The strange case of the WoodCollector and other stories.

The entire affair transpired on the TardsTalk forumⁱ, Bitcoin's premiere comedy goldmine. A convenient summary is provided by nubbins`, who for some reason has been prosecuting the matter relentlessly, mpoe-pr-esque-ly. Mayhap he was bored. Or he has bloodhound blood. Or something. Anyway, the summary in question :

WoodCollector creates a hate thread in order to intimidate me into silence. He will post his evidence "soon" ; A carver with 40 years of experience calls bullshit ; Several pieces are found to be using stolen artwork ; A thread where WoodCollector attempts to recruit paid shills to push his phony wares ; A thread where our Master Carver is tired of making $10 million a year, and is interested in a much more lucrative career operating a dark market website selling marijuana paraphernalia ; More stolen artwork ; Several of WoodCarver's customers have PMed me stating that they realize they were ripped off for hundreds/thousands of dollars, but are currently too afraid to come forward for fear their personal information will be releasedⁱⁱ ; A South African resident calls bullshit on everything WC has stated about his woods, with links to back it up ; WoodCollector locks both of his hate threads against me, after posting screenshots of him uploading a proof video. The screenshots turn out to be bogus ; WoodCollector can't figure out how to engrave straight lines onto wood with his laser engraver on November 29, 2014.

The meat and potatoes of this entire thing is : some kid got a laser etcher tool, and proceeded to etch free SVGs found online upon pieces of wood. This is actually a good, positive and useful thing, and it resulted in a net if tiny addition of value to the space.

However, instead of representing himself fairly but modestly as someone doing something useful that anyone else could just as well be doing, he instead misrepresented himself, fraudulently but grandiosely as some sort of "master carver" doing one of a kind work out of "valuable wood" and other similar insanities.ⁱⁱⁱ

The facts of the matter were readily obvious to everyone with a clue upon the most casual inspection. However, people without a clue apparently ended up taken in.^iv Normally people without a clue do not have money, so they are reasonably safe - except, of course, for the rare circumstance where ordinary people get empowered significantly above what their modest intellects can handle, such as for instance whenever a land rush happens, be it Bitcoin, oil or anything else of similar value and properties ; as well as for the common circumstance of the ever more advanced fracking techniques developed to separate welfare recipients from their ill gotten gains^v.

The one point I wish to make, and underscore and bold and carve out of live bone if at all possible is this :

You know in retrospect, I don't actually blame the woodcarver idiot. He's just some monkey doing what he should be doing : monkeying. I blame Andreessen Horowitz, and Paul Graham and fucking Bill Gates. That's who I blame. A whole shitload of "charity" in Africa isn't going to wash this off of them. Poor monkey is doing what they claimed he should be doing. Fucking frauds. He's exactly their fucking poster child : politically aware, rhetorically prepared, ready to lie and fake it all the way.

That's right. Do a little and claim you're really doing a lot ? Check. Pretend like you have skills you don't have, pretend like you're delivering value you're not actually delivering ? Check. Engage anyone showing you differenty in a purely rhetorical battle, instead of using that energy to engage your shortcomings ? Check.

This vapid sort of pointless, disabled, ineffectual and ultimately useless and worthless "entrepreneur" that the VC circus is promoting puts to shame the otherwise glorious traditions of the Western civilisation, and the immortal heritage of white people. A lot more so than the inept handling of finances and financial promises, for instance.

And I wish it clearly stated and plainly understood that when I say I am white, and when I say I am European, and when I say I am a civilised man I specifically do NOT mean I am like the United States Africans. I specifically do not mean I am like Andreessen Horowitz, or like Paul Graham, or like Bill Gates.

No, they do not belong and in no sense participate in anything to do with white culture, or European civilisation. They are Africans^vi, they belong in Africa, and the pretense to the contrary is not merely insulting, but extremely ignorant - of history, of culture, of civilisation. Not just of any history, or of any culture, or of any civilisation mind you, but of that history which matters, and of that culture which matters, and of that civilisation which matters.

Here this article ends, and we each go back : me to being what they pretend to be ; they to hoola hoops, tribal dances and ridiculous superstitions.

1. Here's the principal thread, Scam Warning: WoodCollector.

   Here's the first response thread, a moderately lulzy "Nubbins is the type of Plague that destroys this community (video proof thread)" (no video nor any "proof" is actually produced).

   Here's the second response thread, a somewhat lulzier "Nubbins is using a witch hunt to try and iliminate his competition - THE FACTS" introduced by the guy's signature as "THE TRUTH BEHIND NUBBINS LIES AND TACTICS". This last one is particularly interesting because well... that "competition" scammer story is really getting old by now. [↩]

2. This, incidentally, is the actual plague that destroys the community of retards blindly swarming around Bitcoin - just like it destroys every other community of retards, irrespective what they're swarming around.

