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I tracked down my impostor

theguardian.com

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Re: I tracked down my impostor

#31

Post by cbanek »

jmercouris wrote: post #3
matt-attack wrote: post #2

What an incredibly odd story. I wonder if the man suffered from mental illness.

I am very certain he did, whether we have a name for it or not.

While you're probably right, I always find it oddly weird sometimes how logical these things can be. Like copying tattoos and mannerisms. On one hand, it doesn't make sense to pretend to be someone else, but if you look past that, the steps were frighteningly logical. And this is where I think it dovetails into other scams. I'm not sure if the scammer is above it, a part of it, or unaware of it sometimes, but what they present and what you see isn't really the whole story.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#33

Post by mahalol »

xenonite wrote: post #28
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #21

Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level. I posted a comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs. Later that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word in reply to the same article on Reddit. I still have no idea why someone would do that. I thought at first it was some kind of karma farming operation but the post history of the Reddi…

Well: Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level. I posted a comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs. Later that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word in reply to the same article on Reddit. I still have no idea why someone would do that. I thought at first it was some kind of karma farming operation but the post history of the…

Well, this is definitely the kind of content I wouldn't be surprised to read on reddit, but a bit disappointing to see it on HN.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#34

Post by ironmagma »

jmercouris wrote: post #3
matt-attack wrote: post #2

What an incredibly odd story. I wonder if the man suffered from mental illness.

I am very certain he did, whether we have a name for it or not.

But the only definition we have for mental illness is whether your situation falls under some category that we have a name for. It’s a slippery (and fuzzy) enough slope having designations for illnesses that encompass a huge portion of the human condition (see Rosenhan). Much worse if we also include things that don’t have entries in the DSM. It would be trivial enough to say that anyone you have even mild distaste for has a mental illness.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#35

Post by cortesoft »

kfoley wrote: post #6

Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level. I posted a comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs. Later that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word in reply to the same article on Reddit. I still have no idea why someone would do that. I thought at first it was some kind of karma farming operation but the post history of the Reddi…

There was a Reddit bot a few years ago (aptly named 'trappedinreddit') that would automatically post the previous top comment on reposts. Predictably, those comments would get upvoted again, and trappedinreddit would end up with the top comment on most posts. It lasted a few months before the bot was outed and it went away.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#36

Post by [deleted] »

agency wrote: post #25
ghaff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the person telling a story is a real person and it's been printed in not only the Guardian but the BBC and I assume elsewhere. These are news organizations that do at least a modicum of fact-checking.

And the guy is clearly a real scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0g9Hm1cAAAAJ&hl=en...

[deleted]

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#37

Post by brendoelfrendo »

duxup wrote: post #23
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost always bot accounts. Reddit is decent at catching bots so the botters copy legitimate comments, build a post history, and then switch to scamming or spamming after the account has some credibility.

>Reddit is decent at catching bots I don't know about that so much. I'm seeing a lot more straight up spam on reddit that looks easy to spot, but I think reddit gave up or something...

Totally possible. Maybe enough people figured out how to game their detection so they gave up, or if it was so gameable in the first place it was never as good as I'm remembering.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#40

Post by jshmrsn »

cbanek wrote: post #31
jmercouris wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very certain he did, whether we have a name for it or not.

While you're probably right, I always find it oddly weird sometimes how logical these things can be. Like copying tattoos and mannerisms. On one hand, it doesn't make sense to pretend to be someone else, but if you look past that, the steps were frighteningly logical. And this is where I think it dovetails into other scams. I'm not sure if the scammer is above it, a part of it, or unaware of it sometimes, but what th…

Actually, I’m confused by the logic of that. If you were plagiarizing someone, wouldn’t you want to be look different from the original author so you don’t remind people of them and get caught? His hand tattoos meant that anyone who know the original author and encountered the copycat would immediately be suspicious even if they weren’t familiar with the subject matter.
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