Make Money Fast

I would hope nearly all of The Long Run blog's readers know instinctively the problems with pyramid schemes and their fellow traveler the "multi-level marketing" errr "opportunity". The Internet is always adapted by the MMF (that is to say the "make money fast", not "money market fund" or "male/male/female") types. Back before the web, when USENET was the social media venue of choice for many, the scourge of USENET was the "make money fast" post. Wiki has a pretty good history of it. Cult animator Mike Jitlov did an enduring parody of it called "Big Money Now". (Be sure to click the "hit space bar" links at the bottom to get the whole uber long work of art.)

Email was naturally well adapted to the MMF scheme although it's been a long time since I've seen a traditional "add your name to the bottom of this list, send the person at the top of the list $5 or else rancid salad bar lettuce will kill you and your famiy!" in my email. Maybe spam filters are doing a bang up job?

Back during the rise of blogs, there was an irritating "get a free nano iPod" MMF going around. You would post a link on your, say, LiveJournal blog back to the pyramid scheme web site. You would then encourage your friends to follow the link and register for their own link. If you got x number of friends to register and then x number of them got friends to register, you got a free iPod nano. View an LJ douche in action here. After a few generations of this you would either run out of people to sign up or hydrocarbons to make billions of nano cases required by the scheme's exponential growth.

[caption id="attachment_1482" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Nothing sad and pathetic here. Move along."][/caption]

Apparently now Youtube has become the site of choice to try to make a MMF scam work. The "cash gifting" MMF compels people to put up pretty much a panhandling appeal on Youtube. Unlike the old snail mail chain letter or USENET posting you get to see what these people look like.

The Viral Video Film School has a hilarious take down of this scam. Must see TV!

-- Karl Mamer