This one has been lingering in the elephant graveyard that is the ever expanding number of tabs I really am going to post about soon it was old when I was linked it about a month ago so perhaps I can get away with it being a little older still.
I understand that This American Life is quite popular with liberals in the US and this is an episode from it. It is also counter to the righteous indignation that usually characterises my posts, as the title states, this really is a moral grey area. It is about three individuals who are part of an online community that likes to scam Nigerian scammers which seems a reasonable thing to do but these three in particular have put those they target in some pretty extreme danger. Plus you have the usual problems vigilante justice brings and the nagging question of why obviously white and affluent first worlders decided the group they most needed to bring justice too was relatively poor Africans, plus their choice of terms such as "Safari" further muddies their motives. Nonetheless it is also made clear the Nigerian Scammers are really not pleasant people and false payoff the vigilantes use against the individual highlighted in this episode involves them defrauding a fictional church that is trying to distribute aid to war victims.
In the end its hard to say the Nigerian scammers they target are in any way nice people but you do still have to wonder if this is the right way to deal with them as well of the question of if two wrongs make a right.
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