LuLaRoe

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

such direct comparisons to games. Instead, it’s often consumers who treat consumption like a game, with retailers only too happy to oblige. Take the LuLaRoe multilevel marketing company, which earns money by selling clothes to its “consultants,” who sell them on to shoppers.27 Unlike normal retailers, consultants can’t

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know which prints they will get until they open the box, and no two consultants get the same mix. Shoppers, therefore, will usually join multiple LuLaRoe groups on Facebook to try and find the piece they want because some styles or colors of clothes are popular or rare

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. (LuLaRoe fans call these “unicorns.”) Others designs, which have been endlessly mocked online, are ugly, unflattering, or just plain weird (like leggings featuring DeAnne in a

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Santa hat). In this way, shopping for LuLaRoe is like a treasure hunt. When the company announces the launch of a new style, design, or color, LuLa fanatics comb through the groups to

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then elicits yet another treasure hunt, this time by customers. The difference is that gachapon and loot boxes usually cost a few dollars each, while LuLaRoe consultants have to spend $499 to get started, with many of their orders running into thousands of dollars.29 Then there are the broader similarities

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between games and multilevel marketing schemes, like LuLaRoe’s giveaways and complex system of leadership tiers and “leadership pool” points that determine consultants’ compensation.30 Plenty of retailers reward customer loyalty, but few

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,” The Verge, Vox Media, December 3, 2020, www.theverge.com/2020/12/3/22150152/complexcon-virtual-music-streetwear-complex-food-festival. 27. “AG Ferguson Sues LuLaRoe over Pyramid Scheme,” Office of the Attorney General, Washington State, January 25, 2019, www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-sues

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-lularoe-over-pyramid-scheme. 28. Stephanie McNeal, “Millennial Women Made LuLaRoe Billions. Then They Paid the Price,” Buzzfeed News, February 22, 2020, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/lularoe-millennial-women-entrepreneurship-lawsuits. 29. “Join Us—Join the Community and Become

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a Fashion Entrepreneur,” LuLaRoe, accessed November 28, 2021, www.lularoe.com/join-lularoe. 30. “Leadership Compensation Plan,” LuLaRoe, updated November 23, 2020, https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/llrprod

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

by Amanda Montell  · 14 Jun 2021  · 244pp  · 73,700 words

’ve always wanted. American MLMs number in the hundreds: Amway, Avon, and Mary Kay are among the best recognized, alongside Herbalife, Young Living Essential Oils, LuLaRoe, LipSense, dōTERRA, Pampered Chef, Rodan + Fields, Scentsy, Arbonne, Younique, and the iconic Tupperware. When I think of the typical MLM recruit, I think of women

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Facebook. A year or several into stay-at-home motherhood, they get roped into hawking the slimy serums of Rodan + Fields, paper-thin leggings of LuLaRoe, or something similar (you name it, I’ve seen it in my newsfeed). Most MLMs target nonworking wives and moms, and they have since the

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loss. Search “MLM scam” on YouTube, and endless pages of videos like “The MLM ‘Girl Boss’ Narrative Is a Lie,” “I Filed for Bankruptcy After LuLaRoe and Now Work 2 Jobs,” and “AMWAY: The Final Straw (with Audio EVIDENCE!)—How I Quit My MLM Cult” accumulate millions of views. Anti-MLMers

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‘Be your own boss. Work from home’ shit.” Becca eye-rolled through the phone. Several of Becca’s friends were involved with the controversial MLM LuLaRoe, a billion-dollar leggings company that the Washington State attorney general sued for pyramid scheme activity in 2019. (As of the time of this writing

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Hottest Recruiting Scripts in MLM,” Network Marketing Pro, https://networkmarketingpro.com/pdf/the_hottest_recruiting_scripts_in_mlm_by_eric_worre_networkmarketingpro.com.pdf. LuLaRoe: Charisse Jones, “LuLaRoe Was Little More Than a Scam, a Washington State Lawsuit Claims,” USA Today, January 28, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01

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/28/lularoe-pyramid-scheme-duped-consumers-washington-suit-says/2700412002/. Tupperware: Cristen Conger, “How Tupperware Works,” HowStuffWorks, July 25, 2011, https://people.howstuffworks.com/tupperware2.htm. The

The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

by Jesselyn Cook  · 22 Jul 2024  · 321pp  · 95,778 words

, leaving her feeling like a single mother, she did her best to erect new ones to prop herself back up. She poured her energy into LuLaRoe, a multilevel marketing firm known for its brightly patterned leggings and widespread allegations of pyramid-scheme conduct. Likened to cults by a growing pool of

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Diamonds, depending on the company—could juice the downlines for millions. The majority of sellers never turned a profit. Andrea was no exception. To join LuLaRoe, she had to buy in for several thousand dollars and purchase its clothing in bulk to resell, all the while recruiting more base-level sellers

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-game-plays-believers/​2021/​05/​10/​31d8ea46-928b-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT poured her energy into LuLaRoe: B. Aho, “AG Ferguson Sues LuLaRoe over Pyramid Scheme,” Attorney General’s Office, Washington State, January 25, 2019, https://www.atg.wa.gov/​news/​news-releases/​ag-ferguson

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-sues-lularoe-over-pyramid-scheme. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT majority of sellers never turned a profit: M. DeLiema et al., “AARP Study of Multilevel Marketing,”

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann  · 17 Jun 2019

sold as a teenager). Recently this business model has become even more popular, including the hundreds of new businesses enabled by social media, such as LuLaRoe (clothing) and Pampered Chef (food products). A fourth influence model is known as social proof, drawing on social cues as proof that you are making

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–74 low-hanging fruit, 81 loyalists versus mercenaries, 276–77 luck, 128 making your own, 122 luck surface area, 122, 124, 128 Luft, Joseph, 196 LuLaRoe, 217 lung cancer, 133–34, 173 Lyautey, Hubert, 276 Lyft, ix, 288 Madoff, Bernie, 232 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 291 magnets, 194 maker’s schedule