Online Sympathy Scams
Created | Updated Jun 21, 2013
Where do I start? This is a draft.
On another board that I post to one of the posters has been discovered to have a number of accounts, one of which was supposedly dying of cancer.
It's a long story but he's basically been outed by the site admin people, who realised that he was still posting to the board under another name when he was supposed to be in a coma and on life support.
How do other people feel about this deception? Is it fair game in an online community? The people on the other board were pretty pissed with him because they'd spent A LOT of time giving him sympathy and support, only to find that he was duping them all - he'd been doing it for literally months before he was caught.
Why do people do this?
For four years and counting…she keeps finding groups who want so much to believe that her need to be the center of attention, no matter how mendaciously, is fulfilled. Eventually people find out, but the truly sad thing is that they then engage in pure doublethink, deliberately deceiving themselves when they know better, because confronting her at that point would mean they themselves would be marginalized out of the group AND they would make themselves look like fools for having believed for so long. It’s easier to lie to yourself every day than face things and change them. I know one woman had to be institutionalized on a suicide watch over that narcissistic game-playing, and several who had to seek counselling."
Shoud they be outed? What about the people who get taken in?
Yes indeed they would. There's a theory in Psychology known as 'cognitive dissonance'. It arose as a theory after American social psychology researchers, led by Leon Festinger, read a newspaper article in their local paper about a housewife called Mrs Keech. She said she was receieving messages from the Planet Clarion planet These told her the world would come to an end in a flood. The only people to be saved would be true believers, and the newspaper reported that Mrs Keech had followers who had left spouses, jobs, homes and family to get ready for their alienfrown salvation.
The newspaper article inspired the researchers to go and infiltrate the group, pretending to be true believers. There wasn't really another way to get into the group and find out more about human behaviour. All followers sat in waiting on the night that the flood was predicted. They sat all through the night waiting for salvation, well past the appointed hour, but no flood came and there was no rescue.
Now, you'd think that the believers would stop believing and go home mummbling "sorry" to their families. But that would make them look "stupid for falling for it".
Instead, in the early hours, Mrs Keech recieved another message from the Planet Clarion, thanking the believers for their faith, which had saved the world from destruction. The believers then actually strengthened their committment and began to spread the word to others and give newspaper interviews. The theory is that to do otherwise would make them look ridiculous, and nobody wants that.
See Leon Festinger's book: "When Prophecy Fails".
