Hi Ladies,
I'm new! Sorry if this post is too long! I'm a writer on the side, and being concise is something I'm still working on haha!
Although I'm a newbie to you all, I've been following the older threads for a few weeks now! After reading and discovering everything, I'm embarrassed to admit that I actually was one of the women that bought the courses. First, I want to thank you all for your honesty and detective work! The things I've seen here are really eye-opening (and entertaining).
I know it's been said before on here, but the only not positive thing that worries me is the identities of those girls not being blurred out on the shared posts. I know some of you are saying, "well if they're stupid enough to buy it, they deserve to be exposed" etc, or perhaps you think all the girls are the same type, so I really wanted to comment just to give you an idea of what can make a different type of woman buy that course. (Also wanted to add that I feel like when the SOA women see names posted publicly here, it's more likely for them to see Anna as an angel and they won't even get to the point of reading the things about her on here to discover the truth, so I feel like if we post while protecting the identities, it would help get the message across more).
To start with, Anna has A LOT of followers, and not all are African or SE Asian. She has many Western Europeans, many North Americans, and lots of Australians. She has 750K followers on youtube, ~250K on insta, 32K in the free lounge and ~2K in the SOA group. With all these followers, I can truly say not all of them are the less attractive, socially awkward types. There are many like the gorgeous Jamaican one AB interviewed who started the clothing brand (what was her name?), and many other well-dressed, well educated, and genuinely entrepreneurial women. Of course, there are also the sugar baby types, who I think followed her under the old branding (which I didn't know about until later), and the nerdy/socially confused types (but some of them do seem sweet! I think they just need exposure/guidance). I've noticed this last type does actually post more, although all types of women comment and help each other, which I do enjoy seeing. Of course, I won't lie, I am completely mortified and cringe when there are the women who blindly defend her, or are obsessive and seem to worship her (although I would still hate for their private life/pics/names to be so public).
Anyway, so to get to my case which will hopefully help in understanding a different perspective of how Anna has been so successful recently.
I actually grew up in an "affluent" international city where I went to a small British private school, and I currently live in a different affluent international city in a different country. I come from an old-money family on my mom's side, and though my dad's side of the family is highly educated and financially comfortable, I suppose they don't count as old money like my mother's. But don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not running around with Rothschilds, nor is my family the type with a $10 million yacht or anything. I'm tri-lingual (once upon a time this was quad-lingual, but adulting has taken so many skills from me!), I play the piano, I dance ballroom and latin dance (salsa & bachata, way before I discovered Anna lol), I've written a novel which I'm in the process of querying to agents, and I'm in a top tech company. On top of that, I'm fairly attractive--although I admit I don't have the look of/not on the level of those Sugar Baby Eastern European IG girls)--and I certainly do not have a hard time with men (although in the past I've sadly fallen for the wrong type and I've been too giving/trusting, which I think is partly what led here). Pre-covid I was very active socially in my city and went out often. I'm in my mid twenties.
Why am I saying all of this? Because I wanted to really show that not all the girls in the group are the nerdy type, the desperate type, the uneducated type, the poor-background type etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Anna at all, I think her scamming is horrible and I feel like an idiot for buying into it, and I'm so glad you are all here spreading the message. But looking back, I can see what led to her success, and what led allll the many other women to buy the courses.
So anyway, what makes the more social, attractive, and somewhat intelligent girls buy the course?
I think it's a combo of 1) going through a hard phase in life 2) being naive, or not researching 3) feeling like they need motivation/a push/ to be reminded of their goals 4) being pulled in by the whole male/female dynamic she talks about 5) Anna B's incredibly good marketing skills (they got me and that was my degree, I even knew what she was doing!), and the biggest; 6) the timing of the course release!
So then what made someone like me susceptible? The biggest factor for me (and I think someone mentioned it as a theory before) is that Anna launched her second during the beginning chunk of the COVID-19 pandemic. Right before she announced it, she also used a common tactic: the "the course is going offline, this is your last chance" tactic. The COVID factor is massive. At the time, I even knew she was using a sneaky marketing tactic (and I lost respect for her). But mindset wise, I was having SUCH a hard time with the pandemic, anything that felt like it would help keep me emotionally afloat was worth it (I hadn't started seeing a therapist then to cope emotionally).
The city where I live was and is badly affected by the pandemic. I'm so far from my family, most of my friends had left the big city during COVID, I was going through a ROUGH breakup that did a number on me. I felt like the hard time I was having coping with the pandemic was pushing me back to this toxic relationship--where I felt like I behaved so naively--to cope with the loneliness. I couldn't go back to my family because of border closures. I found Anna Bey on youtube at first, and like many people said here, she does in fact produce most of her videos very well. I did disagree with some stuff, but overall, yeah, I won't lie I liked watching them a lot and I began to like her! I feel like with what I was going through, somehow the free YT videos helped remind me to stay on track, to not lower my standards etc. I didn't google her, nor did I follow her on Insta or read the articles etc. And she often mentioned her humble and--as she called it--trashy background, so when she did or said things that were a bit eyebrow raising on the youtube vidoes, knowing her background explained it, so I didn't become suspicious yet, and I don't like to judge people's history in that sense.
Then, all of a sudden, overnight she put the old course on "last chance to buy", then only after did she announce the new course with a tiny window to buy it. DURING COVID, when so many people were isolated, the economy was struggling, there was so much uncertainty, and riots/political unrest happening in some parts of the world etc. All of these things affect people emotionally and mentally, and thinking about superficial or frivolous things, or simpler things like dating, clothes, etiquette, or self-improvement and mindset, help take you away from that.
Anyway, I had doubts even as I was buying it, and I could tell it would be overpriced, but I bought it on the last day, without time to research, and partly it was because of what I was going through and because I didn't see the other side of her on those youtube videos. Truth be told, the new course itself is not that bad content-wise (since it is a repeat of a lot of cheaper but good content), but NO, it is absolutely NOT worth $1K. I would say $250 tops (and that Elite Women Bingo is some superficial basic BS). As for the old course, I didn't really look through it well, but that was the one that had the facebook community, and although most girls are not the type I would not naturally socialize with in real life, I didn't mind that aspect as much, and I liked how it was a group of women coming together to help each other. I would say that's actually my favorite part out of everything.
Feel free to ask me anything about the types of users in the group, the course, her marketing tactics that worked etc! I'm also part Eastern Mediterranean (with some Lebanese) so I wanted to comment on my thoughts of her relationship, but this post is already way too long so I'll spare you guys for now haha!
www.picuki.com
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Ladies, this is seriously disturbing.