0062 — Pat Gives Ray a Gift

Personal note at bottom. 

A full-page collection of outtakes and unused panels from this week's cutting room floor will post in the In-Universe and Author's Tiers at noon Pacific today, as is custom.

Inherently sensed in a friend's cheery announcement that they have just begun a "side-hustle" selling essential oils, makeup, or loud peplum tops from New Zealand is that your financial participation, and even deputy evangelization, is assumed. In fact, your name was probably on their short list when they were finding ways to justify their hello-and-faceplant into the world of multi-level marketing.

You are not wrong. The moment a half-cocked American decides to play-act entrepreneur — because so did our Rockefeller and our Carnegie and even Bezos started somewhere — a lifetime of low-resolution capitalist pomp strikes up in their heart and their birthright of easy riches beyond imagination is all but assured. You will not only be their customer, but you will become so moved by the jazzy fabrics and de-ionized eyeliner that you, too, will become a salesperson, and a portion of your monthly income will tithe their way. The essential trick of the MLM is the conflation of friendship with leverage.

It's a sorry thing to see a friend go through this — like the fungus that invades the brain of the ant and drives his body around like some nightmarish rough draft from Boston Dynamics — but go through it they do. And Ray Smuckles, bless his wealth, can just bat the handsy zombie of amateur ambition back with his dollars. Does his decision ultimately fuel the delusion? Yes, of course it does. But Ray Smuckles is one to avoid problems, and that is what I wanted to tell you today. Maybe that's why he's still single.

Has an MLM ever threatened your own life and well-being? Please describe it in the comments.

Personal note: I once dated someone who joined an MLM, and it was a point of great contention that I would not use the Achewood platform and readership to advertise their shlock. It was, perhaps, the initial audible cleaving of the fibers of our union. My commitment to spend fifty dollars a month on a small bottle of laundry detergent was ultimately not enough; the entire ill-begotten relationship collapsed several hundred dollars later.