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Eh, we had a similar thing happen on a game called Invasion3042 a few years back. It's the internet, it's very possible to make up fake personas. Hell, might even be the same one.

 daedalus wrote:

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:
Internet tough guy is a good enough term for it. But we'd be better off if we had a similarly catchy term for the guy who interjects in a thread and goes: 'Oh look you people are reacting to something. How quaint. Who cares? I'm above all this reacting to stuff. This happens all the time, what is new?'

I guess if I have to see your outrage, you have to see my flippant disregard? Perhaps part of the problem is that you take too many things too seriously, and I take nothing as serious as I should.

So then I guess it's "petulant and bored neckbeard pretending to be numb psuedo-intellectual" versus "petulant and bored neckbeard pretending to be selfrighteously enraged and taken-advantage-of innocent upstanding member of the community" over "petulant and bored neckbeard who's figured out he can antagonize a group of people by pretending he is a dying mammal possessing a reproductive type opposite of his own." Not as catchy as Internet Tough Guy.

You might try psuedo-intellectual internet sophist. Problem is that it's still not very catchy, and that there's so many of us it's not really as profound a remark.

Actually if you want to talk about what has actually been posted rather than what you have come up with then it's pretty clear you're here to promote your idea that your somehow superior to the rest of us, something your doing again by now making out that I am enraged by your posting. In fact, I simply pointed out to you that the only pointless waste of time posting being done here is by yourself.

Now lets not start pulling words out of thin air and putting them in quotation marks as if someone actually said them and lets get back to restoring your need to feel superior to everyone else here by leaving this subject, you supposedly have no interest in, to the people who actually want to talk about it. Perhaps you could go dwell on how proud you are to have used your favourite buzz words 'psuedo-intellectual' so many times in one post.

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:

Actually if you want to talk about what has actually been posted rather than what you have come up with then it's pretty clear you're here to promote your idea that your somehow superior to the rest of us, something your doing again by now making out that I am enraged by your posting. In fact, I simply pointed out to you that the only pointless waste of time posting being done here is by yourself.

You're not enraged by my posting. You're enraged by original topic, which I guess I just can't relate to. I suspect that you're taking me personally also, which shouldn't be done. I don't feel "superior" to you. I think that the topic is funny, to the point of being a bad joke you must not have gotten. I still really don't get why anyone wouldn't just roll their eyes and get on with life. That's the only idea I really wish to promote. And now you're either accusing me of being smug for the point of being smug, or lying about it to feel superior. I'm still unsure of why having an opinion alternate to the majority theme of the thread is a bad thing.

Wow, and it's late there. (or early I guess, depending upon how you look at it.)

But I guess it's late here too.

Now lets not start pulling words out of thin air and putting them in quotation marks as if someone actually said them and lets get back to restoring your need to feel superior to everyone else here by leaving this subject, you supposedly have no interest in, to the people who actually want to talk about it.

I put them in quotation marks because they were my own standalone terms, not anyone else's. I'd have quoted people if they belonged to anyone but me. As far as still being here, it's because people responded to me, rather than letting me get bored and leaving, so I've continued our fine and welcome discussion of my ulterior motives and societal need to artificially make myself feel better than everyone else.

Let's do this though: Other than societal disorder and lack of candor displayed by the charlatan who committed the hoax, what's the problem here?

Ultimately speaking, where's the horror that hasn't been played out a million times before?

 kcwm wrote:
Interestingly enough, I did pitch shift a portion of the interview I did with Christina. While both of our voices sounded modified, my voice sounded unnatural whereas "hers" sounded like a guy talking a little higher, and shifting that up through a filter would make it sound like a girl. I'm not convinced it was a dude masquerading as a girl, but I can't rule it out by any means.

During the interview, before she'd talk, you can hear a number of weird clicking or popping noises. While crappy mics do indeed sound like you're talking through a telephone, it'd be odd for it to click and pop before someone talked and not during their talking. I wouldn't rull it out, but as I listened with a different point of view, a few things did stand out as odd to me, especially when listening to the pitch shifted version.

Something has made me doubt this person was using a voice filter. In the tribute episode Jason says he played and spoke to her often on xbox live. I haven't used an xbox for a long time but I don't think you can filter your voice on it, I may be wrong though.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
I bet I know who it was...
















MANDELBAUM!!!!!!!

Good God, you're right....

