When I first read the announcment that's the first thing that went through my mind I even started to do searches on the guy out of curosity before I found the remaining comments
Even the likes of Modof, wGooden and Bawbag took at least a few weeks to start to get noticed
Im sure they dont give away IP addresses, which i why i never asked for any IP addresses from them, but i would happily provide them with one in order to get more details about them.
Besides, i dont need an IP for that, i could just ask a forum mod if they can look at mBah's post IPs and see if the same IP has been used for another username, this is something i can do on our forum, but i dont have the user database like here.
I provided the IP address, as taken from mBah's registration to our forum, and asked for it to be double checked for duplicate forum accounts. Bob confirmed, however it doesnt mean too much, just that our suspicions could well be true, however we simply couldnt confirm it was 1 person, 2 accounts, or 2 people, 2 accounts, 1 computer.
We couldnt come straight out with 'are you AMB' because for 1, if he denied it which he could easily, just by saying he's a mate, we had no answer. Secondly it'd mean he knew we were watching him, so we werent asking too obvious questions (although IMO still too many not to p*ss off geniune new LFSers/new members) just ones we felt we could use to get a better assessment and at least ease our doubts.
At the same time, if he was genuine, we dont want to p*ss them off on the first day, with little/no proof.
At the moment, i dont know the real reason behind why 'mBah' decided to make his confession, but my guess is because Bawbag or one of the lads rumbled him rather than any guilty concience.
To be honest, it was mostly a case of seeing an opportunity of getting a new lfs racer who knows how to drive, just hasnt applied himself to LFS yet, and getting in there before others did.
We're not stupid, he seemed too good to be true (in terms of his claimed potential, with no experience in LFS) and worth taking a chance. When we've signed other drivers, i've set their site account up straight away as its a 2sec job (which i never did, because of our doubts) and i wasnt overly impressed this thread was started or the news put on our site, when we could hold off a while longer, but i wasnt around at the time or aware they were being done.
We've never done this before (as i think the original post says) for an unknown/unproven racer, and from the offset we had suspicions which is why i PM'd Bob about 3hrs after mBah put the wings on.
As Rooble said, it hasnt cost us anything (wasted a few hours of my day though) and it hasnt tarnished our name, we'll carry on as normal.
My guess is AMB/mBah will disappear, and he'll buy another new account in order to play hassle free. Im sure the dev's appreciate another £50 though, courtesy of AMB and his 48hr prank which acheived nothing.
For someone wanting to improve their standard of driving, by learning from the likes of drivers in our team or another team, i wouldnt say he's done too well from it really, hardly prank of the century is it, he's wasted a 2nd account he obviously bought for this use, and got himself kicked out of his original team, and if it provided fun for you Pearcy (or AMB/mBah), for the few hours you knew about it, congrats, but i wouldnt even bother MTV for Ashton Kutcher job
...and instead start to tarnish your name, without you having done anything wrong.
yup, with the exception of this occasion, all other drivers we've seen racing for quite some time, and have been well known to us. The only person thats been 'signed' without too much being known about them was our last member, Fox2, and bawbag had raced with him a couple of times in events, and it wasnt a decision made over a couple of hours with half the team having no knowledge of them etc.
Theres only so much double checking you can do, and i dont think there was much more we could have done short of not signing him, and someone certainly would have because plenty were asking. As i said, not sure what the final hurdle was that brought him down, but we'd already seeked assurance from a mod on this forum, and a teammate from AMBs now ex-team we felt we could trust, and i was ready to install additional checks to detect additional/unusual activity on our forum.
Oh well, were coming up to our 4 year Anniversary on Thursday, i'd say our record of driver signings speaks for itself, and the results back that up.
We're more than just a group of drivers, more like a (dysfunctional ) family, and 1 person certainly wont change that.
Sad to see this and glad we never took messy on after him wanting to join dSRC a few months or so ago... what a plank.
It'll blow over pretty quick for Mercury I think.. their only "crime" is being nice to someone who ultimately deceived them.
Haven't raced much in a loooong time now, but the last few times I did was with a bunch of lads from Mercury and although I got my arse well n truly whooped, it was always fun
I certainly wouldn't expect anything negative to come out of this towards Mercury it actually shows you guys aren't nubs and are human
I've always had the highest respect for Mercury, and very much appreciated their friendlyness in helping new guys back in the days when they used to frequent BL1/GTi... yes a loong loong time ago
The story / the thread matches perfectly into the silly season (some call it summer)
Had a good laugh.
That's all you can do: laugh about it and forget it
Look guys, you don't have to like me I know what i've done and i'm not asking to be forgiven, just let the thread die, if you see me online you want to say Hi then I'll say Hi back if not just leave me alone.
@ Danowat: Yes I have been in a lot of teams, but there's a reason for that and if you want the reason feel free to PM me.
American football - European football. Both can be called football because the two are easy to seperate: American football includes neither a foot nor a ball.