Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Digital Marketing Scams (The New MLM)

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of ‘side hustles’ being advertised to you on social media? Feel undue pressure to ‘build passive income,’ even if you aren’t entirely sure what that means, or how to do so? Maybe the siren song of ‘digital assets’ and ‘financial freedom’ gives you déjà vu—  haven’t we heard these buzzwords before? But maybe you’re just getting your first taste of the #GirlBoss side of the internet, which is so very wide and full of opportunity, after all. And justttttt maybe, this digital marketing course is the key to your transcendent financial future!…..Yeah, no. This week on Sounds Like a Cult, Reese and Amanda take a scroll through the beige world of the cult of Digital Marketing and all of its malicious tactics, from emojis to emotional manipulation. Follow us as we ask: do these courses actually teach anything useful? WTF even is a digital asset? Are these just MLMs in trendy Gen-Z clothing? If you couldn’t tell, we aren’t exactly ~math experts~ over here, so joining us to help debunk some of the hashtaggable rhetoric of digital marketing are Maggie Patterson (@bsfreebusiness) and Michelle Mazur (@drmichellemazur), cohosts of Duped: The Dark Side of Online Business. Log into your Canva account and get ready to (L)earn!  Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Earn points on rent and around your neighborhood, wherever you call home, by going to https://joinbilt.com/CULT   Go to https://ThriveMarket.com/SLAC to start saving. The sale ends 8/31—don’t miss it   Go to https://Quince.com/slac for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty-five -day returns.    Please consider donating to those affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Team SLAC are donating to the PCRF, a nonprofit organization providing vital medical care, food, and humanitarian aid to children and families in need. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Trixie Mattel, co-host of The Bald and the Beautiful podcast, drag queen, and Amazon Prime enthusiast. And I'm Katya, interpretive dancer, chaos agent, and someone who orders from Amazon Prime more often than I check my email. That's true. Yeah. Prime gives us fast delivery that makes unpacking almost glamorous, endless streaming of our favorite shows, which we call research, and music playlists that are both chaotic and calming. Prime isn't just convenient. It's a gateway to trying new things. It helps us discover new obsessions and dive deeper. into old ones. From one day delivery to top shows to music, whatever you're into, it's on Prime.

Visit Amazon.ca slash Prime to get more out of whatever you're into. Culties, have you ever been in a situation where you were right about to start a meeting and realize that you're out of coffee? I've been there. And to prevent it from ever happening again, I stacked up on coffee and other goodies during Thrive markets back to school sale. Thrive makes it super easy to shop for high-quality pantry staples, snacks, vitamins, even skin. care without the errands or ingredient label deep dives. I have loved everything I've gotten from Thrive

Market. They make discovering new products that you might not ever pay attention to in the store easy and fun. If you're interested in healthy pantry staples and snacks, I truly recommend you check it out. Now's the best time to try Thrive Market. You'll get up to 25% on select items, and new members get 30% off their first order plus a free gift. Go to Thrivemarket.com slash S-L-A-C to start saving. The sale ends August 31st. Don't miss it. Hi, I'm Heather McDonald, gossip enthusiast, podcast queen, and longtime loyalist to Amazon Prime. Between next day Prime deliveries, binge-worthy shows, and playlists that keep me company while digging into the latest gossip, Prime is my silent co-hosts. The truth is, Prime doesn't just support my passions. It fuels them,

from spontaneous curiosities to full-blown obsessions. It's got my back. Whatever you're into, it's Prime, visit amazon.ca.ca slash prime to get more out of whatever you're into. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. And sometimes it's coaching, sometimes it's digital products, sometimes it's courses. There's so many flavors of the scam. They gaslight you into believing that their system is flawless. and if you don't succeed, then there's just something wrong with you.

Digital products convert between 1 to 3%. They are outright lying to you about the ease to sell you this dream of financial freedom. Part of the American dream is being sold that return on investment. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montel and I'm an author. And I'm your co-host, Reese Oliver. sounds like a colt's resident rhetoric scholar. Every week on this show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group or guru from the cultural zeitgeist,

from tradwives to Trader Joe's, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? Live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out. After all, coldishness is in the eye of the beholder, and not every culty-looking group these days is equally bad. The point of this show is to analyze how culty behaviors show up in everyday life, including places you might not think to look.

And, you know, sometimes they're exactly where you thought they'd be. All cozied up on your ID Discover feed, how would you like to make your month's rent from your couch this weekend? Indeed, this episode is dedicated to the cult of the digital marketing girlies, aka the new 2025 version of the early 2000s MLM. Girlies who are trying to get you not to leave the prison of your 9 to 5 job to become your own girl boss and sell leggings from home, achieving the American dream without having to leave your kids,

but rather the beige-filtered clean girls promising to sell you a digital marketing course, teaching you how to sell digital marketing courses. If you're confused, that is the point. So are we. To the point that we've already recorded this intro and it was so confusing that we have to do it again. The girlies are confusing. The girlies are confusing and the girlies are confused. Basically, I've been wanting to do this episode for like six months because it feels like

the Pokemon evolution of the anchor subject of this whole entire podcast, that being the multi-level marketing industry. Digital marketing is an intentionally vague term, and thus the scammy digital marketing cult exists in so many forms. It's truly so disorienting, and I hope by the end of this episode, you'll understand it a little bit better and how to avoid it. But at first blush, the term digital marketing might conjure one of many images. You might think about like, I don't know, shady looking luxury marketing firms on LinkedIn or Indeed. Or maybe you think of like social media scams that

promise to help you increase your follower count or SEO by thousands overnight or like faceless accounts offering to sell you a cheap website domain with no strings attached. We get emails from such digital marketing scams and this sounds like a cult inbox every day. In fact, they're like the main type of email we get. So I wish you culties would email us more often. Yeah, please drown out some of the other bullshit we get. All of those types of scams are important subjects and certain aspects of the conversation we're about to have with our guests will be applicable to each of those. However, I feel like the cornerstone of this episode and the element of the digital marketing scammery universe that got me interested is the digital marketing

girly. And by that we mean the MLM industry's self-satisfied tech girlie genzy younger sister. These TikTok and IG digital marketing scammers of the 2020s take advantage of the wild west of unregulated social media-based e-commerce platforms to make bank or sometimes lose every dollar to their name and supposedly then teach you how to do the same. Indeed, these scams are so confusing because the MLM world is like ostensibly trying to help you sell an actual physical product, whether it's a pair of leggings or a supplement or some kind of fitness contraption. but the digital marketing cult is trying to get you to buy a course to teach you how to sell courses.

