Amway tried to recruit me. and the US Army. And every day the Jews For Jesus come at me in the subway. A born-again friend invited me to "friends day," at his church.

Yeah, I had a job interview that turned out to be a group seminar for some pyramid scheme. About fifteen minutes in to the presentation, I stood up and walked through the room full of candidates to the door, which was locked.

I turned around to look at our lector, who stared me down as if to shame me into sitting.

"Hey, would you unlock this door? This is a fire trap if you keep it locked. And anyway, this is a a pyramid scheme!"

Four or five people grumbled when I said "pyramid scheme," got up, and left with me, after the red-faced charlatan unlocked the door.

We then went across the street to a burger joint, where we devised a way to make millions by taking out TINY CLASSIFIED ADS in local newspapers.

Hey, Moonbird!

No similar experiences, but i gave away $1.50 to panhandlers yesterday. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Does LDS count?

My husband had a co-worker give him the hard sell on Amway once. Made him instantly lose respect for the guy, which seemed ironic to me. Here this guy was, trying to hustle a buck by recruiting for Amway and it ultimately probably cost him thousands of $$ in lost opportunities because he had severely tarnished his professional image.

A friend tried to recruit me into a self-help cult, that involved $500 weekend 'seminars' (this was $500 back in the 80s). She'd already basically given them her house. Their stated concern appeared to be for my well-being. I thought that their only concern was with validating their cult membership and getting my money.

Your friend's question is a psychological hook; however you answer, it validates the cult. If you say that you do trust, then she'll say 'Trust me; come along." If you say you don't trust, then she'll say 'You need to trust more; come along.'

Cult members are manipulated and manipulative; vulnerable, and looking for other vulnerable people. Ignore them. Better, run the other way.

Avoid, avoid AVOID! My friend went to one of those Legacy center gigs and it sounded scary; fortunately they discovered that she had no money at all and so they lost interest.

Instead of that, you need to show up at Drinking Liberally tomorrow night, yes, yes you do.

Ack, one of my best friends sells Amway. It's kind of freaky. She's only given me the hard sell once though, and never since. She took me to one of their meetings, and it was weirdly cult-like.

My first year in college, I met a nice girl in one of my poli sci classes who I thought was really sweet to talk to a stranger. Then she invited me to bible study. I said no. That was the last time. I think I must totally give off "I'm not buying what you're selling" vibes.

Just the Lesbian Avengers. They gave me stickers.

Now that WalMart sells direct from the tiny little fingers of the Pearl River Delta we don't need Amway for lo-cost, no-name items.

I'm here aren't I?

Yeah, I actually studied cults for a while, and all of her manipulative language was very easy to pick apart. This fits the classic LGAT (Large group awareness therapy) model of self-help cults, and has links to Scientology. I called the recruiter on her NLP-style open-ended questions (who insisted that she'd be my friend regardless), and I could tell that she didn't know or understand these things; she herself had given up her will. Yeah, there's no danger to me on this one, and I just got the great news that one of my dearest friends has also turned against joining. Sadly, three other friends of mine are lost, gone, and glassy-eyed. It's like the heroin of the 90s are the "encounter groups" of the aughties.

Not a cult, but I had a longtime acquaintance pressure me for several weeks about joining the Masons. I'm not a "joiner" by any stretch of the imagination, but I finally relented to go to a meeting, and the next words out of his mouth were, "Now, you'll need to keep quiet about your lifestyle, at least at first..."

End of story.

I spent a summer in Austin about ten years ago and was often at a loose end. One day I noticed the Scientology center downtown was hiring, so I went in and asked for an application. They also gave me the personality test (apparently I have problems) and let me watch the movie about how god loves monkeys, or at least the image of an actor dressed as God and holding a real live monkey in his arms (to illustrate Scientology's merging of Science and religion) is the thing that sticks with me most. I didn't end up taking the job, which was selling scientology books outside the center for a small omission, and they never called me back. Pretty low pressure, although the org there was not exactly terribly together, so my experience may be atypical.

