Agent Insights Ep 24: How Not to Confront Scammers

Hello everyone. Flint here to do an Agent Insights, talking about what you shouldn't do when confronting scammers.

Hopefully, we all know scamming is bad, and you should respond negatively to it. However, some methods of responding to scammers are unhelpful, counterproductive, too extreme, or unnecessary. I'll tell you some things you shouldn't do in order to be the most helpful. These go for agents and non-agents.

Note that you can't convince scammeres they're wrong right at that moment. That really needs to be done organically, by the scammers. They need to do it themselves. Yelling at them that scamming is wrong won't work. Have you ever changed your mind after being yelled at or snarked at?

Do Not Harass the Scammer

Harassing includes insulting, demeaning, snarking at, threatening, or spamming the scammer. Doing this isn't actually going to help anybody. You aren't warning anyone, you aren't gathering evidence, you aren't investigating the scam, you aren't even making the scammer regret scamming. You're just being mean. I think people might do this because they want to be mean anyway, and have found an acceptable target. Either way, harassing is unhelpful and mean, so don't do it.

Do Not Scam the Scammer

This makes you a scammer. Even if you scam back your items, you're still scamming. Scamming is never justified for any reason. Don't.

Do Not Go Undercover

While this is especially a rule for our agents, this also applies to you. There's a very good chance that if you try to go undercover as a scammer, you will get reported/suspended, outed as a non-scammer before actually doing anything, and/or end up actually scamming someone and being unable to return their items. For these reasons, you should not go undercover as a scammer/part of a scam team.

Do Not Stalk the Scammer

Every so often, I see people who follow the scammer around long after the scam is complete and they have stopped scamming. They aren't anonymously tracking a known serial scammer and only making themselves known when they are actively engaged in scamming. They aren't remaining in the scammers' den or following the scammer after they left a world to make sure they aren't still scamming. The people I'm talking about here randomly show up where the scammer is hours, sometimes days, after they've scammed someone and harass them or scream about how they're a scammer during their FNAF roleplays. This is ultimately pointless. You're wasting your time. You aren't helping anyone, you aren't convincing the scammer. You're just being mean.

In summary, a checklist of things you should make sure of before confronting a scammer.

• Will this gather evidence, warn others, or impede the ability of the scammer to scam?
• Am I being mean? If I were the scammer, what would I think of this action?
• Do I truly want to help, or do I want to look cool?

Goodbye, everyone!