It's just like so fucking abstract that I barely even know how to talk about it. And though, yeah, the multi-level marketing girlies have just been doing the hard work for so long of scamming people with shampoo, of scamming people with smoothies, of scamming people with powders. And one day the digital marketing girlies looked to their right and they saw the all of these Bitcoin boys and NFTers were selling Canva doodles of monkeys and fake money. You know, we want it on that. Hey, we can sell nothing too.

And hence, the digital marketing girlie was born and now exists in perpetuity in a 10 slide carousel on your feed with a filter that you forgot existed. Exactly. Exactly. I brought this up during our interview, but like the coldiest thing about the digital marketing scammerverse to me at this point is that there is nothing. tangible to even critique. And thus, I almost just want to throw my hands up and walk away and be like, you know what, it can exist. It's fine. And I think they know that. I think they know

that they exist more in like vibe and they're not being really one solid leader and it really being a cult more by means of tactic makes it so nefarious in that way and so difficult to pin down in conversations because everybody's experiencing it in a way that's tailored to them by their algorithm. Exactly, which is not to say that it's less dangerous. It's just more in its nascence. Yeah, bad people are harder to catch when they spread themselves out. They're not unifying themselves as one brand that you can look at and point to that have a clear enemy and a clear like we identify here and we don't here. Like they can find you anywhere. And while they do have like types of people they identify more with, they're not making enemies either necessarily.

also like the consequences of these various things are dramatic like people are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars people are isolating themselves from real life people are investing in some false promise of the american dream very much in the same way that the multi-level marketing industry is constructed it's just again so hard to hold accountable because it's hard to articulate but we're going to try we're going to try So most of the definitions for digital marketing come from people that are themselves trying to sell you a course. And most of these digital marketers will claim to help you or your business with or help you learn to teach others about online advertising, search engine optimization

and marketing, social media marketing and management, content creation, amongst a bunch of other things. This is all according to the American Marketing Association. And nowadays, popular digital scam that I see often are the ones that are wanting to sell courses to help aspiring influencers, salespeople, small business owners, really anyone looking for a passive income by teaching them to sell courses instead of acquiring any real life skills. It's like I was doing research into all of the people that have been duped by these scams. And one Redditor said, you know, you make more selling shovels, which I guess here are-shelves are real. Resel rights. Like, these shovels, like, these aren't even existent shovels.

Like, these are links, babe. Like, these are Canva templates. Like, it's bad. So, yeah, most of the time what you're actually getting when you sign up for these courses is just, like, PDFs that are written by chat TPT, deep seek, if you're lucky. Infographic templates you can get on Canva and a bunch of other, like, algorithm-numbing BS that is not going to make you stand out or create any kind of individual brand for you beyond the brand that recruited you in.

Because at this point, so many of these things exist, just like multi-level marketing companies. It's such an oversaturated market. You will not make any kind of money. Oh, it's such a sign of the times. Everybody is encouraged to think of themselves as a brand and a small business. And I'm telling you, like, until I was forced to learn what marketing was to promote my own books, I did not know what marketing meant. And so if I were to see someone in my feed promoting one of these courses specifically for authors, bro, when I was like 25, years old, I would have fallen for it easily. We like to sit and talk about how, oh, the boomers on Facebook can't tell what's AI and what's not. And, you know, they're falling for all of these

online scams and they're getting malware on their computer. And it's like, are we better? The call is coming from inside the house. For sure, for sure. And the sad thing, too, is that, like, marketing is an important skill if you're a small business owner. Unlike a shitty diet shake, like, nobody actually needs that. Even though that's, like, the product of a lot of MLMs. Small business owners actually need marketing prowess. It's just you're not going to learn it from these people. Now, this is one of the first questions we posed to our guests, and I'm excited to introduce them to you all, but all of this conversation thus far does beg the question, why are digital

marketing scams a cult? Why aren't they just a grift or a scam? And so much of the conversation that we had today is dedicated to answering that question Because I think in the context of today's labor market and just how hard it is to survive in the capitalist landscape these days, the koltometer on predatory industries like this is just dialed up much higher. And we'll articulate what that looks like. So I talk about this a little with our guests later, but in trying to find examples for you all of the ways in which these influencers recruit, I came across one of the most nefarious recruitment tactics that I

have ever seen. And it was at this moment when I realized, like, oh, this is the way in which these are like the next evolution of the MLM girlies. Like, they've taken the MLM playbook and we've learned. We are now taking into account the fact that we are living in an online culture wherein people are cognizant of scams. And we are now not only playing coy and being cute and acting legitimate, we are purposefully evading that reputation. Should I put them on blast? I dropped their at. I feel like a... Jordan, we might tell you to cut their at later. But at Mummy underscore Marketing underscore Life's IG.

She posted top five mistakes every beginner makes when starting their digital marketing business and what to do instead. Number one, jumping into the wrong course. They buy hype instead of help. Flashy promises no real plan. Choose strategy over aesthetics or you'll stay stuck and skint. Wait, what is skint? I don't even chaty BT can probably tell you. And then they give you four other mistakes, and then they say the fix, a step-by-step strategy designed

for real life, not hustle culture, one that works, even if you've got kids a job or zero time to waste. That's exactly what UBC and the Secret Softs gives you. If you're tired of guessing and finally ready to grow, DM UBC and I'll send the details. Stop. The fact that a whole thing, they're aware enough of scammy digital marketing courses, that it is a core tenet of their course to tell you to avoid other courses or take advantage of the fact that you may have been scammed before. Dude. Yes.

Mistake number one, you picked the wrong MLM. Like, what the fuck? It's just so transparent. It's like telling on themselves while also trying to get in front of the narrative. It reminds me of this conversation I just had for the magical overthinkers podcast that I also do every two weeks. Tune in about gaslighting. A listener wrote into the academic that I interviewed for that episode about whether or not

it's possible for a gaslighter to be like, deeply deceptive and know that they're being deceptive, but also at the same time to believe their own bullshit. And she said, yes. And she actually referenced a cult. You'll have to tune into the episode to learn which one. And how they had like kidnapped this woman. And the woman for her survival convinced herself that she wanted to join this group. And they would simultaneously coerce her into doing all these things that she didn't want to do. But also, be like super anxiously, relentlessly checking in on her being like, but you want to do this right, but you want to do this right? Yeah, it's the make them think they thought of it thing.

