Thursday, June 30, 2011

How I know I’m nearly famous

My wife often asks me when I’m going to get “rich and famous”, and today I was able to give her the good news: I’m still not rich, but well on the way to fame. I know this, because the name “rewboss” has been used for a scam.

One of things you should always do from time to time is to google yourself: not for reasons of vanity, but because it’s always prudent to know what, for example, a possible future employer might see when they speculatively plug your name into a search engine. That’s what I did this evening, and I was gratified to see that, for the first time I can remember, “rewboss” has made it into the exaulted realms of Google suggested search terms. Type “rewboss” into Google, and it suggests “rewboss YouTube”, “rewboss German” and, mysteriously, “rewboss manufacturing”. Which is odd, because I don’t manufacture anything, and as far as I know I am the only rewboss on the net.

Searching for “rewboss manufacturing” turns up some forum posts with titles like, “Has anyone ever had any dealings with Rewboss Manufacturing?” Well, I haven’t, so I looked, and apparently just a few months ago, Rewboss Manufacturing was a shady Malaysian company spamming forums with offers for TVs and smartphones at knock-down prices. The uninamous verdict of the experts is that this is a transparent scam and anyone who orders anything from them deserves whatever happens.

Well, I have nothing to do with Rewboss Manufacturing, so if you found this blog post looking for information about the company, I would advise you not to touch them with a bargepole (assuming you can find one long enough to reach Malaysia). This revelation leaves me simultaneously horrified, flattered and daunted. Horrified that people might think I’m a scam artist; flattered that I am obviously famous enough for people to stumble over me on the net and think my screen name worthy of pilfering; and daunted because there’s still a long way to go before I am so famous that using my name for a scam of this sort wouldn’t work.

It also explains why a few months ago I had a sudden flurry of new YouTube subscribers based in Malaysia.

1 comment:

  1. You had better upload this as a video or announcement on YouTube. Your Malaysian subscribers would probably get informed.

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