John Obi Mikel

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Posted: Tue May 30, 2017 3:12 pm

I have decided to reply to various lads as "John Obi Mikel" to see if any of them are stupid enough to actually continue.

For those of you who don't know, John Obi Mikel is a famous Nigerian footballer and captain of the Nigerian national football team. It'll give me an opportunity to practice my pidgin.

Think I'll get any bites? Wink

EDIT: Should I talk like a lad, or like someone who spent many years in the UK and speaks perfect English? Also, should I say I'm joining English club Arse Bandit United on a transfer as soon as the summer transfer season opens? (Hey, it worked once...)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 3:33 am

That would depend on how confident you are with your pidgin. If you decide to go with pidgin, this thread is helpful with more realistic words. Keep in mind that not all lads are Nigerian and they may not understand you if you overdo it.

One time I tried to pose as a fake lad, and I thought the real lad didn't understand me or think I was real. After reading through those emails later, I realized that I could have probably pushed that modality further if I had a better understanding of lad slang.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 4:29 am

If I was going to bait as John Obi Mikel, it would be exclusively to Nigerian lads (or at the very least, lads who claim to be in Nigeria if there's no accessible IP). It wouldn't be nearly as absurd to, say, a Benin lad (and there aren't really any great, famous footballers from Benin).

The absurdity of it would be due to a) the fact that, I'm assuming, the vast majority of natives of Nigeria know what a 419 scam is, and b) even if John Obi Mikel somehow didn't know, he wouldn't be responding to random people whose "offers" were in his spam folder.

It'd be the equivalent of telling an American that you are LeBron James. But then again, telling a Nigerian that you're President Bush seems to be fine, so...

Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 5:25 am

If anyone googles that name, it will be Eater as the first hit. I'd suggest editing your post,

Change one letter in each, leet, do not leet it all.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 6:13 am

If someone Googles the name, Eater most certainly won't be anywhere close to the first hit. John Obi Mikel is a famous footballer (or soccer player if you prefer) who is a native of Nigeria.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 9:00 am

An awful lot of lads know a huge amount about football and even those who aren't fans will know "Odogwu" and it was major national news when he signed for Tianjin Teda in the Chinese Super League.

It *may* be possible to get a decent bait this way but will be a huge challenge, especially if you are trying to write like he would. It might be better NOT to use such a familiar figure, instead if you wanted to do a high profile footballer it may be better to do one from another country to reduce the familiarity factor. Or, rather than a footballer, someone who represents a club.... this is how Tasman managed this sort of thing
http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=132176

One might argue: Scammers sometimes try to impersonate high profile Americans such as James Comey or even Donald Trump, targeting American victims as well as others..... But the difference is that they send out thousands of messages.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 3:05 pm

Oh, it definitely would be exceedingly difficult to pull off. There is no doubt about that.

If a Nigerian lad thought they actually had their country's most famous footballer as a potential maga, though...then something special might go down.

Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:21 pm

Snowy_owl wrote:

Eater most certainly won't be anywhere close to the first hit.

Can confirm.

Snowy_owl wrote:

then something special might go down.

Go for it!