How to show off about your car, but soften the blowhard-ish bit:
Hi! My name is B**** Mc***, you may or may not have heard of me before, either way, that’s OK with me.
I’ve never been featured in the BRW Rich 200 (nor do I want to), hardly ever wear a suit and tie (shorts, thongs and t-shirt is my dress-code). I don’t drive a Ferrari (although my Mercedes CLK is pretty nice). I don’t have commercial premises with staff running around all over the place (home is where my heart is).
— quoted verbatim from fax spam spruiking this guy running free seminars showing how to get ‘seriously’ rich from the internet.
Which reminds me of Merlin Mann’s excellent comment:
“The internet is becoming this thing where it’s just people trying to become successful on the internet by showing other people how to become successful on the internet.”
You have that one nailed Peter.
It’s amazing the number of people who send rubbish like “Learn how to make millions by working 15 minutes a day” and they do this while still working as a Teacher or Electrician in their spare time because they haven’t made those millions yet.
I recently replied to one such an email because it was sent to me by an old friend from Oz.
We chatted about a variety of things including work and when he told me he was still working as was his wife I had to ask….Ahhhhh, why is it not working for you then?????
It doesn’t take too much to figure out most of the people selling the “how to get rich on the internet” don’t actually know how to get rich on the internet themselves.
The next most stupidest spruik I see is on twitter from people sending a tweet saying “I found this fantastic site which helps you get hundreds of followers every day.”
My question to most of them so far has been “why then do you only have 2 followers?”
There was an old saying in the sales world “Fake it until you make it” and these days the Fake it until you make it brigade are becoming more and more outrageous.
At least in the sales world when you were faking it until you made it you wore nice clothes and drove a nice cars so that people thought you were successful.
Now with the internet the Fakers don’t even bother with that, they just tell you they are great….doctor up some fake screenshots of click bank commissions or adsense commissions and then ask you to pay them $7, $19, $39 or $99 for a whole lot of dribble.
Obviously these spammers are just that, they spam what ever platform they can get on to and send dreary, hyped up, rubbish to every email or account they can get a hold of.
Unfortunately I don’t think spamming is going to go away in the near future and the self proclaimed experts will continue to tell the world they are the best….. maybe at blowing their own trumpets yes….anything else? Who know?
“…these days the ‘Fake it until you make it’ brigade are becoming more and more outrageous.
Yes, agreed. Right on, Terry.
Trouble is, as HL Mencken said:
…who is also responsible for another favourite quote:
Ah, for such self-awareness! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Terry. – P
Terry, earlier we talked about the snake oil salesmen/instant experts preying on the neophytes…
I spotted this tonight on Stephen Fry’s blog (one of my pleasures when I get the chance):
Hole in one! – P
hmmmm now theres an idea.
I could be rich!!!!
Look I have 2 followers but don’t let that fool you into thinking that I don’t know how to build a twitter following, oh no, I can show you how to get 100 followers a day…..
yes yes….I have been on for a year and yes I only have 2 followers but that’s not the point…. It’s you we need to be talking about, you’re the important one here and I can show you how to have 100,000 followers in 30 days!
Now hand over the cash!
[snort] – P 😉