Blog

Vemma Involved in Silencing One of Its Harshest Critics

| Bonnie Patten

YPR Pariah, a former Vemma affiliate turned anti-Vemma blogger, who wrote under the pseudonym The Revanchist, had a clear message to share on his popular blog site – he didn’t “believe anyone should join Vemma, nor should anyone in Vemma currently stay in Vemma. The overwhelming majority of people lose out due to it being a product based pyramid scheme, and they maintain loyalty throughout their ranks through psychological bullying and cult-like worship.”

So why would a guy who actively claimed that Vemma is a scam, and more specifically a pyramid scheme that has the attributes of a cult and bullies people, shut down his site? While the details are unknown, the published reason is that The Revanchist and Vemma struck a deal.

This past month visitors to YPR Pariah’s site were greeted with the following notice:

YPR Pariah notice

Two things are interesting about this notice:

  1. The soft legal threat in the first paragraph used to try and dissuade individuals from republishing or distributing The Revanchist’s anti-Vemma posts.
  2. The fact that The Revanchist and Vemma made a deal in which The Revanchist was willing to shutter his site.

In September 2013 The Revanchist stated that his blog was “a site that specializes in taking Vemma down.” But a little under a year later it is clear that quite the opposite was true – Vemma took YPR Pariah down. But all is not lost.

UPDATE: Since the original posting of this blog, archived online editions of YPR Pariah have been removed. Luckily, we at TINA.org saved many of them.

Also, earlier this week we saw this Twitter post demonstrating that Vemma has continued to pursue its critics, this time going after Vemma Verve who uses the Twitter handle @YPRbroYPR  by threatening a lawsuit if “Bro” didn’t discontinue publication of ALL online content related to Vemma.

My fantasy would be for this case to go to court to give Vemma a chance to try and prove (because truth is always the ultimate defense to libel):

  1. 75% of Brand Partners are not going to lose money.
  2. Vemma does not engage in illegal business practices.

Bonnie Patten

Bonnie, executive director of TINA.org, is an attorney and mother of three. Her commitment to educating the public about deceptive marketing stems from her belief that education is the only…

See More Posts


You Might Be Interested In