In Which My Loserdom Is Sadly Exposed

For those of you who knew me in the days when I was "all fired up" about ridiculing/exposing Amway, here's a LONG overdue commentary.

You wouldn't know it to look at my page, but I still get email about Amway several times every week. I gave up updating the mail page around 2000. Although I made some half-hearted attempts to go through and HTML-ize my mail a few times since then, the problem isn't formatting the mails for the web... it's going through every single piece of mail and stripping out the names to protect their identities. After eleven years of seeing these emails, they do start to get repetitive. A bit more than half of them say "Thanks so much for saving me from a mistake!" or "Right on! Amway sucks!" The other half respectfully dissent by letting me know that I'm a pathetic loser and will never amount to anything.

I know that many of these people pour their hearts into the mail they've written to me, but I've read those words a great many times already, and I'm no longer that motivated to read it all twice. Occasionally I'll reply to one when the mood strikes, but rarely. Sorry, emailers. One of these days, I suppose I really should install a guest book or something so they can write their own messages.

Update: Good idea, past self! I took your advice and created a Perils of Amway Guestbook. Knock yourselves out, folks.

But this letter from "Binoy" really takes the cake, and I thought it would be a terrible thing not to share it.

Subject: Hi plz read - Binoy

i can understand ur situation cos i was der but den i decided i woud rather make money than give xcuses for my own shortcommings
Jus bcos u faild dosnt mean everyone fails u idiot

if john cestena recomends dis business den u gotta have sume nuts loose.

i earn a hell lot than i ever cud and so do 17 of my downlines. u should hav seen the poverty that they hav been lifted from.

if u want money get in make some and den talk.
quiters never win dude.
u r jus cryin bcos u wer un successful.
a lot of people are cos u don hav wat it takes to be rich u re jus a sore looser
if it was a bogus den it coudnt hav survived for 47 years.
wud u rather make money or complain.
i can understand ur situation cos i was der but den i decided i woud rather make money than give xcuses for my own shortcommings

Oh, there are sooo many things to enjoy about this letter. I mean, I hate to shoot at fish in a barrel, but this wildly successful businessman does appear to be functionally illiterate. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume from his interesting name that English is not his native language. However, I'm not so sure that is the case because I don't think I've ever seen foreigners make such heavy use of internet slang like "u r." Or say "dude."

Another thing that amuses me about this letter is the reference to John Sestina -- whom Binoy must respect very much to so creatively mangle the spelling of his name. John Sestina was the "big shot" who Amway was waving around as their street cred eleven years ago. Am I to understand that in all that time, they have not found one single new financial guy to endorse them? That's the worst track record I ever heard of. Even the creationists are constantly being joined by new "scientist" voices.

How well known is John Sestina these days? Well, my google search provides these hits on the name:

1. John Sestina's company's web site.
2. An anti-Amway page
3. Another anti-Amway page
4. John Sestina's book on Amazon
5. My anti-Amway page
6. A citysearch page for John Sestina's company
7. A page where you can purchase and download John Sestina's tapes.

That's all there is on page one. Searching Google News today yields one hit that has the word "John" and talks about the sestina form of poetry, whatever that is. No reference to the world famous investment guy. I have nothing against John; I'm sure he's a fine financial advisor and all, but based on my search, I am pretty well convinced that he is known first and foremost as an Amway shill, far beyond being known for anything else. And again... they couldn't find a new spokesman after eleven years???

The last thing I wanted to highlight about this letter was "if it was a bogus den it coudnt hav survived for 47 years." Awww gee, you're right, I can't think of one single other enterprise that promises to deliver great wealth, fails to provide it for any but a very few people, and has lasted for more than a few decades. Nope, not one.