This might be a giant fakeout, but it costs you absolutely nothing and may help some people a lot. If you’re on Reddit, follow this link and just upvote the topic. Those of you familiar with .self posts know that the OP gets no karma, so the only downside is some elaborate troll is having a go at us, in which case it’s egg on my face, not yours.
It’s fake! 4chan got us good! Great joke, guys!
Did you check out the rest of r/atheism today? they fucking kick ass! over 100,00 raised!
r/atheism gets a lot of hate from people I otherwise respect and agree with. I think as much as we’d like it to be all things to all people, it’s still the internet. However, I’ve seen some pretty amazing things come from that ragtag group of ruffians, and I think that it is, overall, a force for good in the world. It definitely shatters the myth that without religion, people would cease doing good things.
That guy was a fake, trolling for 4chan lulz, and one of his several trolls was getting so many comments it almost broke reddit
his account has been removed.
There’s plenty of genuine stuff happening though. About $50K donated to MSF in less than 2 days.
That’s too bad. I don’t really see the joke, but then again 4chan is full of inexplicably dickish people.
the guy who does Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal linked this on twitter – I was of two minds: If this is real that is a stupidly low value calling for each upvote and a stupidly low time limit of 5 hours. It is likely a fake with no form of identification to it so I will ignore it.
I was suspicious, but I figured if it was real then cool, and if not then I have wasted exactly the amount of energy it took me to click on the upvote. I dunno… I guess I look stupid now?
better to fall for a couple of trolls and do a little more good on average
I guess. I just don’t understand why the joke is funny. The troll put in way more effort than anyone else, people were calling him out on the fraud almost immediately, and it spawned a bunch of actual giving as a copycat. I have a fairly decent sense of humour, even when I’m the target of a joke, and I don’t get where the lulz come from in this one. It’s like when a kind punches another kid and says “gotcha!” or lame April Fool’s jokes your mom tells – “oh honey I forgot I can’t pick you up after school” “that’s okay, I’ll take the bus.” “APRIL FOOL! I’ll see you at 3”
This is what I call a fake-out troll. There’s probably a different better name for it.
Basically the troll post isn’t what he did first. He made the fake post to get people interested, but like you say, it cost nothing and the poster gained nothing by responding to the fake post. Haha, people have hearts and want to help? Nah, that’s not a good joke.
The actual troll came when it was discovered it was a fake, and he was all “lol, atheistfags”. Given how angry a lot of posters seem to be over being duped, I’d say successful troll is successful. Trolls aren’t looking to just make a joke, they want to make people angry. While most will swoop in, say something obviously designed to garner a heated reaction, and never post again, some can be extremely patient in their setups. I moderate a few tech forums, and quite frequently I get users that start off alright, asking seeming legit questions, until slowly the questions start turning to a more subtle “this sucks because it should be able to do X but it can’t and everyone who uses this is stupid” sort of posts.