Chess dot Scam
Submitted by
Rael on Fri, 09/05/2008 at 9:34am.
I wrote this for Is Chess.com ethical?
Chess dot Scam
by Brian Wallace
All around the world today, people are taking to the streets to decry what some are calling “unmitigated an unlawful civil rights abuses” on part of an entrepreneurial chess website one can find on the url http://www.chess.com.
Organized by a group that calls themselves “Anonymous”, these protests are designed to call attention to “unfair” and “UNBEARABLE” practices this seemingly innocent site promotes and have been organized worldwide for September the 5th or 2008 in as diverse locales as Turkey and the United Kingdom.
“We’ve simply had enough of chess.com preying on people for their slimy political gains,” one protestor said who refused to give his name. Protestors feel that they have to protect their anonymity through the use of masks, fearing legal and violent reprisal for their demonstration.
We asked Professor Bouchard of the University of Michigan’s economics department what he thought of the protests.
“I find myself quite sympathetic to their cause,” he told reporters, “Chess.com hides behind the veneer of being an innocent entrepreneurial venture in a capitalist system, but this is just what they’d like you to think. Behind the scenes, their shady deals with ad revenue actually serves to create the same class division that Karl Marx decried between bourgeoisie and proletariat… a two tiered system wherein decadent premium members laugh at the helpless non-paying members, who are absolutely burdened with the shackles of advertisements.”
We asked Doctor Doc MD, an optometrist with the Peter Lougheed Hospital in Westminster, to weigh in on the physical side-effects of chess.com’s business practices.
“I believe that we could actually classify this as physical abuse,” he told reporters in his office, “The way these ads attack the eye, capture it’s attention, and beam their insidious offers through the optic nerve to the neocortex is only the beginning. The long term effects include a reduced attention span, anxiety, and a tendency to make whiney posts in the chess.com forums, which is to say nothing of the possibility that some victims might actually be tempted to – God forbid – actually purchase the services the ads offer.”
Protestors link the source of the injustice to one man, who goes by the name of “erik”.
Julie Davenport of Massachusetts explains: “He tries to come off all humble, y’know? Spelling his name with the first letter uncapitalized… always leaving little smiley faces after his posts. But like everything on chess.com, that’s just one more lie, just one more way of hiding the truth.”
District Attorney Rufus Evans offered an official statement, “We will be laying charges against chess.com for these heinous, criminal acts. I frankly can’t understand how the lowlives that call themselves chess.com staff – mobsters, really – can sleep at night when they’re withholding the ability to create groups or tournaments from innocent chess players. They should be ashamed.”
Further developments pending, Brian Wallace, CBC 2008.
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