How to Build a Pyramid
It's becoming increasingly common to encounter someone who is offering you a once in a lifetime career opportunity. They'll say you get to be your own boss, make a ton of money, work little to no time per week, all while providing a life-changing product or service to people that are practically begging to have it at all cost.
To which you may reply, "well that sounds great, what's the product?". Only to be met with a flurry of buzzwords and entrepreneurial babble that leaves you with even more questions than you had before. This flavor of obfuscation is a tried and true strategy favored by multi-level marketers. The goal being to prioritize your innate desire to be successful or do meaningful work, while sidelining skepticism. Now, some of you may consider this to be a trap reserved for individuals of lesser mental fortitude. But, these very tactics are universally effective; and it's very likely you've fallen for them repeatedly without even knowing it.
There's a certain wiring that people have that makes us more sensitive to negative vs. positive stimuli. For example, let's say within one day I do the following:
- Step on a scale and realize I lost weight since dieting.
- Get an interview invitation for a job I really want.
- Deal with a road rage incident on my daily commute.
The first two are positive stimuli which could lead to long-term positive effects. For instance, losing weight means the diet is working, and if I continue I may become healthier over time. Or, if the interview goes well I could get the job I wanted. The second, being a negative stimulus with short-term negative effects.
Interestingly, I find that short-term negative effects illicit more exaggerated behaviors which, if observed in a social setting, will hold more weight in your impression on others. Individuals who are keen to this will find themselves making a conscious effort to filter or dilute their behaviors to lower the likelihood of interacting with negative stimuli-- whether it be limiting conversation to safe topics (i.e., small-talk) or maintaining polite etiquette. Though, the directionality of this conscious effort is often defined by pre-established power dynamics between participating individuals. For example, the directionality in a social interaction between friends is more level than one where you are interacting with your spouse's parents and so on.
This is an important consideration when dissecting the tactic of individuals participating in a multi-level-marketing scheme, as it seems this conscious filter effort is at a maximum consistently, regardless of pre-established power dynamics. Naturally, in order to maximize potential for collaboration/recruitment. However, people-pleasing is now elaborated as a conscious effort to give you the illusion of a favorable power dynamic. Meaning, in making their conscious filtration effort ever-so obvious, they want you to believe you are a key-player, or indispensable asset to their mission. Which, in the case of this scheme is absolutely true, but due to sheer participation rather than any unique characteristic of your own. After all, you may notice that individuals recruiting for such a scheme are seldom aware of, or requiring and specific technical skills. They simply ask that you're a people person passionate about improving the lives of others.
Now that we have some basic understanding of the telltale signs of an multi-level-marketeer, we can consider the parallels in broader social contexts. We can summarize the multi-level-marketeer as follows:
- Directs enthusiasm towards you, without any true inquiry.
- Maintains a clear power-dynamic which favors the recipient.
- Communicates the benefits and importance of the opportunity before discussing the job/work itself.
Now, throughout our lives, it is likely we've employed any of the above characteristics to suit our own social needs. Since, while they are somewhat annoying to deal with if we catch on to their usage they are indeed efficient in situations where they are perceived as genuine, with few exceptions.
I believe that the first two summary points, which I'll refer to as blind enthusiasm and power feeding respectively, are the most broadly applicable. Have you ever talked with someone who is just so interested in everything you do, no matter how mundane it truly is? Did you just take out the trash and do the laundry? Wow! What a exemplary display of independence and discipline. Watching TV? That sounds like such a good time, gee I wish I was there! Blind enthusiasm manifests as a flurry of compliments and buzzwords which signal interpretations such as interest and respect with hopes that the recipient associates their interactions with positive stimuli. With this association, it becomes more unlikely that future requests will be met with harsh rejection. For example, in dating contexts, flooding someone with compliments on their looks which signal positive attraction (i.e., beautiful, gorgeous, amazing, etc.) at first, in order to enhance potential for explicit requests in the future. It is less likely that defense mechanisms trigger when the positive association is established. With this, you may find this characteristic universally applicable to social engineering. Power-feeding goes hand-in-hand with this, because in establishing directionality of this flurry of compliments via blind enthusiasm, the power is shifted towards the recipient. A successful social-engineer will employ blind enthusiasm and power-feeding in such a way that places themselves as a positively-associated individual who genuinely admires the recipient.
The third summary point, while not as explicitly universal, can be interpreted as the response of a blind-enthusiast/power-feeder to inquiry from the recipient. Consider the goal-oriented nature of the social engineer to signal the recipient to believe they are a positive influence, with genuine interest and admiration. Limiting the conversation to the goal and benefit itself, without divulging details, positions conversation in a way which feels natural. Since, the primary source of positivity for the social engineer is the manifestation of the goal itself. (some quota, participation, or action) Consider the salesmen pitching a product to investors, they share the same sentiment, and will often employ a wide variety of tactics to retain focus on the spectacle of improvement, importance, and opportunity. Consider the student interviewing for graduate programs, who will emphasize the importance of their prior projects to leverage themselves as an innovative and compassionate candidate, while one look at the details reveals them as shoddy.
Indeed, we have all been the engineer building our own pyramid, per se. But, with an understanding of the universality of these tactics in broader social contexts, one can remain aware of potentially artificial or disingenuous communication in a world which is becoming increasingly transactional. Furthermore, while these tactics may be successful when employed on unknowing individuals, to truly be a successful social engineer, graduate candidate, romantic interest and so on, do something worth genuine signals of positive association, admiration, and investment. As, a pyramid built on artificial, contractually transactional scaffolding won't last. Unknowing individuals eventually wisen-up, and knowing individuals who let you pass out of sheer annoyance will eventually move on.