4 ms·

Reminds of of this later and somewhat funnier article about the "one weird trick" ads: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_one_weird_tr

Reminds of of this later and somewhat funnier article about the "one weird trick" ads: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_one_weird_trick_conquered_the_internet_what_happens_when_you_click_on.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_... They reached the same conclusion and in that case, I can believe it's correct because those ads cost money, so must bring in more revenue, or they'd have stopped a long time ago. In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that sophisticated. It's entirely possible they really are just as dumb and incapable of spelling as a naive layperson would assume. The fact that "scam baiting" is a thing provides some evidence of that, although it's likely that many of those reports are fake as well.

graeme 12y ago
>In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that sophisticated. It's entirely possible they really are just as dumb and incapable of spelling as a naive layperson would assume. The fact that "scam baiting" is a thing provides some evidence of that, although it's likely that many of those reports are fake as well. Could be a case of evolutionary dynamics at play in the system. IF the typos mattered, then dumb scammers would have been weeded out. Conversely, if typos help, then this phenomenon may actually have encouraged dumb scammers and weeded out literate ones that never thought to misspell.
- bpodgursky 12y ago
  > Could be a case of evolutionary dynamics at play in the system. IF the typos mattered, then dumb scammers would have been weeded out. OR, those who were able to produce high-quality grammatical English were able to find better jobs than running 419 scams.