[STORY TIME] A narcissist, some screenshots and an embarrassing made-up word walk into a bar…
Copythinkers Assemble! George brought the receipts!
The top 3 things I cannot stand are people who are tight with money, being rude to the service industry and blatant manipulative dishonesty.
This story is about dishonesty.
For context- Copywriting, sadly, has been co-opted by the Alpha Male, crypto trading, Liver King crowd, also known as nightmare fuel in civilized society.
I don’t think you can make a name for yourself in the subculture without running some sort of grift, so finding copywriting grifter dude Bros to dunk on is very easy.
And we know I love dunking on a copywriting grifter.
I was on Twitter, and a new player enters the chat: George Ten.
At first, he was very unremarkable- the same grifter practices I’d seen before: simplistic hints and tips, “I made X million $ by changing this one thing in my pitch” stuff, you know, the usual.
And then I saw the word Copythinkers.
I was familiar with CopyTHINKING because of my foray into the world of Robert “Kings of Conversion” Allen.
I couldn’t believe someone other than Robert Allen was spruiking Robert Allen.
So I jumped onto the profile and I saw no, George Ten had commandeered copythinking for himself (another theft of someone else’s ideas) and was Usain Bolting with it.
After realizing I couldn’t stomach the cringe for a no name face in the crowd, I jumped back off his profile and moved on with life.
Flicks of copythinkers posting lists of marketing terms came on my feed occasionally. And the “copywriters are dying out because they aren’t totally rad like copythinkers” tripe, ironically describing copywriting while failing to recognize it.
Then they started the “Copythinkers are going to run the Universe with ChatGPT” chapter.
Yawn.
My primary issue at this point was the increasing sense of being chafed by the incessant bleating of “Copythinkers!” every time I started to scroll.
Reading George’s tweets was honestly mind bending. How could someone so blatantly preach copywriting, call it copythinking, trash copywriting by describing it as something- honestly, I still can’t get a grip on it- and no one has pegged?
Reading a George Ten thread will save you from buying “how to use copywriting templates for dummies”.
Looking exclusively under the search term ‘copythinkers”, the real Mad Hatters Tea Party comes out.
“Copywriting isn’t about writing. It’s about visualizing the big idea in a way to make your customers visualize their feelings and speaking to that!”
Or
“Copywriters use templates and steal each other’s ideas (the irony) but copythinkers use their minds and visualize stories and the customer that no one can compete with”
Right.
My favourite were the semi coherent “Copywriter poo poo heads are going to get DECIMATED by the GigaChad Copythinkers who are gonna rule the world with AI. Bet”
Truly a bizarre collection of individuals .The Copythinker spectacle was amusing to lurk on at best.
One day, on Twitter, I saw a tweet by an innocent bystander saying…..
Hang on, George took a screenshot for reference
I said what I said because
A) Seriously, it’s embarrassing
B) the mean girls reference warranted it
C) I had no idea my reply was in a thread with Precious George.
This will be shocking to the Copythinkers
(if you’re reading, hi. Probably sit down first),
but an utterly incomprehensible number of people could not give a rats who George Ten is or bother finding out.
I myself was perfectly fine, and if my Robert Allen research hadn’t implanted a Copythinkers cringe-trigger in me, I would never have noticed him beyond the surface.
So no, I am not taking any notice of his Twitter handle.
As I will never fall to the indignity of becoming a one hit wonder, I followed up with this banger (thank you George again for the screenshot)
Lol, CopyWankers. I’m hilarious.
Seems a turncoat Copythinker agrees with me.
Anyway
We’re at the part of the story I want on record:
George targeted me.
Those screenshots are his. He took my 30 follower face and handle and posted it to his arguably much larger following.
And he did it completely unbeknownst to me. He didn’t tag me, nothing. Just took my picture and handle and blasted it to all his sycophants.
What a chill cool guy! I can see why some people call him “the realest”.
Now why would a man with a huge following of yes men and batty boys, firstly take screenshots, then post, pictures of two people making a joke about Copythinkers in a comment thread on Twitter?
When was the last time you read an entire comment thread? Zero times? No comment thread has ever been read in its entirety since the conception of the planet, let alone Twitter. Who cares?
As it turns out, self obsessed narcissistic nerds do.
When his screenshots failed to garner the response he wanted (for future reference lurking CopyWankers, SenPai wants you to cry with gratitude at the mere whisper of his name. Nothing less), he then tried to get MY attention.
RECORD SCRATCH……. I SAID WHAAAT????
SenPai? Do you notice me?
