4 ms·
Summary: First, criminals preying upon someone apparently vulnerable (after cancer, divorce, and who knows what else). Then, as if that wasn't more than enough
by neilv 2y ago
Summary: First, criminals preying upon someone apparently vulnerable (after cancer, divorce, and who knows what else). Then, as if that wasn't more than enough for one person, a bunch of Internet people, and even some brand marketers, publicly mocking and harassing the victim.
- seydor 2y agoShe was paying for his divorce with jolie. She got 770k euros from her own divorce. Not exactly a poor person A fool and her money are easily parted. You can have sympathy for her while admitting that she s a fool. Not even the first or second one. Moral of the story is "don't be a fool" because there is no chance that scammers will disappeared
- fooker 2y ago> She got 770k euros from her own divorce. The ex husband must be laughing his ass off at this!
- Gualdrapo 2y agoI don't see how that validates the response of the public mocking and harassing them.
- paul7986 2y agoUnfortunately for her the mocking is to teach other fools not to be one!
- johndevor 2y agoSome people are the shipwrecks on the rocks that help others navigate.
- llamaimperative 2y agoYeah very commonly people say, "I have identified this as a scam but given that other victims weren't mocked relentlessly enough, I shall part with my money." /s
- quickslowdown 2y agoI think you know that's not what the comment is saying. They're saying people who fall victim to these scams would be less likely to talk about it, knowing they'll be the Internet's lolcow for a day. That hurts everyone, because now a scam is getting less coverage, leading to more people falling for it. Has nothing to do with recognizing it as a scam in the moment it's happening. They're talking about what comes after falling for the scam.
- llamaimperative 2y agoThat's a nonsense argument. Mockery obviously makes people LESS likely to talk about their victimization. What you're actually trying to say is, "mockery amplifies the signal to get in front of more people's eyes" and my counter to that is: it doesn't need to. The article itself does a perfectly fine job communicating what's going on without making mockery. You're just choosing to layer mockery on top of it for, as far as I can tell, net negative effect.
- paul7986 2y agoIt's the human condition to teach each other via positive and negative reinforcement. If she didn't come forward publicly her story would've via the human telephone game. As well fabricated stories on this topic will and are created. So the mob is mocking fiction but in the end in a valuable societal manner to teach the fools.
- llamaimperative 2y agoI don't even know what argument you're trying to make here. We don't need to spread the story because it'd do it by human telephone? We do, and it needs mockery? The stories are fake and the mob is mocking a fake story? How about: Don't be a bully to people on the Internet?
- comfysocks 2y agoI would think that public mocking of scam victims would just encourage them to keep quiet about the crime.
- fn-mote 2y agoThe lack of morality in the parent post discourages me.
- locallost 2y agoEveryone is a fool in some aspect of life. This person was bad with money and fraud, but maybe she is or was an extremely talented artist. Maybe you understand money and fraud, but are otherwise talentless. Neither of you are fools.
- throwawaysleep 2y agoWrecking your life is substantially worse than not being a good artist.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoMost people never had €830k to begin with - are their lives already wrecked?
- chongli 2y agoNo, the moral of the story is that technology is an exponentially-growing force multiplier for scammers. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, you could be a fool and still survive by relying on your kinship group to protect you and take care of you. They would find ways to let you contribute to the group without needing to be highly intelligent and skillful. Now we are living in a techno-jungle swarming with parasites and predators. Let your guard down for even a moment and you could lose everything. Oh, and when the cognitive decline that comes with age catches up to you? You might as well walk out onto the virtual ice floe and unplug yourself from the internet.
- kiba 2y agoProbably true that we are all vulnerable to scams in one way or another, especially as we age. Some of us has more mockable vulnerability, but one way or another it's just a bug in human software. Even if we aren't vulnerable to scams, we may be vulnerable to falling for false rumors, fake news, myths, or just things that sounds true but turn out to be false. "Don't be a fool" isn't really much of a lesson, but it is useful to know there are fake Brad Pitt milling around potentially preying on vulnerable women.
- ttoinou 2y agoShe is creating a bad buzz to get helped from detectives, lawyers, media, the public etc. The price she pays is being mocked at, yes
- scarmig 2y agoYour timeline there is a bit off. When she met this Brad Pitt, she was still married. She started sending money to him; got divorced; got a settlement of €775,000; and proceeded to give all of that as well to Brad Pitt. Still worthy of sympathy, but no one would question mockery of a married man who started chatting with a fake Angelina Jolie on social media, started sending her money, got divorced, and then gave the rest of his assets to her.
- beretguy 2y agoHow why would anybody give money to Brad Pitt? Dude's rich enough already.
- johnisgood 2y agoWhich makes her more of a ...?
- scarmig 2y agoThere are always explanations for why the invented persona needs cash, and the scammer also presents sophisticated evidence chains for it. Most people are susceptible to it; see the massive success of spear phishing in corporate environments.
- squarefoot 2y agoAs would be Nigerian princes. Seems just a variation of the same old scam.
- jerlam 2y agoAnd on a very small scale, popular Twitch streamers.
- hleszek 2y agoHe pretended he was sick and his money was frozen because of his divorce and needed a lot of money for expensive operations which failed one after another.
- 2y ago