This spiel (below) was taken from a Facebook forum about fibromyalgia. Along with the stories from (mostly) women who had lived with this condition for years and tried everything to ease it, there was this block of advice, not asked for, and (I hope) not taken by anyone. It starts off on an "I used to be like you, I understand your pain" level, the usual insincere patronizing bullshit. (Yes, I used to be "like you" - an unenlightened loser who was obviously the cause of her own distress.) But keep reading, and you'll see the deeper meaning of this thing. It's an ad, folks, and that's all it is.
There will always be someone holding out The Cure, but the way to test their sincerity is to figure out what's in it for them. And if you think they just want to share their good fortune with the world, think again. They're really after your bucks. Don't fall for it. And don't EVER dump your meds because one of these clueless people says you "should"! Meds can be a glorious gift from God, I'm here to tell you, and probably saved my life more times than I can count. "Use" is not "abuse", and it's time people stopped equating the two.
I have had Fibro for 20 years. I know what you are suffering with. I had gotten to the point that I only did what I had to to get thru the day. I turned down doing things with my family because I hurt too bad. I have tried several prescription meds like Lyrica, Neurontin, cymbalta just to name a few. I have tried supplements, physical therapy and chiropractic and nothing ever worked. I have tried diets as well to help with the inflammation in my body. My friend recently introduced me to a company called Plexus Worldwide. It is a health and wellness company that provides natural products that help with many medical issues including Fibromyalgia. I was very skeptical even coming from one of my good friends. Nothing else had worked so why would this product. After several months of my friend telling me about this product o decided to try it. The products that I started with is Triplex and it has 3 products in it. One is a Slim drink packet that you mix with water and taste like a cherry drink. The second is Probio5. It puts the good stuff back into your gut the third one is Biocleanse which detoxes your gut.
Most diseases are started due to poor gut health. Plexus products regulates your sugar levels, decreases the inflammation in your body, lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, decreases inflammation, gives you energy, decreases cravings for sugar and carbs, helps with sleep, and as an added bonus can promote weight loss. It is an amazing product. I have been taking Plexus for 2 months and I am feeling the best I have in years. My Fibro pain is gone, my inflammation is gone, I am sleeping so much better, I have lost my cravings for diet coke and junk, I have been able to stop taking Lyrica and Neurontin, I have ton of energy, I love to keep busy, enjoying my family again and my list could probably go on and on. The best part is that I have my life back. I have lost 22 lbs plus 5 1/4 inches off my waist and 3 inches off my hips. I feel great. I would love for you to check out Plexus because I know it could help you with your Fibro. Plexus has a 60 day money back guarantee which you can't beat. You have nothing to loose but you may just get your life back. Plexus is sold on my website at (xxxxx) and you can email me at (xxxxx). Please look over the information on my website and contact me if you have any questions.
OK, so you probably know by now that I get incensed by some of the stuff that appears on Facebook. Though I've never had fibromyalgia, I know a number of people who do, and one of the WORST things you can do to a person in that situation is give gratuitous advice, particularly about what they're doing wrong to bring on the condition and what they should be doing right to cure it.
Invariably, like this voluminous spiel (name left out, I don't know why I don't just leave these in and let these assholes twist in the wind), there's a link to a personal web site dedicated to selling The Product that will make all this pain and anguish just go away. Like the snake oil of old, it is "good for man or beast", as well as oiling machinery and defending the free world, and guaranteed to devastate anyone who just needs someone to listen to them for a change. I don't think people with chronic conditions are looking for the anodyne of the week, nor are they thirsting for that ONE true link that will take them to the magical (non-pharmaceutical, of course) substance that will make everything all right again.
Several times in the past year I've had emails from people I know - or thought I knew - and the sum total of the "message" is a link to some herbal weight-loss scheme that no doubt works as well as all the rest of them (i. e. if it works so well, why is there another one next month or next week?) What sort of mailing list am I on, anyway? How anonymous and random is it, or is it somehow "targeted" (that lovely marketing term, which is used all the time now - but think about it. What is a "target" anyway? Think of "target practice", bows and arrows, etc.)? I even flirted with the notion that "somebody" thought I needed a weight loss supplement. But I KNOW I don't need it now because I just lost a substantial amount of weight. But I'm not here to Share My Secret, sell you anything or hang out a shingle. I lost weight because I ate less.
