443 Legit.

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I get a lot of spam messages on the site’s email.  In fact the site itself gets thousands of spam comments every day.  This being so, I’ve seen every kind of scam imaginable.  People are always tying to get me to do something for them, give something to them, or what have you.  All in various guises.  (Usually the king of someplace…)  Every so often I check the spam folder to see if any legit stuff is getting hidden from me. 

So I find one that references Archie comics and charity work, and I’m like “Well played spamster, you’ve researched me a little better than normal”.  I open it and read a pretty textbook scam style email about me doing art for a charity.  Normally I’d have deleted the message there, but I just had to see what the con was, or at least taunt the guy.  Unexpectedly, I get a response, but it still reads like it’s fake.  There are some links in it though.  Now, you never know what you’re going to get when someone making questionable claims gives you links.  I have faith in my various firewalls, and whatnot, so I check them out.  They lead to fairly bland, unimpressive sites that don’t instill any more faith in me, and I leave the message alone.  I figure I’ll do some research and see if I can vet this dude in any way.  Turns out that my half assed googling leads to places that all make me think this is just a scam, so I forget about it.

A day or so later I read a journal, after following a link in a friend’s art post, about this dude’s charity project.  So I’m like ‘Oh, he’s actually not a scammer’ and I tell him I’ll go ahead and help if I can.  I get back an email that is clearly, though politely, meant to make me feel bad.  It’s basically a name dropping list of artists involved in the project, that I guess I’m supposed to give a shit about, wrapped in a blanket of ‘neener neener you missed your chance’.  As I said, however, it was kindly worded.  In any event, the subtext was not lost on me. 

I just know, at some point, I’m going to run into this dude again, and he’s gonna be like “You’re the guy who teased me on the internet.”  And then I don’t get in to Princeton.

Makes for a fun story though.  XD

16 Comments

Eh, a number of “legitimately” established, paperwork-clear charities are still scams of a sort, designed mostly to pay wages out to the folks running them. If you want to support charity you should pick small ones that are local to you, whom you know a few of the people working at ’em and have at least met a majority of the rest. And if that doesn’t describe any charity you know of, then make one; it’s not hard to find something small-scale to do to help either your local community or someplace further abroad.

Or to put it more simply: A charity with a large staff is a charity that has to pay out hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year before they’ve spent their first dollar actually doing anything useful. A charity that would rather have your money than your time is probably a waste of both.

Aww, damn. To be fair I think a lot of people would have reacted the same way.

You seem to have a mistake in the first speech bubble by the way.

I probably would have reacted like that if he’d have contacted me, but I contacted him. ^^;
I love the “I don’t get into Princeton” line. :D
I’m hoping it’s legit and considering that I got the info from someone who does cards for a living I think it is. We’ll see when the cards show up I guess. o_o;

Why do I get the feeling that Mike & Brooksie are going to get caught, not by Reggie, but by someone else, and it’ll end up looking like Mike & Brooksie are trying to make out?

Mike and Jo, Nina’s next crusade. And speaking of her old crusade, sort of, is that creepy, Snape-wannabe going to show up again?

I think c-c-college is referring to the fact that Nina has forced Carole to make up with Ed AND hook her an Thomas up AND defended ED against Reggie when he could do nothing. She does seem to be the most proactive character when it comes to relationship development.

I wouldn’t worry about it. If everyone got really upset over someone else on the internet, well….

You’ll have another chance at something like that later. There are always opportunities waiting for someone to come pick them up.

Back when he was new in the industry and I worked at Sears Credit, I denied Todd McFarlane a Sears card because I didn’t believe he worked at Marvel. (In my defense, Marvel wouldn’t verify employment…)

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