Some amusing discoveries from Web Archive

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Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:54 am

After using WebArchive for an unrelated activity, I had the fun idea of checking out if there were any archives for the forum, and wouldn't you know it, there are quite a few (maybe 5-10 a year). Most of the fun things I've found that can't be seen now on the forum are some people's signatures and lots of hilarious custom titles. It's also interesting to see how the forum's overall activity has changed over time; going back to things from 2010-2014, for instance, there were a lot more members active every day. It's also somewhat bittersweet to see the times when our dearly beloved lost members like Capone were still around and commenting. Memories... Anyway, I promised some fun things, so here are some old custom titles people here used to have:
DSW-Lonely Planet Africa
Tsnerd-Man in a Bunny Suit
Nurse Nasty-Eloquent Noob
Justcold-pathetic F%@#ing social life
Esox Lucius-cat strangler
Pastor Frank-Canucklehead (unrelated, but he also had a very impressive array of signature icons)
TheDane-Norwegian or Swedish
jojobean-Obese Drooling Idiot
SlapHappy-Body Eater

I'm sure there are more memories of the past out there if you look hard enough.

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 3:05 am

Kind of makes me wish I had been able to join here back then...

With that being said, I am really happy to be here now, and if my post history is any indication, I don't plan on leaving anytime soon (heh...maybe I post too much?)

The things you've dug up here are great! I hope more baiters join and stick around. Hopefully we can continue to make this place a source of entertainment for archive searchers for years to come! Very Happy

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 3:29 am

I personally joined the forum at the very end of that era, and I really jumped into everything the summer of 2017. That was still enough time to get a healthy dose of the past. I did make a thread a few months about postulating that Eater was in a slow and inevitable downward trend, but there’s no point in whining and moaning. As Gatsby says, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” There are theoretically ways to market more online, and some of the old members like FrumpyBB that have left here are still active elsewhere (he’s an active admin on Eater and Scamwarner’s sister site romancescam.com, dedicated unsurprisingly to helping document romance scammers and support their victims). I’m sure there are more out there, but as long as they’re fighting the good fight somewhere, there’s little point in reaching out again.

I personally wouldn’t mind pounding the pavement a bit to, like you said, ensure that in the future some other internet historian will find this treasure trove by recruiting more, but there’s generally a decent rate of one or two new people a day. And even if the percentage of those who stick around is quite low, we aren’t gone yet. Still, I doubt we’ll ever get those numbers of 15-20 members consistently active during prime hours and inane threads reaching 5-10 pages in under 2 days.

If there are any specific things like old custom titles and signatures that can’t be found just through the forum’s own search function that you want found, let me know and I can try to see if they match up with anything available.

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:24 am

I used to be a Demented Opportunist before I was appointed* to the position Common Street Thawth Vergabon.

* I wouldn't call it promotion.

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:56 pm

MrMystery314 wrote:

I personally wouldn’t mind pounding the pavement a bit to, like you said, ensure that in the future some other internet historian will find this treasure trove...

There are YouTube channels out there that promote the unique, niche aspects of the internet and online communities. I wonder if that would be something worth looking into? That is, if we are actually looking to grow the forum again. Heck, This American Life did it a while back, I wouldn't be surprised if some YouTuber would do it today.

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:55 pm

^^^I hear Eater is active on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:44 pm

^^^ And I would imagine that most people who follow those pages/subscribe on YouTube are already members here, or at least have been at some point. Zombini makes a good point about This American Life, as I know that was a windfall for membership. Are there any other similar programs that Eater could have a segment on? Those programs have the advantage in that they don’t exclusively target people who are already interested in scambaiting. At some point I suggested reaching out to James Veitch (the TED talk guy) to see if something could be worked out that way. Like I said earlier, not my decision; then again, any minor advertising helps.

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 7:49 pm

^Exactly. I've noticed the "Greatest Hits" baits tend to be what get the most hits on the platforms bware mentioned. Stuff that involves lads reading entire books and whatnot. Other than that, Eater's socials (YouTube in particular) seem to be "preaching to the choir" as it were. Not that that's bad! I love the YouTube channel, but I think if we want to increase viewership and membership, we ought to reach out to other people.

