
I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation - jianshen
http://fusion.net/story/191773/i-created-a-fake-business-and-fooled-thousands-of-people-into-thinking-it-was-real/
======
wanderfowl
If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case,
it's pretty important to "seed the pot" by throwing a few dollars and some
change into the case. Not because you make any money from your own "donation",
but because it shows passers-by what the arrangement is, and adds an element
of social pressure ("Somebody donated, so I should too!").

I can see this as similar. There's something pathetic about being the first
Twitter follower, or the 6th "Like", and something scary, particularly for a
local business, about vouching for something you're not really 100% sure on.
Writing the 4th 5 star review is a lot easier than the 1st one, and it's easy,
and more anonymous, to be the 45th Like.

I don't support these services, and think we need good heuristics to stop
them, but I can totally see why even an early influx of a few fake followers
and reviews would "seed the pot", and be worth _way_ more to a business's
eventual health than $20-40.

~~~
pyre
It's the same thing as posting a "tear off this phone number" page on a
bulletin board. You always tear off a tab or two when you first post it, to
make it look like people have shown interest.

~~~
collyw
That must depend on what you are advertising.

Looking for cheap appartmnts near a university, I would always go for the ones
that didn't have lots of numbers taken, as it meant there was more chance I
would be first to get it.

~~~
hienyimba
which site do u use for your search?

~~~
collyw
this was back n the days of pen and paper ads on a noticeboard

------
m12k
"Facebook says it uses pattern recognition to find and eliminate click farms
and accounts that exist solely to like pages. Since March, says Facebook, it’s
“notified 200,000 Pages that we’ve protected their accounts from fake likes.”
I love the way they put this: “Protected,” as if the companies hadn’t paid for
them."

This may be more accurate than the author of this article believes. I've read
elsewhere that precisely because FB is using pattern recognition to combat
this, the cleverest of the fake accounts spend a certain amount of their time
doing random/normal stuff to avoid detection. And this includes liking random
businesses. And one of the problems is that if a legitimate business pays FB
to promote one of their posts (so it is shown to a bigger percentage of their
followers), then the more fake followers they have, the more real money they
are wasting to advertise to bots. So if a business is actually using FB to
engage with their userbase, then the fake likes are in fact detrimental to
them.

~~~
corin_
Not just a problem if you spend money promoting to unwanted fake likes -
EdgeRank decides who sees your un-promoted content based in part upon your
average engagement levels, if half of your fans never engage because they are
fake then your stats look worse to Facebook and so your content will be seen
by a lower proportion of your real fans, even before you start spending $
promoting stuff.

~~~
sokoloff
Presumably, the snowshoe fake likes are somewhat even distributed, so there's
no reason to think legitimate business A would be preferentially punished by
fake like low engagement versus legitimate business B, right?

~~~
nitrogen
Fake likes may be randomly distributed, but real likes are not, so evenly
distributed fake likes will be more detrimental to businesses with fewer real
likes.

------
roymurdock
_Yelp was the only company that caught us, hiding both of the reviews I bought
behind their “not recommended” click wall and not counting them in F.A.K.E.’s
rating. It has software that screens out suspicious reviews, not including
them in a company’s star-rating. If they see too many of them, they will
penalize a business’s page, putting a “consumer alert” on the profile for 90
days warning visitors that they think the business is buying fake reviews.
People on Fiverr who were selling reviews would often say “No Yelp” in their
descriptions, saying it was hard to make those “stick.”_

This is why Yelp almost never disappoints. Kudos to the Yelp team for keeping
the quality control strong and providing a great service.

~~~
irq-1
I draw the exact opposite conclusion: Yelp is selling reviews and need to
control their product. Twitter and Facebook aren't selling followers or
friends, so they fight fakes... but not too hard, because that isn't their
product.

Isn't the conventional wisdom that Yelp is a protection racket?

~~~
pwillia7
Exactly my thoughts. It's becoming more and more clear that Yelp pretty much
extorts businesses to upgrade or they surface negative reviews at the top of
the page. Since a typical person will read 2-3 reviews this can be pretty
impactful.

I also recently heard it alleged that they submitted fake reviews when someone
wouldn't upgrade, but that was the first time I had seen that come up.

------
skrebbel
> _A Lincoln could get me a Facebook review, a Google review, an Amazon
> review, or, less easily, a Yelp review._

Mostly off topic, but what's "A Lincoln"?

