Willowsrealm

Well, another one bites the dust. Am I the only one who’s commented on a blog, only to see the blog deleted by it’s user? Twice now this has happened.

Some of you may remember Matthew Richmond. He is a christian and decided to engage a few of us in debate in my Science vs. Religion series. He got hammered pretty hard when he said we should approach some things “with our hearts open and our critical minds closed”. It really didn’t go over that well with one or two of my more ardent readers, but it did make for an excellent discussion. Well, he stopped commenting and when next I went to look at his blog, it was no longer – “This user currently has no blogs” was the message. I’ve kept him in my fiends list though in the vain hope that he will return one day. I still check from time to time.

That was a fairly sad occasion, simply because Matthew was prepared to engage in a discussion. This time however, I guiltily found myself quite chuffed at the fact that I goaded a blogger into deleting their blog.

The blog in question was a thing called Willowsrealm as you can see, “This user currently has no blogs” isn’t the half of it. It seems that Blognow have even removed the profile. I wonder if they were asked to or whether Marcel uncovered their sordid plan?

Anyway, the difference with this one was that they were asking for money. Ten dollars would buy you an emailed tarot reading and thirty, the snail mailed recording. Then there was the angels for five dollars. The angels? Well, they said that they talked to the angels and for a poultry 5 bucks would let you know what the cheeky buggers were saying about you.

Unlike the usual Viagra and travel agency spammers however, this one allowed comments, so I put one there along the lines of “Look folks, we’ve got our very own Sylvia Browne.” When I went back the next day, in the hope that there’d be a reply, I found, to my chagrin, that my comment had been deleted. Well, I didn’t swear and I didn’t say it was crap or anything, so what’s the big deal? That was when I decided that I needed to write “Woo for everyone II”.

After that, I got to thinking about what James Randi might do if he saw something like this on his free blogging service, so I whipped out a quick challenge. Now I don’t own a foundation, nor do I have a cool million bucks to spend, so I guess my challenge wasn’t quite as inspiring as his, but I figured I could scrape together a hundred in a pinch, so here’s what I did.

First I made the following comment on Willowsrealm:

Why don't you show us how good you are Willow, and advertise your skills as you go.

Here's a challenge. I'll give you any info you need about me to do a tarot reading, publicly, here in your comments and in my blog. You can post the reading here for all to see and I will get my wife or anyone you want that would know, to verify, or not, what you see in your reading, for past, present and as the future arrives, for that as well.

If you can be more than 50% accurate with anything in my past or present, I will pay you 10 times your fee, if not you get nothing. We'll leave the future out, if you want, unless you see something very short term.

Then I posted the same challenge in a comment on mine and kept an eye on Statcounter. My deleted comment made it obvious that Willow kept an eye on the blog, so I didn’t bother with a comment to let them know I’d done it, I just waited until they were online then posted it.

Sure enough, within a couple of minutes I’d had a hit on my post and the referring page was Willowsrealm. I chuckled with glee and thought nothing more about it until later that night when I logged on and saw that I had no new comments. I wondered at that point if Willow had responded on their own blog, so I took myself off to look. Well, if I was chagrined at having my comment deleted you can imagine my pleasure when I saw the whole blog had been deleted.

There are a few reasons for my glee at my success. Firstly, this is a free forum and this person was here for no other reason than to garner funds. Secondly, I’ve tested quite a few tarot readers in my time and haven’t managed to find one yet that actually got anything much right, past present or future. Lastly and to be honest, that “talking to angels” thing freaked me out a little bit.

11:04 AM - 7/3/2007 - post comment

Willowsrealm

I like to think that Willowsrealm has seen the error of their ways.

But I know how true believers are.

Incidentally, you know that Randi is revising his challenge to weed out the small fry?

It's sad, but it's also good.

dikkii - 1:05 AM - 8/3/2007

Believers

Your right Dikkii, the true believers will never be swayed so I imagine that Willow will have a steady clientelle.

Yes I did. I think it's a good thing. It's the big shysters like Sylvia that we need to catch first.

plonka - 9:42 PM - 8/3/2007

Still only 2 entries in his Visitor book

I wonder how many of the visits on his lap counter are made by Plonka readers? I would be delighted to find it was most of them

petermcc - 9:56 PM - 8/3/2007

By whom

Who wrote them, I want to know. They seem to be glowing references, don't they?

plonka - 7:50 AM - 9/3/2007

disappearing blogs

Further evidence that Ted is satan. They leave and delete their blogs rather than be faced by "the ancient evil one." ;)

beepbeepitsme - 2:06 PM - 9/3/2007

Could be a problem

If I ever succeed at showing he doesn't exist, will I vanish in a puff of logic?

Maybe I'll just change my name to Nick and be done with it...:)

plonka - 5:17 PM - 9/3/2007

What a strange tale this is

...but glad you haven't taken your bat and gone home, so to speak, plonka. Sad when people huff off like that. I usually have an open mind about various things... until it begins to impact on my own deeply held beliefs. That's when I wish everyone well and prefer to just watch from the sidelines.

Edited by Ninja on 10/3/2007 at 4:03 AM

Ninja - 9:13 PM - 10/3/2007

Yep

I don't know why anyone would delete their blog Ninja. The whole point is discussion. Well I think so anyway.

plonka - 11:20 PM - 10/3/2007