Fornits
General Interest => Open Free for All => Topic started by: AtomicAnt on February 22, 2009, 06:12:25 PM
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A teenager came to my door today. He said he was selling magazines for his 'media class' and named a high school in a nearby community. He said he lived in my neighborhood. That sent up a red flag. I know the kids in my neighborhood and I did not know him. I know the kids in my neighborhood do not attend the named high school. It is a different district. There were other red flags (his aggressiveness and the prices) and I sent the boy packing. Maybe I should not have. I looked on the internet and found:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/mag ... 0offs.html (http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/magazine%20scams%20and%20rip%20offs.html)
For Youths, A Grim Tour on Magazine Crews
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21 ... nd&emc=rss (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21magcrew.html?ex=1329714000&en=be91678aaac7038d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss)
It's not the troubled teen industry, but is another way that unsuspecting teens are exploited with little recourse. It just made me angry.
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Oh, there are a lot of these kinds of schemes pitched to young and old alike. Wanna dip just one toe into the Twilight Zone? Try attending a Mary Kay induction seminar. I ran into a kid just this past weekend who had been through some adjudicated adult rehab in Escambia County, Florida. He described a murder by guards by way of intentionally giving the kid a drug to which he was severely allergic. They did this to make the kid shut up cause he was moaning loudly all night as he was locked in solitude while he withdrew cold turkey from heroin. Same kid also tried to sell me on magazine crew. I'd run into that before. There are also perfume crews, Amway is still kickin, bunch of others.
The good news is that we've had 30 years--a generation and a half now--to become familiar with this stuff and I think people are starting to recognize it for what it is more easily. It's become part of the common experience and consensus trance so we're now better able, as a society, to mount a defense.
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Maybe we have had 30 years to learn about these scams, but the young people trapped in them are not old enough or experienced enough to see it coming. I suppose that is why these scams are still around.