Does this count as fraud, or misrepresentation on the internet, as it would be in person?

I'd like to know more about it, unless we're not too busy trading smart quips and insults.

I'd think that the offender could be sued at this point, especially if they were making money off the "tragedy".

I don't think there was any money involved and that would rule out any motivation to take it down any legal channels. They have advertising on the podcast but I would presume the revenue from that is dealt with by either one of the long term members.

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:


Something has made me doubt this person was using a voice filter. In the tribute episode Jason says he played and spoke to her often on xbox live. I haven't used an xbox for a long time but I don't think you can filter your voice on it, I may be wrong though.

That's a fair point. However, if someone was THAT invested in the hoax, it might be possible, especially if the clicks and audio anomalies I hear are evident in the Xbox live voice feed. When we recorded a skit for Chaos Brand Feminine Napkins for a recent episode, one of the lines called for a girl to say "Blood for the Blood God" (I never said our podcast was classy). My wife was hesitant to do it, so I did a voice and pitched it up a little. It ended up sounding eerily similar to what she did. In fact, my own mother didn't know it was my voice. That's why I'm not 100% sure it was a girl.

Let me put on my audio hat for a moment. The Xbox live headset is a 2.5mm jack (smaller than the 3.5mm normally found on most headphones). There are 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapters out there. From there, the 3.5mm could easily have a 1/4" adapter (think guitar/instrument cable), if necessary, to run through whatever process is being used, then running it out with appropriate adapters into the Xbox controller.

It sounds somewhat elaborate, but if someone has invested in voice altering software (some cheap mixing boards can do it), whats a few more dollars to perpetuate the hoax? I've known more than a few people who use a mixing board just to talk on skype. The mixer we use to record elsewhere other than my house has a bunch of built in effects...no pitch shifting. There are some software that could do this and it's relatively affordable. The thing that shoots a hole in it is the fact that, unless they have another use for the stuff (like how all of the recording gear we use for our podcast is actually for recording my music), it's a hefty investment for a year or two of this.

I'd be curious to hear what Jason did, as I only ever talked to her on Skype. My gut feeling is that it's a girl who fashioned an incredibly deep persona and ran with it until it ran its course for her or she got in further than she expected or felt comfortable doing. Then again, didn't I read in the DSR facebook post that she demonstrated how she did the Xander voice live? If so, who's the know which one is the real voice.

Whatever it is, it will die down and the wargaming world will go on...hell, it already is.

All of that said, if they were to contact me and come clean, I'd simply have questions without judgement. There are enough people judging the individual. I'm simply curious.

To be fair, you can pitch shift by compressing audio files via the windows sound controller. You'll sound like a chipmunk, but it's possible.

That being said, I'm 90% sure either FruityLoops or Audacity could handle it,

After thinking about my last post, I realize that it ultimately doesn't matter.

The amateur engineer in me was curious and got the better of me. In trying to figure out the possibility of how something was done, I because personally invested in the situation for the completely wrong reason.

Sorry about that, guys.

I'd say it would be important to know so that you can protect yourself against it in the future. Say if your podcast was to audition hosts it would be in your interest to avoid the embarrassment of this situation, even if the faker was (as in this case) a good host.

I didn't think about relaying the same filter system through the xbox setup, that's a good point. This person could either male or female to my mind.

JWhex wrote:
The person that perpetrated this hoax needs to be outed. They have some serious mental health issues and the community really should be warned away from this person.

I cannot stress how terrible this advice is. You make it sound like everyone with mental health problems should wear bells on their clothes like the lepers of old, or perhaps an arm band or a bag over their heads. Outing anyone to the ridicule and hatred of "the community" for an illness they have little or no control over is monstrous. What's next, forcing bipolar people to wear clown shoes?

This person is quite possibly not at all well, and if so, they deserve appropriate consideration. Yes, I know it's hard to empathise with someone you'd much rather hate and shun as unclean, but tough noogies. Empathy is hard. That's why humans are the only species that can do it.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

JWhex wrote:
The person that perpetrated this hoax needs to be outed. They have some serious mental health issues and the community really should be warned away from this person.

I cannot stress how terrible this advice is. You make it sound like everyone with mental health problems should wear bells on their clothes like the lepers of old, or perhaps an arm band or a bag over their heads. Outing anyone to the ridicule and hatred of "the community" for an illness they have little or no control over is monstrous. What's next, forcing bipolar people to wear clown shoes?

