Man, I just listened to that episode, those guys are harsh! Serious assholes. Still don’t feel much sympathy for the scammer though.
Neither do I, but that’s not the same as taking steps against him the way those guys did.
No, I support him in spite of that. I’d rather have a much more vindictive candidate who could be relied on to put some key Bush Admin figures behind bars.
Bloody hell. Another politics thread.
sorry.
Scam baiting- good or evil?
I’ve got no problem with it - they deserve what they get.
BTW, here’s one of my favorite sites:
I say they deserve whatever they get. If they get lead into a war zone and killed they won’t be able to scam anyone else again. Since law enforcement has no effective way to deal with them, what other alternatives are there? Let them keep scamming? As far as their relatives suffering, they are participating in a scam, they are as guilty as the scammer.
Yeah, I quit reading that story after about a page. It wasn’t even the scam itself, it was all the posters encouraging it. The African guy who was getting strung along was a thief, but the storytellers and the eggers-on didn’t seem to regard him as human to start with. It was pretty sadistic.
The slippery slope argument was the first one I learned in high school debate club - actually, it was the only one I learned there; everything else I know about technical argument I learned on this board. Anyway: you can make a slippery slope argument out of almost any scenario because almost any principle is bad if it’s taken to unreasonable extremes.
You said we’re supposed to struggle against the desire for vengeance, but in point of fact I think we repress it and bury it under euphemisms much more than we struggle against it. In small doses that are fairly harmless, might it not be different than bombing somebody? Could it be a reasonable outlet in some cases? We haven’t completely evolved past it, if such a thing is possible, and one of my favorite authors once wrote something that might actually be true here - “If there were more bloody noses, there’d be fewer wars.”
The problem is, studies don’t bear this out. Studies don’t show that venting anger makes people less angry. Studies show that venting anger makes you angrier, or at least that’s what I learned in psych when I majored in it and graduated in 1995. Maybe there’s been more recent work contradicting that. But my understanding is that the best way to stop being angry is to let it go. And that’s what I’ve tried to learn to do. It’s not easy. But I try.
I agree, itty bitty bits of vengeance are probably harmless. But where do you draw the line? Hence the slippery slope. I don’t know the answers. I’m trying not to be a prig on this issue, but I’m not succeeding well. But this is important. It’s one of the real keys to civilization, and I’ve watched it slide increasingly out of our grasp during my lifetime, as vengeance has been increasingly glorified, and we have come closer and closer to becoming those whom we profess to hate.
And we seem blind to it. Even the people in this thread, the Dopers who consider ourselves smarter than the average bear, and of those, the people in GD, who have the courage or stupidity to post here, can’t see that the very qualities we consider barbaric include the unbridled thirst for and willingness to take revenge. Or don’t care. And I don’t know which is worse.
However, if it makes you feel better, by all means go and punch him in the nose. Just don’t disable him, and make damned sure you don’t get hurt yourself (he probably has friends - do you, in Nigeria?). How were you going to pay for this? Revenge starts getting expense. Bet that gets you even more pissed off at the guy.
And that may be true. I’ve always been interested in psychology but I didn’t study it in school beyond one class, or maybe two. I do think I’ve learned a little by observation. I think there’s a fine line between venting properly and stewing in your own anger. For me, venting (which usually means envisioning myself tearing the person a new one) is almost always enough.
That’s exactly what I’m saying: everything is a bad idea if you don’t know where to draw the line. Revenge is an exceptionally slippery slope, though. I’d be stupid if I didn’t admit that. Proportionality is the key to allowable revenge and it’s extremely hard to get people to agree on what a proportional response is.
You’ve been around here as long as I have, more or less, so I’m sure you’ve seen this kind of thing on the board before. I’m also sure you know the difference between what people will say online and what they’ll actually do.
I didn’t say I’d punch anybody myself. It’s not my thing. But the theory might not be such a terrible one, that’s all. Not every fight ends up in conquest or in an endless cycle.
I’m pretty sure that Aragorn chopped heads off Orcs, that Samwise stabbed a spider, and that Gandalf quenched a Balrog (very painful I hear).
I’m of the opinion that the story was much more interesting because these things happened.
Every one of them was self-defense. There is a difference.
A very very small number of baits involves sending boobs into warzones.
In my view, baits go too far when the punishment they deliver exceeds that of a reasonably working judicial system. A Safari to Darfur is a plausible example, but there are very few others.
(Baits should also try not to punish innocent third parties, but I understand that this guideline is generally acknowledged within the baiting community.)
If the legal system realistically encompassed internet criminals, you would have a point. But this is a case where vigilantism is truly filling a vacuum.
I’ll also note that in general baiters happily work with law enforcement, when they can.
The slippery slope argument is handled by my criteria: make the punishment milder than, say, 3 years in prison. That still permits a wide span of abuse, though not a death sentence.
