"You are an arrogant jerk"

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LOL, that is SOOOO me it's not even funny. I have no patience with think-skulled people that call me an "arrogant know-it-all" as if that is a refutation of what I said.

At least to me, arrogance is the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the possibility that you may be wrong. I'm a big believer in qualifying my opinions or beliefs, with the exception of hard facts that I have personally verified. Arrogance annoys me, and I tend to write off arrogant people, because whether or not they actually can back up their opinion of themselves, I don't care to deal with them.

Yes, you don't have to incorporate, but when you're in a business like mine, where I will be hiring people, it can come in useful. Maybe some of my expenses were needless, but I have zero support in all this, and all I know comes from reading some business books. All I know is what the books tell me. That is not ideal, but I don't have access to people who can say "look, I've been there, and you can do it better this way".

Oh, and a couple things from another post: yeah, I did come across rather harshly. Being aspie, I sometimes get carried away and don't realize how it looks to NTs until somebody points it out. The accountant comment was out of line. Also, I was indeed speaking hypothetically when calling people morons, but to fall for some of the schemes I've seen, you would HAVE to be a moron. Many times, NTs get so blinded by greed and/or desperation that they fall for anything, and unquestioningly believe what the con man is saying. Of course, a skilled con man will use NT tendencies to his advantage, and soon he has hundreds of people at a seminar eating out of his hand, and then they'll go and lose tons of money and then viciously attack anybody who points it out.

Ever tried pointing out the fallacies in the logic of scam victims to the victims, especially if the scam approaches a cult like some MLM schemes? You'd be treated better if you goosestepped into a full synagogue in a Nazi uniform and yelled Heil Hitler. The scam victims will tear you to shreds, despite the fact that you're right. It's similar to Stockholm Syndrome, where captives will start to empathize with their captors. It can appear to be stupid, but upon reflection it's a mental illness (and I do believe that Stockholm Syndrome is considered a mental illness).



As I noted, if I'm risking my money, *I* want to be the one getting the rewards. In most of these schemes, it's the guru getting rich. If I sink $10k into a business, I want to take the risk AND reap the rewards. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing yet can act like I do. Ok, but at least I know that *I* have the possibility of getting the profit. Compared to people who shell out thousands to some guy who says he'll make them rich, and then takes their money, sets them up with some slapdash website selling Booga Booga Juice (it can cure autism, TRUST ME!) and then absconds with the cash to Grand Cayman Island while his victims turn into attack dogs tearing apart people who point out that they're not getting rich, I'm ahead, even if it doesn't work. It was MY IDEA, I took the risk AND had the possibility of getting the rewards. BUT, there is no reward without risk, be it financial or otherwise. THAT was my REAL point, that anybody who says you can get rich "with no risk" is a LIAR. Could I have expressed it better? Yes, of course. But on a website where a thread about a scam called "AGLOCO" got dozens of posts praising the money they were making while savaging anybody who pointed out that AGLOCO was a rather common internet scam, I think I have the right to be ANGRY and BLUNT. Maybe I should post this on that other website.

In my experience the people who are really knowledgeable about something are usually humble about it and would never patronize someone for not knowing something.

I agree!

Those who say, do not know.
Those who know, do not say.

Maybe not to refute what you said, but to tell you you're an arrogant know-it-all. If that's possible.

pezar,

You think THAT is bad? There USED to be a scam called 12dailypro. The idea was that you would make like 12% a day from what amounts to be a simple ponzi scheme. At least Charles Ponzi had a PROVEN scheme that COULD have made money if he stuck to it. 12dailypro STARTED as Ponzi ended up!

Anyway, there was a site that was ALSO apparently operating illegally. Stormpay! The unusual turnaround caused people to get suspicious, and some people tried to cover their rears. This included stormpay. That meant that 12dailypro had to have a reserve because it was a ponzi(A LEGITIMATE business could have kept running with another provider).

Last I knew, TO THIS DAY, the people that thought they were doing OK STILL think it was legit, and blame stormpay. EVEN after 12dailypro made the news, etc...

http://www.spamdailynews.com/publish/SE ... ro_com.asp

BTW Stormpay is now relegated to a little auction site which doesn't even handle payments for THAT!

