"Buy Gold, Get an AK47, Liquidate Assets,
And My Dad Says I will start Shaving by 2000"

Alan Simpson

The public is understandably confused and bewildered at the barrage of conflicting information on the potential effects of Y2K. Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public are subjected to a broadside of websites, newsgroups and mailing lists. Great care must be taken by them to discover the background of the provider of this information.

The current free, and unaccountable, model of the Internet has shown that it has become the "Weapon of Choice" of every pervert, psychopath and unsociable creature with a personality problem. The information is usually inflammatory, sensational, and apocalyptic in nature. The more extreme the message, the more vocal the group effort is to corrupt, and convince the innocent.

The anonymous email services, designed for the pornography trade, allow access to a personal communication network, without accountability. Free web pages, provided by ISP's allow schoolchildren to emulate the legitimate, registered Web Sites, often hiding under a pseudonym, such as Mr. Snake, Dr. Lizard, or Prof. Citizen. In many cases Mr. And Mrs. Adult Public, are being given investment, and critical decision-making advice from an 11 year old nerd, who has not even started to shave!

A recent analysis of Y2K sites has shown that few dare reveal the true nature, expertise, qualifications, nor experience of the owner, nor contributors. If they did the audience would go away laughing!

As it is many innocent people go away frightened, bewildered, and believing the end is nigh!

Yes folks, the end is probably nigh for the author of the web site, his Mum is about to make him switch off his bedroom light, and stop playing about with his PC, or whatever!

I believe there should be discussion about important, and potentially damaging events such as Y2K. To get a full understanding of the problem, its causes and effects, all shades of opinion need to be discovered.

For example, you may not like Gary North, and the Christian Right predicting Armageddon, but they do not make an effort to hide their beliefs, or background, even their name and address. Gary's picture is on the web for all to see.

His watchdog is Charles Ruben, diametrically opposed and also open about his qualifications, background, views and outlook.

You can pick up the phone and speak to either North, or Ruben. They are mature, qualified people, with differing views.

You can't pick up the phone and talk to the aliases, hiding behind hotmail, or anonymous screen names, polluting the mailing lists with misinformation, and often-dangerous advice. You can't call them back and ask what to do with the 5 tons of dehydrated apples, and the gelling petroleum you stockpiled, after they had irrefutable evidence that the power grid would be down for a year. You can't question them when the Y2K survival book, turned out to be a 1960's surplus nuclear survival manual, in a new cover printed at Kinko's.

But yet people, rational people who would not buy anything from a door-to-door salesman, nor give their credit card number to a stranger over the phone, are planning their future based on the hearsay of a potential basket case.

Some Rules for Y2K Advice on the Web

1. Ignore everything without attributes. If the person hasn't the guts to sign it, it is worthless. I know the excuse is that "My friend is a highly placed executive, and fears for his job, and his wife said that if this information is made public." The technical term for this is pure crap. There exists about 50 or so Y2K "experts", ranging in opinion from "mega-problem" to "hoax". If this highly placed executive had unveiled a major failure, or cover up, one call to the chosen "expert" would hide all tracks, and it would come out into the public domain

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2. Suspect everything from people who sell you a product, or book, or subscription, just after giving you the bad news. I still find it amazing that there are those selling 2 year subscriptions to a magazine telling everyone the country will collapse in less than 12 months, and the postal service will be paralyzed for at least a year. If they tell you to convert to gold, be suspicious if they just happen to have some brochures available to send you.
3. You can buy a scanner for less than $100. You can put a biography and photo up on a web site, for next to nothing. If a web site, offering advice, does not have positive ID, log off. You would not deal with a broker, salesman or official without ID. Is liquidating your life savings worth less security than paying for cat food with a check.
4. Most Y2K "Experts" have been called to testify before Congress, or the Senate. Most appear on CNN, etc. and are interviewed weekly by the media. Should you get less credible advice than Congress? Ask for some measure of acceptance of the views being offered. The High School Glee Club does not cut it!
5. Get information from several sites, and ensure those sites have multiple contributors (http://www.comlinks.com has over forty contributors, the top in their fields, and over 2,000,000 people from 120 countries have downloaded info, free of charge since it was created). Is this advice unfounded opinion, or has the person a track record, and wide expertise? Waiting the results of summer school, so they can graduate junior high, is a suspect level of achievement.

Getting credible advice on the web is no different than getting it from someone you know. You learn to trust advice from some quarters, and ignore it from others. If a drunk staggered over to you, and told you the world was spinning and all would shortly go dark, would you rush home and start emptying all bank accounts?

Yet that is what many people are doing. They read some fantastic story about the end of the world as we know it, and start panicking.

It's just common sense. Think before you act!

Alan Simpson
Broadcaster & Speaker

  (This paper was chosen by the US Government and featured on their ITPolicy site on GSA.gov)