The Gathering of the Huns
Where exploitation is the aim of the game
When I get a friend request on social media from someone I knew back in the day but am not friends with, I’m automatically suspicious and I wonder which multi-level marketing company (MLM) they have just been duped into becoming a representative for. There is nobody in my past that I actually want to talk to and certainly not if they are trying to shill their latest get-rich quick scheme with me.
Whichever one it is doesn’t matter because I decline them all. I absolutely am not interested and I don’t care how good anyone thinks the products are, and really whatever physical items they sell exist merely to make their particular pyramid scheme legal. Whatever shit the representatives are marketing to their family, friends, acquaintances, and any other poor sucker that they encounter isn’t relevant because it’s the structure that’s the point.
These companies aren’t actually about selling something revolutionary, they are all about the pyramid. The mission is to recruit, none of the rest of it even matters. It’s usually women that get caught up in these predatory scams. Many of these companies are cultish. Women on the lower rungs are exploited by those higher up to make money for the ones at the top of the pyramid.
Most women under mid-level will not make a lot of money, with many not even breaking even with their investment. I’ve heard horror stories of women who have entire rooms full of Mary Kay cosmetics or LulaRoe leggings they’ve had for years and been unable to sell. Several have lost their savings and their marriages because of their participation in these companies.
It’s not that these women are stupid, because they aren’t. It’s that these companies are predatory and they seek out women in particular, often stay at home wives who are desperate to make their own money. Sadly, they rarely actually make any money unless they bought into the company in the very early stages and are at the top.
I’ve personally been bullied by women in some of these companies. They managed to recruit me because they saw my desperation and capitalized on it, and then when I got frustrated because I wasn’t successful in a company that wasn’t created for my success despite the propaganda, those bitches went all high school mean girls on me.
These obnoxious women are often called huns, because they tend to get all sweet and call their target hun or honey. It’s one of their buzzwords, and it has nothing to do with Southern manners and everything to do with trapping their prey. After all, honey tastes good on bread but most people butter the bread first. So they butter up their victims with sweetness.
Shortly after I got married, my husband Jeremy and I were invited to dinner with another married couple who were friends of Jeremy’s. I was excited because I’d been in the USA less than six months and didn’t really have any friends. Everybody I knew was only interested in continuing to exploit me and so going to dinner meant an opportunity to make some friends.
When we showed up, however, there were a bunch of other people there. Jeremy’s friends, Martha and Justin, had pulled a bait and switch. All sugary sweet, Martha told us we would absolutely love what they had planned for everyone, and they served a pretty decent dinner. After dinner, they began their presentation. Justin, who was doing most of it, didn’t give very many details. Most of these companies don’t, not until after they’ve managed to get you to commit.
It was about insurance sales and I am not a numbers person. It was just confusing to me and besides, I had 24/7 morning sickness and I was not in the fucking mood for their shit. We listened politely, but didn’t commit. Neither Justin nor Martha actually told us the company name until the very end.
Jeremy told Martha that he wasn’t sure, we would have to go home and think more about it. That wasn’t what either of them wanted to hear and a couple of days later, we got another dinner invitation, but Martha promised that it would just be us and them, a more intimate dinner where we could focus on friendship.
As I sat on a couch in Martha’s living room wishing I was at home, she began her spiel for Primerica again. It was interesting because she kept switching up between Greek Orthodoxy and Primerica. I was far more interested in Orthodoxy than selling insurance, and it was really the first time I’d ever heard much about anything liturgical. Unfortunately for me, Martha wanted to recruit me for Primerica rather than Orthodoxy.
Before even coming to Martha and Justin’s house, Jeremy and I had decided against joining Primerica, and I guess Martha didn’t figure that out until we had been at her house for hours and she still hadn’t managed to sign us up. Jeremy and I left shortly after Justin indicated they were tired and needed to head to bed, and we never head from either Martha or Justin again. Good riddance.
One day, one of the women who had been involved in trafficking me to the United States hit me up on Facebook with an invitation to join a new company. This one sold shitty nail stickers, and I honestly don’t know how I got suckered into that because I’m not bougie and those aren’t the kind of thing I use. My best guess is that it was because she was supposedly a friend, I trusted her, I wanted to “help her build her business,” and wanted to be part of a group of women who I thought might want to be friends with me.
This particular company ended up being especially predatory and my “friend” was pretty deeply into it. I bought some of the products to try them because I needed to be able to show them off and talk about them. I am unable to pretend that something is great if it isn’t, and I soon learned that these products sucked ass. They were terrible and they didn’t even work.
When I mentioned that to my friend, she and several other women dogpiled on me telling me there was no way I could be successful with that attitude and that I should be ashamed to say such things. My friend, Alison, told me that if I didn’t get it together, this would ruin our friendship. I tend to be unable to pretend something is wonderful if I don’t believe it is, and so my brutal honesty about the product got me a lot of hate for months afterwards.
The huns said some cruel things to me and accused me of trying to sink Alison’s business. They called me a traitor and said that I was obviously just too lazy to do any work because the business will only work if you work the business. It’s another one of their phrases. Alison said she couldn’t believe I was doing this to her, because saying the products were awful was apparently a personal attack.
Alison herself quit doing it in the end to sign with two other companies she thought were better. Since one of those companies was new and she signed up early, she became an executive and actually made money on it, but it ruined her character and she saw her family and friends merely as objects to be exploited.
I had just wanted to fit in somewhere and make a few dollars, but I never was able to accomplish that in any of these companies. This is by design, MLM’s do not want anyone but those at the top of the pyramid to be successful. The rest of the women are merely there to make more money for the executives, not for themselves. It’s a cruel trick, and it’s why I do not buy from any of them.
There are times that I have tried to warn a friend who was considering getting involved in one of them how predatory they are, but usually they don’t listen. The recruiter would just tell them that I was negative and they should probably reevaluate the friendship. Sometiems a person I know will sign up with a new company and start advertising on social media. I try to ignore the whole scene and if they try to recruit me I will say no one time and then block them if they continue with that shit.
MLM’s need to go back to the fresh hell from whence they came. After being exploited via sex trafficking my entire life, I was excited to finally have found a way to make money and friends, but in the end I lost both because they merely exploited me in a different way.