5 ms·

Could you expand a bit? It sort of sounds like you're describing a small town or a social circle / social scene where everyone got involved in some particular a

Could you expand a bit? It sort of sounds like you're describing a small town or a social circle / social scene where everyone got involved in some particular altcoin or something and invested a ton of their personal savings into it while encouraging others to do so as well, is that essentially it? Crazy if so.

cjbgkagh 4y ago
That’s essentially it, a small town where everyone knew each other and all hung out in the same bars. I didn’t pay attention to which one it was, I do remember hearing crazy interest, like >40%. I think you also got a cut from new entrants as well, so it reeked of pyramid + ponzi.
- zeven7 4y ago
  I'm fascinated that some kind of place like this existed. I've only lived in large cities and the picture I've gotten of small towns from trips and media hasn't prepared me for the idea of a whole community that collectively buys into a get rich quick scheme.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It happens all the time but often the community and the physical community don't overlap, but check out /r/MLM or other similar subreddits and there's whole groups of scammers who target particular groups (church, social, retired, veterans, etc) with particular pitches designed for that group. Because if some rando tells you to join Amway or invest in AmCOIN™ you will tell them to get bent, but if it's a trusted friend, you're much more likely to be open. It's disgusting, but it happens. And in a small town, likely everyone goes to the same church or two, hangs out at the same bar, etc. It can spread like wildfire, though usually after the first few scams it becomes known and starts to die out a bit. Sometimes you recognize the situation and decide to "participate" (read: lose some small amount of money in the scam) to stay in the community.
    - dtmmax33 4y ago
      You can also check out behindmlm.com which exposes most of the more popular scams.
    - AlwaysRock 4y ago
      In the smallest version of this... My weekly poker group talks about stocks and crypto often. It's a mix of guys who work in tech and engineering and a handful who just want to get rich quick. We've all bought a few yolo stocks and coins together and 100% of the time the investments have gone to zero or close to it. Thankfully no one in the group is dumb enough to go all in on this hyper risky investments but I can see how it would be easy to be talked into something if you're in an echo chamber. Before anyone gets too worried I'm talking about spending a few hundred dollars each on stupid investsments over the course of a few years.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        The danger is when they don't go to zero, and you suddenly thing you're stock picking geniuses - or you then decide to put it all in on the next one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardstown_Ladies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardstown_Ladies
        seoaeu 4y ago
        Amusing quote from that page: “This revelation led to a class action lawsuit against publisher Hyperion, a division of The Walt Disney Company, which settled the case by offering to swap the Beardstown Ladies books for other Hyperion books.”
        bombcar 4y ago
        Considering I'd estimate something like 99% of investment book purchases are "for entertainment purposes" (i.e., the buyer either doesn't read it, or never bothers trying to implement any of it) this may be a decent option.
        cjbgkagh 4y ago
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    The town is mostly retirees and it was mostly the retirees that got suckered into it. Inflation eating away at fixed incomes and low interest rates undermining their investments.
  - _jal 4y ago
    It happens a lot, and isolation can help keep scams going. In case anyone has any illusions about how bad financial scamming can get, pyramid schemes famously led to civil war in Albania not that long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    In Utah "Network Marketing" or more plainly MLM schemes are literally the second biggest industry in the state. Strongly influenced by the Mormon culture you have stay at home moms do direct sales and multilingual missionaries using their skills for that kind of stuff. There's entire software companies that just build tools for MLM companies.
  - joseph8th 4y ago