~~~
techstrategist
A 5 USD bill.

~~~
Retra
I was thinking a penny, but that makes so much more sense.

~~~
wpietri
As far as I know, it's not something people say in real life, just a funny
turn of phrase; "a Benjamin" is the only common use of a president's name for
the denomination.

~~~
savanaly
Friendly correction that Benjamin Franklin was not a president, your point
stands though.

~~~
wpietri
Hah! Something I even knew. Thanks for the correction. I guess we need to stop
calling cash "dead presidents" [1] now.

[1]
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dead+presiden...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dead+presidents)

------
mintplant
There's a whole seedy world under the surface of Fiverr, and I'm surprised no
one seems to have done an in-depth "Inside Fiverr" piece yet. Vectorization
services that present as individuals in the US but are actually farmed out to
workshops in non-English speaking countries. Voice actors whose work samples
consist mainly of dubious get-rich-quick ads. And as this article points out,
"SEO" and "reputation building" services as far as the eye can see. (For $5,
you can have your yoga "article" featured on this woman's website, complete
with up to "three... dofollow links": [https://www.fiverr.com/maigent/post-
your-content-on-my-yoga-...](https://www.fiverr.com/maigent/post-your-content-
on-my-yoga-fitness-and-health-site))

~~~
elcct
Really, even yoga?

------
dvh
In 2004, two czech graduate created massive campain for fake hypermarket:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Dream)

~~~
silverbax88
The thing about that hoax, is that they put together a massive PR and ad
campaign, with billboards and other media ads. That's not quite the same as
doing everything for a couple hundred bucks.

------
TomGullen
A lot of this problem seems to come from Facebook/Twitter showing:

"You have 3 followers"

Perhaps it would be better if they showed publicly facing ranges:

    
    
      - < 1,000 followers
      - < 2,500 followers
      - < 5,000 followers
      - < 10,000 followers
    

Then above 10,000 (or whatever) it shows the actual number.

I see these fake like paid services losing a ton of business if social
platforms took this approach.

~~~
puranjay
Then you'd just spend $20 extra and buy 10k+ followers :)

~~~
TomGullen
Facebook et al would be able to spot 10,000+ like purchases a lot easier than
a few hundred.

~~~
puranjay
Then you buy them in batches of 2k/week.

In all seriousness, I've actually purchased 10k Twitter followers for $10.
Twitter did not care one bit.

------
WA
That was a good write-up. Thing is, this works. Even (or especially) for
startups. Only if to kickstart the hype a bit. Real followers and likes will
follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business
that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there?

From the article: _And these days, which is more real: a fake business with a
real website or a brick and mortar business with no online presence?_

~~~
orng
> Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't
> automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good
> reviews out there?

For now. As more companies cheat the system, people will be less likely to
trust them based on things like followers and reviews.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Currently I don't trust the reviews of lots of physical businesses in my area.
In my experience places with few reviews tend to be more reliable than those
with many. My theory is that customers of physical businesses are more likely
to leave reviews of negative experiences and that businesses respond with fake
reviews. This is because there is a high 'activation energy' to making an
online review of a place that you normally walk into and that only really
angry customer bother. I tend to trust e.g. App store reviews more because the
barrier to entry to leaving a review is lower so real positive reviews seem to
happen more.

I find this sad.

------
matthewmacleod
This site brought up at lease two separate overlay popups while attempting to
read it. I don't usually complain about this, but that's totally obnoxious and
meant I didn't finish reading the article.

Is there a good method to block this aggressively user-unfriendly bullshit?

~~~
mintplant
uBlock?

Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/ublock/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/ublock/)

Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm)

Safari:
[https://www.ublock.org/newdl/safari/0.9.5.2](https://www.ublock.org/newdl/safari/0.9.5.2)

Alternatively: Firefox has a built-in "Reader View" button in the address bar
that extracts just the text and formats it for easy reading.

~~~
iaskwhy
uBlock didn't fix it for me. Also, because the second overlay was huge, I
couldn't close it down so I closed the tab instead...

~~~
Ntrails
Maybe it's time to NoScript?

