Drama Mamas: The case of the underage scammer

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-25-2011 @ 9:41AM

LynMars said...

I'm in the middle, but leaning more on Lisa's side on this one. Threatening to continue your lecture with alts, and generally terrorizing someone to the point you feel they were in tears since they were asking you to stop, is a definition of trolling that most people would report in other situations. If this is actually a kid (and not scamming you again to make you feel bad; if he can lie about this, he can lie about age too), a 20 minute lecture likely wasn't necessary.

"What you're doing is wrong and can get you into a lot of trouble. Falsely advertising having an item for sale and then trying to give people another item instead is a scam and will get you reported and your account flagged and eventually banned. It gives your guild a bad name and can get you kicked out. You'll get posts on the forum, and if your older siblings or parents play, you can get in trouble at home too. It's not worth it; ask your friends and family for help farming materials or doing quests to get money."

Something like that would likely take a couple posts of chat, but it's not going to tie a kid up for 15 minutes or so. Message his guild master if he's got one. Tell people in Trade and on the realm forum. Put him on /ignore. Report to a GM if applicable about the attempted scamming, especially if you see it continuing if you haven't put the kid on ignore.

As another comment said, it's not your job to parent someone else's kid; you can give some guidance and advice, but how likely are they to really listen to a nasty rant, when someone they tell later is going to point out that YOU were harassing and trolling THEM right back and they could have ignored you at any time, or logged off? They'll be more likely forget or justify their own behavior and think you were just freaking out and dismiss much of what was said. If lucky, maybe some got through and will give them a doubt about doing it again in the future.

I don't think Remorseful handled it particularly well. And I think they know that or they wouldn't be writing in as they are.

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