Sooper Sekrit insights into Weiss, Wales and SV, good for some, not so much for others Options

[WordBomb]

Remember the sooper sekrit cyberstalking list? Well, it might come as no surprise to learn that it's sprung a few leaks and some email exchanges have made their way to me.

I have a detailed recounting of one particular exchange on DeepCapture.com, but here's the summary.

As you read this, keep in mind that both Gary Weiss socks Mantanmoreland and Samiharris were active members of the list, pretending to be separate people.

(This all took place between October 20 and 22, 2007)

• Jimbo says he thinks Gary Weiss is Mantanmoreland.
• Mantanmoreland freaks out.
• Jimbo says "The queen doth protest too much, Gary.”
• Mantanmoreland responds by calling Jimbo a "stalker."
• Samiharris shows up to support Mantanmoreland, and then compares Jimbo to our very own Somey!
• Jimbo says he worries that before long they will discover Weiss had been manipulating them "in a pretty sad way."

Having read through several threads, I must say my impression of Gary Weiss has plummeted yet more (incredible, but true), while my opinion of Jimbo and SlimVirgin as actually improved...quite a bit. That whole bunch was simply and endlessly manipulated by Weiss. I can now understand how reasonable people might doubt that it was even possible for one individual to expend so much energy pretending to be two.

My point being, Weiss was the fount of 90% of the darkness in those days (that being the BADSITES era, etc), and I have to assume that the only people who dislike him even more than me are the ones he so mercilessly duped.

[EricBarbour]

The list messages don't surprise me a bit. Remember BADSITES?

I can't help it, I'm still curious about why Weiss has been carrying on this maniac war.
Is he simply a paranoid schizophrenic, with "voices" telling him to do this? Is he mad
enough to think he can become a billionaire by making naked-shorting "respectable"?
Or is someone paying him to make a damn fool of himself?

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Sun 13th December 2009, 1:05am

[Somey]

I can't help it, I'm still curious about why Weiss has been carrying on this maniac war.
Is he simply a paranoid schizophrenic, with "voices" telling him to do this? Is he mad
enough to think he can become a billionaire by making naked-shorting "respectable"?
Or is someone paying him to make a damn fool of himself?

We've speculated about that before, and it took me a while to find it, but back in November 2006 I made the point that the short seller's risk (naked or otherwise) is theoretically infinite:

...remember that the short seller's risk is theoretically infinite. While you can only lose 100 percent of your investment in a normal stock transaction, in a shorting transaction you can lose far more than that, because the stock's value could, theoretically, increase by a thousand percent or more. Critics of the practice claim that this is why people like Mantanweissland do things like try to bad-mouth and denigrate target companies on public websites: They live in perpetual fear of ruination. It's a pretty good motivator!

And to build on that, the perpetual fear of ruination can be a huge stress factor in a person's life, particularly when the person is well into his/her 50's, and any day can bring with it some hugely expensive medical problem, a death in the family, an invitation to a private party from Tiger Woods, or any number of such things. Fear of that magnitude can result in all sorts of psychological problems, including anxiety/panic attacks, paranoia, even histrionic personality disorder. Erratic or combative behavior is fairly mild compared to some of the things that can happen.

I mean, it seems much more likely that he's just misguided, greedy and manipulative, but who knows? Maybe he really believes in the idea of the "mom 'n' pop investor," that corrupt CEO's are the root of Wall Street's problems, and that the only way to deal with them is to bypass SEC regulations and short-sell their companies, even if you can't cover - it's actually a fairly populist viewpoint, to some extent, if you grant the basic premiss that Wall Street investors need protection of that nature. (Which I don't, of course, but I'm just one guy.)

Be fair, One.

I think he's talking about a different game!