Even after reading Nakamura’s article <\/a>, I really could not grasp the concept of “scambaiting,” which I felt was really important to understand before I could formulate an opinion on whether or not it has digital racial implications. I looked on the Wikipedia site that Nakamura mentioned, as well as 419eater.com<\/a>, which was mentioned several times in the article and was also one of the first websites to come up when I typed in “scambaiting” in Google. I decided that I had a general concept after reading the article and these two sites: scambaiting is basically the act of scamming a scammer by pretending to be a victim to their scam, and then gathering up all their resources and information, scamming them into coming to foreign countries (often Nigeria) for money, and then exposing them.<\/p>\n

Now having a basic understanding of “scambaiting,” I tried to figure out how the result of these scams were the “Trophy Room” pictures, in which men (almost always African American) are portrayed in sexual and often racially-charged poises for the scambaiter’s own amusement. My best understanding is that the scambaiters tell these scammers that they must pose in these ridiculous pictures before they get their money.\u00a0An example is pictured below.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Image source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was on 419eater.com, I looked for an explanation as to why these pictures are the way they like to exploit and expose scammers. There was no mention of this act on the site, just information on how the scammers are baited into traveling to foreign countries. I find this very contradictory to the fact that the members say they are “race-blind” when they are practicing this (Nakamura 263). If they were race-blind, I feel like they would mention their practices explicitly, instead of saying “even if you are a newcomer, much fun can be had and at the same time you will be doing a public service (261, or 419eater.com). I am in agreement with the opinion of Nakamura, that this kind of media is racially-charged, especially when considering it in a historical context (i.e. lynching photos, and the images from Abu Ghraib prison). I find that, with these kind of photos, as well as GIFs, Memes, and other “blackface” media, historical context is very important when analyzing whether or not there is intended racial prejudice in the particular media.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

Posted from Digital Studies 101 Blog<\/a> by Lindsay<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even after reading Nakamura’s article , I really could not grasp the concept of “scambaiting,” which I felt was really important to understand before I could formulate an opinion on whether or not it has digital racial implications. I looked on the Wikipedia site that Nakamura mentioned, as well as 419eater.com, which was mentioned several … <\/p>\n

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