Beware False Marketing Prophets

Today I was casually reading Facebook while eating some lunch as I’m wont to do some days looking for passive entertainment.  In amongst the outrage about a Gorilla being shot instead of a small boy’s mother and an absolute ripper of a video Dan Norris posted of this woman stumbling around while carrying popcorn I saw a post by someone that really caught my attention.

Now, this person is not really a “friend”, she’s a “Facebook friend”.  That kind of means I know of her and she knows of me and at some point over the last year her and I became “friends”.  I purge my FB Friends a couple times a year to get rid of people with whom I have no contact or interest in – last year I wiped out 1100 “friends” I’d accumulated.  She must have slipped into my friend list since the last purge in December.

Anyhow, this young lady is very attractive and one of those digital nomad fluffpreneurs.  For the most part, her posts are rather banal affairs targeted at people who need “faux motivational memes” to get out bed in the morning.  She pitches a fair bit of MLM stuff which I’m not too impressed but I generally ignore that nonsense – if people want to be part of her “team” and buy into whatever amazeballs new system some numpty is peddling, what do I care.

Today though, she posted something that caught my eye.  She said she was coming out of “semi-retirement” (at the grand old age of 30) because this new system had the potential to make everyone’s dreams come true and in one morning she’d signed up 18 new team members.  She was going to run a webinar to show everyone how they could make a hundred grand a month with this program.

Yeah, seriously, she wrote that.  She has over 8000 people following her on Facebook and she posts this kind of ridiculous nonsense.

Let me start by saying, if she’s making seven figures a year with that shite I’ll eat this MacBook Pro that I’m writing this on.  I’m pretty confident I’m not getting lithium poisoning anytime soon from scoffing down the battery.

Now, you’re getting this email and you’re reading it, so you’re a pretty smart person by default, but I’m struggling to understand how anyone could possibly be stupid enough to believe that rubbish.  How is this even possible?  Who are these drooling messes of humanity that think this young lady can send them an email and point them in the direction of a “system” that will turn them into millionaires?

I was genuinely lost for words reading it and for people who know me, they know I can talk underwater, so that’s a pretty significant event.

Part of me wants to go into her post on Facebook and just say, “LIAR!”  Another part of me doesn’t really give a rat’s ass and that part won the day.

Seriously though, don’t believe stuff like that.  It’s utter BS.  I could try and explain why those kinds of dodgy online pyramid schemes only ever work for people like her, but I can’t be bothered – like I said, you’re here, so you’re smarter than that.

But everyone has the occasional moment of weakness.  Maybe a bill has come in that you weren’t expecting or you just discovered you needed to replace the tires on your car.  At times like that, you might see the next “massive system that will totally change the game” come along and in a moment of weakness think about getting onto that “ferris wheel of stupid” because it must be working for that pretty little digital nomad fluffpreneur.

Wrong.  People like that are total scammers and they’re out to have you fund their lifestyle with your hard earned dollars.

There are no shortcuts, trust me.  I’ve been at this online caper for nearly a decade and I’ve seen so many people try to “hack” their way to the top and while there’s always the odd outlier, for the most part, all of those people fail.  The people who succeed are the ones who put the work in, do the right things day in and day out and run an honest business aimed at adding value to their customers and target audience.

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