~~~
iaskwhy
I get the feeling having NoScript can be more annoying that not having it so I
have been procrastinating installing it...

~~~
gorhill
I use "medium mode" in uBlock[1], which causes only 3rd-party scripts/frames
to be blocked, not 1st-party ones. I could read the article fine, I had no
idea there were issues with overlays with it, and it otherwise rendered fine.

Not blocking 1st-party scripts remove a lot of the tediousness of blocking
scripts by default.

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-
mode:-medium...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium-
mode)

~~~
iaskwhy
Thanks for the suggestion, it looks very interesting. And, obviously, thanks
for all the work on uBlock Origin, interneting got much less annoying after
installing it in every machine I get my hands on. Thanks!

------
throwaway23545
But who, in this day and age, would trust or hire a new online business that
had a page with 0-100 likes? The apparent presumption on seeing under 1k likes
or under a few thousand twitter followers is the business is defective. Or
forgotten, or no good. _The incorrect wisdom of the crowd is that a legit
business has a certain number of likes, followers etc, or it looks suspicious_

For a new local business who is never going to get a HN or /. effect, or get
some "viral buzz" from the cool kids, buying a few thousand can be a way to
get to perceived neutrality. Enough likes or followers that they're no longer
clicked away from for being "suspiciously" unloved.

Fake reviews on the other hand are much more directly fraudulent. Mind I'm
surprised anyone at all still trusts online reviews, apart from negative ones!

~~~
ryandrake
As someone who does not use Facebook or Twitter, I don't give a hoot about how
many "likes" or "followers" a business has, any more than I believe in any
other marketing campaign. These measurements measure nothing meaningful to me
as a potential customer, as this article clearly demonstrates. I've always
found it baffling that people even remotely believe online "reviews" written
by strangers.

I'll turn it around: Who is stupid enough to think, "Wow, this business's
carefully curated Facebook marketing page has 10,000 likes.. That must mean
they are truly reputable!"

~~~
throwaway23545
Personally I agree completely. As someone in tech I find it very difficult to
ascribe meaning to a meaningless number. Especially when people "like" things
they hate for comedy or irony purposes, or clicked accidentally a few years
ago. Reading online reviews is a case of trying to glean a little truth from
something everyone should know is being heavily gamed. But they don't.

Amongst the non-tech population there _is_ trust taken from these numbers.
People believe those reviews. People seem to believe that a lot of likes is
indicative of trust. People used to believe that clicking blue links was good,
and so the web used to be a cesspool of adsense sites providing no real
information.

Sad fact is it works. Both with the algorithms - more likes gets more random
likes from nowhere over time, and with the visitor perceptions. probably only
the non-technical ones.

If it's on the web it must be true, right? /s

------
Animats
I'm very aware of this problem. I set up Sitetruth.com to try to combat it.
Here's what Sitetruth has on Launchrock.[1] Is there an street address on the
web site? No. Anything we can tie to a list of US businesses? No. Better
Business Bureau link? No. SEC filings? No. Rating: Do Not Enter. SiteTruth
takes the position, "when in doubt, rate it down".

We'd use D&B data if it wasn't so expensive; this is just the demo version.
There's a whole industry out there tracking business info, and the search
industry isn't plugged into it. (Why? Google gets about a third of its revenue
from AdSense ads on other sites. If Google really cracked down on clickbait
sites, Google's own revenue would drop. We once calculated it would drop
14-17%.)

Back in 2011, I wrote "Social is bad for search, and search is bad for
social".[2] That's when Google had started using social signals for search
ranking, and the black-hat SEO industry had discovered how easy it was to
manipulate Google via social. Old-style link farming, setting up lots of fake
web sites to create links, is expensive, with servers to run and sites to
fill. With social spamming, the social network hosts the spam for you, for
free! You can still buy "bulk likes" for Facebook.[3][4] The price has gone up
a little, indicating that Facebook is having some success in getting rid of
fake accounts, but not much.