Yes. And it's just like, it's such a mind fuck. I feel mind fuck thinking about the mind fuck. Oh, exactly. And it only gets mind fuck here. I want to share one more example that I truly just was astounded by. Please. So I was researching and I was trying to find again people who had actually been scammed by digital marketing girlies. And Infinite Money Collective on Instagram got me good with this one. They posted, I fell for a digital marketing scam. Here's my story and what you can learn from it. But wait, it's not a scam at all. What I actually did was craft a catchy hook using chatchy BT, a tool I learned about in my digital marketing course. As a total beginner, this course has been my gateway yada, yada, yada. So again, opening with the premise of praying on people

who have been scammed by digital marketing or who might be wary of getting into digital marketing or taking advantage of people who have any semblance of critical thought left and absolutely eroding it and presenting themselves as the answer and the solution, which is like we've been talking about all anyone wants online these days. It's tragic. It sucks because as you'll learn very shortly from our guests, the people who like founded this industry are surprise, surprise, old men and the people that I found this industry through on social media are moms who have privilege for sure but who are otherwise locked out of the dignified labor market or are whatever pawns of the patriarchy and in a way it sucks that we're critiquing them and not the bros who

founded all of this but also the girlies are just always going to be more interesting to me The girlies are going to be more interesting, and I do think, like, there's an aspect of traitorism to it. Just something about the scamming girl boss is so predatory given how women have such a complicated history with labor, and it's just really nasty to me. And they look like such girls, girls, but they are not girls, girls, girls. That really gets me about it. So I think it's high time that we get into this juicy, illuminating, and at the same time, confusing, confusing. little interview with none other than two of the digital marketing cult's most devoted critics. They are the hosts of a podcast called Duped, the dark side of online business. They are

seasoned marketers themselves, Maggie Patterson and Michelle Mazer, behind the Instagram account BS free business. So stay tuned after the break to hear our conversation with them. Hi, I'm Heather McDonnell, comedian, podcast host, and connoisseur of celebrity drama. And let me tell you, Amazon Prime is the unsung hero of my chaotic, passion-filled life. I use Prime for fast delivery on everything from Tech Gear for recording to books, I swear I'll finish before the next scandal breaks. Streaming, I've bingedged enough gripping documentaries on Prime Video to consider myself an amateur detective. as you know at this point, music. My Amazon music playlist shift with my mood faster than a Hollywood headline. Prime isn't just about getting things fast. It's about fueling whatever I'm

into. It helps me go deeper, discover new obsessions and make the most of every weird little interest that makes me meet. So whether you're planning, procrastinating, or partying, whatever you're into, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.ca.ca.com slash Prime to get more out of whatever. you're into. This is Trixie Mattel, co-host of the Ball on the Beautiful podcast, lover of wigs, winged eyeliner, and one-click ordering with Amazon Prime. And I'm Katia, podcast co-host,

celebrated gymnast of the mind, and compulsive curator of very specific interests. Amazon Prime allows me to keep up with all of them. With Prime, I've ordered rhinestones, wig stands, and a pink toolbox I now use as a makeup kit all in one go. And best of all, they showed up before I even remembered I bought them.

All while streaming top shows on Prime video and playing chaotic but oddly soothing soundtracks on Amazon music. Prime isn't just a shipping service. It's a buffet of deals, shows, playlists, and convenience that supports every one of my obsessions, both old and new. I get my Wigloo delivered fast, stream vintage Italian horror movies while I perfect my latest outfit,

and queue up an Eastern European pop playlist on Amazon music to set the vibe. It's multitasking, but also kind of feral. From one day delivery to top shows, music. Whatever you're into is on Prime. Visit amazon.ca slash prime to get more out of whatever you're into. Maggie and Michelle, could you please introduce yourselves to the culties here at Sounds Like a Colt? And how you began critiquing digital marketing scammery in your work? Oh, that is a long story, but we'll try to sum it up to be very succinct. So Michelle and I are both

marketers by profession, have worked in corporate. have worked for big corporate and we're both self-employed. We're in this world of the online business digital marketing that can be very scammy and culty. And we were kind of having this continuous conversation behind the scenes where we were like, this isn't normal. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Like, did you see this post on Instagram? And eventually we're just like, you know what? These conversations need to be more mainstream because we'd be talking to friends and groups and they'd be like, oh yeah. And we really decided to launch our duped podcast and start really doing consumer advocacy because we can't stop the scammers, but we can help the end

consumer be more educated and understand like, hey, you're not going to get rich because this ad on Instagram said so. And fun fact, Maggie and I became friends because I met her on social media and decided that she and I were going to be friends and I stocked her until I made it happen. And I mean, not like, stocky, stocky, but you kept it classy. I wasn't scared. I know. I kept it classy, but she was like a person I met and I was like, she and I need to be friends because I saw that we just had so much overlap, like with her background in corporate and marketing and my PhD and calm. I was like, we have so much to talk about.

So we have to be friends. So I stalked her. Beautiful origin story. It's hard to make friends. Oh, my gosh. It is. impossible. I would love if each of you could tell us what you think the cultiest thing about digital marketing scams is. I feel like there are so many culty things about digital marketing.

And for me, I think the cultiest is also this grift of like how easy it can be. And it's like there are people who are out there wanting to give you $500. They have their credit cards. Like, you don't have an audience, you don't have a problem. You can just sell this so easily and make tens of thousands of dollars a month. And it's just such crap because audience growth is hard. Digital products convert between one to three percent. They are outright lying to you about the ease to sell you this dream of financial freedom. And to me, that is super freaking. culty and scammy and I hate it. I think beyond that, the other really culty thing is there is no allowing for critique. It is all positive vibes and toxic positivity all the time where if you comment and say like, hey, can you explain this to me? Like even a good faith question is immediately deleted. There is absolutely no room for critique or dissent. And that is something we see time and time again. And it's the biggest red flag when the leader or the so-called creator or whatever

will not take any even legitimate questions. Totally. So I want to ask because this is a question that came up when I was incorporating my chapter on multi-level marketing into my book cultish. And then when we covered it on the podcast, what is the difference between a scam and a cult? Like, when does something transition into something more complex and life-consuming? In the case of MLMs, and I would love to hear more about what you two think about how these digital marketing scams might be MLMs in a new cloak or whatever. But in the case of multi-level marketing, it felt like more than a scam because these organizations seem to have a language and culture all their own. They had these like strong and pervasive ideologies that were missionary in character. Members came to revere

their founding leaders who shared a desire not just to run a successful company, but to literally rule the free world on the level of religious worship. And they condition and coerce you with these loaded buzzwords, that toxic positivity that you mentioned. And those us versus them dynamics were so profound. They gaslight you into believing that their system is flawless. And if you don't succeed, then there's just something wrong with you. And it's just obviously something so much more than like, I'm going to get your cash real quick and then leave you alone. How do you think that these digital marketing scams resemble something more like a cult than your average temporary grift. I think for my perspective, one of the things we see a lot of is there's very

real consequences for exiting the group. That to me means it's much more culty than it is scammy because in some of my work, I've talked a lot about like the financial abuse that happens. I've talked about consequences like stories from people like, what happens when you leave the group? well, what happens when you leave the group? A lot of these people lose their entire business support system. They lose friendships the same way you would have when you exit a cult or even an MLO. I agree with that. I think scams to me are just like a financial exploitation. It's a cash grab. And then you can usually leave because the scammer exits and leaves your life completely and you're just left with a hole in your bank account,

whereas these culty digital scams, they take up a large part of your time. They're like controlling your behavior because you have to spend all this time on calls with them and in their community and then actually doing the work of putting the marketing out there. And then if you decide to leave, all of that goes away. You are shunned.

