A while back I had a client who received an angry email from a woman. He’s a Boston-based plastic surgeon who provides aesthetician services in his office including hair removal. She ran a company in Arizona that did training in hair removal (or something like that) and for some reason used the name "Boston" in her name.
She was going to sue my client because he ranked higher than her in Google, and he was obviously trying to run her out of business. She had trademarked the name and he was infringing on her trademark. My advice was to ignore it, which he did.
She also sent me some angry, threatening emails because my contact info appeared on his site. I really wanted to "educate" her, but my instincts told my any advice I would give her would go into a black hole of ignorance. Her experience in hair removal probably had to do with getting people to tear their own hair out in frustration.
I tell this story because this morning I read something equally as ridiculous.
Rich Brooks
Portland Hair Removal
For your information, the article linked to here is a complete hoax. Dean has maliciously deceived his faithful readers for the sake of traffic gain. Don't believe me? Check out the story on Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/160241). The story has been tagged as a 'hoax' and 'fake' more than any other tag. Many users, including myself, have reported attempting to comment on this story through his blog, asking him to provide evidence that shows this is authentic. There remains no evidence proving this to be authentic while much evidence points to it being a fraud. See, for example, his recent post on planning to start a viral marketing campaign: http://deanhunt.com/viral-campaign/
Also note that all of our comments asking for proof or more information fail to get moderated and added to the blog comments.
Please do the right thing and point out that this article is a fraud. It really bothers me that Dean has been dragging this out without a second thought towards deceiving his own readers. It appears that he has linked to your blog post and a couple others on his latest entry because yours is a highly ranked site that will again benefit his rankings and traffic.
The truth needs to be set free regarding this malicious viral campaign. Obviously Dean will not allow that truth to be posted to his own site. I certainly hope I won't find the same result here on yours.
Thanks for your time.
Devin
Dear Devin,
Please get your links to other web pages right before you flame someone or something on the internet. Otherwise, you look like a big jackass.
Moe
Devin,
What makes you think that the 'viral campaign' he talks about references this. From what I see, that post was about bird flu and during October. His current issue isn't involved with either…
Just a thought, you should try it sometime.
I don't think it's a hoax. This is too good to be invented.
Moe,
Cut him some slack and knock the extraneous two characters on the end of the /. URL. It will work. The two characters are ')' and '.'.
Pascal,
"I don't think it's a hoax. This is too good to be invented."
I would disagree with how 'good' it is, if I were sure what you meant. Disregarding that, good cons are really believable which is why they work.
NotDevin
I would like to clear a couple things up:
I am not flaming anyone.
There is a real issue underneath this all that exists whether or not Dean made this up. And it is something that has happened before. So, there is truth in the issue itself.
This particular story is a complete hoax perpetrated by Dean himself in order to draw traffic and links to his web site.
Please read through the load of comments on Slashdot for this article. They provide a practical look into Dean's lies as well as an interesting discussion into the issue itself.
Thanks!
Link to the Slashdot article and comments, properly formatted:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/160241