Incentive to give deliberately misleading advice on the forum

[Emerica]

In theory, this is quite true. But in reality, the scale of a poster's impact is very small in the overall scheme of one's "competition".

In other words, said misleading-poster is wasting his time. The only instance I could think that this could even slightly be effective is if it was applied to a very narrow school -- e.g. doesn't mississippi only accept instate students and receives only approx 700 apps? Perhaps if some elaborate troll made a longitudinal attack on Mississippi's rep (i.e. make fake premed accounts on mcat issues, make fake med student accounts for school quality issues, make fake adcomm accounts for prereq issues) they could sway a couple out of the 700 applicants out of applying -- but I doubt it.

I concur.

OP: When someone says you're trolling you may not be trolling. There have been so many trolls that posters here are ready to accuse everyone of being a troll (kind of like witches before the Internetz). Many people on your thread realized that your story is probably true, I believed it at least, and those people gave you real feedback. Some people on this forum will give you good advice, even if it is slightly sarcastic lol, but you have to sift through to get to the good stuff. No one is out to get you, and everything will be ok.

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[vickpick]

hey verify, simple follow your ID's advice. Verify the advice before you follow it. Problem solved.

 

[AutumnChild]

I suppose I am skeptical because I am on another forum dealing with farming issues that is super-supportive and encouraging. Many (certainly not all) people here seem insulting, wanting to run others down, calling legitimate posters trolls, and downright rude. Plus not many people seem to want to connect, make friends, give out their real email, give out their real pictures, give out links to their Facebook pages and other info, etc. That is what makes me suspect that information given out on this forum may have insidious purposes - like discouraging competition for instance.

Verify, how long have you been on SDN? If you're a long-time lurker, you should realize that, yes this forum has some really rude, unhelpful people. However, they're easily spotted and you just have to ignore them and pay attention to the people who actually care to help. Since you don't seem to see this, I assume you're basing your assumptions on only perusing SDN for what? Like a week?

And I don't think you can equate a farming forum to a pre-med forum. Getting into medical school is highly competitive and many pre-meds don't know the process so they come here asking for advice. Problem is, the same questions keep getting asked over and over and over which makes forum regulars jaded and annoyed b/c if they just used the search function, they can find their answers.

Also, as some have said previously, many are skeptical of people with minimal posts that puts something out of the ordinary up to discuss. I'm sorry some ppl thought you were a troll, but don't take it so personally. Like anything else in life, you need to build your reputation. The more non-troll like posts you have, the less likely ppl will call you a troll if you post something a bit strange. However, I read your thread there were a bunch of people who believed you. Did you forget about them?

I know this is a long post, but my last point is this. People don't freely give out information on this forum like facebooks, names, e-mails etc... because many school admissions committees lurk these forums. They can find negative and/or offensive posts of yours and then link it to you as an applicant. This can affect your chances. No one wants to risks that. Sure anonymity can make some people a little insane, but just ignore those people. Just like you can't like everyone in real life.

Think a little before you go on such a tirade.

 

[GoSpursGo]

As the OP has been banned, this thread is being closed.