Read "The Snot Goblin - A Cautionary Tale - Part 1"
Story by @seomommasays
The Snot Goblin Cries Wolf
This is the second part of a light hearted look at how some people behave online. In the first part, I introduced the comical ‘Snot Goblin’. Explaining how such people could fool others into trusting and following them, more importantly, how they could encourage people to give them money.
The story has moved on and so we go back to that mythical land where snot goblins and other nasties lurk about waiting to take advantage of the innocent.
We left our hero, the techmage, trying to ensure that all the people who’d paid silver to the snot goblin, got something back. He continued to produce coins and his friends did what they could to help.
The snot goblin had moved islands and, with new techmages under his control, he was promising people that his NEW coin was much better than the last one. So good was it, that he was going to let a few special people, people who’d stayed under his spell, have some of these coins. All they had to do was send him more silver.
At the same time, he used the troll messaging system to tell the world that he was trying to get ‘his’ gold coins back from our hero. He told as many people as he could how bad our hero was, how he had help from a band of marauding bandits, and how they were all going into the dungeons, just as soon as they were caught.
Naturally, some people believed him, after all, they didn’t know him, didn’t know our hero and more importantly didn’t know the whole story.
He said “Oh woe is me, all my names have been stolen.” These were the names of all the people he’d had bespelled. He moaned “All my coins have been stolen, even though they’re worthless, poor me, all my hard work is wasted.” Even though he sent messages out to everyone that they must petition the gods of gold to stop our hero’s gold coins from being used.
Our hero’s friends began to ask “If he no longer has his list of names, why are they still getting messages from him?” As you can imagine, the snot goblin didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all, because it stretched his magic so it became weaker. This meant that he had to work harder at not producing coins, so he could try and hurt our hero and his friends.
He still sent out messages and even went so far as to send an emissary to our hero to try and get ‘his’ coins and names back. The emissary was another troll though and so that didn’t work because once the snot goblins spell had been broken, our hero found that he could see through magic much better than before.
The friends that supported our hero in his quest to make really good gold coins, ones that didn’t disappear, ones that were useful and which everyone would be happy with had a bit of a problem. The snot goblin, terrified as he was of them, tried to make people think they were bandits, out to steal all his gold and more importantly his trust spell.
What were they to do? The snot goblin had called them bandits, he’d said they weren’t to be trusted, that they would join our hero in the dungeons. His plan to ruin their reputation began to backfire.
They decided that they would join forces and create an army of helpers. They called themselves ‘The Fellowship of the Coin’ and they would oppose the snot goblin on all fronts. Some would help our hero in his quest to create the coin, some would go out into the world and fight the snot goblin’s trolls wherever they were found. Others would search high and low for allies, for others who had been damaged by the snot goblin.
They swore an oath not to lie like the snot goblin, to always be truthful and to do their best to protect others. They all had magical devices that could record sounds and images, they could even go backwards in time to capture images of things the snot goblin had said.
As they did, they noticed that the snot goblin made no sense at all. He said their gold coins were worthless, yet he wanted them back. He said his precious list of names had been stolen, yet he still messaged them. He said our hero and all the people who’d supported him were going to be imprisoned by the guards, yet no guards were interested in his story.
Finally, he sent out a message that, well, it was so bizarre that everyone who’d been under his spell woke up. What was the message? Remember his promise? Give me silver and I’ll give you gold. In his final message, that went out to all on his ‘precious’ list, he said, “You all knew I was going to keep the silver, there was no gold. I was keeping the silver to pay me for all the years I’d worked on creating gold and FAILED.”
He’s cried wolf too many times and lost all his influence, all his trolls (well except for those who thought he might rise again and help them take money from innocents.) Sinking into the swamp of his own making.
Back in the real world, this is basically what’s happening with the tale I watch unfold. If you’re going to lie online, publicly and want to remain undiscovered, you must be consistent and, you must be able to prove what you say. If others have records that show you lied they will surface. My advice is – don’t lie online. Doing so is a recipe for your own eventual destruction!