Craigslist: The tone beneath the scam

I'm 99.9% sure that everyone reading this has either heard of, been on, advertised, or responded to an advertisement on Craiglist. As the majority of you have experienced Craiglist, I'm sure you all are aware that sometimes, bad people try to take advantage of you through Craiglist. I could have been one such victim. 

I posted an advertisement during the summer of 2009 in an attempt to find a roommate to live with me. I knew there were people who would be responding to my ad that were possibly going to try to steal from me, so I was very careful about who I met with. I used email communication as an initial screening test, if they sounded trustworthy I would agree to meet up with them for interviews. 

How to you discern trustworthyness in an email though? You have to search for tone in the written words. This was no easy feat, but after enough scam emails, there were common themes. 

First, all the scammers would portray themselves as normal, provide me with background information on themselves such as age, hobbies, how clean they are, and ironically none of them enjoyed having people over. By providing normal information about themselves, my attitude toward them was, "hey, this might be a potential roomie, they sound easy enough to live with." They developed trust by discussing normal, generic traits. 

Second: As soon as trust was developed, they would immediately begin discussing payment details, all of them were from another state or country and needed my house address to ship their car and belongings to me. They almost all insisted on paying for multiple months rent in advance to reserve the room. They would ask for my personal information so they would know who to write the check to, and then ask me to remove my advertisement because they plan on moving in ASAP. The tone went from a positive "TRUST ME!!!!" to another positive "I'LL TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING!" To a fool, this would work, but underneath what they were saying I understood the email quite differently. By analyzing the play in tone that the person used I was able to determine what the email actually meant: "LOOK, I'M JUST LIKE YOU SO LET ME MOVE IN, OH AND WE DON'T NEED TO MEET LOOK HOW COMPATIBLE OUR PERSONALITIES ARE, SO JUST SEND ME ALL YOUR INFORMATION AND LET ME STEAL EVERYTHING FROM YOU WHILE YOU'RE UNAWARES!" 

Needless to say, I never met up with the person who's email I will leave at the bottom of this post for anyone who wants to read it. I listened to the tone of the email rather than the words the email said to determine this person was a scammer after my possessions. Also, the grammer in the email didn't help this person betray me.  

ACTUAL EMAIL:

Hello Kat I'll be so glad if you can reserve the room for me and i really appreciate the breakdown details of the house, more about me from Huntsville, AL, USA, a quiet,clean,honest,responsible and easy going person to live with, I'm 5"7',straight, 26 years of age. I dont drink nor smoke but i'm cool living with people that do. I love to go on date but seldomly party. I swim for fun and sometimes play long tennis... i live with my Uncle here in AL,my Dad and mom's dead since i was a kid ,roommie i want you to know that i have no friends in the area except you for now lol....I am currently working on a research pertaining to my course work on culture and tourism. I hope to end my current assignment by the end of this month here in Alabama and focus on my new assingment to your States.. According to your mail, i will have to make a payment of $500 and reserve the room for me before my arrival, and then i will make subsequent payment thereafter as i plan to stay for more than 6months. So i'll client to see you'll get the payment prior to my arriving date....To be honest with you i really like the kind of person you are from your little description and if you have the picture of the bedroom available, kindly forward it to my mailbox. I am really okay with the place... I am planning to arrive on the 1st of next month so i will love to know if i can make the payment ahead of my arrival via business check,money order or personnal Cheque,Bank acctount ...so you will get the payment by next week and i can go ahead making arrangement for sending the payment to you, also i will much apprecaite if you can mail your information like,your mailing address ,your full name,your contact number as to appear on the payment. I will like to ship in my car,luggage,laptop and other materials for my research ahead of my arrival... I will also like you to remove the advert from the site b'cos i am ready to have your place rented..... Hope to read from you soon.

English 402 Class 1/26 assignment

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVW708E-0W4bZGZzNXQ2ZmZfMTQ1bXY3bTRyZ2Q&hl=en

Rhetorical Persuasion

In order for anybody to succeed, whether they can define rhetoric or not, they must understand how to use ethos, pathos, and logos in their everyday life. Rhetoric itself is a greek word, which when used in the english language is actually a form of logos, because for some reason, people who speak english are typically fascinated by foreign words. By assigning the class a blog on defining rhetoric, our professor has used logos to persuade the class that this assignment is scholarly, further promoting the students to spend some extra time on this work. 

I am certain that the majority of the world's population have no idea what rhetoric is, yet everyone has used it in their lives in one form or another. Communication is impossible without rhetoric, and therefore everyone who speaks or expresses themselves is using rhetoric to capture someone's attention. 

Ethos is in play when a person of reputation uses that reputation to persuade people that what that person is saying is important. When ethos is apparent, that person might not be using supportive information or emotion to enforce their topic, but rely solely on the power of their self. An example of an ethos driven work could be when the president of the United States makes an announcement, before he even speaks, in general, the audience is rapt with attention toward him, for he is the president, and therefore what he has to say must be important. 

Pathos is the most common form of communication through out the world, and also the most powerful. Pathos is the form of communication through emotion. Emotion is the only universal human language, which is what makes pathos so incredible. Two people who cannot speak the same tongue will know exactly how the other feels based on their body language. This is not to say that pathos is only expressed through body language, words also invoke emotional decisions out of us. Lets use the "Fund a Child" commercials we commonly see on TV, with the older gentleman and the starving children sleeping in shacks made of cardboard as a good example of utilizing pathos. The older gentleman does not give the audience data to back up his plea for the audience to donate their money to poor children, nor does he use his reputation (I can't even remember his name), but instead he shows clips of small children crying and starving without shoes in a muddy alley. This is all he needs to get a higher majority of the audience to donate to these children. Pathos, is often the best form of persuasion for this reason. 

Logos, is more typically used within companies or organizations. Logos is a person's use of logic and information to support what they are conveying. The reason logos is best used in companies and organizations is because data and information often do not make much sense to the general public, but for those who understand what the data entails, will be more easily persuaded to support or deny the data. A good example of when logos is best utilized is in Academia. In class, for example, you learn every single element on the periodic table and run an experiment on how two of those elements react under intense heat. Your write up may be trying to persuade the professor that those two elements may react to create a cure for cancer. By discussing scientific jargon in your paper, your professor may be more convinced that your results are accurate than if you were to base your write up on an emotional or reputational standpoint. 

I hope that by reading my overview and analysis of Rhetoric, for those people in the class that were a little confused on the application of ethos, pathos, and logos, and for my professor who wants me to understand rhetoric in the written world, this blog has successfully achieved what it was meant to. 

Writing

    Throughout the course of human history, unarguably one of the most important technological advancements ever designed has been the written language. Writing has allowed humans to spread their ideas globally, keep records of important historical data, as well as quickly advance the mind's capacity to learn. It is our ancestors explorations in writing that have led to the establishment of our political systems, education systems, and economic systems. Our ancestors have paved our path to not only learn and organize efficiently, but to continue innovating past ideas. With writing, humans have the ability to become a global community without boundaries. Communication through the written word is our vehicle, and we are the drivers. Understanding writing systems is the framework necessary to construct our vehicle, and determination as well as innovations are the necessary components for us to achieve greater feats via writing than we can even imagine. 

Pioneer Post

This blog has been specifically designed for a class I am taking at WSU. With that in mind, the following posts will be related to prompts given by my professor, to which I will be responding to. This post, in itself, is merely an experimental post, and is not an actual response to any prompts.