The removal of "For each member who joins, we will donate $0.50 to Haiti earthquake victims".
Today, I won the most pathetic, worthless victory imaginable, barring [sports analogy]. I oversaw the removal of a group purporting to donate money to Haiti earthquake victims, which was, of course, a stupid hoaxing spam group set up by a teenager from Singapore with too much time on his hands.
It started with a message explaining how 50 businesses had agreed to donate 50 cents for every member who joined the group, encouraging members to invite all their friends, etc. It's an old formula. Obviously there was no mention of who these companies were, or when the end date for the donation would be, or whether people's leaving would result in money being taken away from Haitians, and the whole thing was so transparently fake that it was almost laughable.
Except, for some reason, almost 300,000 people had joined, presumably (excepting the minority of angry misanthropes like me) because they believed they were helping in some small way. Their ignorance was breathtaking. Unsurprisingly, I was called "sick", "cynical" and "disgusting", and many other somewhat less-eloquent words, simply because I thought that exploiting human sympathy at a time of genuine suffering was despicable.
Thanks to people pointing this out, the founder (that is, the power-crazed nerd exciting himself over the thought of getting friends to spam each other) decided to remove all forms of interaction in the group, annoying even some of the most diehard (stupid) members, but not before a tremendously underwhelming showdown where I got to tell him just how pathetic and worthless he was. I, and many others, I hope, had also reported the group repeatedly for its spam-tastic content.
A few hours later, the group had disappeared. I'm taking partial credit for this. My god, my life is so completely pathetic, that I actually feel a bit disgusted with myself for how I've wasted today.
No comments:
Post a Comment