#eric skaggs

We start off with a laundry list of links and an offer of a $1 million reward if you get Eric Skaggs the money he “deserves”. Also, for some reason people are referred to as “[name].com” which is weird. I knew from the title this would be some crazy conspiracy-theory stuff but I may be getting in over my head here.

Then we transition into a first-person narrative of an encounter outside the computer lab at college, in which the narrator already sounds to be patting himself heavily on the back. He mentions he came here to work on his website, and the person he bumped into perks up. The narrator explains his website combines yahoo search, geocities, and hotmail, (an illustrious collection--not) and earns $5000 a month. Ew.

The other guy, Chad, wants to start a website but doesn’t have an idea. He’s a graphic arts major that taught himself html in his spare time. Chad lies about a jeep being his. For some godforsaken reason. The narrator rambles about cars and how his BMW makes him feel pretentious and he misses his Camaro, get your head out of your ass Eric I think you’ve been eating your own shit for too long.

“Chad... failed with everything else in his life after the YouTube idea I gave him.” You realize that just makes you sound like even more of a douchebag, right? Skaggs is claiming that he predicted the convergence of television and internet in 1999. “Not many people knew about it except for those that kept up with such things like myself.”

Okay. He says Chad failed everything in life, but Skaggs couldn’t even be assed to write a full autobiography to jerk himself off with. That seems like way more of a failure to me. Also, his formatting is atrocious. Not anything like what you would want to see from someone claiming to be a web-design wizard.

Skaggs told Chad this idea in 1999 in exchange for 1% of the company. The domain name wasn’t registered until 2004. Skaggs goes out of his way to trash Chad’s academics, despite him going to the same goddamn low level state school, before he suggests Chad whip up a portfolio of digital graphics to try to get in good with a dot com company.

I suppose it is theoretically possible that Skaggs really did have this conversation with Chad, but it really feels that he specifically constructed this narrative in order to line up with the few facts he felt like providing. Including some weirdly specific and racist facts. He even encourages stalking rich men’s daughters.

“This is exactly the story I told Chad to use” or, far more likely, you intentionally incorporated this detail into your own delusional narrative because it was already common knowledge. “He didn’t want to hang out with me” well shit, I wouldn’t either. You really sound like a pretentious asshole. Skaggs also claims that “$5000 a month” website of his wasn’t even public yet, and the dot com bubble burst a week before he was going to take it public. Then his domain name got stolen by “their India office”.

Then he went back to that same college he had trash-talked to Chad. Relying on the FAFSA. What the hell happened to all that money from his weird shitty frankenstein website? “I wanted to help everyone including those that needed the most help.” Wow, alright. He goes from financial advisor to social worker, then started a website called “BuckGet” that attempts to subvert the bureaucracy and ugliness to help people. It sounds really shifty just from the description of it.

Then, after all of this, he hears about YouTube starting to get big and tries to claim his piece. He is still bitter about it 12 years later. Then his ex girlfriend says something and he goes to google it and why he didn’t google it before I have no idea. He can’t even spell “googling” correctly.

Then he gets into some really creepy stalker-type shit. Sending emails to every address associated with Chad, applying to work at every company Chad is involved with, even speaking with Chad’s housekeeper on the phone for like half an hour. This guy is seriously delusional. Interestingly enough, Skaggs even meets another man named Herb that also claims to have been the mastermind behind YouTube, just like he does. He insists that Herb was the liar though. Then some filmmakers tell him to write this book.

He even offers to take this book off the web if Chad pays him his $16.5 million. If not, he’ll try to make a Social Network-style movie. So, he’s blackmailing the creator of youtube with precisely zero evidence and almost negative credibility. “Since I was laid off and trying to get in touch with Chad” making it even clearer that this is a desperate cash grab as opposed to anything resembling justice. He mentions Chad referring to him as “crazy” on twitter, and even puts his phone number on the last page of the book, which is crazy indeed.

Okay, here’s the thing. I have many years of experience with varying degrees of mental disorder, from many different categories. This man is either delusional or transparently manipulative. There is nothing even plausible about this story, and every claim he made had no substance to it at all. He offered no details that couldn’t have been pulled off of wikipedia, and the whole thing feels incredibly manufactured. I don’t know if he’s genuinely delusional or just a liar. I almost don’t care, since he sure doesn’t seem to.

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Page count: 28

Objective quality: 1/5

Personal enjoyment: 3/5