[1]
[http://www.sitetruth.com/rating/freakinawesomekaraoke.launch...](http://www.sitetruth.com/rating/freakinawesomekaraoke.launchrock.com?format=popup)
[2]
[http://www.sitetruth.com/doc/socialisbadforsearch09.pdf](http://www.sitetruth.com/doc/socialisbadforsearch09.pdf)
[3] [http://www.buylikesandfollowers.net/buy-facebook-likes-
cheap...](http://www.buylikesandfollowers.net/buy-facebook-likes-cheap.html)
[4] [https://boostlikes.com/](https://boostlikes.com/)

~~~
digisth
I really like this idea, but it seems fairly punishing for new / all remote /
self-funded businesses. If you're running a company out of your own pocket (no
SEC filings), aren't anywhere near big or old enough to have a BBB entry, and
are remote (what street address should someone use? their apartment?) I'd like
to know what signals you'd recommend bootstrappers use to engender trust for a
service like yours, because I don't think "person is known on HN, posts on
medium / Twitter about their service" is necessarily amenable to automated
analysis.

~~~
Animats
_" it seems fairly punishing for new / all remote / self-funded businesses."_

There's no right to run an anonymous business. It's illegal in the EU, and a
criminal offense California if you accept credit cards. The customer needs to
be able to find you and, if necessary, haul you into court to get a refund.
You can register a D/B/A name and get a post office box to create a legal
identity. That's fine. Hiding behind a web site with "private registration" is
a scumbag flag.

Read yesterday's article about how Venmo helps scammers by making anonymous
payments easy.

~~~
digisth
I definitely agree with that part. Does your service check WHOIS data, then?

~~~
Animats
No, WHOIS data is of such low quality that it's useless. SSL cert data is of
better quality, for OV (Organization Validated) and EV (Extended validation)
certs. Contact addresses found in text on the web site are also useful. Those
we match to commercial business directory information.

~~~
digisth
Considering that many smaller companies use e.g. CloudFlare's SSL, I'm not
sure that would help them, but good to know.

~~~
Animats
We ignore Cloudflare's many SSL certs. We have a short blacklist of MITM-as-a-
service content delivery networks. Here's my paper on that.[1]

The list is short. Here it is:

    
    
        cloudflare.com – a front-end network for sites, controlling 36,280 domains.
        incapsula.com – a front-end network for sites
        sonymusic.com – operates sites for their range of artists. 
        Janrainengage.com – customer tracking service
        edgecastcdn.net – Verizon caching system
        fiducia.de – security service for banks
        vin65.com – wine seller with many sites for various wine brands.
        practiceweb.co.uk – a hosting service for accountants
    

Sites which use those services are not blacklisted by Sitetruth, but the
ownership data in their SSL certs is ignored as meaningless. The CA/Browser
Forum is looking into ways to express this better in SSL certs. A cert with
fifty unrelated businesses is just silly, and it's a transitional thing until
everybody gets TLS-capable OSs and browsers so shared IP doesn't mean shared
cert. (Windows XP/IE 6 being the problem).

[1] [http://john-nagle.github.io/certscan/whoamitalkingto04.pdf](http://john-
nagle.github.io/certscan/whoamitalkingto04.pdf)

------
rajadigopula
I have been on Fiverr for few weeks and ordered two articles for $5 from some
guy claiming from the US. The result was hilarious; a kindergarten kid can use
much better grammar.

Also found some gigs encouraging piracy, found a guy who claims to give 3
ebooks ( you name it) for $5 ?!

Another one who can give you any 3 Udemy courses download for $5 -
[https://uk.fiverr.com/udemy_guru/give-you-any-4-u-demy-
cours...](https://uk.fiverr.com/udemy_guru/give-you-any-4-u-demy-
courses?context=advanced_search&context_type=auto&pos=34&funnel=cddb1796-5f30-4230-a8f9-c4127e8c40e0)

I think Fiverr should hire a team to monitor the activity and authenticity of
its sellers.

~~~
nkrisc
> I think Fiverr should hire a team to monitor the activity and authenticity
> of its sellers.

That would cause most of their revenue to evaporate.

~~~
degenerate
They also don't have a "report this post" button anywhere to allow people to
flag spam or illegal activity. That would at least be something they could
do...

~~~
nkrisc
Great point. If they won't actively police their sellers at least they could
let visitors volunteer to do so through such a feature.

~~~
throwaway1967
Yes, and if the police won't actively police every square foot where there are
people, they could at least let citizens do so through concealed carry of a
weapon.

And yet, somehow, there's a large group of people that is always for people
meddling in other people's business by telling on them (including calling the
police when they see a citizen legally open-carrying!).