I once ran over the folks at Fortuna Alliance.

A small omission, PST? Nice freudian typo.

Uh yeah, that'd be a small commission. I blame my body thetans.

Someone asked me to join a frat once. I declined and transferred colleges.

I blame my body thetans.

Ha! Scientology humor! Guess you just weren't willing to join the "C" Org.

I wrote a Scientology joke once!

Q: What is L. Ron Hubbard's favorite kind of consommé?

A: Clear!

Yup. Still not funny.

i did the landmark education thing, a descendant of werner erhard's "est" and scientology's third cousin. it was useful in some ways, very disorienting in others. i actually quit my job and joined the corporation fulltime, such was my fervor. one evening, some papers were lost. they were important papers i distinctly recalled having given to a specific person, neal, who denied i had done so. at midnight i was standing in a dumpster behind the office complex waist deep in paper looking for the "lost" items when they sent someone out to tell me that neal had located the papers after recalling that i had given them to him. none of this perturbed me much - what perturbed me was hearing myself vocalizing a belief that my willingness to dumpster dive had helped to "manifest into present space" the missing papers. knowing all along i given neal the fucking papers, and being unable to repel the realization that the whole drama had played out ridiculously, by ridiculous people including my ridiculous self, the entire bubble seemed to burst. a couple of days later i quit.

no one ever even tries with me : (

at one place i worked, someone there was notorious for trying to rope people into scientology, but she never even tried with me.

I got the Amway pitch from a real estate agent when I was about 25. I called my father in law to see what he thought of it, just to check it out, because while my bullshit detector was going nuts, my wife was curious. My f-i-l suggested that if I was looking to make sure I lost all my friends, this was the way to go!

Nobody ever tries with me either.

It's a shame, too, because I actually sometimes enjoy that kind of thing (as long as someone's trying to bring me around to their way of thinking, it seems only fair that I should try to do the same).

My psycho first boyfriend got involved in Amway. I went to a couple meeting thingies (maybe a Christmas party?) and thought it was really weird. Then the psycho deemed it a waste of time and moved on.

Nope. And now that I think about it, that's weird. Should I be insulted?

Just the Lesbian Avengers. They gave me stickers.
posted by me3dia 04 January | 11:43

Heh, me too, back when I didn't have much hair.

I went to a doctor once to ask for Prozac. He tried to talk me into going to the Landmark Forum instead, which is the modern version of Est. (It was parodied on Six Feet Under, when Ruth got involved in that weirdo group.)

Anyway, I walked off with Prozac, dammit.

Also, after I graduated from college the girl who grew up next door to me came to visit in Austin. I was so thrilled -- no one ever came to visit me. We went out to lunch and she said she wanted to talk to me about this "great new business opportunity" she'd discovered. I asked her what it was, she said it was hard to explain, that she just needed to sit down with me.

I said no, of course. Totally crushed my feelings.

This was about 10 years ago. She's been calling again lately (damn you for giving out my number, Mom!) and I refuse to return her calls.

A friend's husband was way into Amway and tried to recruit me several times. It was very uncomfortable. I haven't spoken to them in years.

Another friend of mine sells Mary Kay and every so often tries to get me to join. I keep telling her it's not my thing.

Q: Landmark Forum is the predecessor of Legacy (Landmark = Lifespring = Legacy), and the woman I was speaking to was blissfully unaware of EST, Erhardt, NLP, and Scientology. I think these days they do well to cover their tracks, though they claim that Heidegger is their main inspiration (?). I've toyed with going to the guest event out of sheer curiosity as to their methods, but decided that all of the harrassment you get, decided it's not worth it.

Ugh, moonbird. I've been aproached more than once by Scamway. the last time the guy called me at work like 3 days in a row and I finally asked him point blank if it was about Amway. There was dead silence for 2 full seconds and then he said yes, and I told him seek someone else.

