The Money Cult

For some reason, I was reminded of how an ex-classmate tried to recruit me into a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) company. If you've somehow been unexposed to this evil, MLM basically works by you getting recruited as a "Marketing Executive/Sales Executive/Idiot" by someone else and he/she gets a good cut of your profits which come from selling generic-quality utensils or health products. You don't earn much by merely selling those and that's why you should recruit more Sales Executives under you so they can do the work for you, giving you a cut of their profits. It's capitalism boiled down to its simplest form and coated in self-help motivational babble jargon and put in a faux-corporate environment.

More often than that, these "Marketing Companies" (which they are sometimes called, to reduce the dodginess) require new recruits to spend a couple of hundred bucks on training seminars, tapes and videos and this actually earns the companies quite a bit of money because through insistent bugging, psychological pressuring or just plain naivety, new recruits end up spending the couple of hundred of dollars on the training material even though many of them do not continue past this stage.

If you do end up continuing past this first filter, designed probably to weed out the unenthusiastic, skeptical and lazy (Doesn't matter, they've paid for the bullshit already), you will find yourself using every single social situation as a sales pitch to your friends, relatives or strangers.

If you managed to live with the fact that all your friends now avoid you like the motherfucking plague for a few years, you'll probably find yourself earning enough to eat alone at posh restaurants rather often. However, and hopefully, you'll realise that you'll never earn as much as the top executive who drives a Mercedes (Choice of car for the noveau riche) because you're not at the very top. All you've been doing for the last three years was to work for his S-Class, his quarterly European travels, his gawdy-but-Goddamn-look-at-the-logo Ralph Lauren Polo shirt and his penthouse suite on the East Coast. You realise this and hopefully, you go into depression after being enlightened on how silly and futile the entire idea is and hopefully, you commit suicide by sinking yourself down in your condominium swimming pool.

Fuck you, do you have any idea how much you've just scarred the five-year-old boy who unknowingly jumped in for his morning swim? Fuck you and your wrinkly, bloated corpse, do you have any idea how much of a PR nightmare it is for the condo?

The best part of my visit to the company was when three other Junior Executives in G2000 suits and ties that were too big for their tiny heads and eyes, introduced a more senior executive into the meeting room so he could brief me on the company's function.

"Alright, Arthur, we are going to invite James in, so he can communicate to you on our company. He's a very friendly and charismatic guy, you'll enjoy hearing him speak."

In comes this gawky-looking 24-year-old who probably, no, definitely spent a good part of his life being the nice guy who has always finished last. His perfectly-ironed shirt was tucked in too high, his spectacles expensive but totally unsuitable for his scrawny facial frame. He beams at me and says hi, his breath smelling like cheap mint and reaches out for a handshake. I stick my hand out and he grabs it and attempts to break my forearm by forcing a violent up-and-down jerk.

Wow, he is not charismatic at all.

The junior executives loved him though, laughing at every punchline during the presentation. I smiled, for courtesy's sake but it was clear that I wasn't enjoying it. My "friend" (the one who brought me there) kept looking over to see if I'm buying it and obviously, I wasn't. She needed to bring in the big guns if she wanted her first car by the first quarter.

I was then introduced to another guy, this one a lot more comfortable and natural than James and he even showed some half-joking cynicism at the Calcium tablets that he sells. It took me five minutes of conversation before I remembered that he works for the company as well and he wants me to join, he wants my money.

"Arthur, I was from a rich family so I have always been labeled a rich boy and I don't like that. I want to be rich because of my own efforts, you know?"

He wants your money.

"When I saw this opportunity, I grabbed it because I want to be somebody, you know? Being from a rich family is nice but what did I do to achieve that?"

He wants your money, he wants you to sell those fucking Calcium tablets.

"I know you feel the same, you look like the kind who wants to go out there and create a name for yourself, I can just tell. As a friend, I would advice you to do this, start early and you won't have to worry about it later."

He wants your money, he doesn't give a shit about what you want or how you think. Run out of this office, it will be your best decision all day.

How did I get involved in all these anyway? It all started with an old classmate wanting to "catch up" and after asking some questions about what I did in Poly, she invited me to her office because they were interested in hiring "marketing talents". Basically, I had no idea I was going to an MLM company's office. After the visit, I told her firmly that I wasn't interested and she got the not-so-subtle hint and stopped talking to me after that. Biggest relief ever and no, she wasn't hot so it wasn't a huge loss.

The entire thing happened over two years ago and I got reminded of it this morning, really weird. I think it's my mind nudging me in the shoulder, going "Hey, remember how dumb you were?". Never again, my mind, never again.