I have an 'acquaintance' who recently started a monetized fishing channel on Youtube. He goes out often and it's an enviable position to be in. Well, it turns out his wife is a big time MLMer selling essential oils - I thought I saw that she was diamond level or something like that so she's bringing home the $$$. I think most of her clientele/returning customer base began from the social network they have primarily through their church, so she must have milked that cow hard and her "essential oil consultancy" spread like wildfire from there (good luck to any of her close friends who would dare think to enter the "business" and step on her toes lol). Using similar tactics as his wife (but advertising "like & subscribe" on Facebook and in a big FB fishing group) the guy is now gaining tons of traction with his channel and will probably be making a fair amount of money off it soon enough. And no, I'm not going to link his Youtube channel...because I'm going to start one myself hopefully and don't want to shoot myself in the foot LOL - click like and subscribe when I start it!jk
Anyway, it must be nice having tons of free time to spin up a monetized Youtube channel for your hobby because your wife made out well for you, exploiting all your friends. To be clear, I'm not saying or implying that starting a Youtube channel is like MLM. There's a lot of work that needs to go into it for it (editing videos) to be a success. But it's one of those things that not many people can successfully do as a side-hustle/side-gig. On top of that, some people resort to using shameless tactics to quickly increase their viewership (like relentlessly plugging the channel ALL OVER Facebook and elsewhere - not just in posts but commenting in threads, and self-promoting aggressively). It's the aggressive self-promotion that I don't like... it's my opinion that if you start a channel, do it because you love it AND allow the growth to be organic - plug where you have the opportunity but don't get greedy/obsessive/aggressive about doing so.
Years ago, I had a financial planner uncomfortably pressure me, in person after an initial consulting session, to cough up a list of potential clients to refer for her to cold-call (I was young, stupid and didn't know any better and caved in...) - this felt MLMish as well.
My wife told me about this Korean lady who would bother her parents at their restaurant and sell them crap they didn't need (some crappy under sink water filtration unit, a super overpriced bidet, etc). Forgot the name of this company but she told me every time the lady would step foot in the restaurant she would stare her down and make the lady feel super uncomfortable. The visits became less and less, at least while my wife was there. I think my in-laws have halted most of that by now since selling the restaurant but that was another example of old school MLM they were fooled by.
I have very little respect for these kinds of people.
We have other friends who do MLM on a smaller scale with books (forget the name) and Norwex but they don't push hard enough to become platinum diamond sellers - I'm fine with them because I can tell they got into it and realized how shady it felt to essentially exploit your friends selling them nominal products for tons of money, so they don't really push anything on anyone.