It must be because laissez faire is not easy to spell.

~~~
nkrisc
I don't really see how this is relevant however reporting suspicious Fiverr
jobs is totally different giving citizens the right to employ lethal force.
The stakes are slightly different.

------
gorhill
A personal observation in the Chrome store.

I created an extension which I published in the Chrome store. I did notice a
curious statistics with another similar purpose extension, which is also quite
popular -- both are over 1 million users:

The ratings-per-user ratio for the other extension is almost _5 times_ that of
my extension.[1]

I can't figure any other convincing explanation for this other than the other
extension is buying ratings. If there is an alternative explanation I would
like to hear it, but I can't think of one -- five times is way beyond one
would expect IMO.

[1] number of ratings / number of users.

~~~
SalmoShalazar
Perhaps the other extension is prompting the user for a rating like you see so
often in Android/iOS apps. This tactic genuinely works. If not, then yes, it's
plausible that they're buying ratings.

~~~
gorhill
Good point, I didn't think of this... I looked and it does indeed invite users
to rate it in at the top of its options page. So as far as I am concerned this
explains the difference.

I could probably quantify how much this works by adding the same sort of
invitation to rate but this would go counter to the spirit of the project, so
I will pass on the experimentation.

------
brianmcc
I actually don't know whether to be annoyed/dismayed or _impressed_. There's
something really quite accomplished about this bizarre, entirely abstract,
virtual enterprise.

~~~
kaeluka
This could pass as _art_ ;)

------
philbarr
"My sudden surge in popularity raised no flags at Twitter headquarters as far
as I could tell, even though many of the followers had egg avatars who hadn’t
tweeted in years."

I'm not sure that Twitter could use how often you tweet as a metric. I haven't
tweeted anything in years either but I still use the service to see what my
favourite people are saying. I'm sure there are plenty of lurkers like me.

------
juped
How can we be sure that this article isn't a deep-cover "fake review" for
Yelp? It tells a convincing story and manages to throw in Yelp's huge music
selection - I mean, its effectiveness at removing fake reviews.

------
idonthaveaname
I'd have read that but I didn't get more than two lines in before an overlay
appeared in front of the content. So I gave up.

~~~
nhebb
Right-click, inspect, then delete a node or two.

~~~
Mahn
Speaking of which, it would be nice if chrome or firefox had a developer
keyboard shortcut to delete the node the mouse is currently hovering on
without having to inspect or open the dev tools. That'd make dealing with
intrusive content on the web much easier/faster.

------
rcarrigan87
This is particularly bad in the moving industry. Not only are movers notorious
for bribing customers to post good reviews but there are also several well
ranking "Moving Specific" review sites that are completely fake. The industry
also happens to have some of the most horrific scams...

~~~
sokoloff
The less frequently someone needs a given service, the more confusing (in the
best case) and scammy (in the normal to worse case), the sales process is.

Look at weddings, funerals, residential remodels, residential HVAC, and the
like as other examples. Some of those make used car sales look pleasant and
transparent...

~~~
mrfusion
I've noticed this phenomenom too. I think mattresses is another good example.
Is there a name for this?

------
marwann
In France, an agency created a fake company selling kebap sandwich on Mars.
They had 105.000 views on their video, 46k followers, 20k facebook fans...and
orders.

What's scary isn't the fact people buy fake reviews/followers/etc. but the
fact people actually believe in these vanity metrics and want to order
afterwards.

~~~
Retra
To be fair, almost the entire advertising industry is built around trying to
effectively lie to people.

~~~
marwann
True that :( I've worked in the industry during 3 years before figuring that
out! The problem is mostly for platforms to find a way of identifying which
reviews are real or fake, depending on IP, rate of reviews, recency of the
user, etc.

------
downandout
_" He claimed he’d created 5 million Twitter accounts...."_

Anyone still wondering if Twitter is overvalued at ~$19 billion, wonder no
more.

------
kevindeasis
Paul Graham said that if there is alot of potential energy from a broken
system there must be a way to monetize it. Really, it seems like someone can
make a startup to verify the company and reviews.

In fact, why dont we all open source this thing.

~~~
logn
I've thought this would be a good new feature for Stripe. After payment, allow
user to leave a review. Then you know the person bought the product.

~~~
kevindeasis
That would def be a good feature for stripe.