People block you on social media. and these are people you thought were your friends and they are not. And if you say anything negative at all, whoever the course leader is will send their flying monkeys after you in order to shut you down. That sounds so hostile and awful and actually leads perfectly into my next question. Just from more of an outsider perspective, because I get served some of this, but I think at this point my for you page is like, we know she's not interested. It seems to me that have kind of a stronger group identity or brand thing going on, whereas for the digital marketing scammer of today, it's much more about her own personal branding and her own feed. And I'm wondering

what impact that aspect of digital marketing has on the community culture. It's interesting because these digital marketing schemes are more decentralized than a typical cult or an MLM, but they're still super duper culty. And I think one of the things is there's this indoctrination through identity. Like typically these digital scam artists are targeting moms, for instance. And you're not just buying a course. You're buying into a lifestyle. You're becoming her, the woman who has it all. And it's very aspirational and identity based. And the deeper you go, the more it's about being a part of this elite club of action takers or freedom seekers. So essentially they are shifting your identity. So you become a part of that group. The one thing I see a lot of

is it's like the endless upsells. So the same way you see in a lot of like what things we would label as the actual cults, like you need, you're ascending through the levels of cults I will not name because they're litigious. Real. Like, you know, you're going through all the nine levels or whatever. I'll use nexium. You're going through the sashes. Yes.

It's the same thing. You start out with maybe like a $27 product and you get into the ecosystem and then you buy a $97 product. And then it's like they just keep you. There's this escalating commitment that goes on. And it's very culty in terms of how they indoctrinate you and how they keep you on the hook. And then that's where we get into, yes, there's financial abuse. But there is a lot of emotion.

abuse in terms of something you said out of the top is like you just didn't work hard enough, you didn't believe hard enough, you're not following the system, those types of things. And that's where this really gets really messy because, yes, there's money being lost and people tend to focus on that. But there is time and there's personal consequences for a lot of these people. So something that I think makes digital marketing scams harder to clock as culty than MLMs is that they feel like quite of the moment, you know, like everybody wants to self-brand. Everybody wants to learn about marketing.

Although I am curious how this whole cult will like survive AI replacing marketers, but whatever, that's like a different can of worms. Anywho, with MLMs, I understand quite well what many of those levels look like. And it's so much about buying inventory and recruiting new people to your downline. at this impossible rate. But, like, what are these levels in this, like, unbelievably abstract world of just, like, courses and assets? And, like, I just don't understand it. Like, it, like, is breaking my brain. Like, what are we all talking about? Like, what are we buying? I think that is the point. We don't know what we're buying. I mean, these courses are incredibly vague. I was revisiting

some of the sales pages the other day. And it's like, you're getting a bunch of modules. And it's like crash course into Instagram, a crash course into LinkedIn and selling on TikTok. And there's no real outcomes. You're really buying the idea of financial freedom and ease and that you can make your family $5,000 extra a month, which would be a big freaking deal right now in this economy. And so that's the point. It is intentionally vague. And when you buy these things, you will probably be underwhelmed by the content. I remember I interviewed the economist Stacey Bosley for Coltish who talked about how in multi-level marketing culture so much of it is about the purchase of hope. Someone who's popping from, I don't know, Mary Kay to Avon to whatever,

is not necessarily that passionate about the products that they're selling. They're passionate about these much loftier promises of financial independence and patriotism even and the American dream and all of that. And with multi-level marketing, I mean, there's been so much reporting done at this point about that industry. Obviously, the podcast, The Dream is so iconic. And I learned so much about the industry from Jane Marie, who created that podcast that I imagine so many of those listening to this episode have heard. And you can trace the MLM industry back to like Earl Tupper and Tupperware and like, you know, and just so many individuals like the founders of Amway, the DeFoss family, Donald Trump himself. Like there are so many sort of like leaders and figure heads upon whom

you can place blame. But who would you say if anyone is like at the helm of the cult of digital marketing? Like who's the cult leader here? Oof. This is such a good question. So this is something that Michelle and I have debated at length over the years. And I think the thing to think of is like it's less about having a leader and it's more like a lineage. So it's really the algorithm and the idea of freedom and the financial freedom. It's just being constantly kind of serving you up this content, whether it be paid or organic content. And what you'll see is like, you know, you're on threads. Well, you see all these people making these income claims. They're sharing their doctored up screenshots, which is, you know, oh my God. We have so many examples of these things.

And really, it starts to wear you down. You think, okay, you know what, this can't be that bad. So these scams that we're seeing now are really about remixing old schemes we've seen many times. It's definitely influenced by self-help. It's influenced by a lot of culty tactics that have been bored over the years and we'll see in big name self-help leaders and how they bring in those culty tactics. I know you've talked about them on the show in the past. They used to have these things like called private label rights. Now they become master resale rights, which then becomes PDF farming. Oh my God, my brain is like short-circeting. Like, I hate all of the terminology. It's like so confusing. Yes. And that's part of it, right? Like in a typical culty thing,

they're using these big, where you go like, PDF farming. Well, I don't have a tractor. Like, I'm not in a firm. What's happening? Ultimately, like, if you look at digital marketing schemes, it really zooms back out to there are these basically grandads of early internet marketing that have begot this really disease set of family trees. So we have this entire orchard of disease trees that continues to infect all of us. Who are those grandmas and grandads? Like, are they dead? Or are they like 45 years old?

Yeah. They're like 60 plus. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. This is like generation by generation. And I think the thing that's really interesting for us is I literally will see someone new pop up and I'm like, oh, they've been influenced by this person, this person.

You can tell how they market. You can tell how they talk about their products. And sometimes it's coaching. Sometimes it's digital products. Sometimes it's courses. There's so many flavors of the scam. But at the end of the day, it all goes back up to this, like, you know, core group of these people. Wait, who, who, who are they?

