The Massive Con: Making the pile of shit greater will not enhance the variety of ponies beneath it.
Hey take a look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: TVA v SETI@Dwelling; Telemarketers v DHS batphones; Matt Stone’s MPAA censorship memo; Stonehenge pocket watch; W3C v safety analysis; Congressional mass-shooting response simulator; Dynastic wealth; Gig financial system astroturf; Meta publishes your AI prompts.
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Partway by Bridget Learn’s unmissable chronicle of pyramid (“multi-level advertising and marketing”) schemes, Little Bosses All over the place, there comes a twin revelation: nobody is promoting any product to end-users and nobody is aware of it:
https://pluralistic.web/2025/05/05/free-enterprise-system/#amway-or-the-highway
That’s to say, all of the hustlers who’ve spent hundreds of {dollars} on Mary Kay, Herbalife and Amway have failed to maneuver any of their product (past a statistically insignificant variety of gross sales to family and friends who rapidly tire of being hustled and cease shopping for this substandard, overpriced junk). However none of those “entrepreneurs” is aware of it, or admits it to anybody – not their “downlines” (buddies they’ve lured into the swindle), nor their “uplines” (buddies who recruited them into the con).
Every pyramid scheme sufferer thinks that they are the one failure in the entire bunch. They go to large “gross sales conferences” the place individuals boast about all of the gross sales they’re making, and so they’re all mendacity about it. Extremely, the pyramid schemers who run these legal enterprises have discovered how you can make a advantage out of this example: they provide “gross sales teaching” programs to assist individuals make the gross sales that “everybody else is making.” In different phrases, as soon as you’ve got gone bust failing to promote Amway, they will get you to go additional into debt to learn to right the (nonexistent) points together with your gross sales technique to be able to be part of the (imaginary) legion of people that promote Amway by the bushel.
Con artists have a reputation for this type of swindle: it is referred to as a “massive con,” which is when everybody a mark comes into contact with is in on the rip-off. This is how the large con labored: after a “roper” snared a sufferer (often on an intercity practice), they’d telegraph forward and let the house staff know that they had a stay one. From that time ahead, each single particular person the sufferer got here into contact with was in on it – from the porter who collected his baggage on the practice station to the cab driver to the Western Union clerk he makes use of to cable his banker and ask for a cashier’s examine for his life’s financial savings.
Within the massive con, dozens of expert actors are placing on a play for an viewers of 1: you. It is a real-world, non-hallucinatory model of “gang stalking delusion,” which is when somebody going by a psychological well being disaster believes that everybody they meet is in on a conspiracy to drive them loopy:
https://pluralistic.web/2026/06/03/mission-space/#gsd
The scenario that folks affected by GSD hallucinate is definitely taking place to individuals ensnared in an enormous con…and pyramid schemes are an enormous con. What’s extra – as Learn’s e-book makes clear – you possibly can’t perceive trendy American politics with out understanding pyramid schemes.
Probably the most damaging pyramid schemes in American historical past is Amway. The FTC was about to close Amway down within the mid-Seventies, however then Nixon resigned and Ford grew to become president. Ford had been the Congressman to Amway’s founders Jay Van Andel (then the top of the US Chamber of Commerce, which is to say, America’s strongest enterprise lobbyist) and Dick DeVos (sure, that DeVos). Ford and the Amway swindlers had been thick as thieves, and so Ford referred to as off the FTC. Relatively than going to jail, DeVos and Van Andel grew to become morbidly rich, and so they used a few of their stolen cash to discovered and fund the Heritage Basis (sure, that Heritage Basis).
