A lot of people point out that a person like him would be so foolish but it is precisely people like him who fall for TV ads, who click on Google as and facebook ads which eventually pays for all the free internet services we get such as Gmail.
I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
41–50 of 142 posts
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#42You fly to Lagos with the willful intent to aid in the stealing of $1M from the Nigerian government and its people, but get beaten up instead. Your error, as you see it, is not that you were greedy and corrupt enough to steal other people's money. But that you were stupid enough to fall for the scam and have the tables turned on you. Interesting.
Are we sure this isn't fiction? I'm caught between, "People can't actually be this stupid" and "At least one person has to have been this stupid, otherwise they would have stopped long ago."
Remember, this was a decade ago. What were you doing then? 419 scams weren't nearly as widely-known at the time. I'm not suggesting you would have been duped, but lots of normals had no idea about these criminials. For instance, spam filtering wasn't a common part of life for most consumers with a PC.
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#43"I’m superstitious, so one night I told myself, All right, if I win a game of hearts with less than 15 points, I’ll do it. I’d never scored that low in my life, so when I landed at 11 points, I thought it was a sign and decided to buy a ticket." There's your problem right there. People like this are prone to other irrational thinking. I would bet that the vast majority of people who fall for this stuff are also deepl…
This was self-confirmation and had nothing to do with religion. Please take your hate to /r/atheism.
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we sure this isn't fiction? I'm caught between, "People can't actually be this stupid" and "At least one person has to have been this stupid, otherwise they would have stopped long ago."
Flying to Nigeria to do this is the most extreme I have ever heard of. I do know one or two people who have been duped by the Nigerian scam emails, but just into sending money.
This was back in 2003. Probably the scammers eventually realized that there's no need to have the person come to Nigeria to give cash when they could just wire it.
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#45Never hide anything from your spouse. Ever. Especially not financial troubles. Some openness and trust could have gone a long way here. Perhaps his wife could have helped him figure out their financial problems, maybe she would have even directed him away from the scammers.
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know there's a difference between being religious and asking Hearts game to tell you if you should participate in the 419 scam? Most religions actually frown very hard of those kind of things. For Avraamic religions, there's a direct prohibition of such practices in Leviticus 19:26.
Most religions frown on other religions, too.
I really can't understand why you chose to answer my comment with this. I pointed out pretty clearly that a practice of homebrewn divination, in which the hero of the article engaged, is not "religious" and actually is explicitly forbidden by many religions. In response to that, you offer me meaningless platitude not connected to anything on the topic. What are you trying to accomplish here?
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is religion as superstition religious bashing? I'm talking about correlations, not morality or religious truth. The stay classy thing is overused.
You didn't say religious people were prone to superstition, you said they were prone to 'other irrational thinking'. I think there is a slight difference. You're also generalizing all religions, when in fact there are some religions which actively warn against superstition and miracles (Buddhism, for example). So I can see why someone might think your comment was ill-informed (and I say that as an atheist).
Technically he implicitly said that superstition is a form of irrational thinking (few could argue otherwise with a straight face). He further implied that being deeply religious can be another form of irrational thinking.
What he did not actually say (though we can certainly infer) is that all religious thinking (or all deeply religious thinking) is necessarily irrational thinking.
If we merely grant that much deeply religious thinking is irrational, then I see nothing inherently wrong with suggesting that people who engage in one form of irrational reasoning might be susceptible to other forms.
Instead of commenting on religion, I will wager that people who claim to be superstitious tend to buy into horoscopes and homeopathy more often then the general population. That's not an offensive statement, is it? Yet what really is the difference between astrology and other things that we describe as religions?
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#48"I’m superstitious, so one night I told myself, All right, if I win a game of hearts with less than 15 points, I’ll do it. I’d never scored that low in my life, so when I landed at 11 points, I thought it was a sign and decided to buy a ticket." There's your problem right there. People like this are prone to other irrational thinking. I would bet that the vast majority of people who fall for this stuff are also deepl…
You know there's a difference between being religious and asking Hearts game to tell you if you should participate in the 419 scam? Most religions actually frown very hard of those kind of things. For Avraamic religions, there's a direct prohibition of such practices in Leviticus 19:26.
Those religions also often encourage attempts to communicate telepathically with their God and interpret/act on the results, which from the outside looks like the same kind of activity. Religions don't frown on those kind of things, they only frown on those which aren't approved by the religion.
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
One comment in and, bam, random religion bashing. Stay classy, HN.
Yes, perhaps. But it could have been incongruent if instead he had said "I would bet that the vast majority of people who fall for this stuff are also deeply skeptical."
But I could say "I would bet that the vast majority of people who fall for this stuff are also jumping to conclusions which please them without actually checking the facts or giving a good thought on the matter". Which is exactly what the author of that comment above did.
Re: I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
#50I really want someone to tell the story about the one time they flew to Nigeria to help a governor get some money out of the country and it turned out to be legit. That would be far more interesting. My father used to get similar Nigerian scam correspondences back in the 70s/80s, in the postal mail.
I really want someone to tell the story about the one time ...it turned out to be legit.
In that vein:
http://xkcd.com/570/ (and do hover for the alt-text)