yuppie11975, I think you made some good points, and I did think some of those things to myself. I don't like to discuss moderation since it's not really my place and I feel that a) it's hard to leave bias at the doorstep and b) moderation (from my experience of it) always ends up being subjective one way or another, though these reasons are probably why sites usually have multiple active moderators. But that's why I haven't said much about what happened anyway. I communicated with MoonageDaydream with PMs but that was about as far as I went with anything, I think.
I think this is going to become a little generalised rant of my own...
To be honest, it didn't bother me too much that my post got moved, since I did feel I was kind of off-topic anyway. Though, I don't feel I was particularly disruptive to the thread/discussion, as others did continue on about the thread anyway; but I could have just said the same thing via PM, I guess I just wanted to share my thoughts openly. I did feel the move was unnecessary, people wishing to continue discussing the thread could easily do so whilst ignoring the posts that ended up being moved anyway.
Although I had little interest to begin with in the original topic that was posted by DanielLove, you did provide some perspective and context with your digging. People do all sorts of things for money. It's our moral standpoints that determine whether we do such things or not, I think. I have had plenty of ideas over the years where I could take advantage of certain situations or people, but did I go through with those ideas? No, because I wouldn't like them being done to me and I don't like the thought that someone might fall for such things. The irony to me seems to be that there's a lot of work involved in making some of these things work, versus just doing some hard labour, but I guess the point of such things is that it's largely passive over a long-term after the initial effort was put into it.
On the other hand, people also need to really think and do discriminating research for themselves a lot more too, this is not a problem exclusive to things like this. There is mis-information, of course, but from my point of view, people seem obsessed with making quick decisions and so sometimes might not be looking hard enough to find out more about a certain topic.
I can't tell you how many times over the last few years have I heard stories on the radio about how someone got scammed by this or that, in many cases basically because they got panicked or hyped into something and then followed through into a scam, which from the beginning you could tell it was obvious it was a scam... I don't think these people lacked the intelligence to avoid these scams, but they were probably vulnerable in an emotional sense. And that's a lot of it, honestly, in some cases scams are quite complex and I might have had difficulty telling straight away if it was a scam were I in their position; some people are at vulnerable points in their lives and fall for things because they couldn't figure it out in time, I suppose.
I have fallen for scams, mostly when I was younger, though I've been able to identify many from a distance too. I've also basically been "politely" robbed a couple of times by people I was actually acquainted with, but I'd still rather that than being threatened at knife-point, as for instance one of my siblings was a few times. I wish such things didn't have to happen either way but the difference between being robbed like that and being scammed like I was, is that I knew some of these people who robbed me, I knew they lived in quite poor conditions ("illegal housing", for one thing). That doesn't make stealing ethically correct, but at least I could sympathise with them.
The scammers? No idea where they were from, who they were, etc. Scammers can now even scam you from miles away and you won't have any inkling to their personal situations, so I feel completely disconnected from them as human beings. They can often be rude too and you can end up feeling powerless to do anything, when actually you just really want to hit them on the head or something... For me, it makes me end up feeling vengeful, which I don't like but other than accepting the situation, doesn't seem like there's much else to feel. It's a strange world we live in, very unfortunately at times.
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