The political class operating America are pyramid scheme swindlers, funded by pyramid scheme cash. They’re operating an enormous con on all of us. That is true of the Trumps, who’ve excreted a diarrhoeic slurry of shitcoins which have made them billions – and misplaced billions for his or her “buyers”:
https://www.citationneeded.information/issue-106/
Trump insists that he’s a self-made man who made his cash with profitable actual property offers. In actuality, he lied on a regular basis about his actual property, committing a string of felonies so as to defraud the banks, whilst he went bankrupt, again and again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in_New_York
One other “self made man” is Elon Musk (who’s a “trillionaire,” in a extremely technical sense that means “not a trillionaire in any respect”). Musk would have been broke a number of occasions over however for a string of large authorities bailouts and subsidies, which proceed to this present day:
https://www.congress.gov/119/assembly/home/117956/paperwork/HMKP-119-JU00-20250226-SD003.pdf
Trump, Musk, and the remainder of the schemers within the pyramid routinely declare that they’re rich as a result of they’re operating good companies, a “truth” that many people settle for at face worth. It is unhealthy sufficient that we’re deceived about actuality, however a lot of their most addled cult-members attempt to observe of their footsteps. After they fail, they’re in the identical scenario as a kind of busted Amway sellers: pondering they’re the one ones who cannot make this “certain factor” work. Conservativism is a motion of bitter rubes, led by pyramid scheme swindlers:
https://pluralistic.web/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/#i-love-the-poorly-educated
The “wait, is everybody else additionally failing?” awakening is an expertise that a lot of America’s CEOs are sharing at this second, as they ponder whether they’re the one ones who’ve fired as many employees as attainable and changed them with AI, solely to see their firm’s fortunes fall:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/cash/markets/uber-ceo-says-other-execs-are-lying-about-ai-they-say-it-ll-be-fine-publicly-but-privately-admit-millions-of-jobs-are-gone/ar-AA1Z9QMv
Like an Amway sufferer, these boardroom rubes merely cannot consider that each one these individuals may very well be in on the con. How might the world spend trillions on AI if it is not on a path to profitability? It isn’t that these guys spent 2008 in a cave – moderately, they only lack the article permanence to recollect the final time a “Federal Pockets Inspector” approached them at a board assembly and took them for all the things:
https://pluralistic.web/2025/12/13/uncle-sucker/#willing-marks
The thesis that “it might’t be nonsense if there’s some huge cash at stake” is the core of so many of those swindles. It is the funding idea that holds that after a pile of shit will get sufficiently big, there have to be a pony underneath it someplace.
There is a Bugs Bunny bit that I discover myself returning to on this period of the large con: it is a gag from 1954’s “Bugs and Thugs”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugs_and_Thugs
Bugs has been kidnapped by gangsters, who’ve come to belief him. He tips them into pondering that the police are coming and he urges them to cover within the oven whereas he sends the cops away. Then, Bugs performs a one-rabbit present wherein he performs each the cop (with a broad Irish accent) and himself:
Bugs (cop voice): All proper, open up! That is the police! [banging] All proper, the place’s Rocky, the place’s he hiding?
Bugs (regular voice): He isn’t on this range.
Bugs (cop): Oh-ho, he is hidin’ in that range, eh?
Bugs (regular): Now look, would I activate this fuel if my buddy Rocky was in there?
Bugs (cop): You would possibly, rabbit, you would possibly.
Bugs (regular) Would I throw a lighted match in there if my buddy was in there? [Massive explosion]
Bugs (cop): Nicely, all proper, rabbit, you’ve got satisfied me. I am going to search for Rocky within the metropolis.
We preserve dwelling by actual world variations of this:
“Would I, Mark Zuckerberg, change my firm’s title to ‘Meta’ if I wasn’t severe about this?”
“Oh, you would possibly, Zuck, you would possibly.”
“OK, however would I spend $61b on the metaverse if I wasn’t severe about this?”
“All proper, Zuck, you’ve got satisfied me. I will not promote my Fb (oops, I imply ‘Meta’!) shares.”
However neither Zuck nor Musk nor Trump has the attraction of Bugs Bunny. At a sure level we’re all going to have a look at one another and say, “It was all bullshit, wasn’t it?”
