DoriC wrote:DD, I've just reread all 3 pages and I'm so disappointed that so much effort and good will went into helping the poster and now he's disappeared. I'm curious, what are the tell tale signs you look for in a post to create a question in your mind?
It's not any one thing. It's a summation of things:
- All of his posts are primary posts. When I realized this after having read a few of his posts, I went to his profile's list of posts to confirm my suspicions. Darned if I wasn't right.
- He never replies to anyone or engages any of us in any of his posts. (There are - or were - no 'RE:' posts from him back to any of us.)
- He always posts in a report-styled format about one single thing and how it isn't working for him. Very bland. Very general.
- His software doesn't match his hardware in his profile. How am I supposed to believe this guy is really using the 'S8 VPAP™ Auto 25 BiLevel Machine' with 'Compliance Maximizer Version 1.12 Software for SleepStyle CPAP Machines'? It doesn't add up.
I suspect there are no 'RE:' posts because if he had to engage any of us in a real conversation, we would quickly find out that he knows nothing about the machine he chose for his online 'persona'. He doesn't really own the machine. He combined what he learned from other posts and what people didn't like about
whatever and made it up as he went along.
The people on this forum are very savvy. We are take-charge people who want to get the best performance out of our health, or as in your case DoriC, the health of our significant others. Trying to put one over on people like that takes a lot of time and investment. Typically, people who have something to sell aren't paid to do that kind of research or to engage at the level of contact this kind of forum entails. Yes, there are those of us who are lurkers - just hanging around learning, but sooner or later, we jump in and ask questions and get to know each other on some functional level. Some of us leave or take a back seat for a while, but you can go over previous posts by those people and see they're real people with real challenges and successes. You learn to trust the advice of the other forum members as you get to know them, even if only through their past posts. There is none of that with this guy. He just gives us negative reports and walks away.
Sooner or later, it was bound to end with some 'miracle cure' that would tell us what he found that is now making
his life 'better without CPAP' - or in his case BiPAP. We all connect the dots differently. I've learned to be skeptical about certain things. Sniffing out fakers in a forum is something I've learned from years of running a listserv with of about a thousand active members from all over the world. New members come and go. The ones who apply for membership in order to 'share' something are typically only there to sell some product. Advertising is prohibited on this particular listserv, or else it would quickly devolve into a spam list reaching key unelected officials all over North America and elsewhere who really don't need the extra spam. As with this forum, unskewed interactive dialog is key. I've had to learn to pick them out. Something about his method comes across as deceptive - like he's paid to post a few emails a month, but not paid enough to 'linger' and engage. Trying to hire someone who actually has a BiPAP and is willing to engage and sell a product that eschews the use of BiPAP is probably not going to happen because BiPAP is not for someone with 'mild' sleep apnea. Any BiPAP owner with a grain of integrity is going to steer clear of falsifying his own reputation for twenty silver drachmas.
That he's removed all his posts suggests to me that he's rethinking his strategy or attempting to find some other method to market to us 'virally'.
This forum and its members are more influential than you may realize. You -
DoriC - are making a difference in the world, as are the many other incredible members who post on this forum. My
professional opinion is that forum member is a made up 'persona' and was only created here as a marketing tool - not to engage. The point at which I will gladly apologize is when he says something real. I don't think that's going to happen.
I would however be curious to know what he's hawking. If he apologized for the deception, gave us a real name and told us what he's hawking, I might listen for about five minutes, but he's more likely to be 'shot down' by our members as new-age charlatan with some hokum-smokum pill, herb or device that helps with snoring but is not a medically-peer-reviewed apnea 'cure'.
