Grifters gonna grift
I thought the tech grifters had gone quiet recently but it turns out the fragile following they gained by exploiting people's job uncertainty at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has started drifting now that the vaccine programs appear to be (thankfully) making a positive impact. The eBook sales are clearly drying up and I’ve noticed a new pattern to their tweeting behaviour.
The tweet template previously would look a bit like this:
“OMG have you ever realised that 🥺 we're all human 🥺
You’ve got this keep working towards your goals. You’ve got this 🤩🚀 #100daysofcode”
This sort of tweet is usually hounded by other grifters all using a similar template to backslap the original poster in the replies. This all produces a nice bit of circular engagement, which of course, Twitter’s thirsty algorithm rewards by sticking it in everyone’s face. The original poster’s follow count goes up and in 4-6 months, they release a badly written, thin-on-details eBook.
That strategy has worked out for them and shucks, we’ve all got to make money, but it’s the exploitation and erasure I don’t like. Melissa McEwen is a very good person and made this hilarious parody account which summarises these people way better than I ever could. It's gone quiet now but from experience of running these sort of accounts myself, Melissa probably found themselves turning into what they were mocking, so understandably slowed down.
Anyway there's your context. Feel the hate for grifters run through you.
Fast forward to today, there’s a new template that they are clearly A/B testing on Tech Twitter™:
"Tech Twitter is... dying?!
I see a huge drop in activity and engagement compared to this time in 2020.
Any idea why is that? People got bored of tech? OR people got bored of creators?"
This one isn’t even made up lol.
This tweet was the kindling that started a raging Weekend On Tech Twitter™ cycle of doom. Turns out, the guy who posted it has a track record of being an insufferable bellend and when presented with advice, promptly blocked those who tried to help them. This sorta confirms my theory about these grifters. They find a route and if there’s even mild pushback, they melt down and fuck it all up, but because they’re all in this weird cult setup with each other, they fail up, riding 10 million “you can do this 💪” replies.
This new twitter engagement template has already been used since the [checks notes] 2 days since it was unleashed and yesterday one of the other grifters posted this:
"Why does the tech industry (generally) have more males than females?🤔"
This prick knew what would happen and oh boy it did. They did the standard half-arsed apology then oooh, would you look at this: a boast. Granted, this kid is 16 and they clearly have a lot of growing up to do, but they’d better fucking get on with it.
What gets me mad about this particular episode is that the replies to their tweet were a rancid landfill of disgraceful sexism, armchair pseudo-science and just plain wrong "facts". Because of this, I will not link to the quoted tweet. You don’t need to see that shit.
I genuinely don't think these idiots in the replies are even aware that programming was fucking invented by a woman while they spout some James Damore bullshit about "oh well men’s brains are wired up for it". This is fundamentally wrong and really, it's their brains that are wired up wrong because instead of self-improving their clearly shit code, they instead take out all of their frustration in women in tech’s DMs.
What's my point? Fuck knows to be honest. I just hate these grifters so much. They cause untold damage so they can build a following to sell their shit eBooks. I’ve already predicted that this year, we’ll see a tech bootcamp MLM scheme and it'll be these sort of wankers that start it.
Here’s a good tweet, as a treat.
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