Eric Was, Apparently, Never Cool

Meet A Young Internet Outlaw And The Posse Who Caught Him

by Mike LaSalle

He is a newbee member of the forum at AnandTech.com - a well-trafficked website that covers computer hardware news and analysis. "ericiscool" is his avatar.

Scratch the surface of his mask and you will find quite an enterprising young man for whom the future must surely look bright. He says he is Black, and, though he claims to be Christian, he appears to be ruled by no ethic but simple acquisition. (Actually, though he has not let on, I suspect he's a Ferengi.)

The problem for Eric now is that he has come to an early bump in his career as an American entrepreneur.

The "Hot Deals" Forum at AnandTech.com is the place where the site's user community meet among themselves. The Forum is as efficiently run as the rest of the website - all thanks to a highly intelligent and involved community. These geeks are the real McCoy.


Eric began the thread innocently enough... he asked if the community knew anything about a particular auction-style website:

"Has anyone seen or heard of this site? it looks to me like they have good deals, its a bit of a gamble but i like the idea. it seems pretty genuine, im thinking about posting a bid.

"here is the site: www.outbid4less.com"

The replies came quickly:

"This sounds insane," wrote one poster. "Pay $10 per 'raffle ticket, they call auction bid' with 190 tickets sold, thats $1900 for a $1499 retail laptop and the winner pays $112 plus their bid fee and I am sure shipping. That is assuming this isn't a scam from top to bottom. I would feel safer giving my CC info to a site in russia from spam email.

"My vote is that this is a total scam and nobody outside of the site owners will ever win."

Eric's next post came as a surprise:

"i own it man," (sic) he declared less than an hour after posting the first message. "The bid fee on all other auctions besides that laptop is 5 dollars. People really win, I am a christian and I do everythign as honest as possible, I just thought it was a unique idea. there is risk involved. I donate 15% of that profit to chairities divided up between user selection. anyway thanks for the unput, what would make it feel safer? I do make some profit on these, but shipping is always free."

The forum discussion set off by Eric has many angles: legal, religious, cultural, racial, economic, and above all moral. And at its core this is a uniquely American story.

The discussion probably can't be read in one sitting - and it continues to spawn more comments, more sleuthing, and more fun that you'll have watching any movie tonight. MND will therefore keep the post available for the time being on our home page.

Enjoy.

Mike