{"id":1308,"date":"2003-01-29T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2003-01-29T06:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1308"},"modified":"2003-01-29T02:25:00","modified_gmt":"2003-01-29T06:25:00","slug":"latest-moron-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2003\/01\/29\/02\/25\/latest-moron-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Moron Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I read about this latest mutation of the venerable <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=Ponzi+Scheme\">Ponzi Scheme<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/news\/862999.asp\">Matrix Websites<\/a> that sell positions at the top of the pyramid to people for hundreds of dollars, disguised as &#8220;ebooks&#8221; or $500 CDs. These venial morons even have their own <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.msn.com\/MatrixForum\/general.msnw\">bulletin boards<\/a> where they try to boost their rankings by suckering other people into the scam. Some of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shadesmatrix.com\/\">websites even seem to have been written by morons<\/a>, but sadly this is not the case. They just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezexpo.com\/products.asp\">know their target audience<\/a>. Some of the would-be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.b-and-k.com\/\">scamsters have even had semi-cold feet<\/a>, while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.expotechsystems.com\/\">others<\/a> obviously feel the long arm of the law reaching for them and are <a href=\"http:\/\/cgi.ebay.com\/ws\/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&#038;item=2908161088&#038;category=11763\">trying to cash out<\/a> as quickly as possible. But there are still many more of them, and they are even <a href=\"http:\/\/search.ebay.com\/search\/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&#038;query=cheap+plasma+tv&#038;cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&#038;ht=1&#038;from=R10&#038;currdisp=2&#038;itemtimedisp=1&#038;st=2&#038;SortProperty=MetaEndSort&#038;BasicSearch=\">pimping for new suckers on Fleabay<\/a>. Sadly I fear this new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.extremematrix.com\/\">bozo invasion<\/a> will get worse before it gets better and we&#8217;ll be seeing a plague of annoying pop-under adverts for these, just as we did for those dumb <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyberrebate.com\/\">100%-rebate pyramid sites<\/a> last year before they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oag.state.ny.us\/press\/2001\/may\/may25b_01.html\">got the smackdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In a horrible, startling way of course, these kinds of new media Ponzi Schemes are a weird low-rent version of the Net Bubble and feature much the same hype, boosterism, and self-delusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I read about this latest mutation of the venerable Ponzi Scheme: Matrix Websites that sell positions at the top of the pyramid to people for hundreds of dollars, disguised as &#8220;ebooks&#8221; or $500&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}