The internet lets us be whoever we want to be. Most of us choose to be ourselves, or the slightly annoyed versions of ourselves, but we maintain our inner goodness and judge others by our own moral compass. That is why so many people are caught out by emails and websites that promise the world and then proceed to rip off good people who don’t have money to waste.
We expect people to be just like us
Some times it is obvious that people are not like us, we can make that call immediately. On the internet though, in text, it is hard to make that judgement call without some investigation. We give many people the benefit of the doubt because we are good people, and that is what good people do.
It is a difficult thing to chose what to do when someone you thought was just like you, turns out to be something completely different and not in a good way. In my experience, the best road to take is to cut off contact with that person and let them be. If they are dangerous and you want to warn the world then there is the price to pay as the whistle-blower and you need to be aware and prepared to pay that if you want to go ahead.
So saying that, any conspiracy of silence is unacceptable to me (and to others as we have seen in offline events regarding crimes against children) and the price I have paid in lost productive hours investigating the events that led to this post are more than justified by the thought that innocent, well-meaning people, will not be falling for the facade that had been created to encourage them to part with their money.
It all started with one headline that was too good to be true. Make sure you do your due diligence before committing to anything that requires any kind of investment from you.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I’ve watched this from the sidelines within interest. A commendable job done. I’m glad you persevered and saw this through.
komadori´s last blog ..Unplanned
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I do tend to expect people to be just like me online, and when I find that they really are not, I get more surprised than I should get. It is so easy to scam people online, and it is difficult for me to know who I can trust and who I can’t trust. I guess we are all responsible for our own gullible mistakes.
December 24th, 2009 at 4:52 am
I think developing a healthy skepticism is not a bad thing, taking some responsibility for doing some basic research will probably wipe out 90% of the scammer’s efforts.
December 24th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Thanks Komadori. It’s been a long couple of months, especially when I had believed the whole thing was a closed case when I got the SWBN site put back up.
December 26th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
This a particular approach towards other people where we can not imagine of them as being different from our expectations. That is not the true way you behave anybody in this world. Being broad in thinking may change your aptitude.
December 31st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I read what happened to you and my heart went out to you. I am so glad to see it is resolved and I hope 2010 will be a better, brighter year for you. We really do need to love people and use things and not the other way around.
Be encouraged! You have lots of people that respect and appreciate you.
Godbless!
Chris Bloor
Chris Bloor´s last blog ..Article Creation On Steroids
January 11th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
I saw only the other side of it, and the aftermath that quickly revealed the whole story. I had suspicions. The nature of that product were obvious from the start. I emailed him privately, because I had greatly enjoyed the themes put out by that site. But I failed to get a response.
The problem I have with it now is that even though he has posted an apology, he continues to peddle the product. And given a long enough time frame, it will fade into the background noise created by the flood of content his new army of guest posters are putting out.
So inevitably, new visitors will arrive with no clue as to the nature of his product or what had previously transpired, and have to learn all over again.
Such a disappointment.
January 13th, 2010 at 1:10 am
Guess I’ll have to eat crow. Looks like the swindler in question removed his product from sale. Congratulations on your victory and thank you for all you (and others) did to make this happen.
January 13th, 2010 at 1:46 am
Thanks Dan. I hope that this will serve as encouragement for those people out there that see injustice being done and choose to do nothing because it may affect themselves financially. The product was mostly instruction on how to violate or circumvent Tiwtter TOS and newbies paying cash for that would have seen their accounts slowly tracked down and banned.
There are still a few things to clean up. Tracy Coenen is still to remove the blog post she made about the Immediate Edge as it directly quotes one of Ashley Morgan’s fake accounts as proof that there is something wrong with the Immediate Edge program. I am all for opinion, good or negative, as long as it is based on reality.
Also that if “someone” chooses to pick up the product that it isn’t another fake Ashley Morgan account, and that the person is well aware they will need to change the product to something that is above board and does not blatantly lie about its contents.
It’s a shame because as i said to Ashley way back at the time of my review, he could do so much better. The effort it has taken him to create a fake community, could have built a real community. Build a good enough product and they will come.
The other shame is that the Upstartblogger.com site itself has gone from a respected free template site, to something with no value at all. We now know that many of the comments since Ashley started were fake, and that the various “spats” he has had with people have been manufactured garbage, the same as what he attempted to do to myself and my business partners at the SWBN. Hence the blog title, he played with fire one too many times.
I do hope you weren’t burnt too Dan, there are good people out there.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Nope. Not burned. I have a stubborn streak when it comes to trusting supposed experts. I vet and vet and vet… then I vet some more. That has kept my arse out of the fire so far.
I am very suspicious of all these supposed guest bloggers he has recruited. The first post on the main replacement’s personal blog is an endorsement of the much reviled product. Another shill, perhaps?
January 13th, 2010 at 10:00 am
It is very much obvious that at least of the two guest posters are actually Ashley Morgan. He cannot help himself with his naming conventions.
January 21st, 2010 at 6:27 am
Well, due diligence is the most important step before investing anywhere.
@ emma … online scams are very common so nobody should be surprised if they ripped you off because you fell for an inviting headline saying ” GET RICH IN 6 MONTHS” .. And you are right, we all are responsible for gullible mistakes.