Hey, guys.
It's Chelsea, and this week's video
is brought to you by my visceral disgust
at having to look at LuLaRoe leggings for four hours.
As you can tell by our title, thumbnail, and intro today,
I'm just going to be giving you my essentially unfiltered rant
after having watched the four-part Amazon LuLaRoe
documentary, LuLaRich, all in one sitting last night.
Anyone who's watched even a second of TFD
knows how we feel about MLMs, which is badly, negatively.
We don't stan.
And LuLaRoe, for anyone who was near Facebook over the past six
years, has been one of the most ubiquitous MLM offenders.
At least Rodan + Fields makes an attempt to make their skin care
products look chic.
What the fuck are these leggings?
For those who may not know, though, an MLM is essentially
a hair's breath away from a pyramid scheme
and many would argue have basically no real differences,
but the theory is that the organization forms a pyramid
shape in which people make money by bringing
in other people underneath them to represent the company,
usually having exorbitant startup fees
or having to buy a ton of inventory.
The money is generally not actually made
from selling their goods or services.
It's made from roping other people into the scheme.
But if you want any more information on what MLMs are,
who they're targeting, why they're everywhere
on your Instagram depending on your demographic makeup,
we'll link you in the description
to some of our greatest hit videos on the subject.
But I want to talk specifically about this documentary,
LuLaRoe itself, and what I feel is a pretty under-explored
aspect of the MLM phenomenon.
The LuLaRich documentary essentially
takes us from the origins of this company all through what
it is currently at now, which basically appears
to be a husk of its former self that is being sued every which
way from Sunday, I can't imagine has much of a functional staff
left, but somehow keeps posting their atrocious clothes
on Instagram.
So I guess, go, girl.
Give us nothing.
The main characters in this documentary are the co-founding
couple who we find out are Mormons--
not shocked-- give us big Wendi McLendon-Covey circa Reno
911! energy and Glenn Beck if he went through the machine
in The Fly with a beat.
They drop the fact that they have 14 children--
OK-- and that two of them are married to each other.
Good for them.
They also give us a pretty twisty-turny origin story
for the company that, when contrasted
with the actual depositions that they
had to give in some of their lawsuits,
seems to be extremely sus.
The wife in the couple insists that she
started this kind of by accident because people just
loved those ugly skirts she was making.
But when you find out shortly thereafter that both of them,
as well as several of their family members,
had long been involved in various MLMs of their own,
you realize that it was probably a pretty active choice
and she knew what she was doing when
she started looping other people to sell her skirts for her.
But no matter how it actually started, LuLaRoe quickly,
between the years of about 2014 to 2016,
exploded in popularity and growth to the point
that they had, at one time, over 100,000 consultants
representing their brand.
Those are basically the freelance retailers
who buy the inventory that they can then not
offload because who the fuck wants
to be wearing these leggings?
The story arc of the documentary is
one that's not terribly surprising
if you're at all familiar with any anti-MLM content.
And while I did briefly discuss this phenomenon in my podcast
episode with queen of anti-MLM and general internet culture
TiffanyFerg-- love her, highly recommend you check out that
interview--
I think, in light of this documentary,
this particular aspect is really worth exploring.
The couple is framed as the villains of the story,
and it's not surprising why.
Everything points to the idea that they absolutely
knew what they were doing.
And the fact that they offloaded about 100%
of the important and actually legitimate jobs
to their extremely suspect and borderline nonfunctional
children, you don't really have any pity for them.
And let's be clear.
Even while talking about all of the various lawsuits
they're drowning in and cutting to and from the consultants
who are filing for bankruptcy, the wife DeAnne in this couple
is giving her interview while wearing a pair of signature
Valentino heels.
So sure, they're evil, their family's
evil, even their weird nephew for whom
we had to suffer both through a high school musical theater
production and him having to detail the weed Ponzi scheme he
tried to rope all of the former LuLaRoe consultants
into, yes, all of them can go into the garbage.
But I found that this documentary
had a similar dynamic to the one that I
experienced while watching the HBO NXIVM documentary.
For those who haven't seen it, please watch it.
It is such an enjoyable several hours
even with all of its flaws.
Basically, if we can think about MLMs through the same prism
that we think about cults, which I think
is an extremely apt comparison, especially when you consider
how difficult they make it for people to leave
and how much they insist that current members never speak
to or in any way interact with former members,
we start to see that the line between who is a victim
and who is a predator is extremely blurry.
