How to Avoid Scamming/Deception

Hey Jammers! It's my second daily post of February break and I am ready to talk about one of the topics I made a note of yesterday: How not to get scammed. 

But first, here's the Rare Item Monday!

I'd like to give credit for this screenshot to Rainbow000Pegasus because this item is underwater and I don't feel like recycling my wolf right now. Let me know if this is okay!

As with most RIMs, I don't find this item very interesting, but it got me thinking: when was the last time there was a nonmember RIM?

EDIT: OOPS I seem to have missed their Rare Heart Bracelet post. Well this is embarrassing XD

So I did some digging through AJHQ's Instagram, because they update it very frequently...

Aaaaaand it seems the last nonmember Rare Item Monday was on November 19th of 2018. That's about... 

91 DAYS AGO ʘ‿ʘ

I should put a day counter on the side of this blog so any AJHQ member who hopefully stumbles upon my blog can get the message that we need more RIMs to be nonmember. 

*researches count-up widgets*

*30 minutes pass*

*finds some JavaScript code*

*copy and pastes it into a test widget*

*doesn't work*

I guess this is a project for another day (:

Anyways, let's get on to the main topic of this post:

Before we begin, I think it's important to define scamming vs. deception.

Scamming is using something other than the trade system to get someone's items. For example, asking someone to Jam-a-Gram you a rare item, promising that you will Jam-a-Gram them a rare item back... and not following through.

However... just straight-up asking for free items without promising anything in return is NOT scamming! Know the difference.

Deception is when you push another person to accept a trade they don't want to accept by convincing them that the item you're trying to trade is way rarer than theirs... while knowing it's not. Example: Trying to trade away a normal Tiara by telling someone it's a Tiara from beta testing.

Deception is a little trickier than scamming, because it's hard to know who exactly is being deceived. Someone might be saying that their normal Tiara is from beta because they themselves were tricked, and it's basically impossible to distinguish that from someone who actually knows what they are doing.

Funny story: When I was new to AJ, I was trying to trade for a Royal Blanket (which was super high-demand at the time) so I might have gone around Jamaa saying something like "Trading my Rare Tiara for a Royal Blanket!" because that was probably the rarest thing I owned. 

Later on, I decided to Google search my username and found that someone had apparently written me up on their anti-scamming blog for that and outed me as a scammer, even though I honestly just had no idea what I was doing XD

Let that be a lesson to all– don't do witch-hunts of people who you think are being deceptive! Just gently correct them– they may genuinely not know.

So, I have a bit of a different perspective when it comes to the idea of item worth. I talked about it a lot in this blog's Trading Post page.

Bottom line: Items do not have any set worth. 

People will disagree with me, but AJHQ themselves have said it. A fair trade is what you and your trading partner are both happy with.

So, what does this mean about deception?

You may have noticed that I defined deception as "pushing another person to accept a trade they don't want to accept" instead of "trading unfairly". 

This is because I don't believe in the concept of a fair trade– items are just pixels, and no matter how "fair" your trade is, people may still decline and you can't get mad at them for it. It's not like buying fruit at the store– you have to haggle if you really want an AJ item.

Of course, though, it isn't really this simple. Almost everyone you meet on AJ will believe in some kind of intrinsic item worth and regularly consult the AJ Item Worth Wiki, even if there is literally no way to accurately price an item. 

In the same way that dollars are basically worthless, AJ items are also basically worthless, but value is still arbitrarily assigned to them. People trade with the popular idea of worth in mind, because they know that it's something most people generally agree on, which will mean that the item they get can be used to trade up for something they actually want.

It would be so much simpler if people only traded for the items they really wanted, but everyone is kind of trapped in this paperclip system which forces us to take the popular idea of rarity seriously.

Well... I could go on and on about this unsolvable problem, but the main idea I want you to take away is this:

If you accepted a trade and were happy about it because you liked how the items looked, but then were told by a friend that it was not a fair trade, you were NOT deceived.

If you accepted a trade only because your trading partner told you that their item was just as rare or rarer than yours, all the while knowing that it wasn't, then you WERE deceived.

This is the part of the post where I tell you how exactly to avoid getting scammed OR deceived.

To avoid getting scammed...

– Only use the trading system to exchange items. No exceptions.

– If you Jam-a-Gram someone an item, DO NOT EVER expect them to give you back anything. 

– If you're at a "giveaway", leave as soon as someone asks you to Jam-a-Gram anything OR accept a trade with the promise of being Jam-a-Grammed an item.

– Even if someone is your best friend in the entire world, do not break these rules for them.

It's easy to avoid being scammed. It's not so easy to avoid being deceived, though. To avoid deception...

– Only trade if you like the look of the item you're getting and will not miss the item you're trading away. 

As you can tell, this is very hard because we're all trapped in the system of trading our way up to the items we actually want. It's hard to avoid or even detect deception, so the only possible solution is to step out of that paperclip system. Which is hard, but it's something to try.

This has certainly been a long post. If you guys have anything to add, please comment!

See you in Jamaa~