Bee - you have the nack for this sort of thing and understand the well-established rules. Perhaps YOU should kill your persona?

I wish I could say that the shopping/coupon/deal sites where these kinds of things go on are low-class or trashy and that's why it goes on. They're just really well-established sites with huge volumes of visitors and it's the size that permits that kind of thing to cycle through again and again.

I think that most of the con-artists who fall into those sympathy-cycles are leading very isolated and desperate lives. There is always a fresh crop of new mommies with their first baby, stuck at home and barely getting the bills paid who seem to easily buy into these kinds of ruses. I suspect those gullible women are being victimized in other, crueler ways in their real lives and that they gain something valuable by offering their trust and belief to the Con artist. It reaffirms their humanity. They empathize with the victim.

There is a flipside to that too in that there are always a few "truth-sayers" on those sites who call out the con artists in particularly vicious ways with elaborate put-down lanaguge. Those are also women but tend to be older, divorced or alone, empty-nesters who collect accolytes who wait with baited breath for them to sink their fangs into some would-be widow or mother of a newly dead persona or.. into the flesh of of some user who posts an exaagerated story of the woes of their life or their bad day. Those woman do not empathize with the con artist - they see them as victimizing the trusting ones and appoint themselves as online avenging angels. What they get is praise and admiration for being "wise" and "wordly" and strong. Oddly enough, the women who flock to them also tend to have histories of victimization but they have chosen to ally with the bully and curry favor in return for sanctuary from future taunts and attacks.

I truly loathe the Vampires the most - the women who get their kicks posting elaborate taunts and tracking down people via Zaba Search or google to analyze every clue in each post a target has ever made. When they succed in finding their real world addresses, typical activites include sending them poison-pen letters, signing them up for magazine subscriptions or CD club memberships they can't afford, or registering them on porn sites or for porn catalogs. The vampires say the con artists "asked for it" by trying to con people into believing a sob story but the way I see, at least the con artists didn't do anything blatantly illegal.

Why do I observe this behavior, you ask? I can't help it. It fascinates me as an anthropologist. The predictable patterns that emerge and the amazing similarities between the individuals who voluntarily adopt these roles.

The Con artists have supporters and so do the vampires. The Con artists want to play the victim for sympathy and the Vampires seem to be saying "Ok lady, you want to be a victim? OK. Wish granted. Now let me teach you the true meaning of the word." It's like high-tech junior highschool but its being carried out by adults with an adult's capacity for inventiveness and vindictiveness. Truly nasty pieces of work these vampire women.

There are a few anthropologists who study online bullying who also find these patterns fascinating and we send eachother data from time to time. It seems that this kind of thing is equally popular in the UK as it is in the USA but in the UK, the offline harrassment is less direct.

Well - I'll shut up now. I'm hijacking this thread away from its topic and over towards a whole different issue - a related issue yes, but not what we began with.

However, keep all of what I've related in mind if you're tempted to think the Mudcat is messed up! by comparison, I'd say we're a much more open lot.