#25yrsago TVA bans SETI@Dwelling https://net.archive.org/net/20010625113535/https://www.knoxnews.com/archives/browserecent/06162001/archives/31399.shtml
#25yrsago Scott McCloud on microtransactions and Napster https://net.archive.org/net/20010708054658/http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst/icst-6/icst-6.html
#20yrsago Wardialling telemarketers locate Homeland Safety batphones https://net.archive.org/net/20060630104202/https://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060616/NEWS/606160329/1006
#20yrsago NAB: Proof is irrelevant to copyright treaties https://net.archive.org/net/20060622174657/https://drn.okfn.org/node/133#comment-246#comment-246
#20yrsago LA Occasions censors newsroom Web feed https://net.archive.org/net/20060702051259/http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/06/protecting_reporters_from.html
#20yrsago Matt Stone’s memo to MPAA censors https://net.archive.org/net/20060619220447/https://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2006/06/preparing_for_t.html
#20yrsago Stonehenge pocket-watch predicts solstices https://net.archive.org/net/20060627053213/http://www.thinkgeek.com/devices/watches/7d2b/
#15yrsago Imply issues authors say about one another https://www.flavorwire.com/188138/the-30-harshest-author-on-author-insults-in-history
#15yrsago Glasses with 720p HD video digicam https://www.kickstarter.com/initiatives/zioneyez/eyeztm-by-zioneyez-hd-video-recording-glasses-for
#15yrsago ICANN votes to roll out 400-800 new generic top-level domains https://www.flickr.com/photographs/wseltzer/5852419280/
#10yrsago W3C DRM working group chairman vetoes work on defending safety researchers and competitors https://lwn.web/Articles/691108/
#10yrsago Ideas and Prayers: a Congressional mass-shooting simulator https://thoughtsandprayersthegame.com/
#5yrsago The doctrine of dynastic wealth https://pluralistic.web/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste
#5yrsago The gig financial system’s dark-money, astroturf “neighborhood teams” https://pluralistic.web/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#astroturf
#1yrago Your Meta AI prompts are in a stay, public feed https://pluralistic.web/2025/06/19/privacy-breach-by-design/#bringing-home-the-beacon
LA: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with Brian Service provider (Skylight Books), Jun 19https://www.skylightbooks.com/occasion/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant
Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler’s), Jun 21https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026
Toronto: The Sovereignty Debate (IAB Canada’s State of the Nation), Jun 23https://iabcanada.com/state-of-the-nation-2026
Toronto: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI (Osler Data/Sort Books), Jun 23https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-launch-and-talk-tickets-1991501299998
NYC: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html
Philadelphia: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Membership/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-event-tickets-1990110326559
Chicago: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26https://exileinbookville.com/occasions/50628
London: Loafer Pageant, Jul 11https://www.loafer.co.uk/competition/
Edinburgh Worldwide E book Pageant with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/occasions/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
Sydney: The Pageant of Harmful Concepts, Aug 23-24https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/cory-doctorow/
Melbourne: Enshittification on the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification
Brighton: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/
London: The Reverse Centaur’s Information to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle’s Picadilly), Sep 9https://www.foyles.co.uk/occasions/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn
South Bend: An Night With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6https://franco.nd.edu/occasions/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
“Canny Valley”: A restricted version assortment of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.web/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
“Enshittification: Why Every thing Out of the blue Obtained Worse and What to Do About It,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
“Picks and Shovels”: a sequel to “Pink Staff Blues,” concerning the heroic period of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
“The Bezzle”: a sequel to “Pink Staff Blues,” about prison-tech and different grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
“The Misplaced Trigger:” a solarpunk novel of hope within the local weather emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
“The Web Con”: A nonfiction e-book about interoperability and Massive Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at E book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/e-book/9781804291245).
“Pink Staff Blues”: “A grabby, compulsive thriller that may depart you understanding extra about how the world works than you probably did earlier than.” Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
“Chokepoint Capitalism: The right way to Beat Massive Tech, Tame Massive Content material, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin”, on how you can unrig the markets for inventive labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
“The Reverse-Centaur’s Information to AI,” a brief e-book about being a greater AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)
“Enshittification, Why Every thing Out of the blue Obtained Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
“The Publish-American Web,” a geopolitical sequel of types to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
“Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel tailored from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
“The Memex Methodology,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
At present’s high sources:
Presently writing: “The Publish-American Web,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” concerning the higher world the remainder of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft accomplished. Submitted to editor.
“The Reverse Centaur’s Information to AI,” a brief e-book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an efficient AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
“The Publish-American Web,” a brief e-book about web coverage within the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother brief story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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