Side note: @Yastreb, that was some awesome baiting you did that was uploaded to the YouTube channel! That's the kind of thing I hope more people can see!

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2019 6:53 pm

Every time the topic of marketing or advertising Eater in general comes up, the discussion inevitably gets to this point without any progress or changes being made. Emails take time to write, especially if the marketing takes the form of emailing other scambaiters online and asking for shout-outs, and the general policy here of not discussing other groups (which I personally agree with) is a double-edged sword when recruitment drives exist.

But let's look at a hypothetical situation where collectively as a forum we decide to attempt to increase active membership. Logical places to start would be converting other sorts of scambaiters such as the tech support scams; these don't make good discussion points on Eater for various reasons, although the sort of people who enjoy doing those could perhaps be persuaded to try doing stuff by email. We also have lots of exemplary baits on here as examples of the benefits of the email approach or participating in the forum in general; you don't see people like **DELETED NAME OF SCAMBAITING MONETIZER**** safari-ing their lads or having them get tattoos. Reddit would be a decent start for this, especially as the upvote system favors short videos and pictures that are easy to digest. Additionally, occasionally Eater's mentioned there (generally Shiver's stuff), which coincides with a boost in new membership. It's probably possible to post some of the stuff on the YouTube channel there, and on the right subreddit lads singing YMCA or jumping off houses could get upvoted. This obviously helps with exposure, and we wouldn't be "preaching to the choir" in this situation.

Additionally, asking people who reach different parts of the scambaiting community for advice or for shout-outs could work. I mentioned James Veitch before because of his general appeal, although unless the case personally reaches him it would either be lost in the web of secretaries or staffers he maybe has or we'd have to pay for advertising, and that latter option isn't too great. I won't bother naming a bunch of scambaiting YouTubers because a cursory Google search will return results, but I would guess that the overlap between active membership here and active viewers for those people isn't too high. Personally, I don't find that sort of stuff too interesting. Still, as I said before, some proportion of those people could be convinced to broaden their scambaiting interest.

Finding ways to advertise outside of those is harder, especially as scambaiting is admittedly niche. Wrapping a mention of Eater in a bigger article about 419 scams in general seems most promising, especially as this lets us plug Scamwarners and related sites; those "need" the advertising more than us anyway. Popular coverage of scambaiting veers from the bemused to the absurd; an academic article from 2014 makes an interesting argument about scambaiting that I imagine 99% of the people here would disagree with (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470412914546845), citing some old baits like bobjohnson's tattoo baits to psychoanalyze scambaiters. That's somewhat tangential, but there's room for depth in a piece about scamming, and with recent news stories about scammers being arrested there is an opportunity for something that happens to mention Eater or Scamwarners. For instance, the Washington Post did an article on **DELETED NAME OF SCAMBAITING MONETIZER**** last February: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/02/08/internet-scammers-are-terrible-this-troll-is-their-nightmare/. If he can do an article, so can we. We have in the past, as one of the threads in Eater University indicates.

So what can we do now that we've established the general means of action? The easiest, fastest ways of advertising would probably be through Reddit or messaging YouTubers/Twitch people (Twitchers?), perhaps smaller channels that are less likely to be bombarded with emails/requests. These also have the advantage in that every member here could theoretically send a message or make a post somewhere, of course with the intent of bringing more attention to us. It's a bit tacky to write someone and say "hey, write an article about us!", but the next time that some sort of scamming topic shows up in the news, doing an informative piece without any mention of scambaiting, but still plugging Eater or Scamwarners somewhere, would help. I doubt we'd ever get a "This American Life"-level influx of new members, but that isn't necessary by any means, and any small bit helps.

Thoughts?

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 7:42 pm

I was thinking more along the lines of the Internet Historian, who documents all sorts of interesting Internet things. He's covered everything from failed fan conventions to weird craigslist ads, to the rise and fall(ish) of Bethesda's Fallout 76 MMO. He's not done anything on baiting to my knowledge, but he or others like him may be interested in doing a video.

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