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I tracked down my impostor

theguardian.com

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Re: I tracked down my impostor

#141

Post by Aeolun »

lupire wrote: post #135
cammikebrown wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really did not enjoy getting 40% on every test in math and physics and receiving a B. I do not feel like I learned the material that well. My very first freshman mechanics midterm grade, a 67, was an A+, and gave me a false sense of adequacy. Maybe they could figure out how to teach better?

You aren't supposed to learn everything in one semester. You are supposed to make adequate progress, and the tests are broad enough to catch as much as possible of what you've learned.

That sounds silly. Give me a test that I can actually reasonably learn the material for any day.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#142

Post by kergonath »

green_space wrote: post #90
bombcar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia is one where the chickens won’t come home to roost - as in you won’t actually be called to DO what you’re impostering to be able to do. Fake being a surgeon and they’ll assign you to surgery, etc.

Psychiatry is a field where you can get away it. Zholia Alemi successfully masqueraded as a qualified psychiatrist for 23 years https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/17230748.doctor-faked-wil...

You can be a fake academic and build a career on plagiarism. However, stealing someone’s identity is dangerous, as academic fields tend to be quite small social networks, and someone is bound to notice. It’s also much more difficult to wiggle out of identity theft lawsuits than universities’ ethics rules.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#143

Post by livre »

okamiueru wrote: post #122
worker767424 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet, sweet karma. And then you go sell the account.

Interesting. Do you know what the marked value is for karma? Is the value tied to something practical, e.g. easier to pass spam filters with an account?

Many subreddits automatically delete posts or comments from users with low karma. Also people trust users with older accounts and a good amount of karma more than new users or people with low karma.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#144

Post by [deleted] »

worker767424 wrote: post #85
cortesoft wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sweet, sweet karma. And then you go sell the account.

[deleted]

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#145

Post by AussieWog93 »

u801e wrote: post #117
whatshisface wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level. There was a Reddit bot a few years ago (aptly named 'trappedinreddit') that would automatically post the previous top comment on reposts. I bet it was Reddit internal bots. That process is an order of magnitude faster on Reddit than control-v.

Are you making an attempt at humor or are you just copying and pasting parts of comments to make your own comment?

Given the context, it's clearly a joke. Pretty clever and funny too, IMO.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#146

Post by oasisbob »

Veen wrote: post #61
jonnat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter is in 5th grade, attending school virtually due to the pandemic, and she has all her submitted assignments automatically verified by plagiarism checkers. In fact, she's encouraged to use online plagiarism checkers herself before submission to avoid false positives.

My partner finds it frustrating that she has to edit out “false positives” even when she knows damn well she hasn’t plagiarised.

How obnoxious. I would hate that too, and would be tempted to refuse. Is that a common thing to do these days? With the seriousness of academic dishonesty charges, I don't see why students would put up with this.

If someone wants to bring meritless flimsy accusations, I wouldn't want to help them do their homework in running down all the accidental matches found by their commercial provider, let alone rewrite my work in the process.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#147

Post by N00bN00b »

disabled wrote: post #106

I have been a victim of this, and it is still an ongoing matter. If you don't want to find yourself a victim of these kinds of people, then you better keep these two links as a reference, and always take them to heart: Narcissists Online: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on... What to Remember When Dealing with a Narcissist: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-wh... Peop…

I doubt it's a narcissist and I'm saying that as a narcissist myself.

That fragile ego basically means narcissists are afraid of humiliation. On top that, mentally everything is build around shoring up my ego to compensate for the low self esteem. My ego. Not someone else's ego. I'd have to do some really weird mental gymnastics to be satisfied with copying someone else's work, that would just lower my ego even more. I guess it's doable if I straight up believe I'm that other person? But now we're talking about something really special and uncommon. Not just a narcissist anymore. The narcissistic self deception is involuntary, I can't just say "well, I know I'm copying the work of that person, but now I believe that's me." It doesn't work like that.

The person doing this clearly knew there was considerable risk of getting caught and being exposed. That's someone that doesn't give a fuck about the social consequences.

So you were closer with the malignants, but it's probably just a sociopath (ASPD). A lot more rare in general and more willing to take risks.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#148

Post by turingexam »

I had a sort of similar incident happen with the youtuber Siraj Raval who was ripping off people's original projects (without attribution) and making videos about them -- and spun a career out of it.

It took many attempts to get him to attribute my project (in accordance with its license) although he was caught repeating this type of behavior later on.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#149

Post by d0mine »

green_space wrote: post #90
bombcar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia is one where the chickens won’t come home to roost - as in you won’t actually be called to DO what you’re impostering to be able to do. Fake being a surgeon and they’ll assign you to surgery, etc.

Psychiatry is a field where you can get away it. Zholia Alemi successfully masqueraded as a qualified psychiatrist for 23 years https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/17230748.doctor-faked-wil...

It tells us something about psychiatry as a field. Imagine faking being a programmer or a physicist for 20 years: a trivial Fizz Buzz-like test would reveal the truth for the former, and the failure to reproduce research results—for the latter.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#150

Post by Gimpei »

nchelluri wrote: post #44
autophagian wrote: post #19

For the curious: this emerged as a twitter thread back in Jan https://twitter.com/mattlodder/status/1350192856154198016 . In it, Dr. Lodder posts a comparison between his tattoos and his imposters, as well as a talk his imposter gave based on his work, while dressed as him. Creepy.

Interesting how the test score is 80% in the twitter thread and 95% in the article.

Having done tertiary coursework in both the UK and the US, I can tell you that it's much much much more difficult to get an 80 in the UK than a 95 in the US. Even a 70 is hard. A 70 is like an A in the US thirty years ago.
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