Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

Inventive Stumble Tagging

I recently installed Stumble on my PC. I didn’t know that Stumble would add elements to my Google searches. I have been Googling Kimkins regularly for the past few days and the tag that I underlined in green on this screencap struck me as kinda weird.

I don’t know if an anti-kimkins person added this tag in an effort to be subversive, or if a pro-kimkins person (there are still a handful of these) did it to generate traffic for Heidi’s blogspot blog. Kimkinsdiet.blogspot.com would actually get lots of traffic if it allowed unmoderated comments the way some anti-kimkins blogs do.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Anti-Kimkins

The author of Anti-Kimkins is not above saying I told you so to the broader Low Carb community. This is a blog that is written by and for the insiders in this controversy and the author doesn’t pull many punches.

I don’t like this blog very much. It crosses over to being quite mean spirited and vengeful. The Kimkins fraud was something that many people determined could not stand, but they put their efforts into railing against the key elements of the fraud without personally attacking the people who were perpetrating and abetting it.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Borat???

Where do I start with this blog review? I recently saw some hand wringing with regard to the offbeat humor that is the spawn of the Kimkins fraud. This blog is the penultimate example of this humor, if only for the reason that I have a new spell check and I wanted to see if I could spell penultimate right the first time. Unlike the real Borat, I don’t think this blogger ever fessed up to their true identity. It could be an open secret, I am way out of the loop on a lot of things.

This blog is ridiculous enough to be forgiven. The blogger also has good timing in that they quit when the joke had run its course.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Survivors

Kimkins Survivors is a very tidy sort of ‘best of’ blog. Many posts feature former Kimkins dieters’ own words describing the bad experiences that they had.

One very long post from someone who was not only a member of Kimkins but also an affiliate for a short while is especially enlightening. It comes from a reasonable, sensible and honest seeming person who found herself in the Kimkins camp when the controversy was coming to a head. I was able to empathize with her impression that the conflict was a kind of flame war that was unwarranted and unproductive. I appreciate that she carefully examined the situation rather than becoming entrenched in a camp. I think Heidi took full advantage of the you’re either with us or against us tripe that is sold nationwide. I will be taking not of the notable blogs that are against her in a series of posts.

Am I A Bad Person?

I put a poll on my blog last week and I was complaining about how the website that creates the free polls has a weird and dishonest business model. The script that they provide users with has a text link for some online casino. The instructions tell you that if you alter the code your account will be deleted. That’s fair enough but then the next sentence says that there is no link. Today I am putting up another poll and I am removing the link from the code.

Top Commentators

The most frequent commentator on this blog is OhYeahBabe. This person blogs over at Kimorexia. I was thinking of adding a Top Commentators widget to the blog as a way of encouraging comments. I’m not sure if it worth the trouble.

If you use WordPress, you can add this function quite easily. The word on the blogosphere is that this widget is kinda buggy. There are fixed up versions available elsewhere. Webgrrl.net has a post about her adventures with this thing.

Blogging is Not a Hate Free Workplace

The Fat Acceptance movement is somewhat controversial. I haven’t followed enough of Joy Nash’s work to know what her views are on activism. Her famous Rant is really more about her own personal resolution to accept being fat and to not use it as an excuse for not living a happy life. She drew some very negative comments with her recent blog activity from someone who is on the warpath with regard to fat acceptance. I commend Joy for leaving the comment on her blog even though it crossed some lines as far as being personally insulting. The comment was illuminating if not pleasant.

While the obesity of one particular woman was central to the Kimkins Fraud, commentary after the PI pictures were published crossed quite a few lines. LOL Cat-like humor created using the ass of a fraudulent fellow human being may be quite funny, but it is also kinda wrong.

Free Stuff With Lies…

I am going to leave this poll up for a day or two. The provider of the free poll is very disappointing. I will explain why below the poll…

	Choose…
	Clinton
	Obama
	Edwards

When I used easy-poll.com to create this poll the following text appears over the box containing the script for the poll:

Paste the code below into your web page,

If You make any changes - Your account will be deleted.
Important: There won’t be any banners and visible links on Your web site!

I don’t know if that is one lie or two. As you can plainly see, there is a visible link on my website. Edit: Now there is NOT a visible link on my website

Considering Changes in Comment Management

This blog has had the same comment settings since its inception. All comments are held for moderation. Akismet is not enabled.

This setup is not ideal. Readers would probably prefer to see their comments appear immediately. I would prefer to not have to scroll down through dozens of those awful spam comments checking for the 0-10 comments that I get on any given day.

If anyone has ever left a legitimate comment that was mistakenly labeled as spam, I apologize.

While I looking at different options for managing comments, I found out about a blogger who made a point of taking down all the barriers to spam for 24 hours as an experiment. If you are a serious blogger, you might enjoy reading Just Add Water.

Here is the nutritional value label for actual spam, it’s actually better than I expected…

The Kimkins Controversy in a Nutshell

I made some effort recently to push the discussion of the Kimkins controversy out into blogosphere beyond the low carb bloggers that had been providing exposure for months. I can’t help but think that there will be a spike of traffic and business at Kimkins because of all the January dieters. I felt that while encouraging the stalwart anti-kimkins bloggers to get busy would help reduce the number of unfortunate victims, getting more bloggers to post about the story in a succinct and engaging way might help even more.

I noticed a blog post on ChubbyMommy.com that was posted on New Years Day. It sums up the Kimkins fraud quite nicely. And her blog looks really cute, too…