in the old bank account every month and not have to go to work every day.
Anna and Dave:
DeleteWhat's most interesting about this method is it works both ways to try to possible get them out of the cult! Case in point:
Do you agree that spending time away from family is a bad thing?
Do you agree that it's odd to listen to a stranger you just met as oppose to a close friend who's known you for years?
Do you agree that for conventions in whatever city aren't once in a life time if it happens 3 times a year?
Do you agree that having a job as oppose to not having a job at all is a good way to pay bills?
Anonymous - those are all good points and questions I posed against my husband when he was in the Amway cult. Except maybe that one about having a job because we have a business and as long as we have customers we are employed.
DeleteOf course my question - do you agree that it wastes money to buy Amway products when I can buy better quality lower priced products at Walmart, etc. was also glossed over. We need to support our business and buy from our own store. That is totally brainwashed into Amway cult followers.
That one about listening to people he barely knows instead of someone he's spent the last 20 years living with just pissed me off to no end and part of the reason I despised our upline so much.
I saw this post from someone on a decade old anti-Amway site letters page that underscores the trick of asking questions of a prospect to avoid answering hard questions:
ReplyDelete"Although they are motivating, I do find it bizarre that the
talk of the actual business is hid behind talk of dreams and goals. I have found it to be a challenge to get anyone to talk actual figures with me. Instead, I find myself answering questions instead of asking them. I asked one person who was involved to stop talking about my dreams, for they are my concern, not Amway's. I asked that he talk
strictly numbers and he was quick to change the subject."
And that, in a nutshell, is how they operate. They avoid the logical cold, hard numbers that they refuse to provide proof of with copies of tax returns, and instead do a tap dance of questions and talk of dreams and goals and fantasies.
They are so sleazy and deceptive. Because they know if they were forced to step out of fantasyland and prove actual numbers and statistics to unbrainwashed prospects, no one would want to join up and throw their finances away in that pit.
~Dave
Dave - that is what happened to my husband. He told the sack of shit Platinum questions about Amway's compensation and the numbers didn't add up to him. He didn't get answers. Change the subject or angrily tell him not to question upline.
DeleteEven Amway's own compensation figures are all over the place. They include the money an IBO "saves" from buying from their own store as part of their profits. So when Amway says an IBO earns $800/month about half of that would be from saving money buying from themselves - at a cost of about $1000 worth of buying Amway products!
Dave - Pretty much what happened to me with my buddy who got involved!
ReplyDeleteHe kept asking 'Are you happy with your job? Are you REALLY happy? Are you SURE YOU'RE HAPPY?'
If I wasn't happy the first 50 times then why wouldn't I be happy the next 100 times? :p
It became really annoying to the point where my other group of friends now have a running joke where someone as brainwashed as him wouldn't answer simple questions even if they weren't related to amway. My fave joke question if answered by him is:
Q: 'Does 2+2 really equal 4?'
Brainwashed former friend answer: 'What if 4 is not really a 4? What if there's a better 4? Are you happy with this answer? What if there's a better answer outside of 4? Don't let those other so called "Math Expert" tell you that the answer is 4!'
Anonymous - the Amway cult brainwashes its followers to hate their jobs. That's why they find it incredible that someone outside of Amway actually likes their job. Didn't they use the old would you still work your job even if you didn't get paid routine on you? I should do another post about that sometime soon!
DeleteAnna
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how (simply by applying common sense) you and your readers can see how brainwashing and cultic control fraud works - gradually tricking victims into doing things which are completely against their own interests, by cutting them off from all external sources of information whilst persuading them that what the cult wants them to do is in their future interests, but apparently, American legislators cannot.
In order to survive, human beings constantly have to make critical and evaluative decisions as to what is safe and what is dangerous. Imagine, if each time we crossed the road, we didn't first stop and look for on-coming traffic. In cults, it's as though the adherents' brains have been re-wired. Dangerous, unquestioning behaviour becomes seen as 'positive and safe,' and safe, questioning behaviour becomes seen as 'negative and dangerous.'
The 'yes question' technique is a standard, devious procedure widely-used by the police for getting suspected-criminals to confess. It's also widely-used by high-presure salesmen and con-artists.
Technically, procedures for persuading people to stop thinking critically and to do, or say, things systematically which are completely against in their own interests whilst giving them the illusion that they are making a free choice, are known as 'coercive behaviour modification.'These procedures work best on already-vulnerable persons; particularly, when they are, isolated, exhausted, starving, sick, frightened, confused, lonely, etc.
