No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
It was Bill Gates in spam emails when he was still the richest man.
There's definitely a YouTube algorithm thing going on, too. I've had a lot of these right-wing dipsh*t maga channels pop up on my YouTube home screen, recently. As in, more of them showing up in the last 6-8 months than I've seen in years.
dipshit
I've had the algorithm try to. It starts with a seemingly benign short that might have one questionable thing that most will overlook. Or may have a mildly controversial designed to agitate engagement.
It doesn't even matter if you like any aspect of it, so long as it gets the clicks and comments.
Hm, I've yet to see a single one.
They are fishing for crypto so they target people who are likely to hold crypto and be stupid enough to fall for the scam. Using a video of Elon or space x is a perfect way to attract this demographic.
Spacex doesn't have an official YouTube channel. You've got to go through their website or go to X to watch a stream. Scammers probably see it as easy bait for anyone trying to catch a live rocket launch. A lot of people just assume there's an official channel.
Is it just because people who like Musk are more likely to fall for scams?
Bingo.
If someone is still a fan of Elon in 2024, they've self selected themselves as one of the most gullible, easily-scammed people on the planet. Saves scammers a lot of time to target this demographic.
elon musk / 2024
Where a fat line of idiocy and the learning curve of digital currencies intersect. Wisdom level set at "infantile".
"doge doge doge doge doge doge doge..."
"Elon's pumping dogecoin again!"
To top it off, these people most likely mock older generations for falling for the Nigerian prince email scams.
It's the same reason scam emails don't spell check or make the grammar more believable.
The people dumb/ignorant enough to not get caught by all the giant waving red flags are people who probably wouldn't notice an atomic bomb detonating against their eyeball.
You'll find that most Tesla/SpaceX hacked channels promote shitcoins or some form of "You send me 10 Bitcoin and I'll send you 20 back" scam. This is because Elon himself is promoting or has promoted dubious coins as well (i.e. Dodgecoin). I think Elon stans are just the perfect blend of tech hypers and technologically illiterate people that would most likely be unable to differentiate between "legitimate" Elon promotion and those scams.
It's just scammers trying to cash out. They know Elon has a large (and gullible) following, many of which see him as as trustworthy and a super good business man, making them easy targets.
It ends up as the usual, a scam investment promising huge returns, but of course they just run away with your money.
It's fundamentally the same scam they use to hack accounts, posing as a rich sponsor and tricking the youtuber into downloading malware that steals their account.
If I were a scammer, I'd want to attract marks who are A) greedy, B) gullible and C) think they are smart.
I'd go for Elon's fans yeah.
Imagine how bad it'll get with generative AI only getting better. Think about someone like Linus Tech Tips getting hacked and an AI video getting uploaded of him telling his users to go sign up for a chance to win some $5000 PC "we're giving 500 away!" and that site which won't even have to look like anything other than "someMadeUpBrand.com/giveaway/linus". It's crazy to even think about how many people would fall for that shit. If the AI is good enough I might fall for it and I'm pretty damn good at catching it (for now).
Nope. You jack an edited video that is ready to upload. Then, only insert a blip of an easter egg hinting at some soon to happen contest.
I mean this is how a lot of spam emails worked.
Back then, it was scammers telling marks that Bill Gates can help them get rich off the internet.
This is absolutely it.
No, they don't want people who hate Elon like another commenter suggested – the idea that a scammer would think that the people who are most likely to fall for their Elon crypto scam are the haters and not the people who are uncontrollably guzzling his cum is frankly bizarre.
You're overthinking it. It's bait for the low EQ and gullible. Call it efficient, some call it natural Darwinism.
Ultimately just messed-up
If I had to guess, it’d be that it’s easy rage bait since folks get so worked up over him.
Scammers want to attract people who are gullible and stupid enough that they don't see they're getting scammed.
People who are "worked up" about Elon aren't going to watch a scam video that purports to be by Elon / SpaceX / whatever and go "by golly, I clicked on this link because I get so worked up about Elon, but he's saying he can make me rich. Maybe I've been wrong about him the whole time and I need to check this thing out?"
I was thinking more along the lines of a troll hacking an account and then trolling more by posting things they know a lot of people would get angry at. People don’t even have to open the video, just visit/be subscribed to the channel. “Some men like to watch the world burn” kind of vibe.
Uh, ok. I do get what you mean, but that sounds so far-fetched that it's a bit funny.
In any case, the Elon-related scams are pretty much always about crypto, far as I can tell. There's absolutely a profit motive there, they're not just doing it to piss people off
I don't have a proper answer but I know exactly what you're talking about. I've seen it happen with channels like GameXplain, A+ Start, and LTT as you said.
It seems like it comes from long-term social engineering where the hackers pretend to be a potential sponsor and eventually send a .zip with a dodgy screen saver file that rips the session cookies from the PC's browser.
Why they choose Musk? I assume, like you said, people who like him are more likely to fall for scams. I've never watched too much of the stream, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a crypto scam in there.