Who are they? Well, if anyone wants to dig into this, the syndicate. Google that and your brains will break. I will give you a few examples because these are the granddaddies and some of them are out of business because they've actually sold their culprud. marketing businesses to other people. One of the OGs is Dan Kennedy magnetic marketing. He was one of the first, I think, kind of bro marketers using a lot of manipulative tactics. Frank Kern, who is a copywriter, is part of this lineage, like direct response, but really exploiting the work of Robert

Chilini, his book Persuasion in particular. Instead of using that as a guidebook of like, oh, I need to be responsible with my persuasion. They're like using it as the book of like, okay, how can I scam people out of money and tell them what they want to hear so they get their credit card out. So I feel like some of those are like the OG people, but they have left the field and have sold their businesses. Although I think Frank Kern, he's up there in like a million. He's like a million years old. How did these dinosaur scammer motherfuckers get all the way to like the beige-toned mommies on Instagram, how did that trickle down like that? So it's really interesting.

That kind of the granddaddies or maybe the great granddaddies now. I mean, there may be the great, we don't know. I'd have to draw out the tree, which I have in a notebook somewhere. But here's the thing is what they did is they started getting in with a lot of really big self-help names like Tony Robbins had them coming in and training him on internet market. So a lot of these tactics became very, very mainstreamed. Then we saw people come in that maybe he wouldn't have identified as a bro-marketer, but was getting trained by these people.

And basically the same way we see with a downline in an MLM, there's just this really tangled, never-ending layers and layers and layers. Like, this person got these four big names, these four big names, then got 24 more big names, and it just goes on and on and on. I've been working in the internet marketing online business world since 2013, and I literally still don't know branches of this tree. Like, it's everywhere and it's insidious. And I remember when I first started my business, like coming out of academia,

I didn't know it at the time. I went to like one of these big named people who was from this family tree. And I was sitting in a video training of his and he said something. He's all like, oh yeah, and you don't have to be an expert. All you need is a great story, you know, tell your rags to riches story about like, how you were sleeping next to your cousin's toilet, like $100,000 in debt, and then you started this business. And that's all the credibility you need. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, wait, but I actually know my shit. I am an actual expert in what I do. But that didn't start

with that marketer. It came from his lineage, almost like his upline in some ways. Wow. It's like rewriting Bible stories to create these grandiose, like, no, sometimes people just work hard and like learn and are good at things. That's terrible. So obviously lying is up there with one of the worst ways you can recruit. What are some of the other more nefarious ways that you have seen these digital marketing scammers recruit? It is such a vast landscape that I feel like there are as many different ways to recruit as there are people. But we're pointing out these very distinct lineages. So describe some of the tactics. I feel like one big tactic is playing on economic anxiety and mom guilt because I feel like a lot of these faceless Instagram accounts and

digital marketers, they are really preying on moms. Similar to an MLM. So it's that be there for your kids and make passive income from your phone. And in this current economic healthcape that we are in, people are extra vulnerable to that message. And so they're like, oh, I can be a good mom and provide for my family. And it's not going to take me any time away from my family. I'm just posting on Instagram. It's no big deal. And then you don't realize that like all that time that you're at home with your kid. It's like, how much is your kid ever actually seeing your eyes? I don't think so. Probably never. Yeah. And it is about like, yeah, you're selling them this idea. of ease when really what you would have to do to make these businesses work to just sell 10 of these

digital courses, right? Just 10 a month. Like it would be constant posting, constant showing up, constant interaction with followers. And really, they're selling like ease and time freedom, but you're just, it's a one way ticket to burning out and not seeing your kids. So it's not giving you any of the things that you actually want. And it's just taking from you. I just want to add to what Michelle is saying. One of the things we see a lot of and a lot of people share their stories to us in response to what they hear on duped, you know, the DM us. And like we on our show don't name names because we really don't want to focus on this

person is bad. We want people to learn the tactics. That's been a really deliberate thing. But we hear the names behind the scenes and what we see a lot of, tons of love bombing. Reese, you say, oh, I have a question about digital marketing, whatever, whatever. Next thing you know, like I'm inundating you with the bestie behavior. I'm acting like your new best friend, and it's relentless until you buy, and then I drop you live off.

Do you find that mostly the people who get lured in by these tactics are former MLMers? Or do you think there are a lot of people who maybe wouldn't even fall for an MLM because that's not their culture or they've, you know, come across anti-MLM TikTok or whatever, yet they still would fall for a digital marketing scam? Like, who is the target here? theory on this. I think that it's one part, the people we see, especially with like the master resell rights stuff in terms of digital marketing scams, I feel like a lot of those people are people that have picked up on the anti-MLM of stuff, but they're very susceptible to that messaging.

They really want to be able to stay home. They want to be able to do those things. But I absolutely believe whether it be specifically a course or a program or a coach or whatever, that pretty much anyone who's running a business or what is what we would call a wantpreneur is very susceptible to that because anyone who wants to be self-employed very much has hope. There's this like relentless optimism. You have to be a little bit delusional, right? If not a lot delusional. So it plays on that constantly. They give you these success stories. It basically wears you down over time. And I spent a lot of time for my work and what we do on Duke, tracking these things, cataloging them, watching for trends. And there are times I send stuff to Michelle and I'm like, you know,

maybe I should just, and I'm like, oh, even the person talking about consumer awareness is being lowered in. I know all the tactics and it's still appealing. Okay. So a couple of things, talking about this subject matter makes me disoriented. Like, it is all so confounding. I like have trouble even, like, gathering my thoughts, which is so faulty. Literally. Yeah. My only job is to gather thoughts. So when I am sort of debilitated that capacity, I start, yeah, it's not good.

But then, okay, so I identify as highly delusional as a self-employed person who wants to remain self-employed for my whole life. And I am also quite interested in marketing. And when my book Coltish was coming up, I mean, I'm. be honest, this whole podcast was started as a marketing exercise for my book. I am very interested in like clever marketing tactics that don't feel like it, which is honestly the opposite of these digital marketing courses, which like only feel like marketing, but anyway. Without any of the fun stuff even. Yeah, literally. So I feel like I could be inveigled by someone, maybe not

the beige tones, don't really speak to me, but if someone specifically was like targeting authors who want to learn how to start their own engines or whatever, I feel like I could totally see myself being at least curious, attending some kind of introductory thing. So what are some red flaggy buzzwords to look out for? Please inform us, because I mean, obviously, that's my clue number one. Help us understand what are some of these first signs that the marketing coach you're looking at might actually be a marketing scammer, linguistically speaking. Okay, so I'll talk buzzwords. And then, Michelle, do you want to talk deceptive phrases?

