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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:34
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Actually, I believe they use bank account numbers largely to test your gullibility; bank transfers leave a trail which can make them nervous. No matter how stupid you are, you eventually catch on, and they need to be able to disappear.
The vast majority of the time they try to squeeze a WU payment out of you. It's the fastest way to send money worldwide and never see any of it again, ever. Try and respond to this and it'll take maybe two or three e-mails before the guy mentions an unfortunate fee needed to process forms, bribe a crooked bank worker, and so on. And when you've paid that he'll ask for another, and another, until you get sick of it. At which point he'll stop replying, sever all contact, and run away laughing.
Scam-baiting is HUGE; I've seen this played out time and time again at www.419eater.com, which is the unofficial headquarters of Nigerian-torture. These men are often made spectacularly stupid by their greed. I have seen:
*Pictures of a man "proving his sincerity" by posing naked in a bathtub full of milk with a goat.
*Another man posing naked with a bucket on his head, holding two torches, with a rock dangling from a string tied to his member. Both of these were presented as "initiation rites" of the church headed by the pastor character the baiters posed as.
*Recently, one baiter has gotten a man to pay shipping and handling fees on a transatlantic shipment of a busted washing machi--er, 26 state-of-the-art laptops. He blamed that on disgruntled employees playing pranks on him, and is currently shipping the REAL laptops to him, disguised as a broken dryer to match. Yes, they can be that stupid.
It's great fun, seeing how low a man can be dragged by his own greed.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Last Conformist
That doesn't address the argument about stupidity, tho. Getting scammed by a fake charity might be more noble than by a get-rich-quick scheme, but it's not any less stupid. |
Yes, that's an argument a lot of people use. It sounds very good if you're the "smart" one. Thing is, intelligence is relative. You too might be an idjit from somebody else's perspective. Justice is not suspended merely because the victim is an idiot in any case. Scambaiting isn't formal justice as such, but I don't see how it is specifically wrong just because the people it defends should have known better. I think you'd have to be pretty stupid to use heroin, but if some dealer is extorting sexual favors out of people he addicted I still would like to see his ass soundly whooped. The weakness, real or apparent, of scam victims, only makes the crime more reprehensible, as it means the criminal has been preying on the defenseless.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:34
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Hmm, there's no middle finger smiley here for you though.  Anyway, I'm afraid I don't see how your situation in this argument is any different from that of fundies in the other one. Essentially you say that people who disagree with the majority view of reality should be beaten down and suppressed, their ideas expunged. Well, most of us ain't commies, and like God the system has never been "proven," and in fact has inevitably failed, like fundamentalism, when taken to the ludicrous extremes demanded by literal obedience to its tenets. Let's be fair here, eh? And answer the bloody question. I normally don't like the parody post as a rhetorical technique, but more subtle arguments don't seem to be working.
And trying to irritate people is not debate, it's merely obnoxious. If your idea of a good time is to aggravate complete strangers online by scoring points off of them in the eyes of other strangers, I'm not sure that my time would not be better spent getting hammered and laughing at stupid crap. Except that booze costs money. Still, I always thought of debate-as-recreation as useful more for broadening one's mind. Being petty and snide is what we have high school for. You're a grown man, for crying out loud, a twenty-one year old shouldn't have to tell you this.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:34
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No, you merely said, "people who disagree with the OBVIOUS truth," which I took to mean the most fanatical lunatics who disagree with you coupled with all the more moderate supporters of their general ideas, many of whom are not at all literalist but who can be associated with the loonies by virtue of similar beliefs. Thing is, if you look at "overall damage" in trends, the overall effect of trying to implement communism is horrific. Stalin and Mao were monsters. When people try to encourage any idea and squash dissent, the inevitable consequence is tyranny regardless of the original idea they started with. You can say "Stalin and Mao weren't really communists, they violated principles X, Y, and Z," but then there are similar arguments WRT Christianity and the abuses thereof. "Look at the plank in your own eye before removing the speck from your neighbor's," "judge not lest ye be judged," "let he who is without sin cast the first stone," the prodigal son, good samaritan, etc.
Anyway, I've managed to threadjack two separate threads and I need to clarify my position, so I'll start a new thread. Thanks for calming down and arguing again, I'm not very good at doing that when I'm PO'ed.
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06-04-2005 23:51
The internet is full of them as you can see 
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