Surely the media channels are complicit?

[Richard Holt]

Hello.

I went all in on a full on command console.

I'm in the UK, and never had any experience of replicas before. I had no idea of Steve's reputation, nor would I have reasonably ever found out about him, or thought to look him up if his name was conspicuous in any of the discussion.

I responded to a well constructed Indiegogo campaign, but mainly - I found that through the massive amount of publicity on respected online channels such as:

The Verge

Engadget

Uncrate

Gizmodo

etc etc etc.

Indeed, if you search for this project even now, you still arrive on glowing hype-building articles from all these outlets, and you're directed towards the MRG website where you can still place orders.

Plus - the project was officially endorsed by WB, as an official 2001 piece of merchandise. Or at least that's what I was led to believe.

So - did NONE of these guys do any journalistic research? Given that they were part of the community they ought to have heard of Steve if he's as notorious as you guys are saying.

Those articles are still there. None have been corrected. None have an update saying MR are bankrupt. None of them have written an exposé to address their previous sycophantic endorsement.

Sure I blame Steve - but he's a recognised con-artist at this point - right? So, BOY do I have a lot of anger right now directed against all of the trusted sources I followed to end up being fleeced.

They sent me his way.

[Cave Dweller]

My situation and sentiments exactly. 

[Philip Raciti]

Ordered a command console as well, ended up getting charged for 2.  I’ve been working with the company for 6 months + on a refund for one once I realized. Runaround. 

On Aug 14, 2020, at 2:21 PM, Cave Dweller <rick...@gmail.com> wrote:



--
To post a message to the group by email, send to:
 
hal-9000...@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HAL 9000 Replica" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hal-9000-repli...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hal-9000-replica/b822efe8-1991-456d-9554-cd1c0f1b9016o%40googlegroups.com.

[Ken Wiebe]

Bingo.  One of the most striking things about this experience for me is the air of integrity which was created and the complete about-face which then occurred:  Indiegogo washes their hands, required updates abruptly halt and previous ones exposed as lies, etc.  An attractive and enticing facade suddenly crumbles, revealing the cesspool which was always there, just conveniently out of sight.  Breathtaking.

The Internet and its various sites are a very slick way for unscrupulous operators to gin up a coordinated but flimsy scheme to raise money ostensibly for an attractive product/project, with little or no accountability once that money is in their pocket.  They capitalize on successful projects' reputations and successful track histories while easily propping up a facade hiding their malfeasance and incompetence.

All these sites and especially the crowdfunding sites, are complicit.  I don't see how the crowdfunding sites can continue to claim innocence long term.  Fine print only goes so far.