Why ignoring frauds (eg. LIGATT) won't solve anything
After months of posts by various people in the community exposing the LIGATT/Evans crock of shit, there have been responses by others (even in response to my own tweets/blog posts) that we should just stop talking about LIGATT because to him, any publicity is publicity that he can then use to promote himself to the media. These people also claim that all the attention we're giving him just serves to drive traffic to his sites, and that he keeps getting invited back by media outlets because they see controversy as a good thing. They are of the opinion that if we all ignored him, his short-lived fame due would simply fade away along with his company.
Despite entertaining the idea of just ignoring him after being fed up of his racism, sockpuppetry and lies (and after I'd already devoted two posts to that slimeball), I now find this view naive.
Even if we ignored him and stopped exposing his fraudulent garbage for what it is, he would still be marketing his products to gullible consumers, he would still be convincing people to buy his stock, he would still be promoting himself in the media, he would still epically fail...everything will still be the same, but this time, the few people who actually care enough to take the time to research his claims would assume that since nobody is complaining, everything he says is therefore true and can be taken at face value.
It's a sad reality, but I doubt the various organizations that removed him from speaking lists would have done so if there wasn't a shitton of documentation of his lies and incompetence.
Yes, a lot people are still going to be hoodwinked, a lot of his shareholders won't realize the scam until it is too late, and most media outlets are still going to fall for his lies. However, if we care as much about our industry as we claim to, and if we are truly serious about self-policing, if we truly gave half a fuck, we'd expose frauds and increase pressure on frauds like LIGATT till they go away, or till they are widely recognized as the fakes they are.
We can't help those who are unwilling to do basic research anyway, but we can certainly help point people who are wiling to be informed in the right direction.