------
swalsh
A karaoke truck kind of sounds like a good idea. Shame it's fake.

~~~
wodenokoto
I think it even hit the front page of reddit. I remember seeing something
about a karaoke truck recently.

So maybe somebody should make it real.

~~~
caskance
Maybe that was part of the marketing this author bought, just not explicitly
listed in the article. If you can buy all those other things, why not reddit
upvotes too?

------
galenko
CBS Canada, did this about a year ago, very interesting watch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0pYUdfGiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0pYUdfGiw)

------
vijayr
_Yes, writing fake reviews is illegal. False advertising is a misdemeanor
crime_

Does this mean those Amazon affiliate sites are illegal too? A lot of these
sites review products as if they have used the them, but there is no way they
could've paid real money for the dozens of products they review?

Also, how is this different from celebrities endorsing products and appearing
in ads? How do we know they bothered to use the product even once, other than
the time they were shooting for the ad?

~~~
DanBC
Some people are given free product in return for a good review.

In England you must make it very clear if content is your regular content of
if it's sponsored content. This is hard for YouTubers to comply with because a
big pre-roll splash probably isn't enough.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30203816](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30203816)

[http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/26/vloggers-
must-t...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/26/vloggers-must-tell-
fans-paid-adverts-asa-rules)

[https://www.asa.org.uk/News-resources/Media-
Centre/2014/Maki...](https://www.asa.org.uk/News-resources/Media-
Centre/2014/Making-ads-Clear-The-challenge-for-advertisers-and-
vloggers.aspx#.VfrjVk-CPTo)

------
lighthawk
You don't have to pay for it, btw. There are sites you can post to in order to
attract people that will just like/follow your stuff for free. It doesn't take
much searching to find them. You won't get the same numbers, but if you're on
a budget, it works.

~~~
throwaway23545
FB's own advertising is as cheap than fiverr. $5 can get you a thousand or two
likes if you geo locate the campaign to certain parts of the world. Some parts
of the world seem to like everything!

Seems to be all legit accounts, so presumably far safer from any FB fake
detection algorithms. Just don't expect them to buy your service!

------
chinathrow
"He claimed he’d created 5 million Twitter accounts using scripts, and had
completed 10,000 Fiverr orders for Twitter followers. He’d been banned from
Fiverr three times before but says he doesn’t know why."

Duh...

------
icedchai
This puts most corporate marketing departments to shame.

~~~
gk1
Why?

~~~
icedchai
I mean, if it wasn't all fake traffic... if he did this "for real", it would
put them to shame... heh

------
logicallee
As an entrepreneur, I became so disappointed with this article about 60% of
the way through, that I had to stop reading. When the author started getting
phone calls on his burner phone from people wanting to hire his van, he should
have manned up, stuck with this damn business, and written instead about
bootstrapping. With stats like the ones he reported, he should have stuck with
Freakin' Awesome Karaoke Express even if it meant moonlighting as a KJ and
eventually backing into a seed round he never anticipated.

Seriously. Those facebook reviews sound authentic because those are real user
stories just waiting to really happen. The real user queries prove it.

I'm so disappointed at those unfielded phone calls that I can't even bring
myself to read any more. A business was born three months premature, and
instead of nurturing it in neonatal intensive care, the author just let this
beautiful creature die. :*(

~~~
greggarious
Out of curiosity, why do you assume the author is male?

~~~
t2015_08_25
Out of curiosity, why do you assume that because the author said 'he' that he
projects that gender onto the author, as opposed to not actually knowing and
choosing his own gender, as is common, or choosing a random gender, as is
common?

Are you one of those people who insists that everyone say "he/she" every
single time they don't know? If so, then why don't you also demand that the
person say "she/he" 50% of the time? With no more than a specified number of
imbalances per time interval and instance interval? And no more than a
specified change in number of imbalances per same?

I only bring this up b/c you seem to grant yourself the title of auditor, so
out of curiosity, I'd like to see if you can stand up to auditing yourself, or
if you simply expect more out of others than you're able to give. My
hypothesis is that you have no grounding or ability to generate introspective
thought, just a little provocative scheme to grant yourself power
opportunistically.

~~~
logicallee
you're coming down on my side, but I think this 3-paragraph tirade is a bit
over the top... the comment you're replying to was 11 words, and also correct
in that, yes, I had assumed the author was male.

------
pnevmatico
It's not faking, it's just doing things that don't scale /s