Almost no one knows how to receive another's pain. But one way NOT to do it is, "Oh, yes, I used to be like you. I used to have what you have. But everything changed when I dumped all my prescription drugs, embraced a much healthier way of life (implying that the sufferers aren't really trying and their attitude is dragging them down) and started taking xxxxx. All my symptoms went away and now I have tons of energy and a wonderful life!" The defense for this sort of obnoxious attitude is a "huh? Hey, I was only trying to help!" No, you were not. You were shoring up your insecurity by trumpeting your conversion (and these things really do have the flavour of a religious awakening) to a Whole New Way of Life, usually available for $39.99 (for a whole months' supply! Order now), which is, just coincidentally, for sale on YOUR web site. No doubt these mercenaries sift through health-related Facebook pages/posts trying to find vulnerable people/potential customers, and no doubt move on quickly when somebody bites back (which they hardly ever do: everyone is afraid to talk back to these types, it seems).
Real compassion isn't "hey, I used to be like you" or even (as I got once, from someone who really should have known better, "When I look at you, Margaret, I think: there but for the grace of God go I"). It's having the guts and the grace and the humanity to listen without judgement, to accept that person's reality, and the self-esteem NOT to have to strut your stuff and constantly prove how much better you are. This is the realm of the fragile, but it's also the province of the greedy and heartless. These products sell like mad and seem to garner all sorts of testimonials, but who knows who writes them. Meantime, if someone shares their pain with you, ANY kind of pain, feel honoured, and don't say "I used to be like you, but then I wised up. If you want to fix it, here's what you should do."
(If you'd like to see what this woman is hawking, just click on the pink link below.)
(If you'd like to see what this woman is hawking, just click on the pink link below.)
Home
And here, a sensible retort from a woman who has had enough of this B. S.:
Please!!!!! Stop posting crap here. Water????? Seriously? A ph balance is the cause? Gees someone give this moron the Nobel prize. There are a few too many quacks here giving advice like get rid of meds? Without mine you might as well bury me now.
A post to the post: I've done a bit of digging, and this woman's blurb for Plexus Worldwide, which has a frighteningly Brave New World-ish sound to it, appears all over the place on Facebook. . . verbatim. It never varies. Buried among all the authentic comments, it still sticks out like a sore thumb, except for that phony "I've been there" at the beginning, a fake attempt to "identify" and disguise the blatant pitch. I wouldn't be surprised if it appears with only the name of the disease changed. I left a couple of comments, to which she replied "???". I don't think she understands what I am talking about. Can the phony "I used to be like you until I saw the light" crap. I don't even care if you were. Just can it.
Post-post-to-the-post: Now here is a REALLY interesting response, praising my piece on gratuitous advice/self-serving sales pitches. What really gets me is that these people seem oblivious to the fact that they are neatly proving my theory.
Hi Margaret, I'm Marianne with Personal Capital, and I really love how much of yourself you share with your readers. The fibro post was great by the way and I totally agree with you on how annoying those salespeople are!! :)
I was surprised to learn from a recent CNBC article that only 53% of us working-age women have started planning for retirement compared to 65% of our male peers!
I'd love for you to pick a female friend or family member to showcase in a post on your blog as a female financial role model. Maybe she writes a grocery list before shopping to fit her budget, or started walking to work to save money on gas.
Small decisions like these really add up over time and help people save for retirement. I think this would be inspirational for women reading your post who may not have a strong female role model, and haven't thought much about saving money for retirement.
Please let me know if you're interested and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. Through October and November, we will be sharing some of our favorite posts on Twitter and Facebook, where we have over 10,000 followers each. I hope to see yours :)
Best,
Marianne Ahlmann
You know, this really makes sense to me. Obviously she loves my blog, and loves the way I rat out scammers. So. . . I hereby nominate ME as a financial role model (or roll model - I make good rolls, try to roll with the punches, and have rolled the dice that this will expose the kind of obtuseness and greed that drives mega-corporations).
I have more to say about all this, as my good friend Matt Paust has exposed Plexus Worldwide for what it really is. You can guess from the name that it's worse than Scamway, and my suspicion of the "good for man and beast" nature of their products is correct. This includes the infamous Pink Drink which guarantees dramatic weight loss in only a few days, but is likely the same product that cures fibromyalgia (which the sales rep claims to have). No doubt she also used to weigh 300 pounds, but after a few chug-a-lugs of Pink Drink is now 112.
Meantime, here's lots more, including an entire blog on the subject! Just click on the"pink links" below.
http://pinkdrinkscamalert.blogspot.ca/p/my-pinkwashed-journey-introduction.html
http://www.realscam.com/f9/plexus-worldwide-plexus-scam-pink-drink-reviews-plexus-sliim-4171/
http://www.plexuspoint.com/plexus-slim-reviews/
"Just one more thing. . . " I'm starting to feel like Columbo today.
