Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind
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Consumerism Commentary has some good stuff on the MLM here as well. Training children to violate trust and leverage social guilt and burn friendships to try to make a quick buck.
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That last article, they use the term "when your friends start social selling", but I think that there is something key here... a friend would never do that. Social selling is just financially stabbing someone in the back. If someone tries to social sell to you, they were never your friend. Social selling is what you do when you think someone is a fool that you can sucker, it's never something you do to your friends. Your friends are you have drinks with while you laugh at the suckers you just sold junk to based on violated trust and using social guilt. Mwahahaha.
But seriously, if someone is trying to social sell to you, they are no friend of yours. They can't pull that crap and view you as a friend. The two can't reasonably coincide.
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Oh look, the guide to using your Girl Scout Funnel to Run MLM Scams. Yup, people really make guides for this.
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This article talks about how the Girl Scouts get almost no money and asks if this doesn't violate child labour laws. Which I agree, it almost certainly does.
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I have no kids and dont take solicitors at my door. These posts might as well be in sanskrit. What is MLM and social selling? I know what the individual words mean.
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@momurda said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
I have no kids and dont take solicitors at my door. These posts might as well be in sanskrit. What is MLM and social selling? I know what the individual words mean.
MLM is Multi Level Marketing. It's the modern term for the Amway Pyramid Scam model.
Social selling is where you sell to friends and family through guilt and pressure of your social framework instead of through actual marketing or having a viable product.
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Boy Scouts did the same thing with popcorn, but not to the extent that Girl Scouts does.
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@nerdydad said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Boy Scouts did the same thing with popcorn, but not to the extent that Girl Scouts does.
Yeah, my wife reminded me of that. I had forgotten.
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A good alternative is American Heritage Girls, if you don't mind religious affiliations.
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@nerdydad said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
A good alternative is American Heritage Girls, if you don't mind religious affiliations.
It's hard for me to evaluate an alternative, because I'm not clear on what the purpose of the original is. Kind of like the Facebook discussion on that other thread
All I know of the Girl Scouts is that their purpose is to undermine the ethical underpinnings of girls and use them as child labour to sell unhealthy cookies to Americans while preparing girls to be highly susceptible to unethical MLM scams as adults. I'm sure that the GS do something other than that, but I don't have the first guess what it is. I literally know them as the same as Amway, but with kids. -
Fix the typo in the thread title.
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All fundraising by selling packaged products like this is a shit show.
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@jaredbusch said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Fix the typo in the thread title.
LOL, done.
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@jaredbusch said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
All fundraising by selling packaged products like this is a shit show.
They really are. It's just a way to funnel money to the source manufacturer. No one along the way really makes any sizable money.
Someone said it in one of those articles, get a few parents to donate five dollars instead of five weeks of effort and they'd raise the same money. Those girls are working at something like ten cents an hour!
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@scottalanmiller said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Those girls are working at something like ten cents an hour!
And I thought child labor was illegal...hahahaha!
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@nerdydad said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
@scottalanmiller said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Those girls are working at something like ten cents an hour!
And I thought child labor was illegal...hahahaha!
It is in most developed countries. Not so much in the US.
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Girl Scouts is just a re-seller of pre-made/pre-packaged cookies, I don't care for them.
I rather go to a bakery to buy freshly made stuff. -
@scottalanmiller said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
@jaredbusch said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
All fundraising by selling packaged products like this is a shit show.
They really are. It's just a way to funnel money to the source manufacturer. No one along the way really makes any sizable money.
Someone said it in one of those articles, get a few parents to donate five dollars instead of five weeks of effort and they'd raise the same money. Those girls are working at something like ten cents an hour!
This is likely true - but at the same time - getting people to part with money purely for a donation with no return - i.e. no cookies - probably doesn't happen much.
Sure, the whole thing is a MLM scam - but without it, I'm not sure GS would have any money at all.
Which makes me wonder - how does the boyscouts exist? Where does their funding come from? I can't believe they make enough in popcorn sales to do what they do?
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@dashrender said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Sure, the whole thing is a MLM scam - but without it, I'm not sure GS would have any money at all.
Why can't they bake cookies themselves and sell them at a much higher margin? It doesn't HAVE to be a scam, they just choose the path of least resistance. "Here's our standard order sheet, everything is done for you, you don't need to do anything but stand in front of a store and annoy the shit out of people"
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@bnrstnr said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
@dashrender said in Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Sure, the whole thing is a MLM scam - but without it, I'm not sure GS would have any money at all.
Why can't they bake cookies themselves and sell them at a much higher margin?
Because lawsuits.
