Girl Scouts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind
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If you Google the term, there is a lot of talk of how the Girl Scouts are just a multi-level marketing scheme that preys on children. I came to this conclusion without ever having looked it up, then looked it up to see if others had come to this conclusion and, not surprisingly, it seems to be a common belief. So, is there anything to the GS other than being an MLM? It's the only thing that I know about them, that they are a front for a cookie based MLM. They've always seemed really questionable, but I now feel that they are completely unethical and, really, should be completely illegal. It's not just preying on children in a way that is illegal to do with adults, but does it under the false guise of being a non-profit, and is trains girls to be susceptible to this kind of scam as adults. Something that has become a bit of an epidemic in America with Facebook becoming a communications mechanism for MLMs and scams just like the Girl Scouts.
Thoughts? Think I'm wrong? Go....
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@scottalanmiller I don't know much at all about them apart from the fact they sell a lot of cookies.
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@tim_g said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
@scottalanmiller I don't know much at all about them apart from the fact they sell a lot of cookies.
Yes, that's all that I know about that, and that part is definitely an MLM. They are taught to "run their own businesses" selling cookies for the GS, who in turn buy then cookies from someone else. It's a very traditional pyramid scheme in every way.
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I mentioned it to my wife and she was like "well duh, everyone knows they are an MLM".
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Of course this whole thing also applies to the Boy Scouts selling things, school fund raisers, etc. All those things that we know are uncomfortable and unethical, but we look the other way because someone pretends it is for a non-profit. Somehow, fundraising gets a free pass on ethics and legal MLM oversight laws. But if normal companies did this, they'd be caught in minutes.
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Some interesting conversations here on Reddit about how they are using MLM language now in the Girl Scouts, and how girls are being trained to see "Women owned businesses" as MLMs and begging operations, not as real businesses. Some seriously bad stuff going on in the GS. As a father of two girls, there is no way my kids are going to be allowed anywhere near them. It's seriously bad stuff that teaches girls some horrible life lessons.
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Consumerism Commentary has some good stuff on the MLM here as well. Training children to violate trust and leverage social guilt and burn friendships to try to make a quick buck.
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That last article, they use the term "when your friends start social selling", but I think that there is something key here... a friend would never do that. Social selling is just financially stabbing someone in the back. If someone tries to social sell to you, they were never your friend. Social selling is what you do when you think someone is a fool that you can sucker, it's never something you do to your friends. Your friends are you have drinks with while you laugh at the suckers you just sold junk to based on violated trust and using social guilt. Mwahahaha.
But seriously, if someone is trying to social sell to you, they are no friend of yours. They can't pull that crap and view you as a friend. The two can't reasonably coincide.
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Oh look, the guide to using your Girl Scout Funnel to Run MLM Scams. Yup, people really make guides for this.
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This article talks about how the Girl Scouts get almost no money and asks if this doesn't violate child labour laws. Which I agree, it almost certainly does.
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I have no kids and dont take solicitors at my door. These posts might as well be in sanskrit. What is MLM and social selling? I know what the individual words mean.
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@momurda said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
I have no kids and dont take solicitors at my door. These posts might as well be in sanskrit. What is MLM and social selling? I know what the individual words mean.
MLM is Multi Level Marketing. It's the modern term for the Amway Pyramid Scam model.
Social selling is where you sell to friends and family through guilt and pressure of your social framework instead of through actual marketing or having a viable product.
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Boy Scouts did the same thing with popcorn, but not to the extent that Girl Scouts does.
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@nerdydad said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Boy Scouts did the same thing with popcorn, but not to the extent that Girl Scouts does.
Yeah, my wife reminded me of that. I had forgotten.
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A good alternative is American Heritage Girls, if you don't mind religious affiliations.
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@nerdydad said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
A good alternative is American Heritage Girls, if you don't mind religious affiliations.
It's hard for me to evaluate an alternative, because I'm not clear on what the purpose of the original is. Kind of like the Facebook discussion on that other thread
All I know of the Girl Scouts is that their purpose is to undermine the ethical underpinnings of girls and use them as child labour to sell unhealthy cookies to Americans while preparing girls to be highly susceptible to unethical MLM scams as adults. I'm sure that the GS do something other than that, but I don't have the first guess what it is. I literally know them as the same as Amway, but with kids. -
Fix the typo in the thread title.
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All fundraising by selling packaged products like this is a shit show.
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@jaredbusch said in Girl Scounts - Training Girls to Run MLMs, Change My Mind:
Fix the typo in the thread title.
LOL, done.
