On 5 Aug 2005 at 21:13, Roger Day wrote:
> Oh - puh-leez - this is even more crass than my previous email on this
> thread (for which I wholeheartedly and publicly apologise btw, bad
> times and all that). And that's going some. I have a figleaf of an
> excuse - what's yours?
I need an excuse to point out that the whole point of a scam is to garner
enough trust so that people will allow themselves to be taken advantage
of?
If there are poetry scams then naturally one way that they'll try to deflect
suspicion from their scam is to give awards to people who are not in on
the scam so that they have a vested interest in the integrity of the
award. And who among us, having won such an award while pure as
Caesar's wife, wouldn't say "Hey! Don't disparage that award! I won it
fair and square!"? The way scammers buy advertising like that is to
choose someone occasionally to give the award to who has nothing to
do with them or their scam. The self-interest of that winner, though, is
automatically vested in the scam, though they are completely innocent
of the scam, and they naturally defend the award.
And we all want to believe that it could happen to us, don't we? Does
anyone on this list believe that they would say, if their MS was picked
out of the slush pile and awarded first place, that they would turn it down
as undeserved?
Now, let's not always see the same hands.
Marcus
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