It's a boggy landscape in Plexusland. You have to be extremely careful what you believe. My third "pink link" (above) seemed to be solely devoted to debunking the mysterious Plexus Pink Drink, the one that doesn't actually help anybody lose weight, but after scrolling through about 20 pages, the author's tone began to subtly change.
No longer was she ranting about Plexus and posting "REAL" (negative) reviews, which she may well have written herself. Now she seemed to be hinting that yes, indeed, there was a secret to permanent weight loss, but you had to keep reading to find out what it was.
And reading. and reading. This site had all sorts of gimmicky charts and pictures and things, the strangest being a person stuck to a wall. As you scrolled down and scrolled down, the "science" of this secret was laid out in agonizing detail, but at a certain point you began to feel the subtle tug-tug of a hook.
Yes, a hook. In the form of a book.
This "debunker" whose life mission it was to discredit the pink slime/scam was selling a book about the REAL secret of weight loss. The cover was a blatant ripoff of the ". . . For Dummies" series, but it was amateurish enough that it looked self-published. I didn't stick around long enough to see how much it cost.
She has the One True Religion, see. You don't need to drink anything. You don't need to DO anything. But you do need to buy something. And though this didn't quite look like the pyramid/Ponzi scheme pushed by Plexus, it had a feeling of "wait, there's more" - another little hook, ONE more thing you needed to do, to buy, to believe in, in order to help you achieve your lifetime goals of fitness, health and longevity.
All in all, Plexus Slim MIGHT work for a minor few. We don't know who these 'few' people are. It might be you, yes, it might work for you. But do you really want to spend $115/month for the next 6 months to find out?
AND that's not even the bad part, the worst part is: Do you want to risk all the side effects mentioned here?
I am sure if you're sane, the answer's A BIG NO!
So a better alternative for the sane:
Update: June 22 !
You can now find out if Plexus Slim is specifically right for you.
Just choose the right answers for the 6 questions below & find out if Plexus is right for YOU...
1. What's your age?
20-30
30-40
40-50
50 or above
Note: If you are below 20, you shouldn't even be here!
Concluding…
You DO NOT need Plexus to get fit, healthy, lose fat or {insert-any-of-your-desire-here!}
Each one of us is different. You ARE truly unique.
Your body, your metabolism, literally everything is distinctive about you.
So the hope of "one-drink-cures-all" is one of the silliest myths, and these "recurring monthly billing" product companies make a fortune off it!
Yet…
What you actually need is…
Huh? What does that mean?
That image hides the best kept secret of the entire fitness industry... a secret these companies will protect more than anything, and prevent you from finding about it...
But wait a sec... what the he** does that Spiderman like guy got to do with your weight!?
I explain it in this next post…
READ WHAT THE IMAGE MEANS
(By the way, the "right answers" to the above quasi-quiz all take you to the same page saying Plexus is poison, and the only answer to your weight problems is to buy the book.)
And here, a sensible retort from a woman who has had enough of this B. S.:
Please!!!!! Stop posting crap here. Water????? Seriously? A ph balance is the cause? Gees someone give this moron the Nobel prize. There are a few too many quacks here giving advice like get rid of meds? Without mine you might as well bury me now.
A post to the post: I've done a bit of digging, and this woman's blurb for Plexus Worldwide, which has a frighteningly Brave New World-ish sound to it, appears all over the place on Facebook. . . verbatim. It never varies. Buried among all the authentic comments, it still sticks out like a sore thumb, except for that phony "I've been there" at the beginning, a fake attempt to "identify" and disguise the blatant pitch. I wouldn't be surprised if it appears with only the name of the disease changed. I left a couple of comments, to which she replied "???". I don't think she understands what I am talking about. Can the phony "I used to be like you until I saw the light" crap. I don't even care if you were. Just can it.
Post-post-to-the-post: Now here is a REALLY interesting response, praising my piece on gratuitous advice/self-serving sales pitches. What really gets me is that these people seem oblivious to the fact that they are neatly proving my theory.
Hi Margaret, I'm Marianne with Personal Capital, and I really love how much of yourself you share with your readers. The fibro post was great by the way and I totally agree with you on how annoying those salespeople are!! :)
I was surprised to learn from a recent CNBC article that only 53% of us working-age women have started planning for retirement compared to 65% of our male peers!
I'd love for you to pick a female friend or family member to showcase in a post on your blog as a female financial role model. Maybe she writes a grocery list before shopping to fit her budget, or started walking to work to save money on gas.