   The failure to completely and exhaustively report scams, and in the worst cases (oft seen in Bitcoin) agreeing to shill for the scammer in exchange for a partial refund is the absolute worst thing to do.

   It externalises the costs of one's own idiocy upon the community at large, creating a socialised losses / privatized profits situation where people who should not have money manage to extract a little money out of degrading the general quality of the discussion, by straight up lying for pay. It is toxic, abvoe and beyond the toxicity of African tribalism, but through roughly the same mechanisms. Africa is poor - and the footholds of Africa in the ghettos of the West are poor - because people can't farm and pursue industry due to a minority of idiots go around with AK-47s. Similarly, communities of idiots - whether they imagine they're related to Bitcoin or to anything else - can't prosper because almost everyone is constantly attacking the industry (such as it is) of everyone else through this shilling for scammers approach to denying one's own idiocy, and the grandiose opportunities to learning that spring from confronting it.

   There is a lot of personal responsibility involved in empowering scammers through simple silence, let alone speaking in their favour. To quote MPOE-PR's 2012 seminal piece :

   Prosperity is in general the result of the working of free markets. The one caveat to this observation is that market participants have to be responsible. It doesn't matter so much if they are intelligent or not, it doesn't really matter if they're good christians or devout muslims or anything else, but they do have to be responsible.

   When some people behave irresponsibly the result is that they lose their money, which flows, albeit indirectly and circumvolutedly but nevertheless unerringly, to more responsible participants.

   When a small majority* of participants behave irresponsibly however the net result is not just pain to their own fortunes, but pain spread across the board. All of a sudden you have to be very intelligent, and very experienced, and very well informed to manage to keep your money safe, and often enough even that's not going to suffice.

   Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot has the unpleasant effect of creating a high powered idiot. He can now wreak havoc on the exchange rate, which increases volatility and on the long term hurts everyone involved in bitcoins, because volatility is, much like inflation, an indirect tax on users.

   Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot has the unpleasant effect of creating half a million bitcoins' worth of valueless receipts, which are pretty much indistinguishable to the naked eye from valid receipts. Thus, if you pay on anyone's credit you are basing your judgment not on actual fact, but on an unknown and pretty much unknowable mixture of fact and hogwash.

   Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot is a bad idea. There are people whose personal responsibility in this matter is greater than that of most everyone else, people who have in effect acted as lieutenants for the random idiot. This thread is a convenient spot for all of them to avoid the indignity of being called out, and instead freely and willingly admit their mistake, and by admitting it learn from it. Specifically, learn that they aren't nearly as qualified as they thought to play the "banker", and by this make one step towards maybe one day actually being bankers.

   The wanna-be bankers are not alone in their hour of humiliation. There are plenty of others who spend their entire day spouting nonsense on this forum, either under the guise of being "journalists" for some monthly magazine that does a couple issues a year or just as random internet experts in everything. Obviously they won't be learning anything on this opportunity as they haven't learned anything on any of the previous ones in their lives. That's after all fine, what would a mining town be without the drunks and general scum?

   Aside from these practical considerations, there are some more general points to be taken home by anybody who wants to be a little smarter today than last month, and possibly have a little better shot at actually making money than before.

   1. Learn the pecking order. All opinions are not equal. Some people are to be respected. Learn who. Some people are irrelevant and easily ignored. Learn who. More importantly than the who, learn why. Is it just because "everyone else seems to think so"? That's no good, forget it. Is it because they were right when everyone else was wrong? That's perfect, especially if it occurs with any sort of consistency.

   2. Business means something very specific. Only the permanently poor imagine business = "anything to do with money". There's no business without a business plan. If something purports to be a business but "it can't" or it just won't share its business plan it is not a business. This means you can't be investing in it. Sure, you can throw money at anything you wish, as for instance the toilet bowl, Ponzi scams or scantily clad girls. However, in order to invest you absolutely need a business first.

   3. Learn how to deal with your own mental limitations. If you think you don't have any you find yourself most likely in the situation described here:

   If one skims through the psychological literature, one will find some evidence that the incompetent are less able than their more skilled peers to gauge their own level of competence. For example, Fagot and O'Brien (1994) found that socially incompetent boys were largely unaware of their lack of social graces (see Bem & Lord, 1979 , for a similar result involving college students). Mediocre students are less accurate than other students at evaluating their course performance ( Moreland, Miller, & Laucka, 1981 ). Unskilled readers are less able to assess their text comprehension than are more skilled readers ( Maki, Jonas, & Kallod, 1994 ). Students doing poorly on tests less accurately predict which questions they will get right than do students doing well ( Shaughnessy, 1979 ; Sinkavich, 1995 ). Drivers involved in accidents or flunking a driving exam predict their performance on a reaction test less accurately than do more accomplished and experienced drivers ( Kunkel, 1971 ).

