Spring 2004

During my first two years of college I had a friend named "Robotrip". He was a fucking weird kid. He wouldn't leave his dorm without a tour t-shirt from Chimaira, Lamb of God, or whatever death metal band was striking his fancy at the time. He consumed large quantities of very unusual drugs (ex. he would take bottles of Robitussin and straight up chug them for hallucinogenic effects, hence his nickname). He would eventually meet his girlfriend at a Gwar concert. Need I say more?

I don't know what it is about me, but I am a social lightning rod for characters like this. Robotrip approached me in the cafeteria one day, and we bonded over being two of the only freshmen in our massive dorm complex who had any difficulty getting laid. Thus we became friends.

Quickly, he weirded out all my other friends at school, all my friends from home, and even my parents when he visited me at home and showed up at my house completely stoned. My mom warned me that he seemed like a shady individual and that I should stay completely away from him or anyone he knew. At 19, I was still at the peak of my rebellious nature so I was just like "Fuck what you think, this kid is my friend" But looking back on it now, I should have heeded those words.

In the early spring of 2004, I got a very random call from Robotrip: "Dude, I just figured out a way to make a huge amount of money. You're gonna have to trust me on this. Tell me you're in."

It kind of sounded like his words were fabricated, and almost like he was reading from a script, but given that I was a starved-for-parental funds college student, and I was feeling sympathy for Robotrip at the time (he had just lost his academic scholarship, a point he had hammered home constantly over the phone), I agreed anyway to check out whatever business venture or thing he was doing at the time.

So one Thursday night in late March, I got into a car with Robotrip, a black man who claimed to be a friend of Robotrip's, and two Asian strangers. Robo had not told me who these people were, where exactly we were going, or what this business even was. Everyone was dressed in a suit and tie except for me. Even Robotrip. He even had cut off all his hair and looked clean-shaven, a shocking new look.

I politely asked where the hell we were going. The Asian stranger lady introduced herself as "Suzy Lee" and told me we were going to "a hotel meeting, to meet a man that will change your life"

If I had any sense at all, I would have fucking bolted. I would have jumped out of the car and told Robotrip to have a nice life. But being polite, and I guess still having sympathy for Robotrip, I stayed in the car, and drove 2 hours to a shithole Holiday Inn somewhere in Massachusetts.

When we arrived, there were hundreds more people in suits and ties, most of them Asian. And those who weren't Asian were either Black, Hispanic, or some other minority. I was one of only like 10 white people in the room. This should have been a screaming red flag. They were all hugging each other, shaking each other's hands and whatnot. Another thing I noticed was that they were all calling each other Mr. or Mrs. (Mr. James Ward, Mrs. Sara Lee, etc). Another red flag.

If I had any sense at all, at this point I would have bolted; hitch-hiking it back to Boston and telling Robotrip to have a nice life, thus saving my dignity while I still could. But oblivious to all the warning signs, I stood dumbfounded while all this unfolded. Then, the doors to the hotel ballroom opened, and all these people literally sprinted in to get seats. Robotrip dragged me in as he ran.

Once in the ballroom, some Asian man came up to the stage and began to give a multimedia presentation, all to raucous cheering and applause from the people in suits. It was set up like a business seminar but had the energy and feel of a rap concert- with loud cheering and hip-hop music greeting the speaker, and random applause during various points of the speeches. Then, the lights dimmed and a movie with many colors and lights came on the screen, accentuated with large dollar bill signs, happy families, and the like. Finally, the company's logo appeared on the screen. In big, bold letters, IXC!! The applause in the room was deafening.

People in America today think it's so hard to fathom what it was like for the Germans to be brainwashed by Hitler into killing millions of Jews. But now, even as a Jew, I know first-hand. It's all about power of the mind, brainwashing techniques, and propoganda. A flashy multimedia presentation with hypnotic lights and colors, combined with a large cheering throng, can get a man to go deep into the psyche and do the unthinkable. In this case, it made me join IXC, a company I never knew even existed until 30 minutes ago. The presentation left me in such a daze that I was totally blinded the blaring red warning signs all around me.

I was in a state of shock, like a crack-addled monkey. And as soon as it was over, within 10 seconds there was a clipboard on my lap and Robotrip and his black friend, "Tonio", getting right in my face asking me to sign something. Blindly, I gave my John Hancock, which prompted Robotrip to stand on a chair and scream "We Have A New Member!" at the top of his lungs, to the applause of everyone around. Little did I know, but I had just committed social suicide.

How my position in this company would work is similar to how any referral-based website works. If I recruited my own friends, and got them to successfully sign up to join- like Robotrip had done with me, I would be getting "lots of dough". The exact amount of money was never specified in the meeting, but yeah, because everyone around me was cheering I could tell that it was a lot. Thousands? Millions maybe? Except there's a catch. With most websites, you don't have to pay to sign up. Whereas with this company, not only do they possess your soul upon signing a contract, but they take total control over your wallet, credit cards, and all financial resources you have. These meetings cost money.

Immediately after the meeting ended, I was informed of two more hotel meetings the same weekend, each one of which I would be escorted to from the steps of my dorm. And the weekend after that, same thing, and so on and so on. Parties, events, Mcdonalds meetings (another red flag that I missed, for what "company" is dumb enough to have "business meetings" in a fucking Mcdonalds?), listening to hours upon hours of the Asian "business leaders" talking about success and being rich and so on, lots of cheering for these prophet-like leaders. This pretty much made up the rest of my semester.

By signing that paper, I agreed to giving them hundreds of dollars of my parents' hard-earned cash, and spending hours and hours of listening to this company's utterly irrelevant bullshit- which had been subliminally enforced into their empty heads through the brainwashing process. They had learned to recite sentences and cheer wildly on cue at various points during these presentations, to give the illusion of power, money, and grandeur.

My friend Sportskid, who I was living with at the time, described it to me as such: "You have joined a cult. (IXC) is gonna feed you Cool-Aid, make you bow down to the Mothership, and take your life." This is how it worked. I had to randomly call and harass all of my friends to get them to "sign up" for a nonexistent product and get them to join this "new wave" of computer technology, or some such bullshit. In return for calling and harassing my friends, I got hugs, love, and respect from Robotrip, Suzy, Tonio, and all those other brainwashed idiots, telling me memorized jargon like I was "part of their family" and they thought I was a "very wise, inspirational, and passionate man."

Then I got a call from my dad. He found 450 dollars taken off my credit card, and had no idea why I had spent it. I lied and lied, but there was no way I could bullshit around it. I had been scammed. It had been two months, and I had not gotten one cent in return. This was my breaking point. This company is what's known in the business world as a pyramid scheme. The idiots on top of the company were getting every cent of my cash by brainwashing all those idiots to cheer and brainwash me to open up my wallet to them as well, therefore stealing my money.

I continued to go to these hotel meetings for the rest of the semester, and then ended my relationship with this bullshit scam company the best way I knew how. They had lied to me, so I lied to them, told them that I was totally committed and I was gonna continue to be part of their team, and went along with their bullshit. Then, after I went back home for the summer, I never called them again. Or answered their calls. I got about 10 missed calls a day from Robotrip, 10 from Tonio, another 5 from Suzy, and so forth.

But Robotrip could be dead right now for all I care, overdosed on pills and Robotussin after realizing every cent is gone from his accounts and he had wasted the last 5 years of his life, just like I wasted almost that whole fucking semester. I changed my phone number, changed my credit card and everything, and lived the last 2 years of school like this incident had never happened. IXC may have taken my money, but they will never take my pride.

So kids, the moral of this story is: NEVER trust a man who trips on Robitussin.