In Prague or Budapest about '88 - hazy now as we were moving about a
lot - before the wall came down, but the "thaw" had started. McDonalds
just opened a restaurant, first in the city. Anyway there we were
looking at this enormous queue... the biggest damn queue I ever saw,
It went round the block, and the next block... like how people camp
out for black Friday but thousands and thousands of people. Each
burger was the equivalent of a few weeks wages. But nothing could stop
them, all hungry for a bite of "freedom".
Meantime porn producers and other creeps were swarming Prague and Budapest to "taste the Communism". Hard to find a woman who was in her teens or twenties at that time who wasn't curious if free market penis is as hard as post-Communist one.
> porn producers and other creeps were swarming Prague and Budapest to "taste the Communism"
A significant majority of white sex workers in Western Europe and porn actresses still tend to be from Eastern Europe—Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia.
This scam was popular in post-soviet too. Basically a very annoying salesman who reiterates on all sorts of reality bending pushes once you let them in. You may think it shouldn’t work but it does, on people whom you wouldn’t call idiots. As I understand it, it leverages the tendency to respect authority and avoid conflict, among other sales tricks.
There’s an old joke about it:
Salesman: (enters the room and dumps trash on the floor) If our vacuum cleaner can’t clean this, I will eat this trash!
Dwellers: You can start eating cause electricity is off for three days.
At the end, Lucy tries to make her money back by using the same sales techniques used on her. The vacuum cleaner doesn't work because electricity is turned off because the resident hadn't paid the power bill.
Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. Trained salesman visited home and used all dirty sales tricks and pitches. Until now I remember "don't say this vacuum is expensive, this is Mercedes of vacuum cleaners, everyone desires even a substitute of Mercedes", or "a salesman enters someone's home with an attitude that they own him the commission money". You grew up in Communism with an absolute shortage of everything and are unable to evaluate good value in market economy. Fuck this manipulative psychopats.
In novel free market and democratic ways. That was extremely bitter realization. The reward for hardships so far was a new wave of MLMs, cults, sects, scams, and whatnot.
We do still have them right here in the US-of-A but they tend to be more clever in packaging... Mary Kay, Amway [0], people working IT at state colleges known for IT but paid for a weird 'stock tip' ponzi email thing, heck I know between 2007ish-2013ish a couple close friends bought into this weird "I'm a cellular reseller" MLM thing...
[0] - Still remember when some otherwise very bright folks got wrapped up in 'Team of Destiny' which was basically Amway over the internet back in 2001-2002ish times.
