Well, they do say you eat a peck of dirt before you die

I suspect that Multi Level Marketing (MLM) schemes have been around forever.  I'll even bet that back in the day, Ugga was going cave to cave to sign up Ogga and Glogga to push pebbles from their local stream. And that Ogga and Glogga fanned out to the caves of Klugga, Glugga, Ugga, and Trogga to get them onboard to sell more pebbles, sign up more Neanderthals, and earn swell things like a sabre-tooth tiger necklace or a musk ox cape. 

MLM's? Likely as old as dirt.

And in the case of Black Oxygen Organics, the product itself was dirt.

And it wasn't dirt cheap.

 ...four-and-a-half ounces of it, sealed in a sleek black plastic baggie and sold for $110 plus shipping. Visitors to the Black Oxygen Organics website, recently taken offline, were greeted with a pair of white hands cradling cups of dirt like an offering. “A gift from the Ground,” it reads. “Drink it. Wear it. Bathe in it.” (Source: NBC News)

And don't just drink, wear, and bathe in it for the sake of drinking, wearing, and bathing in it.  BOO, which is what the product was called, was a miracle cure-all. Happy, all-cured users:

...posted miraculous testimonials of cured diseases, weight loss, clearer skin, whiter teeth, regrown hair, reclaimed energy, expelled worms and even changes in eye color (from brown to blue)...

There were: 

 ...claims [of] many benefits and uses, including improved brain function and heart health, and ridding the body of so-called toxins that include heavy metals, pesticides and parasites.

(Does it also rid the ear of heavy metal earworms from AC/DC and Black Sabbath?) 

Anyway, it goes without saying that, with all the misinformation floating around there, anti-vaxxers and covid-skeptics glommed right on. After all, if BOO could turn your brown eyes blue, what might it do for you during a pandemic?

It also goes without saying that the BOO MLM takeoff was propelled by the Internet: Facebook groups devoted to the wonders of BOO, TikTok testimonials, Instas of folks slathering on the black stuff.

All these social media BOO-ers were upping the ante on what BOO is good for. Cure for autism? Come on down! Cancer: begone! Alzheimer's: fuggedaboutit! And it's most current breakthrough: BOO "protects against and treats Covid-19." And can detox more than heavy metals. If you're a vaccine-regretter who feels you were conned into getting the jab, you can use BOO to detox that Moderna and Pfeizer right out of your system.

Who needs Dr. Fauci and his experts/schmexperts when there are TikTok testimonials from those in the know? Who know the pandemic is a hoax, that vaccines are killers, that the number of deaths recorded is fake news. 

More people were buying BOO, and more people were selling BOO. In September, the company reported that over the past six months, monthly sales had increased from $200K to $4M. (This mirrored the timing on when social media BOOsters started in earnest.)

But success came at a price. Canadian and U.S. health regulators have cracked down on BOO in recent months, initiating recalls and product holds at the border, respectively. And just as an online army of fans powered BOO’s success, an oppositional force of online skeptics threatened to shut it down.

And then, the inevitable happened and a few weeks ago "the company announced in an email it was closing up shop for good." 

Leaving its sellers, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid scheme, eating dirt. Rather than hitting the paydirt of making tens of thousands of dollars in your first month alone, they were out the money they'd fronted for product, and weren't able to deliver the goods to the folks they'd swept in as customers and/or resellers.

No surprise here - other than to those who got swept in:

More than 99 percent of MLM sellers lose money, according to the Consumer Awareness Institute, an industry watchdog group. 

I do have a tiny bit of sympathy for those who lost a lot of money on BOO, but how is it that people in this day and age aren't aware of how MLM's work? Surely, most of the easily duped would have been duped already.

Just guess it's true that you're going eat a peck of dirt before you die.