If you have a social media account, you may have found your feed clogged with advertisements for the new ecommerce platform TEMU. The company launched in NZ in March but has only ramped up its promotions in the past week. In particular they use influencers to encourage potential customers to send their friends and family referral links. In return, the referrers are able to earn tokens, chances to enter draws, and play casino games in order to win cash. If that wasn't worrisome enough, the company has already been subject to comparisons to the low-quality products of other ecommerce platforms like WISH and SHEIN. I'm currently on a dogged quest to find out all I can about this company and, while it isn't a pyramid scheme or MLM, its operations are reminiscent of other businesses I've written about. Keep your eye open for an article on TEMU in the near future.
Until then, this issue of the NZ Skeptics Newsletter has a slightly different tone than in the past. We open with a confession from a long time member who finds a connection between secularism and national discontent - and rest assured, despite his confession there's no need for him to resign from our Society! Mark then takes another look at a particular corner of that discontent, the sovereign citizen corner, and revisits the concept of Allodial Titles and how they are just about as useful as the novelty plots you can buy in Scotland. However, Liz Lambert's letter prohibiting the practice of satanic rites in Abel Tasman Park is a sober reminder about how vulnerable people who hold extreme fears can be manipulated into bombastic schemes. Personally, I'm still on my alternative spirituality groups of New Zealand track, and bring to you the first part of my series on the Hindu-adjacent group, Adidam, and its late founder Franklin Jones/Avatar Adi Da Samraj.
Until next week, happy reading!