Because there's a lot. Yeah, I can do that. Yes. Because we could honestly go on for days and days. But anytime you're getting in the territory of the words passive income, that should be treated as like a parade of red flags because there is no such thing as passive income. Like, I'm lying on the beach.

It's just washing over me. That would totally get me. Oh, my God. I would be so susceptible. to that promise. Yeah, and you think about it, right? You're working hard. You're maybe feeling a little burnt out. You're just like, oh, wouldn't it be great if money just rolled in while I was sleeping or while I was on vacation? And I think part of the American dream is being sold that like return on investment. And that like if I do just stare at my phone for 12, 15 hours a day, I will earn the passive sitting there as

I'm washed over with money. That never happens. Exactly. I always refer to these with my clients as peanut cladda dreams. Like you're just sipping pinacoladas on the beach and the money is just those PayPal notifications are going wild. And the other one we see a lot of is people talk about like time freedom, financial freedom. Like the word freedom is used. Oh, it is so I don't trust anyone who says freedom because at this point in the context of business, like it is just oversimplifying something that is so complex to be like, I've got the secret recipe. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Digital assets, nobody should be speaking about anything as assets. I'm buying a course with assets. What? Yeah, like, what is a digital asset? My asset is my

1997 Princess Diana Beanie Baby with hang tag. Like, let's talk about what matters people. Exactly. Anything that's talking about faceless content, that should absolutely be a no. Like, you don't even have to show your face. And I will say when we talk about this, I always like to do this disclaimer is there are legitimate reasons why people will do faceless content, but not in this context. Anything in the make money while you sleep also too should just be like an immediate, no. Oh my God. I cannot even tell you how attractive all of these. I normally am quite resistant. Can you tell how overworked this woman is? I am. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And I genuinely think that being burnt out is an underrated vulnerability in terms of

These days, you think of people being like gullible or just sort of like desperate or whatever. But what about being actually like overemployed? You know? Like I think that's why this is appealing these days is because a lot of people are just like grinding and hustling so hard and they just want to lie down and take a nap and wake up and find $300 in their accounts. Same. Yeah.

And I think the interesting point of that is most of the time when we hear stories from people, it's never he would expect. Like these are accomplished, smart people who had a vulnerable moment and got taken advantage of. And sometimes that's just a, I'm not going to say just flippantly, but like a 497 course. And sometimes we're talking like they've lost $100,000 that they took under their 401K because they got in. Oh, oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So liquidating things, selling homes. What? Sometimes people get in really, really deep. The financial abuse here is astounded. For PDF resale rights, come on now, y'all. Hold on. Wait, what does that mean? That's what, what is a PDF resale right?

I don't know. I'm just throwing words together like they do, man. I don't know. That sounds real. But I think that gets into some of the deceptive phrasing, right? Like, I went to some of the sales pages yesterday just to pull some real, like, examples, a product that is 100% yours without having to create a single slide. They're giving you everything you need. It's so easy, whether it's a PDF or a video or a slide deck, like it is yours to sell as much as you

want. We also see big statements like, oh, I made $73,000 in 47 days. And all you have to do is just follow the roadmap. You don't need any experience in marketing to make this work. roadmap. Yeah, because they've got you. They're going to show you everything. You don't need to worry about any kind of knowledge. And maybe there should be some kind of red flag that that's because this isn't very skilled labor. But no, it's just. Well, and very customized. Like, there is no one-size-fits-all marketing plan for anyone. It's a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall. And that is not as attractive sounding as a roadmap. This episode is

Brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big. And Square's there for all of it. Giving your customers more ways to order, whether that's in-person with Square Ciosk or online. Instant access to your sales, plus the funding you need to go even bigger.

And real-time insights so you know what's working, what's not, and what's next. Because when you're doing big things, your tools should to. Visit square.ca to get started. Hey, so what did you want to talk about? Well, I want to tell you about Wagovi. Yeah, Wagovi.

What about it? On second thought, I might not be the right person to tell you. Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor. About Wagovi. Yeah, ask for it by name. Okay. So, why did you bring me to the circus?

Oh, I'm really into lion tamers. You know, with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit wagovi.com for savings. since they apply. So let's talk a little bit more about how exactly this has become such a problem in the first place if there are so many people like us who find it so disgusting. To what do you attribute the rapid culty ascension of the IG-Garly course reseller brand of digital marketing scheme? We are in this crisis of capitalism right now. Wages are stagnant. The new

inflation report came out today. It's at like 2.7 percent. Child care is expensive. and selling these digital assets just feels like an easy way out because it taps into the fantasy that you can out hustle this broken system we're in with a Canva template and a resold course. And we did an episode of duped because I got obsessed with the question of like, why do people fall for get rich quick schemes? Because I just couldn't understand it. Like our parents raise us to believe like if it sounds too good to be true, it definitely is. And what I found is these get rich quick scams. They really started in the 1920s when we were having a lot of economic uncertainty because of the crash on Wall Street. People were struggling to get by.

It was dire. So hearing this message that you can have control over your financial life, when there is high uncertainty and less opportunity, it makes you think like, great, I can pull myself up by my bootstraps. This is the American dream. I am in control of my destiny, and I can just post on Instagram, set up a stand store, and I can start making money. And if your family is struggling and you think, oh, I can sell ton of these a month and make 5K, that's life-changing money for the people who are struggling. And the problem is that these courses become saturated so quickly. They have a very short shelf life until you tap out. And so the new scams just keep coming. And you're like, oh, well, I can take control of my destiny if I just keep trying. I can pull myself up by my

bootstrap. So the time we are in right now with all of this chaos, it is perfect for these digital scams to rise. I feel like I've been hearing some flavor of this for so many years. And it's like, oh, it's that meme where it's like your entire adulthood is just like, oh, yeah, things are really going to cool down at the end of this month. And then it just like never does until you die. And that kind of feels like the way the labor market is moving in America. Oh, yeah. It's like, oh, the get rich quick self-help boom is certainly going to crest and fall at some point soon. And it just doesn't. It just like rebrands. I've been waiting. Yeah. So I have to ask, you mentioned the smart, conscientious people liquidating their,

sorry, I'm going to say it, I'm going to say it, I'm going to say it, assets and going broke to sign up for these digital marketing courses. Could you talk a little bit more about some like horror stories and worst case scenarios that you've heard of that our listeners could maybe see themselves in because I'm still like struggling to see how bad this could really, really, really get. I mean, this is really hard to wrap your head around unless you start seeing it. And I think that one distinction I want to make before we kind of share some of these stories is the digital marketing scams, these course reseller things, they're often the gateway to much bigger things. So a lot of the people that are selling, you know, like I'm selling my master resell

