Or by her participating that she is knowingly involving herself in a scam. Which, yeah, it’s just books - but it’s pretty obviously a pyramid.
No shame if you don’t see how it’s a scam, the cozy blanket and glass of wine are meant to throw you, and they chose 36 because it’s a confusing enough number where you don’t think too much about how it grows.
She gives one book to her upline. She then sends out post to 36 more people to give her 36 books. Each one of them then needs to find 36 people each, which is now 1296 people in that level if they each want 36 books. Thus the exponential pyramid. Of course there is zero way each of them will find that many people, let alone the levels below that. It’s a scam that benefits those higher up, and the ones lower will likely not receive anything.
Of course she sees nothing wrong with that. She said “Sometimes I get books, sometimes I don’t, that’s just part of the game”. Which… it’s not a game when it’s real money being passed around.
On top of that, whenever we see a pyramid scheme we should be stamping it out - hard. Folks, please spot the signs and point them out. Don’t be afraid to comment on posts calling them out as scams.
Edit: To be clear the idea of a growing book exchange isn’t a bad one, as explained in the comments though the way to make it not a scam is to make it 1:1. You either send a book and receive a book, or if they like the 36 number, you change it to “I’ll send a book to whoever sends me a book!”. Then it’s a true book exchange.
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Imagine having to read 36 books that people stupid enough to participate in this would have chosen for you. Congrats! Here’s 18 copies of The Secret and 18 copies of the bible.
The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Pyramid Scheme
Yeah my immediate thought was what to do with duplicates
As with most things, I’m betting on the people who made it knew it exactly, and a lot of other stupid people jumped at the idea.
At some point I feel it is just easier to go to the library. You need to return the books but they are also not random books the sender didn’t want.
Local library might even have an ebook lending service, in which case, you wouldn’t even need to go anywhere. And the ebooks automatically return themselves.
And the ebooks automatically return themselves.
FUCK I’ve been wasting so many USB drives
USB drives? FUCK I’ve been printing them out on my inkjet to return.
If they wanted me to read about their scam, they shouldn’t describe it over a stressful image of red wine and an open flame resting on a 1x6 on a beige couch.
I scrolled back up and was immediately overwhelmed with anxiety
I’m just waiting for the cat to jump up on it and screw up everything.
Why do people even buy furniture like that? Do they think it’s going to be immune from stains?
Do you mean upholstered furniture? What’s the norm for furniture where you live?
No. Beige or white furniture.
Upholstery covers with different colors and fabrics exist. Washable covers exist. My great grandma has a turn of the century sitting room set with colorful covers for each piece that matches the seasons. My own couch is a cream color with washable covers. Scotch guard also exists. Stain removers even exist and they do work (especially carpet cleaners).
If you get a book back, it’s not a scam because it’s not designed for you to profit, either monetarily or materially. It’s obviously misleading saying you’ll get “up to” 36 books back, but that’s not guaranteed and shouldn’t be expected. If someone joined such an exchange (and it was trustworthy), they should think of it as a random book swap and expect to get a surprise book back in exchange for theirs. Anything extra is simply a bonus.
1 for 1: no one gets rich, and no one gets scammed, in theory…
If everyone is putting in one book, for you to get 36 books, 35 other people have to get 0 books.
“a maximum of” 36 books.
Again, it’s unrealistic to expect 36 good books be sent to you, but I guarantee some people will send along more than 1 book, which I assume accounts for the “bonus” ones…
Right.
As described, for you to get two books, someone else got zero. For you to get three books, two people got zero.
The median person gets zero books. A few lucky people get 2-36 books.
While the authenticity of this is dubious, I don’t think OP knows what a pyramid scheme is…
Look up MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) schemes if you need a reference point.
It’s a pyramid scheme that doesn’t appear to involve money.
An MLM for books would be charging for the books and an enrollment fee. Typically in a pyramid scheme the buy-in is the fee and nothing ever comes back to the enrollee that isn’t enrollment fees from others.
In this case the books are the enrollment fee.
Just because the stakes are low doesn’t mean it’s not a pyramid scheme. You buy in, and then you recruit others to buy in by paying you. Pyramid.
Now, if it was a ping that said “send me a book and I’ll send you one back!” That would be a fun way to do a book exchange. But it’s not, there’s no reciprocation.
This is a bizarre scheme, i would not want to receive 1296 books, let alone however many the top gets.
You don’t. You just get the “up to 36”. It’s not a pyramid scheme where the goods all flow to the top.
I have this great angle for stocking my new bookstore…
It’s a twofold scam.
One, because the person is buying new, it’s driving up sales to a bunch of “confirmed” addresses, which is an important metric for Amazon sales.
Two, the “random” destination is a second customer’s address, and the friend is being an unwitting proxy in a drop shipping scheme.
Wouldn’t the drop shipping scheme require the scammers to know which books they need? In this case they are taking blind submissions, how would a drop ship operation work if you don’t know what your possible inventory will be?