…also fake charity scams.
OK, this seems reasonable. My issues are actually being considered here, and you put your finger on the word I was forgetting: vigilantism.
Ok Oy!, but realize that you’ve just signed off on 99.9%+ of all scambaits. I’ll also note that safaris to war zones have been controversial within the baiting community (I oppose) - but this is only the 2nd example that I know of.
For reference, here’s a discussion of the ethics of scambaiting. Though it doesn’t cover the war zone issue, it addresses many common concerns.
Well, I was more concerned about vigilantism in general, rather than scam-baiting in particular. As you pointed out, there is minimal legal recourse when dealing with i-scammers, and the baiters are willing to work with law-enforcement when possible. War zone safaris are beyond the pale as far as I’m concerned.
What I’ve really hated is the glorification of vigilantism and vengeance in pop culture, particularly movies and TV, that has taken place during my life time, just as we’ ve seen some of the worst events of our history as a world take place precisely for those same reasons, and despised the people doing them as barbarians. There’s been such a disconnect there. I think the people who have the most contempt for the “rag-heads” are the ones who would be the most likely to build and fire missiles if they were in a situation like the Palestinians. I, who have little sympathy for the Palestinians, but can understand their viewpoint, despise the vigilante movies. It makes no sense to me.
I am not a pacifist. There are times when fighting is required, and in such times, I would not ask others to get their hands dirty while refusing myself. (Well, actually I would, but only because I’m a bumbling incompetent who would simply get myself killed in the field; I’d do much more good programming a computer or helping with logistics or other organizational matters.) But while I’m not immune to the siren song of sweet revenge, I do try to resist it. It’s contrary to everything that makes a society work, and to give in to it is to open yourself up to the possibility that the next time you will go further.
In the case of scam-baiting, if you’re thinking about it carefully, weighing the morality of it, and trying to work with law-enforcement, I’d say go to town. It’s best to discourage these people and make them pay something of what the legal system can not. It’s a hole in the legal system, and until it’s patched, that’s as good a way as any. But few of us are qualified to serve as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner at once, though all of us believe we are at various times in our lives.
I read through the first 30+ pages of the scambait yesterday before listening to the radio show. There are a few points I want to make:
1- Adamu thinks he’s going to defraud a church of $200k.
2- Chad is not Darfur. Adamu travels from Nigeria to Chad, no further. He never steps a foot into Sudan.
3- Adamu lies and exaggerates wildly all the time. There is really no way to know what’s really going on with him.
4-The older baiters seem derive satisfaction from the contrast between Adamu’s tribulations and their comfortable lives. I thought it was smallminded and petty.
5-Many of the people commenting are basically building themselves a naive fantasy about how bad Adamu is having it. They have erroneous views on Africa, africans and social norms over there. The messages they kept writing in Arabic or French (I can read both), thinking they would have an effect, were either illegible or utterly useless. I shook my head sadly many times at the cultural gap.
6-It is disturbing to see how many people demonize Adamu and his brother. There is an undercurrent of racism fueling some of the hatred.
7-The first chat session is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever read.
Which were those messages, I am curious.
I agree the relatives aren’t innocent third parties they are active participants in advancing the scam for a share of the loot.
Also there seems to be a bit of a logic jump that we are meant to accept unquestioningly in that because the criminals are perpetuating a scam then they must otherwise be harmless pacifists who wouldnt hurt a fly and are only forced to do this so as to be able to buy their poor sick old granny a crust of bread.(Though why they need thousands of dollars to do this isn’t explained)
I haven’t been to Nigeria so I could well have outdated information but friends of mine who HAVE been there tell me that when they were there robberies committed by very heavily armed men for relatively small amounts were quite common as were murders for minor reasons.
Criminals there DONT tend to specialise,they’ll commit any variety of crime that is within their ability,frequenting a cyber cafe doesn’t mean you dont have an AK47 and a machete and are more then happy to use them on people.
Maybe this particular part of West Africa has had a major cultural turnaround as regards crime is concerned maybe it hasn’t(That said I haven’t noticed this over the years in any of the parts of Africa that I have been to)
As to the victims old people and dementia sufferers aren’t the brightest sparks intellectually(I agree that many of the victims may be just greedy and stupid)but does that mean that they deserve to be cheated out of their money?
Finally I am surprised that surveys apparently show that getting revenge on someone who has deliberately done you harm just makes you more angry.
I would have thought that it would have given you satisfaction and the opposite would make you fester even more so.
Personally,to use an extreme example,if someone deliberatly killed or seriously harmed achild in my family I’d want revenge,not justice,revenge.
Maybe that makes me a wicked person,or maybe it just means that I’m a little bit more honest to myself then those who express good intentions when the event is still hypothetical.