I’m going to gloat for one second because there are Copythinkers who wait their whole lives for SenPai,
trying to make him happy,
tagging him again and again
“Copythinkers Assemble! Right George? Copythinkers. Copythinkers is so cool, you’re the realest George, honestly”
and get nothing.
All I had to do was hashtag CopyWankers once and he’s up my arse like a rat in a drain pipe.
(Copywriting, am I right? The secret is to be so good at it, they think it was their idea.)
Again, my question still, is why does the Grandmaster Copythinking King, want my attention?
Hey George, you could have done literally nothing, and we wouldn’t be here dissecting your character defects. But since you insisted…
The attention I got from Precious George brought a couple of desperates over and I received this:
Which is amusing and fun. 10/10.
But then this genius tweeted at me:
Like I said, I do not do blatant dishonesty, SIR, so I’m going to need you to correct your statement.
Because, you know, f#$k me right? SenPai George posts my picture to ridicule me and get a shot of narcissistic supply from his band of gullible imbeciles, fails, then tries for a shot of supply from me and still fails…
AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO ACCUSE ME OF RIDING SOMEONE ELSE’S COATTAILS TO GET ATTENTION AND FOLLOWERS???????
If George wanted my attention then, he was really going to get it now.
This was going to be the Grifter of the Week to end all other grifters.
My finished long form “George Ten Sells Ice to Broke and Lonely Eskimos” is, in my opinion, a tour de force.
For context, my review of Copythinkers! and George Ten is here.
The wailing from the Greek Chorus and George’s grasping at the smelling salts heard from the Copythinkers side of Twitter suggests George wasn’t anticipating my review.
He should try copywriting, seriously. Copywriters research the market and get to understand their competitors intimately. I’ve seen SO MANY tweets about it.
Here:
See there? “Well aware about market sophistication level”. Using research and knowledge of the market?
Seriously George? This is your wheelhouse bro.
When George was able to sit up and take in some nourishment, he predictably chose Victim mode and made some Tweets.
Nothing surprising, but George isn’t exactly known for his ability to formulate an original idea.
The one on the right got to me though. At first, I couldn’t quite figure out why.
He started the account (in 2013) out of desperation and fear.
Fear of not being able to provide for his family.
Hmm.
That’s interesting, considering this
And this
And this
But its fine, right?
I mean, everyone knows broke and lonely Eskimos don’t ask questions, they just buy the ice.
No one could be so blind as to swallow a hook, line AND a sinker, just because it was renamed copythinking and came with a super cool “let’s beat the mean AI” sci-fi fantasy story.
Could they?
Like I said, one of the things I cannot stand is blatant, manipulative dishonesty.
Post script-
Why do I care?
Copywriting Grifter of the Week was initially me laughing at the ridiculous ploys these losers used to separate people from their money.
A reoccurring theme I begun seeing was the Ego they had- genuinely believing they had special powers with the written word and could make millions of dollars for everyone who payed them.
I also enjoyed pulling apart copywriting grifts to see their moving parts.
George is a special example because he has introduced a new layer- the Copythinkers! It was difficult with the previous Grifters to find public testimony to their greatness. Whereas George was using the copywriting equivalent of #Swiftie, and it was working.
What is intriguing is the lack of questions to George’s contradictions and no one mentioning “umm, isn’t this just marketing?” Or “this stuff you’re talking about is really basic”. I still ask why, in such a vocal network, there appears to be no critical engagement, and more so, no critical thought, in a group calling themselves CopyTHINKERS. Sociologically, it’s like Gorillas in the Mist.
I’m not on a crusade or looking for The Truth About George™️. Because again, George isn’t special, and his life outside Twitter and Copythinking! couldn’t be a less dull topic if it tried.
I’m pointing out how George is the same old Grifter as everyone else. The Grifter doth protest too much, and each time he pleads victim or uses sympathy tactics to protect his Grift, he’s telling you what he wants.
Even his sympathy tweet “I was scared I couldn’t make money for my family…SO I JOINED TWITTER”. He didn’t get a job, go to university, work for a promotion- he joined Twitter, a social media platform who’s primary currency is followers.
If George wasn’t so insidious and narcissistic about it, like pretending to be your friend, creating a public “Good Guy” persona, screaming “I stay on sales calls for…oops. I mean, I stay on helping calls for hours with other people, and you don’t know them!! How dare you say things about me!!!”, he would dissolve into the heaving morass of other Buy My Course nobodies.
But he makes a mockery of copywriting, a job he can’t do. Because if he made $15k a month in the way he is promoting to the Copythinkers to buy from him (in attention, compliments and money), he wouldn’t be bothering with long sales calls or handwritten emails.