The Groupthink Phenomena?

I have been blogging and posting my thoughts and opinions of Amway for nearly 20 years now.  This particular blog has been in existence since 2009, although I ran a similar blog that went dead because the host of the blog site went out of business apparently.  I post and have been posting for all these years to keep this blog relevant in the search engines.  The information and sharing of my personal experiences in Amway have been valuable to many and I thank the audience I still have, although traffic is much lower than it was until recent years.  But I keep doing this so people can get truthful information about Amway and the systems that is the cause of so many of the Amway horror stories that circulate around on the internet.

I have read all of these posts. Interesting that seemingly, most everyone who supports Amway cannot spell very well. Lots of typos and grammatical errors in here by those who jump up and down reciting Amway's many virtues. It is a scam and a groupthink phenomenon of staggering proportions. From a psychological perspective, Amway does its best to separate people from those who would challenge its legitimacy and operations. This is not unlike how Hitler or any other leader would silence opponents or dissidents by having them "removed" from the equation. Same thing goes here, Amway teaches people to ignore and remove obstacles and people who challenge the system, even if said challenges are completely rational and offered by people with the IBO's best interest in mind. It hits IBO's in soft spots for family, friends, and freedom (the 3 F's), and it entices them to focus on emotional reasoning rather than very cognitive-based, rational dissection of information. 

Amway IBO's are taught emotionalism, not rationalism. From a business perspective, it is a farce. IBO's are no entrepreneurs, as they wear the collars of their uplines. Over and over, I have been told to do as my uplines say. What if my upline is a total moron and I have a law degree and an MBA?? I'm supposed to follow these uplines?? According to the system, yes, the uplines' words are paramount. So no, IBO's are not entrepreneurs and do not gain any real experience. IBO is a fancy name for distributor, pure and simple.  And why do you bow down to upline?  Simply because someone joined before you?  Does that qualify them to give me business advice?  How about advice for my marriage or other life changing decisions?  Someone can advise me, and I'm expected to follow said advice because my upline joined Amway before I did?

I had the opportunity to meet a number of "diamonds" and "emeralds", all of whom had either left the business to get real jobs or were still struggling in Amway.  Many of them are posting massive losses, and by the way, the IRS does not consider prosuming OR tickets to a convention (to hear some diamond scream at you) to be business expenses. Good luck trying to recover those losses. It is a product pyramid scheme simply because mathematically and considering the law of averages, a downline cannot really earn more than his upline. It just doesn't happen - it's a nice idea, but it doesn't happen. I worked through multiple scenarios with a friend, trying to see how I could out-earn my upline, and we found several variables that would keep that from happening.   The only exception to this is most cases is when your upline quits, which also quite common.

Finally, on a personal level, this Amway monkey business cost me a great friendship, an IBO who decided that taking a chance on some crazy dream was more important than those who loved him most. I think he will continue prospecting and pushing "the plan" until there isn't anyone left. If you know someone in Amway or who is thinking seriously about it, you need to realize that they will soon be lost. Amway people are very much like crack users (very similar psychopathology, actually), and they will choose Amway over you, their family, their friends, and anything that gets in the way.