rights or my PDF farming thing to you. I'm now going to sell you coaching when it doesn't work. Now you're going to start coaching with my mentor. And then you're joining a mastermind. And then you're doing this. Like there's this escalation of commitment. So we look at something like these digital marketing scams and go, oh, it couldn't be that bad. But it is part of a much bigger ecosystem and people tend to get really sucked in. And I always think of one of Michelle and I's mutual friends, super smart, had a career in really, really big corporate. And I think at the end of the day, it was about $50,000. She had poured into coaching. There was no need for it. And I mean, there return on that was zero. And she was very public about it. But also some of the stories she was

hearing in these groups she was in. We're talking people living in their car because they sold their house so they could pay this coach. They are extreme examples, but they happen more than we recognize. And a lot of it ties back to, you know, Amanda, in the magical thinking, we get into the manifestation. Well, if I spend $80,000, I'm going to get my $80,000 leap and the net will appear. Well, no. And we hear these stories all the time. I mean, we're not in our producing our season right now. So the stories have slowed down a little bit. But as soon as we start dropping episodes, it picks right back up. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Bad story and Instagram again today. Okay. And here's the disturbing thing about this to me. And I know that this

is a pattern and we say it every week, but it's really resonating with me today for some reason. Like, there is a grain of truth in some of these promises. There are some people who need to hear leap in the net will appear. Like Reese, for example. stop it who's moving to New York and being very diligent and deliberative about the choices that she's making in that move no and and that's so valid but that's what's hard about living in the digital age is that I think a lot of us are like quite disconnected from when to trust our intuition and when to like make a pro con list because we're living in such an informationally overwhelming and in many ways psychologically oppressive time. And so that really paves the way for some of these scammers

to come in and fuck with your intuition and fuck with your critical thinking if you've managed to develop those skills. Yeah, I totally hear that because as a Gen Zier, I am learning more and more that this is so fake. But all the time, there's this overwhelming feeling of, well, surely there is some person or presence or figure or entity that knows better than me that I can look to and that can teach me and tell me. And I think we're all looking for that in the digital marketing course we sent up for. And nobody knows. Nobody knows. And it's the Wild West. And they know that they know that you don't know. And they know that they don't know. And everybody knows that nobody knows. And yeah. Yes. I think something like we fail to recognize because it's harder than just

believing that someone has all the answers is that like you can have a caucus of experts in your life and get like a little bit of wisdom from each one. But that doesn't feel as soothing as here is one answer in the form of a digital marketing course. And I think the thing that's interesting in all of this is that when you think about I'm going to buy a marketing course so they can give me this grand wisdom, they know that you're looking for that. So they're pairing it with tactics that are designed to shut down your critical thinking, to get you to commit. They're doing all these classic culty things, you know, using persuasion tactics in ways they are not supposed to be applied. So someone who's an actual expert, and I'm sure Michelle will co-s on

this, is not going to do those things. And maybe it's not as peeling because they don't seem quite as confident to be like, hey, are you going to commit today? Uh-huh, uh-huh. But do you know where they get the actual experts? Because, like, I work mostly with people who, run these expertise driven businesses and they are smart and they've been in business for a while and they got loads of experience. And they are so curious and so hungry. And marketing is something they just don't understand at all because they're like, shouldn't good work speak on its own. And it's like, no, you got to market it. So then their curiosity and their love of learning drives them into these courses where they're hearing like, oh, there's one right way to do this. And then there's

these manipulative tactics, like, seated in. And they're like, oh, but like that doesn't feel good to me. And if they say that, then they're shut down. They're told like, nope, you got to do it this way. This is the way to do it. And then it erodes your intuition and it erodes your self-trust. And by the time they get to me, they're kind of a mess. Like they don't know what they're doing wrong and why they suck so bad at this. And it's like, yeah, it's not your fault. It's just how these courses are taught in a very culty way. Yes, it is because to make someone feel like they're the problem when this digital marketing course is actually useless. It's clever, I guess, because then they're perfectly positioned to be sold an extra level of coaching, like you said. Something you said earlier also

reminded me of a buzzword maybe to look out for. If anyone is ever pressuring you to buy something today, or like in the imminent future, that's such a red flag. And even people who aren't like that can still be scammy because I was watching the Netflix documentary about the college admission scandal the other night. Oh, yeah. That's the type of white collar crime that really fascinates me. But the reason why the guy who ran that college admission scam was able to get away with it for so long, even though it was a very unsophisticated scam, was because he would play this

long game with people. He would never pressure them to sign up today or make a huge investment today. He would play the game over months and months and months. So surely if someone is pressuring you to make a fast decision, that's no good. And I think it all goes, to me, I always think about the level of risk, right? We make fast decisions when something, like we're at the grocery store. We're thinking about trying a new flavor of yogurt because, okay, we blew three bucks. It's not the end of the world. But some of these people are trying to get you to buy on a call and get you to spend $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. And you're like, oh, and it's all this pressure and they're just shutting down your critical thinking. And it feels like the only solution

to escape that pressure is to buy. And that is horrible and culty and a lot of business. So especially in the digital marketing scammy space. Yeah, the human brain is not meant to be confronted with a decision of that magnitude and that amount of time in not a real format in front of them. That shouldn't happen. Yeah. And like one of the things we've heard a lot of that even like ads and extra layer, and I'm probably going to break your brains a little bit with this is they will literally be like, hey, we have financing for this or I'll stay on hold while you apply with our credit company. Wow. It used to be where you're going to, you know, they have all these waste. Now you can use like Klarna to buy the stuff. Yes, it's making accessible to people who maybe don't have the financial means right on hand. But also like that is a slippery, slippery, slippery slope. We've seen a PDF where the person is coaching them on how to get the money. Like you could drive Uber. You could sell your jewelry. You could walk dogs. You can walk dogs to pay for this $40,000 investment. And when the plans get this deceptive and this transparently awful,

It really makes me feel so hopeless in the same way that I do when I think about multi-level marketing because, in part, these are so hard to nip and to get shut down. From your perspective, whose responsibility is it to hold accountable independent bad actors in the digital sales world? Is it like the BBB, the FTC, is it the social media platforms themselves, the people who follow them? We could debate this all day long, but I think it really comes down to a few different things. Ultimately, she should be accountable here, the craters who are doing this and literally making the choice for better or worse to scam these people. There is definitely some interesting conversation about, you know, who is actually responsible. We saw a lot of really positive

movement before current president came in with the FTC. We saw some really good action at the state level with attorney generals, cracking down on influencers making like income claims. But honestly, we're probably over the next little while not going to see. any of that. So can you go to your better business bureau? Yes. But where we're seeing kind of the one of the best moves I've seen is stripe, especially with the marketing master resale rights, is they started cracking down saying this is an MLM like operation and we are not going to let you process payments through here. But do meta, do TikTok have responsibility here? I report this stuff and it never goes away. Well, because it's beneficial. Yeah. So I mean, I think there is some things. But ultimately,

this is why consumer awareness is so, so important. And Michelle and I probably are going to be doing this podcast from the retirement home down the room. Oh, literally, us too. Yeah. We can't keep up. Yeah, like there's always something new, right? So, and there's always like a new spin on it. And this is why, like, if you start to learn the tactics, you start to understand how they're being applied and that it's not okay if someone says, hey, why don't you take this money out of your 401k or you should take up dog walking or can you make a decision right now? Those are red flags and that you need to heat. those red flags no matter how appealing it is and how vulnerable you're feeling in that moment. Totally.