The sad thing is that I once thought about starting a site like paypal, around 1997 or so. I thought about that because I FINALLY got a merchant account(I tried in the early eighties, but there was so much fraud that it was HARD to get an account), and it wasn't that easy to setup. So why didn't I do it? It was FORBIDDEN by the merchant agreement. Apparantly, that is common. One company said they would get you up and running for $10,000. Another sells a gateway for about $1,000 that you could use to setup others.

Unfortunately, I didn't ever think about doing something like clickbank to get around the contract. Clickbank does it by basically acting as a consignment bureau. They consider a purchase through them to be FROM them. So they are the seller.

BTW in response to another statement... Arrogance is sometimes merely bluntness and honest knowledge. It isn't always just some blind hubris.

I found this quote to be interesting:



I read your post and I agree with the guy who posted below you who said you were being cocky and you could have left out the 'moron' comment. Frankly, you're not very wise for leveraging your entire business on credit, with this nose-diving economy. Still, if you don't have the cash, you take a risk, and so you've got guts. I'll give you that. No one ever made any money without taking some kind of risk. You're also correct that business 'opportunities' that supposedly require no up-front start-up costs are nothing more than networking (MLMs). I found this out the hard way myself when I joined up with a group called P-----rica. [Not a good thing for an Aspie to do, trust me]. Still, in order to succeed, one has to make a mistake or two along the way. Calling people 'morons' for trying isn't the best way to win friends and influence people.

When you make your first ten million, then you've earned the right to be cocky. (I'd say 'first million,' but then, a million isn't a lot of money anymore). Until then, you're basically wasting your breath when it comes to advising others on how to start up a business - especially when you've just put yourself in your current credit position. I hope you do succeed, though. I don't wish bad on anyone.

Buena suerte en Nevada.

Exactly. I hate it when I get called arrogant just for questioning an illogical or factually incorrect belief. It's not about "my beliefs," it's about THE FACTS. Just because some nitwit disagrees with a fact doesn't mean it's not a fact.

When I meet people, I come across as an arrogant jerk. They either refuse to get to know me and maintain their hatred and get to know me and become dear friends. I don't have a lot of "in-betweens" or "casual friendly acquaintances".

Okay, one big mistake I'm seeing you make is your continous use of the second person. For example:

A less objectionable way of saying this would be:



The problem with using second person when critisizing a hypothetical situation is that it implies that you think that the readers are so stupid that they'd automatically make the mistakes you're describing. You have no way of knowing that, and I doubt that's what you actually mean. Switching to third person avoids this - you're simply remarking that some people so fall for scams like this.

Does that make sense?

Okay, if you can't see the arrogance here it's pathological. Unless this is sarcasm or a joke. If you don't agree with me, you're a nitwit. If you think I'm wrong for saying what's true, you're a feeb.


See how insulting that is?

People wil want to know you and become dear friends if you can be a likeable person. It is just that simple. It's hard to get someone to like you, but to make them hate you is very easy. Invest the time and effort in building friendships. Put yourself out there. Become vulnerable to others.

Most of the things I would have said to the OP have already been mentioned, but there are a couple of points I'd like to touch on.

I guess the big one would be that insulting people only damages your own credibility. This being a board where the written word is the only form of communication, well worded argumentation is far more effective than insults and invective. When you adopt a condescending tone in your post, a good chunk of people immediately tune you out. I don't care how good you are at what you are talking about, all I have to go on is your word for it, and I view overbearing prose as a smoke screen for ignorance about the topic being discussed. If you want people to take you seriously, humbleness and humility go a lot further than bombast and bragging.

The other point I'd like to make is if the shoe fits... If you're being tossed off of multiple boards for being obnoxious, maybe the boards aren't the problem. Aspie or not, it's no excuse for rudeness. Blaming the NTs for not understanding you is not a constructive solution, it's not their responsibility to interpret your rude behavior. Regular society has it's share of problems, but if you'd like to be part of it, you do need to follow it's rules to a certain extent. People aren't mind readers, and expecting everyone to make allowances for you IS arrogant.

I would like to ask the OP how he got to be the way he is. How did you come to view the world as an assortment of meatbags?

I do think that if you are called arrogant you should try to analyze why you are called that. Even if it isn't true arrogance, you might want to build up the skill of sounding not-arrogant, because you may one day need it.