You know, for someone who was successful in real estate for so long (supposedly), you sure missed out on 30 or so years of life lessons on what "morals" are all about.
I'll just bullet this out for you:
1. You use the title "best stories about taking off a sucker." Try and tell me that title alone is not glorifying these acts?
2. You begin this already-specious-sounding thread with your example of the poor kid losing his 4 years of tuition money, money that was most likely the life savings of his parents, as many parents do. (Yes, call that an assumption -- of it being the parents' life savings -- but what else is the readership supposed to think, when this is actually true in most cases?) Remember, you began and set the tone of your thread with this example. So this is your "best story" of taking off a "sucker"?
3. When called to the carpet about it (not just by myself, but by others here as well), you try and hide behind technicalities -- e.g. the use of the term "vulture" in your story. But just like how you glorify the term "sucker" (boy, you damn sure use it enough -- I wish I had a dime for every time you use it), you also glorify the use of the word "vulture." When reading your story, I certainly didn't take your use of the word "vulture" to be demeaning to the perpetrators of this act. I took it as just a token term "used in this profession."
4. You continue to hide behind technicalities, like saying those who call you out "make assumptions." Yes, and see? You just hinted at another aspect of your character. Those calling you to the carpet about glorifying this act assume people are basically good, unless demonstrated otherwise. You, on the other hand, assume people are basically bad, and just revel and roll around in it.
5. I knew you'd try and slink away from your own Bernie Madoff example. You give the air that you are "too smart" to fall for these mass frauds, that it's somehow "common sense" not to, when in fact part of the science of these frauds is how to convince folks with otherwise sound judgment to let their guard down and give in. It's called social engineering. And before you even attempt to counter this, please know this: if you've read any of my past posts on these boards, you'll know that my "day job" is in information security (I.T. security, to include securing a network's architecture, firewalls, honeypots, intrusion detection/prevention systems [IDS/IPS], vulnerability scans, ethical hacking, etc.). Part of the core of what I do is to study the enemy's tactics. And part of that is the study of social engineering, where all these system controls are bypassed by that one weakest element, the human him/herself. There are some pretty insidious "hacks" where people themselves are "attacked" and forced to give up sensitive information, like login credentials, etc. Part of my job is education -- helping people recognize those insidious hacks for what they are (many of them are truly ingenious), and how to thwart them. So believe me, a lot of those people you consider to be "suckers" -- merely because they fell for a scam, regardless of whether that scam was an ingenious or formidable one -- are actually some very intelligent people that just trust that others are inherently good people, and the attacker leveraged/exploited that good nature. I don't agree with your copious and diarrheal use of the word "sucker" at all.
I'm just getting started, but I'll pause and ask you -- shall I continue?
-Sean