And like in the NXIVM documentary
where our two protagonists were people who both clearly got
filthy rich by exploiting and entrapping
other young vulnerable women and aspiring actors, the most
exploitable group, you got the feeling
that many of the women we are watching
expose the overall scheme are themselves
nearly as culpable as the founders,
especially when you start moving up the hierarchy
and look at women who made literally seven figures
by roping thousands of women underneath them.
The idea that they could be framed
at some level as whistleblowers or righteous victims or people
speaking truth to power in some capacity
is, quite frankly, a little offensive.
And even as you move down the line,
even the women who had some of the most compelling stories
ultimately made it several years in the company
only by exploiting and entrapping
other women underneath them.
And these women were quick to point out
that, hey, I was a single mom.
Hey, I was a military spouse.
Hey, I wasn't able to make ends meet,
which they use to sort of amp up their victim
status in the dynamic, but fail to mention
that all of the other women that they knowingly roped into such
a losing proposition were in those exact same situations.
In my conversation with TiffanyFerg,
I address the issue that I think one of the biggest problems
and why MLMs continue to thrive, and in fact, have grown
substantially since COVID is because we refuse
to hold accountable so many of the people who,
yes, on some level were victims, but the day they stayed
in the company and started bringing other people in
became just as culpable perpetrators.
There is no shortage of anti-MLM content out there.
Yes, this documentary is probably
one of the biggest and most splashy examples of the genre
and is bound to reach a lot of people
who are outside of the world of bad shit
happening on the internet, which happens
to be my favorite topic.
But if you Google essentially any individual MLM,
any of the business practices or models or just the concept
itself, there is an overwhelming and overwhelmingly available
amount of information on why these things are bad,
why you are almost guaranteed to lose money,
and why the only way you will even
be able to hope for survival financially
yourself is by essentially throwing other vulnerable women
under the bus.
I mentioned queen TiffanyFerg, but even lovable chimney sweep
John Oliver has done an entire segment on these.
The point is it is 2021.
There is no shortage of information here.
And while I understand that vulnerable people getting
roped into dubious financial schemes
is a tale as old as time, the fact
that we continue to extend victimhood status to people who
are essentially The Ring-ing each other
and showing each other the video that's going to kill them
so that they don't get killed is part of the problem.
There are many women in the documentary who clearly
suffered financially but also are not fucking victims
and should honestly be part of the takedown.
And it's tough to draw the line, right?
If you recruit one unknowing woman
into getting roped into the scheme
so you might have a chance for survival,
are you then more of a perpetrator than a victim?
Maybe.
If you do it to hundreds of women,
are you more a perpetrator?
I would say absolutely, yes.
But we really haven't reached that place in our discourse
yet.
In doing research for videos on all kinds of topics
like consumerism, internet culture, or even MLMs,
I have an Explore page on Instagram
that is full to the brim of women who are still to this day
engaging in all kinds of MLM-type organizations.
These are women who market themselves as career coaches
or wellness authorities despite no credentials,
or exercise gurus or oracles on all things organic mommy-dom.
The point is the phenomenon of women at home making money
by roping other women into terrible financial propositions
is by no means slowing down.
And yet, when you look in the comments
of these various extremely popular accounts,
you'll see that the number of people who actually take them
to task on the realities of what they're doing to other women
with their, quote unquote, "businesses" is very limited.
We've not yet reached a place in the discourse
where we're ready to hold people accountable who are, yes,
at some level, victims, but also very much
in the process of being predators.
You walk away from this documentary feeling
like the real monsters in this story
are the couple and all of their grotesque children,
and maybe, yes, the atrocious prints on the clothes.
But you also walk away giving a pretty damn free pass to all
of the women in this documentary who knowingly
and intentionally perpetrated this affliction on others.
And I submit that the real reckoning with MLM culture
is not going to come until the people who are midstream, who
are presenting themselves as career
coaches and aspirational startup gurus
are being taken to the fucking mat in their own Instagram
comments.
Hop on their lives.
They can't delete those in real time.
If more people see this documentary
and become aware of the dangers of MLMs, it's a good thing.
But if people see it and think that this problem is
localized to companies like LuLaRoe
or that the singular bad guys in the narrative are the founders,
then we're likely just to keep seeing this problem growing
as it has post-COVID.
Those are just my two cents on what was otherwise a very
entertaining documentary.
PS, Kelly Clarkson is canceled.
As always, guys, thank you for watching
and don't forget to hit the Subscribe button
and to come back every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday
for new and awesome videos.
Goodbye.