Small decisions like these really add up over time and help people save for retirement. I think this would be inspirational for women reading your post who may not have a strong female role model, and haven't thought much about saving money for retirement.
Please let me know if you're interested and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. Through October and November, we will be sharing some of our favorite posts on Twitter and Facebook, where we have over 10,000 followers each. I hope to see yours :)
Best,
Marianne Ahlmann
You know, this really makes sense to me. Obviously she loves my blog, and loves the way I rat out scammers. So. . . I hereby nominate ME as a financial role model (or roll model - I make good rolls, try to roll with the punches, and have rolled the dice that this will expose the kind of obtuseness and greed that drives mega-corporations).
I have more to say about all this, as my good friend Matt Paust has exposed Plexus Worldwide for what it really is. You can guess from the name that it's worse than Scamway, and my suspicion of the "good for man and beast" nature of their products is correct. This includes the infamous Pink Drink which guarantees dramatic weight loss in only a few days, but is likely the same product that cures fibromyalgia (which the sales rep claims to have). No doubt she also used to weigh 300 pounds, but after a few chug-a-lugs of Pink Drink is now 112.
Meantime, here's lots more, including an entire blog on the subject! Just click on the"pink links" below.
http://pinkdrinkscamalert.blogspot.ca/p/my-pinkwashed-journey-introduction.html
http://www.realscam.com/f9/plexus-worldwide-plexus-scam-pink-drink-reviews-plexus-sliim-4171/
http://www.plexuspoint.com/plexus-slim-reviews/
"Just one more thing. . . " I'm starting to feel like Columbo today.
It's a boggy landscape in Plexusland. You have to be extremely careful what you believe. My third "pink link" (above) seemed to be solely devoted to debunking the mysterious Plexus Pink Drink, the one that doesn't actually help anybody lose weight, but after scrolling through about 20 pages, the author's tone began to subtly change.
No longer was she ranting about Plexus and posting "REAL" (negative) reviews, which she may well have written herself. Now she seemed to be hinting that yes, indeed, there was a secret to permanent weight loss, but you had to keep reading to find out what it was.
And reading. and reading. This site had all sorts of gimmicky charts and pictures and things, the strangest being a person stuck to a wall. As you scrolled down and scrolled down, the "science" of this secret was laid out in agonizing detail, but at a certain point you began to feel the subtle tug-tug of a hook.
Yes, a hook. In the form of a book.
This "debunker" whose life mission it was to discredit the pink slime/scam was selling a book about the REAL secret of weight loss. The cover was a blatant ripoff of the ". . . For Dummies" series, but it was amateurish enough that it looked self-published. I didn't stick around long enough to see how much it cost.
She has the One True Religion, see. You don't need to drink anything. You don't need to DO anything. But you do need to buy something. And though this didn't quite look like the pyramid/Ponzi scheme pushed by Plexus, it had a feeling of "wait, there's more" - another little hook, ONE more thing you needed to do, to buy, to believe in, in order to help you achieve your lifetime goals of fitness, health and longevity.
Conclusion and Guidance
All in all, Plexus Slim MIGHT work for a minor few. We don't know who these 'few' people are. It might be you, yes, it might work for you. But do you really want to spend $115/month for the next 6 months to find out?
AND that's not even the bad part, the worst part is: Do you want to risk all the side effects mentioned here?
I am sure if you're sane, the answer's A BIG NO!
So a better alternative for the sane:
Update: June 22 !
You can now find out if Plexus Slim is specifically right for you.
Just choose the right answers for the 6 questions below & find out if Plexus is right for YOU...
1. What's your age?
20-30
30-40
40-50
50 or above
Note: If you are below 20, you shouldn't even be here!
Concluding…
You DO NOT need Plexus to get fit, healthy, lose fat or {insert-any-of-your-desire-here!}
Each one of us is different. You ARE truly unique.
Your body, your metabolism, literally everything is distinctive about you.
So the hope of "one-drink-cures-all" is one of the silliest myths, and these "recurring monthly billing" product companies make a fortune off it!
Yet…
What you actually need is…
Huh? What does that mean?
That image hides the best kept secret of the entire fitness industry... a secret these companies will protect more than anything, and prevent you from finding about it...
But wait a sec... what the he** does that Spiderman like guy got to do with your weight!?
I explain it in this next post…
READ WHAT THE IMAGE MEANS
(By the way, the "right answers" to the above quasi-quiz all take you to the same page saying Plexus is poison, and the only answer to your weight problems is to buy the book.)
