[...]
I will say, how account selling/buying, scamming, and paid signature ads all tie into each other was not something done by design, it just sort of ended up like that.
Yes! We're on the same page, never thought this was some sort of a sinister plan to make some pocket change. The fallout is pretty bad tho.
It's not even something I can easily quantify or point a finger at, more of a general "feel" of the forum changing from hanging out with a bunch of friends to that guarded feel you get when scoring dope in a bad part of town.
[...] See, I don't especially care how it looks, but how it works. We have seen time and time again, that if we just ignore an issue and push it under the rug, it can become way more harmful than it is out in the open. Sure it may not look pretty from the outside, but I'm more against people being scammed, than people thinking something looks scammy.
But it's a feedback loop. If something seems scammy, you deal with it as you'd deal with scammy things, you jockey for advantage, and it becomes scammy. That's why seemingly superficial stuff isn't as superficial as it seems. From strictly unhippy, utilitarian perspective,
it pays to appear good.
A rewording of Vonnegut's Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.