    Oh boy, have I got a story for you. Around 1999, my hometown (pop. ~600) fell for a conman. Like, the actual Town government, and almost everyone in it. Pudgy, balding, middle-aged white dude breezed into town and seduced the owner of one of the motels. She kicks her husband out and starts taking Conman to town board meetings, etc. Eventually divorced husband. Guy claims to be Hollywood connected, a wealthy promoter or agent, scouting locations for future filming, etc. This goes on all summer, and the town manager and county administrator, and the whole board and chamber of commerce totally buy it, lock, stock, and barrel. Conman claims he can bring in some big country music star he knows. I don't remember who. I can't stand country, so why would I remember? Big star. Not Dolly big, but Boot Scooting Boogie big. He convinced the town to foot the bill, that he would pay for everything once they had the final bill... and this podunk nowheresville town 60 miles from the nearest traffic light pays to fly this star in on a private jet, sets up a huge stage for her, and all like 50 of us that show up get a private concert. It sucked. This whole time... Everyone in town is talking about this guy, right? And nobody is asking if he's legit. I mean, I did, but I had long hair and was a nobody, so... Spoiler: he wasn't. Not even a month after the big concert, he disappeared with motel lady's (and her husband's) life savings, and obviously skipped on the million-odd bill for Peggy Rae or whoever TF it was. Everyone looked like a moron. Motel lady declared bankruptcy and left town. I gloated mercilessly. Idiots. They all voted Trump, too. Some people never learn.
    - xiaolingxiao 4y ago
      This should be a movie.
      - acomjean 4y ago
        There is out of town huckster in the Simpson monorail episode… Written by Conan OBrien. Had a Catchy song and had Leonard Nimoy cameo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
    - zeven7 4y ago
      Wild. > pays to fly this star in on a private jet, sets up a huge stage for her, and all like 50 of us that show up get a private concert. It sucked. The concert actually happened? That's the craziest part of all of it.
  - acdha 4y ago
    This is especially common in churches because in addition to having an existing trust relationship, in many more conservative denominations you also have a large population of women who are expected to be mothers first and working second but are also expected to be the frugal wife running the household like a small business (there are several scriptures like Proverbs 31 which mention this in contexts which make more sense if your household is a small farm & you're selling your surplus). Those pitches explicitly borrow from that tradition and they always refer to it as being a small business owner, which sounds a lot better than working part-time at Starbucks even if the latter tends to pay considerably better, and that's also appealing to the people who see working outside the home as being out in the world exposed to all kinds of dangers and temptations since you can tell yourself that you'll mostly sell to people you already know. What tends to happen is that the first person who picks up some new scam does fairly well because there's no exact competition for whatever they're selling. They tell their friends, who are likely to join because they made an enviable amount of money, but returns drop off rapidly because most of the people who want whatever that company is selling already bought it from the first person (whose social network overlaps considerably) and at some point most of the money is coming from the people buying the initial inventory which will mostly sit in their garage. The social dynamic also means that _nobody_ will ever admit that they lost money or made the equivalent of $2/hour even as they're giving away that unsold merchandise at baby showers for the next 5 years. Cryptocurrencies have largely been the brilliant idea of capturing this dynamic for a different demographic (libertarian men).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y ago
There is a recent movie called Dream Horse based on true story: "Twenty years ago, one woman convinced her neighbours to buy, rear and train a thoroughbred racehorse, Dream Alliance. Now their unlikely story is relived in a feelgood film" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/30/against-all-odds-how-a-village-in-the-welsh-valleys-dreamed-big-and-won https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/30/against-all-odd...