This person is quite possibly not at all well, and if so, they deserve appropriate consideration. Yes, I know it's hard to empathise with someone you'd much rather hate and shun as unclean, but tough noogies. Empathy is hard. That's why humans are the only species that can do it.

This is a great response.

Thank you. Like Wernher von Braun, I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London instead.

Having empathy for a person does not give them a free pass for bad behavior which is what you (Agamenon2) are suggesting. They need to be made known to the community so they cannot repeat this behavior and easily accomplish a repeat performance. The person knew quite a lot about 40k and is drawn to this community and it is not unreasonable that they may try something similar in the future.

You greatly mischaracterized what I said in an effort to further an agenda you feel strongly about. I really cannot take someone seriously that has to put false and exagerrated words in another person's mouth to make a point. You are not far off from being a liar in this regard.

If not a "free pass", what punishment, pray you, should we, "the community", impose upon this person? None, says I. And why? Because they're not within our power to punish. Whatever consequences befall them will not be by our hand. We could hate them, yes, but to what end?

What is your alternative? A warning posted on these forums perhaps in perpetuity, to guard against the return of this individual? Presumably, since you mentioned "outing", you want to identify this person by their real personal details, which I cannot agree is a proportional response to what has happened.

I'd rather we saved community ire and pillorying for people whose actions are more deliberate and heinous than the sad debacle illustrated here. Mr. Mandelbaum for example seems to richly deserve his ignominy, and his tenacity gives motivation for continued watchfulness. Until the Anonymous Hoaxer makes a similar repeat showing (which I find unlikely, our community is not big enough for another sob story of a similar nature to go uncommented upon anytime soon), warning others about them is rather pointless.

From a practical standpoint, a caution to the effect of "Beware X.Y, they spin outrageous sob stories in a bid to leech on sympathy!" or whatever is unlikely to be that effective, since making new Internet personas, even in this age of surveillance, is relatively easy. A warning about this specific person is not likely to have much of an effect. Discussion and awareness of the broader phenomenon might be, which is what I'd rather advocate, in stead of going after individual perpetrators.

Revealing the identity of someone who is a liar and a fraud is what you usually do when someone behaves this badly. You have not given any reason other than empathy for not identifying this person. Maybe you think people should not be held accountable for their bad behavior or you just dont think constantly lying to people that have befriended you is bad behavior.

I have not suggested anything other than identifying this person and holding someone responsible for their bad behavior is hardly pilloring them.

"Warning to the community: Mr Whatshisname is pretending to be a woman again! Keep a watchful eye!"

Agamemnon2's defense of this fraudster while portrayed in the context of sympathy for people with a mental illness is a actually a bit of a fraud. In the BoK vs Romeo thread he/she characterizes the fraud perpetrated against DSR as a "depressingly common form of fraud".

So really then Agamemnon2, is it a pedestrian and common fraud that for some reason you want the fraudster to remain cloaked in anonymity or is it some serious mental illness that you can divine from afar and want to shield the victim of this disease?

Maybe if people did suffer some repercussions such as damage to their real reputation the fraud would not be so "depressingly common". For now I am writing you off as a troll.

JWhex wrote:
Revealing the identity of someone who is a liar and a fraud is what you usually do when someone behaves this badly. You have not given any reason other than empathy for not identifying this person. Maybe you think people should not be held accountable for their bad behavior or you just dont think constantly lying to people that have befriended you is bad behavior..

And maybe i'm Matt Ward, posting in secret from GW headquarters to keep an eye on IP theft on these forums. ... I find it ironic that you accuse me of lying, and then proceed with this sort of misrepresentation of my position. We're not in a position to hold this person accountable for anything, for starters. We don't know their name, location or personal details. If they're to be held accountable by someone, then clearly it cannot be us, lacking as we are these crucial pieces of information.

I also feel that focusing on this one hoaxer is counterproductive, if indeed our aim is to better the community and stop people from falling victim to the actions the likes of which have been perpetrated here. Those are attainable goals, as opposed to engaging on an online snoop-hunt for an individual culprit. If this person is ill, they need help, which falls outside our remit. On the other hand, if this person is merely a troll, someone who gets off on duping people and their outrage upon being deceived, giving them additional publicity would be playing right into their hands.