Realistically, you’re getting 36 copies of Dyanetics
It’s a mild scam. More like chain letters used to be than Amway or something with a structure putting a bunch of wealth in the hands of one person. But, you’re right. It’s stupid, even if mostly harmless.
As someone else said, it may be to see who’s likely to fall for more sinister scams, or a phishing scam to get people’s addresses etc
There is an large electronic store near me. At the cash register they have “mystery boxes” where you can buy random shit that you don’t know what you get, ranging from 10 to idk, 500 dollars. I always imagine every time someone buys irl lootcrates, they end up on some sort of list, because these people would buy anything.
in the 90’s my sister was in one if these chain letters for panties.
If i recall correctly you had to mail a pair of panties to the person at the top of the list, then make 10 copies of the list while removing their name from the top and then adding your name and size at the bottom. She sent out the panties and distributed her 10 copies but never got any free panties in the mail. I have no idea why it was panties they were to to be new so i doubt it was a fetish thing.
This is what I was thinking at first. This just looks like classic chain letter.
But on rereading, it appears that the person at the top is controlling who’s sending books to who, and might even be dictating where you buy the book from, which is definitely a scam.
My guess on how this works. Upon DMing the person in control, you’re instructed to buy a book from a specific website (that they control) and have the book shipped directly from there to the “stranger.”. However, “stranger” doesn’t actually exist, no books are ever sent, and the person running this whole scam is just pocketing the money rubes spend on “books”.
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I kinda like this idea; on a one-to-one basis where the maths works out that is.
At that point I’d say it would be easier to start a book club, and instead of following some dooha’s list from up-on-high, the members just share their favorites.
The idea of an anonymous book exchange is fun - but the way to do it fairly and not as a scam would be to say “whoever sends me a book I’ll send one back!”. That would remove the pyramid from the equation, everyone would be guaranteed a book back for everyone they sent.
It’s a scam that benefits those higher up, and the ones lower will likely not receive anything.
Who is higher up? Who benefits from you buying 1 book to send to a random person and how? Maybe I don’t even buy a new one; I just send out an old one I already had. Or is there more to it than the image shows and you’re supposed to be buying a book from a specific supplier?
This seems more like a “pay it forward” gift exchange than a scam.
Pay it forward would be fine if it was 1-1, you gift a book to one person and you get one in return. The scam is that you get people in thinking if they gift one they’ll get more than one back. Of course they probably won’t, it’ll quickly collapse.
Pay it forward things aren’t 1-1 either. You’re not guaranteed to even get anything back yourself most of the time. It’s just to feel good about yourself. Like paying for the people behind you at a drive-thru.
But I can see how this gives the impression that you will.
but pay it forward can work in theory
this can’t even work in theory because books entering the system 1 at a time and leaving the system 36 at a time requires 35 books to be conjured out of thin air
I think the idea here is that 37 people send 1 book each and you could be the recipient of the other 36 you didn’t send since you’re all on the same list and everyone is choosing a recipient at random to send their book to.
how could you know the total participant count is 37 ahead of time if you’re currently looking for sign ups
also, a book exchange of 37 people doesn’t strike me as particularly “huge”
I think that’s where it becomes a scheme instead of a generosity thing. The expectation that you could win out, that you will get more than you put in. Paying it forward you go in not expecting anything, but that’s not the way this is structured.
How is money being made in this? I don’t get it. It’s books- not money.
Just get in the moment
This can be a marketing/scam strategy, you send a new book, and they send their marketed(marketing) or old (scam) book to your supposed secret friend, then re-sell your new book.
I seen stuff like this before, and I think I know how it’s supposed to work.
The “stranger” recruited the person who posted this to OP’s friend as one of 6 people. Each of those 6 people recruit 6 others, who send the books to the stranger (their friend’s friend), hence the 36. OP’s friend will be asked to recruit 6 people in turn, and each of those recruit 6, who then send books to OP’s friend.
I think it’s a bit dodgy that they’re being asked to buy new, but I’d be more concerned that these kind of schemes can be used to feel out who’s likely to fall for more sinister scams, as people feel they’re getting a lot back for very little.
Plus, it only takes a few levels (13 if my maths is right) before there are more (far more!) recruits needed than people on earth.
It’s a chain letter.
Your math is correct.
Isn’t https://www.paperbackswap.com/ still a thing?
There was a bookstore in my town growing up that allowed romance novel readers to do a book swap. I’m not sure why since it didn’t make them any money.
To get people in the door or talking about the store. Free advertising from a group of readers who are more likely to buy the next and the next and the next in a series of books. Even if you’re making one sale instead of two, it’s still a sale. And you’re more likely to make more than one sale if they buy more than one book (which is likely).
Possibly, but it wasn’t a big town and it wasn’t a big bookstore. I don’t know if that would have worked as a profit-maker long-term, but they were around for at least a couple of decades if not longer, so what do I know?
I think that’s more of a ponzi scheme that a pyramid scheme