cjbgkagh 4y ago

That’s essentially it, a small town where everyone knew each other and all hung out in the same bars. I didn’t pay attention to which one it was, I do remember hearing crazy interest, like >40%. I think you also got a cut from new entrants as well, so it reeked of pyramid + ponzi.

zeven7 4y ago
I'm fascinated that some kind of place like this existed. I've only lived in large cities and the picture I've gotten of small towns from trips and media hasn't prepared me for the idea of a whole community that collectively buys into a get rich quick scheme.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It happens all the time but often the community and the physical community don't overlap, but check out /r/MLM or other similar subreddits and there's whole groups of scammers who target particular groups (church, social, retired, veterans, etc) with particular pitches designed for that group. Because if some rando tells you to join Amway or invest in AmCOIN™ you will tell them to get bent, but if it's a trusted friend, you're much more likely to be open. It's disgusting, but it happens. And in a small town, likely everyone goes to the same church or two, hangs out at the same bar, etc. It can spread like wildfire, though usually after the first few scams it becomes known and starts to die out a bit. Sometimes you recognize the situation and decide to "participate" (read: lose some small amount of money in the scam) to stay in the community.
  - dtmmax33 4y ago
    You can also check out behindmlm.com which exposes most of the more popular scams.
  - AlwaysRock 4y ago
    In the smallest version of this... My weekly poker group talks about stocks and crypto often. It's a mix of guys who work in tech and engineering and a handful who just want to get rich quick. We've all bought a few yolo stocks and coins together and 100% of the time the investments have gone to zero or close to it. Thankfully no one in the group is dumb enough to go all in on this hyper risky investments but I can see how it would be easy to be talked into something if you're in an echo chamber. Before anyone gets too worried I'm talking about spending a few hundred dollars each on stupid investsments over the course of a few years.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The danger is when they don't go to zero, and you suddenly thing you're stock picking geniuses - or you then decide to put it all in on the next one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardstown_Ladies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardstown_Ladies
      - seoaeu 4y ago
        Amusing quote from that page: “This revelation led to a class action lawsuit against publisher Hyperion, a division of The Walt Disney Company, which settled the case by offering to swap the Beardstown Ladies books for other Hyperion books.”
        bombcar 4y ago
        Considering I'd estimate something like 99% of investment book purchases are "for entertainment purposes" (i.e., the buyer either doesn't read it, or never bothers trying to implement any of it) this may be a decent option.
      - cjbgkagh 4y ago
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  The town is mostly retirees and it was mostly the retirees that got suckered into it. Inflation eating away at fixed incomes and low interest rates undermining their investments.
- _jal 4y ago
  It happens a lot, and isolation can help keep scams going. In case anyone has any illusions about how bad financial scamming can get, pyramid schemes famously led to civil war in Albania not that long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania
- Barrin92 4y ago
  In Utah "Network Marketing" or more plainly MLM schemes are literally the second biggest industry in the state. Strongly influenced by the Mormon culture you have stay at home moms do direct sales and multilingual missionaries using their skills for that kind of stuff. There's entire software companies that just build tools for MLM companies.
- joseph8th 4y ago
  Oh boy, have I got a story for you. Around 1999, my hometown (pop. ~600) fell for a conman. Like, the actual Town government, and almost everyone in it. Pudgy, balding, middle-aged white dude breezed into town and seduced the owner of one of the motels. She kicks her husband out and starts taking Conman to town board meetings, etc. Eventually divorced husband. Guy claims to be Hollywood connected, a wealthy promoter or agent, scouting locations for future filming, etc. This goes on all summer, and the town manager and county administrator, and the whole board and chamber of commerce totally buy it, lock, stock, and barrel. Conman claims he can bring in some big country music star he knows. I don't remember who. I can't stand country, so why would I remember? Big star. Not Dolly big, but Boot Scooting Boogie big. He convinced the town to foot the bill, that he would pay for everything once they had the final bill... and this podunk nowheresville town 60 miles from the nearest traffic light pays to fly this star in on a private jet, sets up a huge stage for her, and all like 50 of us that show up get a private concert. It sucked. This whole time... Everyone in town is talking about this guy, right? And nobody is asking if he's legit. I mean, I did, but I had long hair and was a nobody, so... Spoiler: he wasn't. Not even a month after the big concert, he disappeared with motel lady's (and her husband's) life savings, and obviously skipped on the million-odd bill for Peggy Rae or whoever TF it was. Everyone looked like a moron. Motel lady declared bankruptcy and left town. I gloated mercilessly. Idiots. They all voted Trump, too. Some people never learn.
  - xiaolingxiao 4y ago
    This should be a movie.
    - acomjean 4y ago
      There is out of town huckster in the Simpson monorail episode… Written by Conan OBrien. Had a Catchy song and had Leonard Nimoy cameo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
  - zeven7 4y ago
    Wild. > pays to fly this star in on a private jet, sets up a huge stage for her, and all like 50 of us that show up get a private concert. It sucked. The concert actually happened? That's the craziest part of all of it.
- acdha 4y ago
  This is especially common in churches because in addition to having an existing trust relationship, in many more conservative denominations you also have a large population of women who are expected to be mothers first and working second but are also expected to be the frugal wife running the household like a small business (there are several scriptures like Proverbs 31 which mention this in contexts which make more sense if your household is a small farm & you're selling your surplus). Those pitches explicitly borrow from that tradition and they always refer to it as being a small business owner, which sounds a lot better than working part-time at Starbucks even if the latter tends to pay considerably better, and that's also appealing to the people who see working outside the home as being out in the world exposed to all kinds of dangers and temptations since you can tell yourself that you'll mostly sell to people you already know. What tends to happen is that the first person who picks up some new scam does fairly well because there's no exact competition for whatever they're selling. They tell their friends, who are likely to join because they made an enviable amount of money, but returns drop off rapidly because most of the people who want whatever that company is selling already bought it from the first person (whose social network overlaps considerably) and at some point most of the money is coming from the people buying the initial inventory which will mostly sit in their garage. The social dynamic also means that _nobody_ will ever admit that they lost money or made the equivalent of $2/hour even as they're giving away that unsold merchandise at baby showers for the next 5 years. Cryptocurrencies have largely been the brilliant idea of capturing this dynamic for a different demographic (libertarian men).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y ago

There is a recent movie called Dream Horse based on true story: "Twenty years ago, one woman convinced her neighbours to buy, rear and train a thoroughbred racehorse, Dream Alliance. Now their unlikely story is relived in a feelgood film" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/30/against-all-odds-how-a-village-in-the-welsh-valleys-dreamed-big-and-won https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/30/against-all-odd...