DeadlyAccurate said:
Actually, jfreedan, some of the people most likely to fall into a cult or cult-like organization are the ones who are intelligent and think, "That could never happen to me." They also tend to be the ones who have a harder time breaking free.
You do yourself a disservice to think it can never happen to you. As long as you think it could potentially happen to you, you're much more likely to be on your guard against it.
You don't seem to get it.
It's not that I think it "could never happen to me, just because I say so."
It's because I know when something seems too good to be true, it almost always is. It's a very old proverb, everyone here knows it, it doesn't matter where you grew up, there's a version in every language.
When I encounter something that seems too good to be true, I either ignore it on the spot or I investigate it until I have a firm grasp of it so I can make a good judgment.
You are trying to convince me that not everyone is capable of holding back their excitement and carefully evaluating the situation they are in? Sorry, I don't buy into that, because if that was true then that would mean these people are destined to die at a very early age.
If I'm out looking for a job and I see an ad that says "
Make <enter any absurd amount of money here> a week from your home! Call to get free package!" I don't fall for it because I know it's a scam, irregardless of how tempting it is to make thousands of dollars working at home. I look at the situation using very simple logic anyone is capable of:
1) If they are paying people thousands of dolllars a month, then why are they advertising on construction paper in laundry mats and telephone poles? These aren't typical places for reputable companies to hire employees.
2) Logically, they probably aren't paying people anything. It's more logical that they are selling people little "kits" to use, like a franchiser would. It is therefore a scam.
Here's another scam I avoided a couple weeks ago,
I have a couple arcade machines I put on craigslist to sell. I got a lot of emails, some of them bogus. One of these bogus mails was a guy claiming he represented some millionaire who was trying to find games for his private collection and would pay thousands for my machines-- much more than I was asking in my ad.
He said all he needed to know was where to send the check and what my address was so he could send someone to go pick the machines up.
This was obviously a scam. Being paid thousands of dollars for something I only wanted about 500 for is tempting, but I'm not going to fall for it because simple everyman evaluation tells me it is bogus:
1) Why would he offer to pay thousands of dollars more than my asking price? People usually try to get the price lower, not higher, and millionaires are no different.
2) If I was a millionaire, I wouldn't be buying non-working arcade machines from the other side of the country.
3) I don't take checks from random people. I only take cash. Checks bounce and checks can be stolen.
So I avoided that scam by using a little bit of logic anyone is capable of, or should be capable of. I can't imagine a person will survive in this world very long if they aren't capable of realizing there is millions of people out there who want to do them harm.
And remember, an eighteen-year-old may have eighteen years on this planet, but for the vast majority of them, they were kids. In fact, they may never have been on their own before or had the opportunity to learn about the world around them.
Again, human beings do not live in a vacuum. Unless the person in question was chaperoned by their parent holding their hand every second of their day, NO, they should have enough experience in life to avoid putting themselves into obviously bad situations. We are bombarded with media constantly, be it from parents, friends, family, TV, books, the internet or even videogames. A lot of this media is the exchange of "horror stories" of all kinds of bad things which have happened to other people. These stories are not just entertainment and gossip, they are teaching you to be weary of such things happening to you in the future.
A stranger offering you candy is an obviously bad situation.
A stranger wanting you to fly around the country to work a low-paying job is an obviously bad situation.
Whether they think before they act is the real question, and that unfortunately has nothing to do with being "inexperience", and everything about making the conscious decision to ignore your better judgment and "go for it" because you're too focused on immediant gratification.
Again, there is a ridiculous amount of people who smoke despite being told again and again that smoking WILL give them cancer. They ignore the warnings because they are more interested in the immediant gratification smoking gives (which is almost always about fitting in with a group).
And I would not be surprised in the slightest bit if there is a pattern of behavior there, and smoking is probably not the only obviously stupid activity they engage themselves in. I'm not going to pat someone on the back and comfort them if they intentionally do stupid things and get hurt. I'm not going to kick them when they are down either, but I'm certaintly going to tell them to stop doing stupid things, because that is what they need to hear.
Even though my words are likely falling on deaf ears.