With regards to your accusation, if this person had solicited donations, sold a product, committed fraud for personal profit or any other unquestionably criminal actions under these false pretenses, I would not be against the forum taking action, as indeed my silence on the Daniel Mandelbaum affair attests to. Lying to people is bad behavior, doubly so if they're friends. But I'm not so sure it should be sanctionable. I've lied on this forum, countless times. I've done worse. I've twisted people's statements to further my own agenda, I've taken the Lord's name in vain, I've been quarrelsome, rude and engaged in other conduct unbecoming of a gentleman. If "bad behavior" is reason to be turned into an example, how long, do you think, until it would be my head on the block?

It's not just empathy, you see. I'm looking out for number one.

JWhex wrote:
So really then Agamemnon2, is it a pedestrian and common fraud that for some reason you want the fraudster to remain cloaked in anonymity or is it some serious mental illness that you can divine from afar and want to shield the victim of this disease?

A point to which I was getting to, as you can see from my notes above. You are free to impugn my honor or and label me as you wish, of course. The perpetrator might be ill, in which case they deserve our sympathy. They might be a troll, in which case they deserve to be ignored. In my opinion neither outcome is helped by making an example of them.

I cannot say i agree to your assessment of my actions as fraudulent, you have simply taken two turns in a longer dialogue and juxtaposed them. It might not surprise you that between those two messages, I've thought about the topic some more, worked at other projects, watched an episode of Futurama and baked a quiche lorraine. I suppose I could have gone back and edited by earlier remarks to be consistent with this latest one, but that smacks too much of retroactively making myself seem cleverer than I am. I prefer my faults and failures to remain in public for all to see.

I'm not a great debater, as I'm sure many other veteran forum users will attest to. I tend to get sidetracked, change my mind midsentence, score cheap points via questionable arguments and otherwise obfuscate key issues. To that end, I extend my apologies for the muddled way this discussion has turned out.

JWhex wrote:
Agamemnon2's defense of this fraudster while portrayed in the context of sympathy for people with a mental illness is a actually a bit of a fraud. In the BoK vs Romeo thread he/she characterizes the fraud perpetrated against DSR as a "depressingly common form of fraud".

So really then Agamemnon2, is it a pedestrian and common fraud that for some reason you want the fraudster to remain cloaked in anonymity or is it some serious mental illness that you can divine from afar and want to shield the victim of this disease?

Maybe if people did suffer some repercussions such as damage to their real reputation the fraud would not be so "depressingly common". For now I am writing you off as a troll.

Stand down, you are making a mountain out of a molehill and going a little far at the point now.

Yes, the guy was a clown-ass for doing that, but I'm not really seeing the reason for the hostility and righteous indignation after the fact. "Fool me once..." and all that.

It doesn't even look like a mental illness, either. All it looks like is someone getting caught up in their petty little charade and going a little farther off the mark then they wanted to.

Not seeing it as a crime, seeing as no money was made off of it, but a damn disappointment in someone for pulling a mutt move because for one reason or another they thought it might go better as a G.I.R.L. This day and age, every girl is a guy and every kid is an FBI agent, keep calm and carry on.

Gak happens, want to protect yourself? do the podcast with a face to face such as Skipe or other screen so you are looking at the cohosts, regardless of distance.

 DeffDred wrote:
Further proof that females don't play warhammer lol.

Wait I don't?

 notprop wrote:
Words escape me.....I mean how do you get a gig without actually meeting the person face to face? The frequency of "I Was ripped off on the web" type thread makes a whole lot more sense to me now I see how "business" is conducted.

I did work for DP9 for probably 6-12 months before meeting the owner or anyone else in person. I was even joking on the forums that they had no proof I was not an AI construct. (I was playing a lot of Endgame: Singularity, a weird little game where the player is an AI attempting to make itself safe from threats like humans shutting it down at the time.)

It's the new way things work. A lot of people are scrambling for jobs, and a lot of companies need cheap work so in-line talent is a great resource (but has it's own share of issues to manage).

Well, whatever you make of the situation, at least it can be discussed on Dakka unlike Warseer. I posted the announcement from DSR and after a few responses hostile to even posting the thread and a couple that were interested in the news, the thread was completely censored.

Not moved, not closed but completely removed from view. My query as to why the thread was censored with the help desk has not been answered after more than a week.

ghost23 wrote:
Welcome to the interwebz, where the men are men, girls are men and the kids are really FBI agents.

Exalted.

This alleged hoaxer is a very sad individual indeed. What was their agenda?