David Brear (copyright 2012)
David - the yes question might work with some people but I'd be more inclined to give the opposite expected response just to piss off someone I don't like. I've never been questioned by a cop so I don't know how that would go over for me!
DeleteAnna - 'Yes questions' are one of the least subtle forms of coercive behaviour mofication, but they still work on some people.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm sure you know, people will do some very illogical things in defence of their egos. The bigger their ego: the more illogical the things they will do.
I once read the auto-biography of a famous pre-WWII art dealer who confessed how he had tricked some of the richest, smartest and meanest, people in the world into spending fortunes in his galleries. His tactics were to guide new wealthy customers quickly through rooms containing his best stock. They were taken into rooms containing only average, lower priced paintings. When naturally the big-heads asked if they could go back to see the better paintings, the art dealer looked them up and down disdainfully and told them that he didn't think they could afford them.
One of the people who explained this type of behaviour modification to me, a few years ago, was a stage magician who specialised in close magic with cards. In his youth, the same guy had been part of a team running a three card trick on race tracks.
Three Card Monty is a provocation-scam that works best on the type of man who is certain that he cannot be fooled. In order to get a victim to play, his ego is challenged. In this way, he is given the illusion that he is making a free choice to play and to continue to lose. Players who seem to be winning are part of the provocation, but they are always schills.
In many respects, the psychology of MLM income opportunity fraud, is very similar.
Perhaps ambots should use that tactic that they don't think their customers can afford Amway products. There would be a lot less misery in the world!
DeleteThank you for your blog! I've got a good friend who seems to be deeply "entrenched" in Amway. After reading your blog his behavior makes so much more sense. I've seen him change over the last year and I couldn't quite figure it out. Now I get it! He's at the convention right now. YIKES! I really appreciate your insight.
ReplyDeleteMs. Lockrow - thank you for reading my blog. Unfortunately the ambot behavior I describe that my husband exhibited is the exact same symptoms of all the other ambots out there. They all change for the worse. They were nice human beings until the Amway cult got hold of them and changed them into nasty ugly sneering ambot demons. Yup the brainwashing convention is all about making the Diamond speakers richer. That's how they make the bulk of the Amway income from selling tickets to functions.
DeleteAnd you can certainly expect your friend to come back from the convention even more obnoxious and "fired up". That is the whole purpose of them. To reinforce the brainwashing making them excited, emotionally-charged (to push critical thinking back) and more immersed in the Amway fantasy of "riches just around the corner". The more "plugged into the system" they get, the further from reality they slip. They could be destitute and living in a cardboard box after losing thousands to Amway and STILL sing it's praises as the "greatest business opportunity available". The only reality they accept is the one painted for them by their worshiped upline. It's pretty sad.
Delete~Dave
Dave - the longer people stay in Amway the more obnoxious they become. And angrier. Anger at losing money and having to lie to everyone about how great everything is going while their house goes into foreclosure and their marriage is crumbling.
DeleteMs. Lockrow - I have seen exactly the same radical personality transformation with an Ambot member of my family in England. There is essentially no difference between Ambots and any other cult adherents.
ReplyDeleteMost casual observers can see that 'MLM' groups are dissimulated pyramid frauds, but many media-commentators have refused to use the term 'cult.'
Anna - You might be interested to learn that, at the moment, media attention is again being drawn to 'MLM' cults in the USA, because of Mitt Romney's extensive financial and political connections with 'Amway' and several 'Amway' copy-cats.
As you probably know, Mitt Romney has been bought by the big 'Mormon MLMs', including 'Herbalife', 'NuSkin' and 'Xango.' If he is elected President, the chances of any official investigation into the 'MLM' scandal in the USA will be virtually zero.
One of the bosses of the 'NuSkin' mob, Sandie Tillotson, has recently drawn unwanted attention to herself by trying to prevent her ex-trophy-husband, Diederik van Nederveen, from publishing a book which blows the whistle on 'MLM' cultism from the inside.
Diederik has created a Website:
http://diederikvannederveen.com/
David Brear
David - it doesn't seem to make much difference who gets into office. Nothing is done about MLM scams and cults.
DeleteThanks for the link. I'll take a look at that later. I'm not familiar with NuSkin. Nothing anyone we know has tried to hawk to us. Fortunately!