Peter, you're overlooking something here:
"Over there on ihub they are also posting that fake boiler-room-basher confession and the one about how to spot a basher. There is a problem with liars on internet boards - they get away with it. The visual and auditory information is not there for the reader to discern the BS, as it is for a listener in an in-person conversation."
The least time-consuming version is when SI_Auric Goldfinger said, "Fish just wanna be fed." On the outward appearance, most of the msg board posters on these scam threads seem to be "widows & orphans (W&O)" who were getting hosed, which, in turn, generates sympathy into a reasonable person who knows what they're doing vis-a-vis the stock market. For reasonable people, there's always this intrinsic need "to help".
Nevertheless, the W&O sometimes got pissed off at the help, back then. They were on the down cycle of the scam and didn't realise the Barnum & Bailey things that were happening to them.... and didn't appreciate that a scam-buster was pointing out their financial foibles, and that they were going to portfolio = 0, in a few moments. A large part of that loss was greed and pride. Also, with the Internet being "new" in the go-go period of the mid-late-90s, many felt they didn't have the resources to make the best decision.
Now, it's 2006. Greed and Pride still exist 10 years later. The factual information is far more prevalent. That limits your W&O cases to a much smaller figure. In 2006, most of those claims are just playing to sympathy. The access is there, the information is available. And if, in 2006, a person can't figure out the myth of, "Microsoft was once a penny stock.", then they are fairly in line for a Darwinian ... Redistribution of Wealth.
If in 2006, you couldn't figure out, on your own, MSFT's 1986 IPO (which wasn't a penny stock), then the crook you gave you're money to, deserves it. More than you do.
As Auric said, "Fish just want to be fed." |