Then there was the time the Mormon chick came to the door my my partner was at work. I told her it was a bad time could she come back tomorrow. She said sure, what's your name? I said Janice Smith and shut the door. The next day she came back and I told my partner to answer the door and that my name was Janice Smith. Um it's not. They went away after that.

I had a friend who would answer the door with a scotch and water in her hand and a cigar in the other, wearing a tshirt and no pants when the bible thumpers came calling.

I've lost a good many friends to The Forum (aka Landmark Education, aka EST) over the years. Bright, creative people with independent minds who one day woke up as militant, aggressive babblespeak connoisseurs. Many of them from my acting cirle, oddly enough.

To this day, if someone I know calls me and there's phones going on in the background, I hang up.

and the woman I was speaking to was blissfully unaware of EST, Erhardt, NLP, and Scientology.

Sorry, but I feel compelled to request that you don't lump in NLP with these. Sure, people can misuse what they learn through NLP (like say, psychology), but it is a valid form of behavior-based therapy.

Thank you. That is all.

Specklet, I agree completely. This person had been trained in NLP induction techniques without knowing what it was. When I bracketed her speech and gave it back to her as an NLP induction, she had'nt (or feigned she hadn't) a clue. NLP is often misused by groups like this to create rapport with their subjects, but remains an excellent tool in the right hands for the right purposes.

My boss and I were invited out by one of his former co-workers -- we thought he was networking. Turned out he'd joined Amway and spent the entire evening trying to get us to join too to sell "laundry balls".

An entire dinner spent discussing the merits of laundry balls. Believe me, don't go there.

Back in New York 18 (!) years ago, I went to a "Buddhist meditation" thing in my neighborhood out of curiosity. The folks all seemed nice enough and the discussion was all middlebrow life philosophy, until all of a sudden the gears shifted massively into a hard sell, and I turned out to be the only sell-ee. I had eight people convince me to go on a wild cab ride down to Union Square where "this night only" a Japanese Buddhist master was in town. I don't know what I expected, but there was a line of people like at a theme park, we had to pay about $10, and we got a Buddhist scroll that the master then blessed in a fast-moving assembly line.

I never went back. It was really annoying when I ran into one of the recruiters in a mall in Jersey the next year -- he tried to start it all over again.

Ultimately I think it's one reason I ended up cocooning even more and didn't investigate more urban social shit when I lived in Chicago. I was really skeeved out. Eventually I joined a volunteer service club, where I met some nice, genuine people. I went to church with one of them, and I learned all about Vineyard. The goofy Jesus-loves-me guitar-slingin' playlet-stagin' service didn't bother me except that when they began talking about all the people out there who hadn't been Saved yet, my friend began shuddering and weeping (approximately the same level of emotion I felt when I heard that the miners hadn't survived after all, for reference). Then there was a break in the service to meet and greet neighbors, and I was introduced to some of her friends, which went fine until one of them put a hand on my shoulder and asked if I had been Born Again. I said I'd been baptized as a teenager in my home church (Congregationalist -- liberal Protestant, y'know), and he looked at me very seriously and said, "Dan -- would you mind if we prayed for your soul?" Which they then proceeded to do.

The next month I went with some other friends from the same group to their Baptist church, with enormous trepidation given prior experiences, but it turned out to be American Baptist and borderline Unitarian, and the pastor had just come back from being in the mental ward after a manic episode -- perfect for somebody like me getting over depression. One of the best things I've ever done in my life was join that church. I was eventually full-immersion baptized there, with my family and best friends present.

if someone I know calls me and there's phones going on in the background, I hang up.

lipstick, it took me years to get myself taken off their call lists.

actually, i have a history of receiving phone calls asking of the whereabout of people like that. there's a high incidence of them not going back to work.
and i like making the younger jehovah witnesses laugh as the older on gives the schpeil.

i also scare collection agencies (it's never for me).

I was at a MLM pitch once for this company that supposedly did things but the whole pitch was sort of:

1. Join us!
2.
3. Profit!

so it was all in all shiny packaged nothing. The speech was good but there was no pretense whatsoever of there being an actual product, so that was, I think, their downfall.