influencers are the modern day MLM

+ musings on the history of "hope labor"

I keep thinking about the Venn diagram between the woman who appears on my TikTok For You Page showing me her empties video and the girl from my high school who DMs me about her “empowering” essential oil business obviously in an MLM.

Sometime in the past decade, the circles began to overlap so completely that they're now functionally the same shape. The internet has perfected what Tupperware parties were attempting in living rooms five decades ago.

We've built entire economies around the optimization of charisma, manufactured intimacy, and the aggressive monetization of selfhood — yet one is celebrated as digital entrepreneurship revolutionizing the attention economy, and the other often maligned as predatory. But their structural similarities reveal deeper patterns about labor, aspiration, and the commodification of social relationships in late capitalism.

This examination isn't meant to vilify individuals within either system, but rather to understand the socioeconomic forces that have created twin cultures of influence and recruitment — and why both particularly target women, minorities, and those seeking economic mobility in precarious times.

Historical Parallels

Multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes have existed for decades, dating back to the mid-20th century with companies like Tupperware and Avon that pioneered the "party plan" format. MLMs originated in the 1940s with Nutrilite, which pioneered the recruitment-based commission structure that would define the industry. By the 1980s and 1990s, the model had exploded across sectors from cosmetics to kitchenware, nutrition to cleaning products, creating a multi-billion-dollar shadow economy operating through social networks rather than traditional retail. The digital revolution of the 2000s transformed MLMs yet again, allowing companies to leverage social media platforms for recruitment, training, and sales — vastly expanding their reach while maintaining the same fundamental business structure that rewards recruitment over retail sales.

These direct sales approaches capitalized on domestic social networks, primarily targeting homemakers with promises of financial independence within the confines of traditional gender roles. Their stroke of genius was creating a business model that didn't just sell plastic containers but an aspirational identity; one that acknowledged the constraints of 1950s domesticity while appearing to subvert them. Look at this woman, living within the acceptable boundaries of femininity, and yet! miracle of miracles! she's making her own money! The innovation wasn't the products but the psychological architecture: you could be a good wife and mother while achieving a carefully circumscribed version of economic agency. Revolutionary, but not too revolutionary.

When I scroll through my feeds today, I can't help but see the same mechanism wearing AirPods and drinking adaptogenic lattes. The 5AM morning routines filmed in perfect dawn light, the "productive Sunday reset" videos with their aesthetically consistent grocery hauls, the office outfit try-ons that promise corporate success through the right wide-leg pants — it's all selling the same fantasy of control and self-determination within systems designed to limit both. The TikTok aesthete doesn't just want you to buy the Stanley cup; she wants you to buy into the idea that the Stanley cup is one purchasable piece of an optimized life that you too can assemble, if only you follow the right accounts, download the right planner templates, organize your refrigerator with the right clear containers.

Both economies operate on the same fundamental exchange: visibility functions as currency, and both dangle the statistical anomaly of wild success while burying the mathematical certainty of widespread disappointment. For every MLM diamond director showing off her bonus Cadillac, there are thousands of women with garages full of unsold inventory. For every influencer monetizing her wedding into a six-figure payday while screaming "just start posting content!", there are thousands of aspiring content creators who will never break 10,000 followers.

But the true insidiousness lies in how both systems colonize the territory of human connection. The invitation to coffee with an old friend that turns into a recruitment pitch, the seemingly casual product recommendation from someone whose affection you've come to count on: both create a disorienting blur between authentic care and commercial opportunity. When every interaction becomes potential content or a sales opening, we all become marks or marketers, sometimes simultaneously. And yet we adapt to this reality with alarming ease, learning to parse whether the text from a college roommate is a genuine reconnection or the prelude to a pitch about passive income or skincare that changed her life.

The most insidious aspect of both models is how they transform ordinary social relationships into potential business opportunities. Whether it's your neighbor inviting you to a sales party or your friend's perfectly curated vacation photos featuring subtle product placement, the line between authentic connection and monetized interaction becomes increasingly blurred.