Some of you may be too young to know this. But before there was FB/Instagram/WeChat “Live”, there were Sell-a-Vision and Infomercials where glib salesmen pitched their products in 30-minute or longer TV commercials.
These people were so good that you’d feel stupid for not buying from them after watching. Luckily for me, I was poor back then. So I couldn’t fall for their tricks even if I had wanted to.
Before fake gurus were touting their Get-Rich-Quick scams on the Internet or free seminars (but subsequently selling their $3,997 “Masterclasses”), fake kungfu masters were selling their “Hit Your Opponents Without Touching Them” martial art secrets on TV infomercials.
They claimed their secrets could unlock your “chi” to defeat your opponents from afar. $399 for a 1-metre “chi”; $599 for a 3-metre “chi”; and $999 for hitting them with your “chi”, even when they’re behind a wall!
Well, I was still poor. So, once again, I couldn’t fall for their tricks. Sometimes, it’s good to be poor!
Okay, I digressed.
Did people fall for them? You bet! Otherwise, these “As Seen On TV” infomercials wouldn’t have been a billion-dollar industry. It’s a cool US$1,000,000,000 y’all!
So, all these social media “Live” shows and YouTube/FB ads you see right now are nothing but a rehash of the lucrative TV Infomercials of the 80s.
The products and lessons they’re selling now are also more or less the same as the old ones – to make your life easier or make you smarter, and maybe richer.
By right, we should be more intelligent than our parents and not fall for all these make-me-smarter or make-me-rich scams now. But some of us still do.
So, does history repeat itself?
No. History doesn’t repeat itself; man does. Man always does!