   In short: if you're not aware that there's anything wrong with your judgment of "business", "finance", "investing", "money" and so forth that is almost certainly due to the fact that you are very weak on all of these topics, likely significantly below average. You should spend a good deal of time reading and a greater deal of time testing things out methodically before you promote yourself mentally to "average", or even "crummy". This means years. Years.

   The advantage of BTC is that it's a very cheap and very clean way to learn about finance. The disadvantage (if we can call it that) is that it's much akin to falling in love: very, very, very hard on the knees. Vitriolic to the ego.

   4. Step outside of your ideology. You might have been brought up in a very repressive social milieu in which some particular ideological slant was drilled into you. This is working to your disadvantage, get rid of it. Are you sticking up for your friends because they're your friends rather than because they have a point? Great for facebook, horrible for BTC. You will lose money. Are you following the crowd like a welfare state lemming? Great for the white collar slave, horrible for BTC. You will lose money. Do you think form is above content and as such it's okay to invade foreign countries and slaughter civilians just as long as nobody says shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker or tits on TV? Great for being an American, horrible for the free world. You will lose money.

   5. Re-read this entire post. It probably didn't fully sink in on the first pass. Seriously. Alternatively it is always easier to just not like me. You will lose money.

   ---------
   * This term of... art, let's say, will go down in BTC history.

   [↩]

3. An illustrative direct quote :

   8: Who am I?

   Honestly NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS. I am not here trying to sell you my brand. 90% of you cannot afford it, i make art pieces for the people here because they ask for it. There are all of 3 people on this forum who know who i really am, and every one of them would not sell that secret for $100,000 because they have a vested interest in keeping the secret. What i am is why you will never find out. I am, in fact a world famous artist, my pieces have been in the Smithsonian on exhibit at the Louvre and in the home of pompous wealthy people the world over. Even if you have the money and want to spend a ton of it, even buying one of my original artworks via this forum will not get you my identity. There is too much at stake.

   In the art world, or for that matter any luxury goods world, taking a very well branded high end product and then doing lesser works and selling them for cheaper is called scalping. Scalping work is the fastest way to destroy a million or billion dollar brand. There is a reason you will never see Louis Vuitton or Prada "on sale" or "on clearance" If you do you can be assured its fake as every single distributor is bound by their contract that they are not allowed to do so, that makes the work valuable and always expensive, its called an access barrier. LV and Prada buy back their unsold merchandise and literally burn it, it keeps the brand managed and expensive. There is a book, its called "luxury brand management". Read it ! It is no different in the art world, Once i sold a piece of art for 7 figures, all my art values went up because someone was willing to pay 7 figures for a piece, because you do not get direct access to me ever without a referral my work is expensive. If it got out that i made some little bitcoin trinket for a few grand and sold it, every single piece of art i have ever made will lose value. There are some really great people here on the forum, and some of you i really like and enjoy talking with like Blazedout and OgNasty and TookDK, but i dont like any of you enough to risk millions of dollars and my life's work.

   Nope, nothing added, nothing embellished. Direct quote. [↩]

4. As he doesn't seem keen to answer my question, the jury is still out on whether Blazedout419 actually fell for the scam, losing the greater part of 14`000 dollars in the process, or merely lied about commissioning an expensive piece as part of the scammer's set-up. Considering the many hours spent by the latter in a doomed but quite lively attempt to control the conversation and astroturf support after being blown wide open, and the sort of cheap discoursive tricks deployed, the collusion suspicion appears quite substantial. [↩]
5. Yes, that's right : the extremely idiotic idea of the welfare state, and the extremely idiotic proposition of "redistributing" wealth - that is, stealing wealth from the productive elements of society to gift it upon the unproductive scum don't merely result in a complete perversion of art for the obvious reason that the ten dollars of ten million idiots accrues to more net receipts than the few hundreds dollars of a few thousand men of importance, leading directly to Britney Spears and the "romance" novel.

   No, they also result in the complete perversion of commerce, because now intelligence can and therefore will be wasted on the otherwise worthless topic of "extracting chump change from large numbers of chumps". Had chumps not had any change, the bright young lads we currently lose as "scammers" would have been doing something socially productive with their time. This is why socialist states fail : in their quest to "help" the scum, that should never be helped but only trodden upon, they sacrifice the only people who actually matter : the best & brightest. The only people who should never be sacrificed. [↩]

6. Chris Rock is as white as anyone can ever get. Bill Gate's the most contemptible nigger the 20th century ever produced. And yes he's got to go. [↩]