BS Summary: This article contains 10 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Framing Effect, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 29.6% saturation with 47 hits. Analysis detected 208 faulty-reasoning hits from 159 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 40.1% and a BS Rank of 30% (15,312 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 70.00% of the article peer group.
Multilevel marketing as we know it dates back to the 1940s, with a vitamin company called Nutrilite.
If you worked for Nutrilite, you didn’t just sell vitamins — you were supposed to recruit other salespeople to buy your supply of vitamins and sell it for you.
They, in turn, could do the same.
The pyramid scheme was born.
Since then, this tactic has made a very small number of people extremely rich and made a far, far larger amount of people hemorrhage money.
Why do people keep falling for it?
Journalist Bridget Read says it has something to do with the very American idea of being your own boss.
She’s joining us to talk about how pyramid schemes defined the nation.
[Rebroadcast, 6/11/26]
GUEST —
Bridget Read | Features writer for New York Magazine.
Her new book is called “Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America.”
[Amazon|Bookshop]
Original Airdate: July 30, 2025
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.