Psst…….. Michelle Obama is a lesbian who brings adolescent girls to the White House and Camp David!

Hillary Rodham Clinton seduced Tom Cruise at her private chalet in Russian River, California! Bill Clinton is never invited there!

President Obama has moved over $4 billion of your taxpayer dollars to Switzerland where he has a secret bank account!

Hot “news” like this can be found any hour of the day online… as one “insider” story after another, each more scintillating, titillating, and scurrilous than the last catches fire online and captures your attention.

Problem is, every single one of these “hot insider facts” is not only wrong, but is deliberately invented (like the ones above) to suit the purposefully invidious and always selfish and self-serving purposes of the poster.

The question is: why are so many people all over the world perverting the Internet by posting deliberately erroneous, always hurtful, and completely false “information”?

Let’s take a look…

Maladjusted kids with too much time and Internet savvy

Did you ever make a prank telephone call when you were in grammar school? I did… and I suspect most of you did too. Now, however, the pranks are not directed at one person, but at millions. And the Internet is so configured that one maladjusted kid sitting in his basement in Kalamazoo can (within minutes) prank the whole world. To pimple-faced Johnny who’s a wash-out with the chicks, this is a thrill that just won’t quit. Unfortunately, the viruses he invents and disseminates, the misinformation he circulates are very real and cause, as he wanted, maximum dislocation and harm. He’s the man!

With malice towards all and charity towards none (pace Abe Lincoln)

We live in the era of the empowered haters where daily people as psychotic as Hitler and as malevolent as Stalin take center stage. These people are hooligans on speed. Shunned themselves, they are determined that the successful of the world shall answer to them….or else. In the “real” world, such creatures have limited influence even if they turn into uni bombers, stalkers, and those who (with cunning and skill) reduce their own pain by inflicting it on the great of the land… or merely on an unfortunate soul who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now the socially inept and clinically dangerous have scope for their inadequacies.

For such people the Internet is a dream come true…. because now, without leaving their homes, they can hurt, really hurt, brutally hurt people who have neither heard of them… nor offered so much as an offending word. The empowered hooligan doesn’t care… to hurt is his objective and if he determines to hurt… he has no need whatsoever to justify the heinous act. He hurts, therefore he is.

Misinformation as pay back

Got into an argument with your brother-in-law lately? Got cut off on the turn pike and wrote down the license plate number? Chastised by your boss in front of your colleagues (never mind that he was right). Got blown off by the waitress you made a pass at? You want pay-back, and you want it NOW!

Voila! The Internet’s at hand. Post! Publish! Hurt them… feel vindicated, powerful, happy. Such commentary, posted by the vengeful daily, floods the Internet. These comments are invariably abusive, misspelled…and anonymous. You want to hurt the boss all right… you want to show that girl to be sure… but hold the name with the mayo. Cut them down to size… but never,ever tell them who you actually are. Hurt and hide, the coward’s formula through history.

“Expose” your competitors by riding in on your white horse

This is a biggie. In business? Got successful competitors? In a hurry for success? Then use the Internet to besmirch your competitors. Make up “confidential” information about them. Pose as the readers’ friend… let them in on the “secret” about your competition. What matter that every word you post is made up…. when YOU can benefit from the lie. Paint with broad strokes: use innuendo, suggestion, go for the big lie. Poor as you are, hiding behind email and anonymity, you have license to prevaricate.

This format is used regularly by people in a hurry, by the corner cutters, the self-appointed “truth tellers”, and by people with an axe to grind. They know that online they can not only appear to be virtuous but ride to the top of the search engines on the coat tails of their well-known competitors. Such messages are a magnet for the gullible and the credulous, for people whose “business” is to manipulate the lazy and uniformed from whom they conjure money without compunction — and then disappear, the privilege of the harlot throughout the ages.

Bait and switch

Back in the good old days of mail order there was a famous ad that ran

SEX

Now that I’ve got your attention, let me tell you about our terrific air conditioners.

A variety of this ad is launched daily on the net which is why ads like the one with Hillary Clinton above are created. Sex, as every marketer knows, sells. And the more licentious and lubricious the better, no matter than the message is false from start to end.

Reader Beware!

Today you will be the recipient of online lies, smut, and vulgarity. That is why today you must be chary and cautious about what you choose to believe and the judgements you make.

* Ask yourself whether what you are reading is likely. If the claim is outrageous and exaggerated, it is unlikely to be true.

* Is the claim signed? Is someone willing to take responsibility? If not, it is hearsay and rumor in which case who is benefiting from it?

* Has the person attacked been given the chance to respond… or is the claim advanced by one person who attacks… but will not let his victim respond? Fairness is never in the repertoire of the irresponsible.

* Is there a clear beneficiary for what is being written? Is this person assailing because they will benefit thereby? Below the surface of seeming honesty, there is always avarice.

* If the claim is attributed, does that person have anything to lose? Established persons and institutions are responsible at least in part because they have much to lose by being irresponsible. Those with nothing to lose can make the most irresponsible claims with impunity… and so they do. That they do is a sure sign of their insignificance and unaccountability.

Consider the source

When I was growing up in Illinois in the ‘forties, my father had an expression: “Consider the source.” When some comment or rumor reached us, he’d say these words. I now think of them often as I, like you, receive the filth and lies deliberately disseminated by those who may be Internent savvy but are bankrupt in all other ways. My advice to you is to ignore, beware, and in all cases consider who is benefiting from the lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications before us. When they cannot touch us, the perpetrators y shrivel and die, fulminating still but powerless and pathetic.

Author Bio: Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., http://www.worldprofit.com where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant’s live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! For details on Dr. Lant’s 18 best-selling business books, go to www.jeffreylant.com

Category: Business Management
Keywords: marketing,scams,earning,business