Okay, now I think it's time for us to play our game. We are going to be playing Would You Rather? We explained to you two Colty premises, one of which we'll have to do with digital marketing scams, and you will pick which one you would rather participate in. Would you rather buy an online course from an influencer you don't know, or talk to an AI chatbot version of your favorite K-pop idol for an afternoon. Definitely talk to the chatbot version of my favorite K-pop aisle. You're not afraid that you would develop a robot love affair?

You know, I just read an article that I sent to Michelle on CNN about this. And, you know, I think I'm okay in that department. That seems like a lot of work. A lot of hours you have to put in. Oh, my gosh. And they forget, you have to, like, jog its memory. I mean, not much different than women. I'd be like, we talked about this.

Scenario number two, would you rather change your entire social media brand to follow the advice of she who recruited you? Or get rid of all of your offsprings branded, not plain clothing in order to send them to Waldorf School. Oh, I'm sending my kid to Waldorf School. That's fine. Whoa. Okay. You should listen to our episode. You should.

I know enough. And I'm just like, eh, I don't want to change my social media. hilarious so i don't have offspring i have cats can i send cats i think they can become clairvoyant i see it sending the cats cats and walded schools do feel like they go together for some reason yeah definitely some wisdom would you rather buy followers to kickstart your digital marketing career or invest in dojlon mars aka elon's cryptocurrency oh i'm buying followers yeah followers like i I can't, like, everything about that was wrong. Yeah, Elon Musk is a whole, I know you covered him, but he's a get the fuck out.

He's a get the fuck out. Yeah, yeah, he's definitely a get the fuck out. I'd much rather, like, ruin a social media presence than deal with that. That reflects well on your priorities. It does. Okay. Would you rather only be able to message or DM those whose comment specific keywords on your posts or not be able to speak to people who is astrological sign you're not compatible with?

Oh, crap, because I don't think my husband and I are astrologically compatible. So that would really, like, head me towards divorce. I think I'm going astrological because I just, like, did a roundup on my husband, my kid, my sister. We're all compatible. We're all air signs, so we're fine. Oh, amazing. Okay. Wow.

Sorry, Michelle. We're probably not compatible. Oh, I'm an earth sign. I think Erin. I'm not sure. Oh, my God. Well, that ends our podcast. Well, crap, Maggie, thanks.

This is what Colts do, people. It is. They tear podcasts apart. Okay. Last one. Would you rather have to use ChatGPT to write all of your Instagram captions with the purpose of recruiting other people or hands-free drive your cyber truck to work every day? Oh, I'm writing my Instagram captions, like, forget to recruit people.

I am not getting into cybertruck. Absolutely not. No way in hell. Those trucks are so. ugly. Like the first time I saw one, I almost rerended the person in front of me because it was such a distraction. Yeah, they're a blight on the earth. So yeah, I'm using chat GPT and recruiting people. Yeah, the chat GPT is like a slight tiered dignity, but I feel like the cyber truck is like a threat to your physical safety, which is maybe a little more important. And I would just be really

bad at recruiting people. So it would be fine. Oh, yeah, no, it's actually safer for humanity. Maggie and Michelle, thank you so much for joining this episode of Sounds Like a Cold. If people want to keep up with you and the Lord's work that you're doing to shed light on this scammery, where can they do that? You can find our podcast at duped.online. And I am not really a social media girly, but if you're going to connect with me anywhere, connect with me on LinkedIn. Yes, slide into my DMs and tell me what you took away from the podcast today. I'm. Dr. Michelle Mazur, really easy to find. And Maggie, where can they find you? I am our Instagram correspondent, so I'm on Instagram of Threads at BS Free Business. And the podcast dup is all the places you're listening to this podcast. So amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, Reese. Out of these three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. What do you think the cult of digital marketing scams falls into? I'm clicking not interested. I'm clicking see fewer posts like this. I'm blocking reporting. I'm getting the fuck out. Get the fuck off my Discover page. Yeah. Despite the fact that I do want to learn more about marketing, I don't want to learn it from these sepia-toned individuals. Anyone who actually has real marketing knowledge and something to teach me for real would not need to sell it to media Instagram. No, and I actually think like marketing these days is a trial and error thing. Like I just, later this year or next year or at some point in the future, I want to do an

episode on the cult of consulting because like I'm just so annoyed by these God complex business. Like you don't know. Fuckos. Yeah. Like it's also culty and it's also predatory, especially in the context of business today. So yeah, I agree. It's obviously get the fuck out. Well, that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too guilty. This episode was produced by Reese Oliver. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson.

Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Oversinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Words Slut, a Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English

language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Colt cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. Hi, I'm Heather McDonald, gossip enthusiast, podcast queen, and longtime loyalist to Amazon Prime. Between next day prime deliveries, binge-worthy shows, and playlist that keep me company while digging into the latest gossip, Prime is my silent co-hosts. The truth is, Prime doesn't just support my passions. It fuels them from spontaneous curiosities to full-blown obsessions. It's got my back. Whatever you're into, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.ca.ca slash Prime to get more out of

whatever you're into. This is Trixie Mattel, co-host of the Bald and the Beautiful podcast, drag queen, and Amazon Prime enthusiast. And I'm Katya, interpretive dancer, chaos agent, and someone who orders from Amazon Prime more often than I check my email. That's true. Yeah. Prime gives us fast delivery that makes unpacking almost glamorous,

endless streaming of our favorite shows, which we call research, and music playlists that are both chaotic and calming. Prime isn't just convenient. It's a gateway to trying new things. It helps us discover new obsessions and dive deeper into old ones. From one day delivery to top shows to music,

whatever you're into, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.ca.ca. slash prime to get more out of whatever you're into.