When was it "the overall consensus was that self escrowing was no big deal"? In what place was this establised?
Right before the forum got full of all these shitposts by a bunch of scammers.
(I do escrow seomtimes but never for myself, however I do not see how self escrowing alone constitutes a scam. The scam happens when the escrow and buyer/seller collude, that can happen if they are the same person or not.)