you're my pride and joy

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Twenty One Pilots Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph Characters: Tyler Joseph, Josh Dun Additional Tags: Acquired Amusia, Assault, Crisis of Faith, Deal with a Devil, Depression, Established Relationship, Lack of Communication, Major Character Injury, Recovery, Religious Guilt, Trench Era Summary: He is an infant, birthed from trauma, and soon, he won’t remember this pain.

I FINALLY DID IT!!!

new fic :-) 

Tyler’s sister Maddy has been involved in multiple MLM (multilevel marketing) scams to make money. Her most recent one is called BeachBody which sells workout routines and supplements and shakes and shit. She promotes her scams to her Instagram followers, many of whom she has because of her famous brother and many of them impressionable people and children who may get involved just because someone connected to Tyler is promoting it.

MLMs are predatory schemes which drain the wallets of people who sign up for them because you’re always having to recruit more people to buy from you and then sell under your line to move you up the pyramid. 90% of people who get involved with MLMs fail and lose money rather than receive any of the success that is falsely promised. They manipulate and prey upon people’s insecurities— body image, finances, supporting one’s family, especially women/mothers. They steal empowerment slogans like “boss babe” and use CULT LIKE MIND CONTROL TACTICS to convince people it’s not just sales... it’s a whole lifestyle movement that will BETTER YOU. They make it appear like you own your own company when really you’re just a fool making high levels rich.

So you sign up to work for them, investing your own money to start selling the product and you go through training of “winning sales strategies” and if you follow everything they tell you, you’ll be ROLLING IN CASH. Then they tell you exactly what to say to your friends, family, and every single person on your social media to guilt them and deceive them into buying whatever you’re selling. There’s an MLM for everything and most of the products are GARBAGE. Some actually cause damage like Monat hair products (chemical burns). They act like these are the best products ever but are unregulated, not clinically tested, and dangerous... some claiming to cure illnesses and coronavirus and cancer (that’s more of the nutritional supplement and essential oils worlds but yeah they make massive claims).

But the products don’t even matter sometimes... the real scheme is recruiting more people to join. Someone got you to join and they make money off what you sell and who you recruit (your up line). You want to recruit more people so you can become an upline too. These schemes have levels you can “achieve” and they promise you more money, more rewards, cars, vacations, etc. it’s always about selling selling selling and recruiting. They have ridiculous scripting, formulaic social media posts, and people will cold message others to try and recruit them (I’ve seen posts where people message people going through a major loss and being like X product will HELP YOU SO MUCH). Predatory and disgusting. They bombard everyone with their company and often ruins relationships because all they want is YOUR MONEY and are completely disingenuine. I could go on forever about patterns of strategies they us and they’re always changing what they’re doing because people catch on— nowadays they tell the salespeople to not even name the company.

Anyway, I could go on and on forever. There’s lots of anti-MLM videos on YouTube, there’s a website that tells you if a company is an MLM (some may surprise you because they’re established brands and even have physical shops— Pampered Chef, Body Shop, Avon, etc. I learned a lot from the fb group “sounds like mlm but ok” which shares real posts sent in by members, and some members even were formerly involved in MLMs and answer questions about them. They keep a massive list of known MLMs and update frequently. There’s literally an MLM for everything.

So Maddy’s in this MLM which is all about fitness and weight loss (which is scary to be promoting this to young, impressionable fans/children especially while she’s pregnant). She’s been posting NOT SOCIALLY DISTANCED PHOTOS AND VIDEOS with Jenna while working out. She’s trying to recruit people to her team and she frequently posts on her IG story/page about it. Most recently she is trying to get 10 new sign ups and she posted a list of who’s signed up so far and “Jenna J” is on the list. Most people assume it’s Jenna and some are trying to defend her that it may be a strategy of Maddy to trick people into signing up.

Several things could be going on:

Jenna could think she’s just helping out her sister in law with her business. She’s ignorant and ill-informed and misusing her platform of even more followers, many of whom may sign up because she appears to be the ideal standard of beauty and body type— people want to look like her even though that’s extremely toxic. She may or may not even participate in this, but regardless her name is there and makes it seem like she is endorsing a dangerous pyramid scheme to over a million people.

Someone online is claiming Maddy made up her name because Jenna isn’t part of the private Facebook group that Maddy has for people that signed up... 1. Do y’all really think Jenna would have a Facebook or be in a setting where people could find her secret account? No... and IF maddy is using her name and making it up and implying she’s involved... they all need to be more aware of Maddy’s rogue posts manipulating the audience she primarily only has because of her famous brother. Because tying Jenna’s name to this is dangerous.

In conclusion, there’s a reddit post getting a lot of attention and making people aware of what’s happening and what’s the risk. I’ve seen a lot of people on twitter warning people. Some Instagram comments are calling Maddy directly out (though there’s many who are in support.... and the negative comments can be deleted. Be careful what you see people promoting online and do your research. MLMs are insidious and I’ve personally seen people get involved in them.

The irony that Tyler literally posted a few days ago about companies asking him to promote their “garbage products”. He’s extremely anti ads and endorsing specific brands or doing celebrity ads (Josh on the other hand... he sure does love Nike and there was a lot of Nike product placement recently...). I really appreciate that about Tyler and I think it’s awesome he knows the power his support wields because of the very invested fan base. I just wished he’d notice that two of his siblings often use and manipulate the attention they get because of him to try and get rich quick. I get that he’s very supportive of his family, but there’s got to be some line where he protects his fans.