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I made $100K from a dick joke

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Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#201

Post by ericjmorey »

eixudheg wrote: post #184
WXLCKNO wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm banned from eBay since about 2010. Sold a cellphone which my sister shipped without requiring signature, guy just said he never received it. My sister was working at a Telco so we just confirmed that he had actually received it because he put a SIM card into it, proof and everything eBay didn't care. I withdrew the money from my PayPal account before they could claw it back. PayPal still works for me but eBay is…

Sounds like your sister got that information illegally. It’s hard to blame EBay because they can’t use that.

Private companies have no limits on using illegally obtained information. It's very common practice. You're thinking about governments and law enforcement agencies.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#202

Post by officeplant »

firesteelrain wrote: post #194
harrall wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay and Facebook Marketplace don’t really compete. FB is better for normal fungible items. eBay is better for specialty stuff. Don’t forget that you have to pay to list and usually have to ship on eBay. It’s two totally different vibes. If I wanted to sell a Dewalt angle grinder, I would go to Facebook first. If I wanted to sell a Sony E-mount camera lens, I would go to eBay first. Most used things I buy make more s…

FB marketplace is full of people wasting your time. "Is this still available?" Yes it is - never heard from again. I stopped giving out my address. I will give a general area where we can meet so they can gauge how far it is for them. When they are on their way, I give them the public location to meet. Only serious people will meet me. On some occasions, I still get ghosted. But ghosting has become more and more comm…

I miss the olden craigslist days sometimes. Even responses that sounded like scams were somehow real people at times. I once sold a PSP Vita hours after listing it on Craigslist. The response had superbroken english and was insistent they had to buy it in the next two hours at X location. That location happened to be about a mile down the road from my job so I humored them. Turned out it was just a guy from out of country that was only there one more day for oil field training. Paid me in cash and didn't even hassle the price.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#203

Post by dylan604 »

paxys wrote: post #195
_1tem wrote: post #9

Sometimes I think about the years of hard work that I put into building a SaaS business and wondered whether I should've just done something silly like this instead.

That's like saying "this guy won the lottery, so maybe I should quit my job and just buy lottery tickets."

and you would not actually be the first person to do that

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#204

Post by duxup »

nosioptar wrote: post #111
rgovostes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember eBay has almost no way to report scam listings, hacked seller accounts, obviously fraudulent buyers, etc. They don’t want to clean up their act. Caveat emptor. Two executives were recently imprisoned over harassing a journalist, to give you an idea of the corporate culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

EBay doesn't care about fraud unless they think you're going to file a charge back with your card issuer, then they're pretty quickto protect their bottom line. I do know for a fact that eBay can kick a seller off very quickly though. I bought a NES shaped raspberry pi a few years back as a gift. The day I got the item, I went to leave the seller glowing feedback, only to find his account was axed (he included NES ro…

The world of coin selling on ebay is just mostly scams and fakes. It's sad.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#205

Post by marcosdumay »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #51
oaththrowaway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just makes me more cynical about everything I see posted. Marketers ruin everything eventually

>Marketers ruin everything eventually You need to follow that chain of thought a little further. The unfortunate weak spot in a capitalist economy is that it's basically a Darwinistic system where the fittest survive, and "fit" means willing to do anything to make a dollar. Morals therefore become a weakness, and those who are guided by morals will be stomped out by those who don't really care. The guardrails are mad…

> The guardrails are made of laws, not morals

The guardrails that work are made of brand awareness and reputation.

Laws are there to stop the company from harms that are too severe for waiting for people to suffer them and from harms to third parties that don't get a say on the decision.

Both of those kinds seem to be completely broken nowadays, everywhere. Getting the law back into working form seems easier, but it's not a viable alternative for most of the things you'll want companies to have morals about.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#208

Post by jasonshen »

ilaksh wrote: post #179
BeetleB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listen to How I Built This . It's not unusual to do this. Especially when they're trying to get a retailer to carry their items. They'll create fake buzz. Stuff like getting all your friends to go to a store asking "Do you carry X?" soon after you've pitched X to the store is a method that's worked for over a century.

Maybe that's why I'm not rich? Because I am honest? I think this culture of normalizing lying means that more and more humans are just garbage. Because being able to trust someone is telling the truth is just a fundamental part of integrity. Without integrity we have.. well I guess the world we live in.. dangerous, full of trash. Everything is bullshit. I hope the machines take over soon.

Our big brains actually evolved because of lying - research by scientists like Robin Dunbar shows that figuring out who was lying and how to lie better may have driven the explosion of human intelligence. The same brain power that helped our ancestors outsmart each other is what lets us do amazing things today.

You're right that trust matters - that's why we created rules and systems to encourage honesty. But lying is as old as humanity itself.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#209

Post by slig »

gadders wrote: post #161
probably_wrong wrote: post #21

I don't have a great opinion of marketing in general and therefore I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". Therefore I feel vindicated when a moderately-upvoted post says the quiet part out loud, namely, "Yeah, we made a fake post and just lied to everyone on the internet. I'm not sorry, because not only was it popular - it bec…

I think a few years back someone examined the JS of one of those "XX people are looking at this product right now" or "ZZZ from YYY just purchased this product" and saw that it was basically randomly generated.

"6.02214076×10^23 other people are looking at this room right now".

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#210

Post by hx8 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #112
probably_wrong wrote: post #21

I don't have a great opinion of marketing in general and therefore I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". Therefore I feel vindicated when a moderately-upvoted post says the quiet part out loud, namely, "Yeah, we made a fake post and just lied to everyone on the internet. I'm not sorry, because not only was it popular - it bec…

>I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". This product is actually an ideal case for marketing, because most people weren't aware that a product like this existed. The best ads notify you about something you genuinely want to buy. What you're really complaining about is astroturfing , not marketing. The more dubious sort of mark…

I'm mostly against the marketing where the company lies or misleads the customer. While this is bad if the product is new or existing, lies are easier if the audience based is uninformed about a subject. The major issue with marketing is that it's hard to trust someone when so many people marketing have a short term finical interest in stretching the truth as much as possible.

In this situation it's mostly harmless, but we see terrible examples of this in the health/supplements space.

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