Keywords

MLM, Authoritarian, BITE, Rhetoric, Recruitment

Abstract

This study aims to understand how MONAT Global Corp, a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) company, utilizes rhetoric that aligns with Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. Hassan is a cult expert and cult survivor whose work primarily explains undue influence and thought control with BITE representing Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control. The MLM MONAT is a haircare brand that operates through a recruitment-and-sales-based hierarchy, in which sellers sign up and work under one another in a layered marketing structure. To meet quotas and maintain ranks, representatives will use rhetorical strategies to recruit new sellers beneath them in their ‘downline’ as they earn a commissionable rate for their participation. MONAT is one of the most popular in the Anti-MLM sphere of YouTube due to its marketing and promotion through the power of social media. MONAT’s use of recruitment strategies prompted me to apply Hassan’s dissertation as a rhetorical framework to highlight the potential dangers of MONAT’s business model. Here, I will mainly focus on MONAT’s online presence, analyzing training calls, marketing materials, websites, and social media posts. Promotional materials for the company are all masterfully infused with rhetoric to lure participants in with the promise of success, money, and time freedom, despite their end-of-year financial statements telling a different story. Here, I argue that the BITE model is applicable to MONAT’s MLM model and perhaps MLMs broadly, and that this research is important to further disrupt the harm caused by the industry.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Brenckle, Martha

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

Writing and Rhetoric

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Identifier

DP0053219

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