Strange and elaborate Kyara scam account

[Mr.P]

it's funny how I mapped all of this out and predicted it back in my kyara thread from 2024

the oud biz as a whole is very much dependent on unsubstantiated and untestable superlatives, so every term associated with high value gets shredded by the marketing machinery.

A list of meaningless oud words thanks to this phenomenon:

organic
wild
pure
cambodian
kinam
kyara
all natural
incense grade
etc etc

 

[TheOudDood]

the oud biz as a whole is very much dependent on unsubstantiated and untestable superlatives, so every term associated with high value gets shredded by the marketing machinery.

A list of meaningless oud words thanks to this phenomenon:

organic
wild
pure
cambodian
kinam
kyara
all natural
incense grade
etc etc

Either words have definitions or they don't.

If they don't, nobody would respond to them. Nobody would pay extra for "wild," "kyara," or "pure," and nobody would be upset when they ordered a pizza and got a bag of lettuce. It's all subjective, right? Maybe the lettuce is a pizza on its own journey.

But people do respond to those words. They pay for them, and they get upset when they don't get what the words promised. That's the whole reason sellers use them, and the whole reason faking them works.

Counterfeit money works the same way. Fakes don't make the dollar meaningless, they borrow its meaning. Marketing feeds on definitions. It doesn't erase them.

So the definitions exist. Sellers lie about meeting them, and buyers can't tell because they never learned the definitions, often because their community told them there weren't any.

"These words are all marketing BS" sounds savvy, but it's usually just "I don't know what they mean, so nobody does," or resentment toward the sellers who do. It's the same move people make when they hear about genuinely wild top-end kyara and call it elitist gatekeeping, overhyped, or no better than their baseline wood. It's a cop-out dressed up as cynicism.

You can't have it both ways. You don't get to say "it's all subjective, nobody's right or wrong" when someone holds you to a standard, then demand the standard when you get ripped off.

Switching sides depending on which one benefits you isn't open-mindedness. It's low integrity. And this thread is exactly where it leads: people paying for kyara, getting lettuce, and calling it a learning journey.

 

[Mr.P]

sides?

What puzzles me here is I don't see the controversy / disagreement. I may have missed a critical post

100% agree words have meanings and of course those meanings can get distorted when language is used carelessly or deliberately manipulated for marketing, and it's definitely too bad.

Do you see this as a forum that encourages people not to learn about the accurate and traditional definitions of terms or something? Or did somebody here say something to that effect?

 

[roflwaffle]

What puzzles me here is I don't see the controversy / disagreement. I may have missed a critical post

I don't think you're missing anything, I too am baffled by the weird vague strawman arguments here. But he hasn't really given any literal examples, just talked about lettuce pizzas or whatever.

His thesis, I believe is, yell at anyone new and scare them off, gatekeep the heck out of it while you're at it.

From my standpoint, OP, a new member, asked a question about a sus vendor, another new member said they bought it, showed pics, and was told it was fake by many members and because of this post's existence, now that member here is likely to get their money back, whereas if it was never discussed, would have continued to be ripped off. It seems like a win/win, and the opposite outcome that ouddood is proposing. /shrug

 

[TheOudDood]

I don't think you're missing anything, I too am baffled by the weird vague strawman arguments here. But he hasn't really given any literal examples, just talked about lettuce pizzas or whatever.

His thesis, I believe is, yell at anyone new and scare them off, gatekeep the heck out of it while you're at it.

From my standpoint, OP, a new member, asked a question about a sus vendor, another new member said they bought it, showed pics, and was told it was fake by many members and because of this post's existence, now that member here is likely to get their money back, whereas if it was never discussed, would have continued to be ripped off. It seems like a win/win, and the opposite outcome that ouddood is proposing. /shrug

You're strawmanning what I said into the dumbest, least accurate version of it, projecting emotion onto it, and missing the point.

I never said yell at new people or gatekeep anyone. I said definitions matter, and that a community that answers definitions with "it's all subjective" ends up with members who can't spot fakes.

Everything I posted was a response to specific things said in this thread: "learning does not need someone to be wrong and/or right," "we all have more to learn and there's nothing wrong with that," and "smell some oud, relax." Those are the examples. They're right above you.

For the longer pattern, see my 2024 thread:
https://www.ouddict.com/threads/project-chinese-kinam-2024.7525/

That thread and every other one I've started on this subject spun off into the same pointless noise, which is why I gave up on them.

Yes, this thread caught the fake, and that's good.

My point isn't about this one thread. It's that when definitions get posted and the answer is "it's all subjective" or "it's a mystery," newcomers never learn what real looks like.

Then they buy fakes and post that they smell great, like here.

Or you get long time people on this forum saying there’s no difference between kyara and agarwood or that cultivated kynam is just as good as wild or that simply that no one knows what kynam is. Or that kynam is “just marketing hype.”

And my overview of cultivated vs. wild qinan, which got zero replies:
https://www.ouddict.com/threads/nice-overview-of-ck-vs-wild.10591/

Not gatekeeping. The opposite. Definitions are how a new person avoids getting ripped off.

If it's still unclear, it's a reading comprehension and skill issue, not a lack of examples or definitions.