Do you think some professionals come on here to promote themselves covertly?

[Anonymous]

Somebody will say...please recommend a photographer/speech therapist/psychologist/exterminator or what have you and when people post back it's like you can almost tell which posts are legit and which are self-advertisement. Is this just my own conspiracy theory?

[Anonymous]

The "valley mill/calleva/Barrie/camp sonshine" thread in Camps is one long ad for one of those camps. Written by fake parents. At a minimum the "parents" were contacted by camp administrators and urged to write a detailed recommendation.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I'm the OP of the Valley Mill etc post, and the sheer number of pro-Camp Sonshine posts had me really skeptical. Plus the enthusiasm sound incredibly fake or forced or something. The funny thing is that I was mostly interested in VM or Barrie, but I searched the archives and saw references to the others so I figured I'd throw them in my query just to be comprehensive. I was feeling a bit guilty about my reaction to the responses, like I was some crazy cynic or something. I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought something sounded off.

[Anonymous]

This is definitely true for the political forum. It's filled with campaign staff pushing negative crap about each others' candidates.

[jsteele]

This is definitely true of photographers. It is pretty common for them to search for threads asking for photographer recommendations and then post to every single one (even if it is very old). There is one poster who got angry with one of my posts, called me names and urged people to stop using DCUM, but still comes to post recommendations for her studio periodically. I remove any of these posts that I identify.

[Anonymous]

What about mortgage brokers? I get pretty suspicious of some of those recommendations.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, probably, BUT not always. The other day there was a thread asking suggestions for a 3y old girls birthday party and I posted about a candy party - and because both of my links were from the same place, someone said I was "the lady trying to promote mys business and that I should pay Jeff..." something in those lines.

But the suggestions for financial planner got me thinking (because I need one) and I was going to ask Jeff to check if they were legit of self promoting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Somebody will say...please recommend a photographer/speech therapist/psychologist/exterminator or what have you and when people post back it's like you can almost tell which posts are legit and which are self-advertisement. Is this just my own conspiracy theory?

What is covert about it? Look at the thread for baby night nurse. Free advertisement galore.

[Anonymous]

When you said "professionals" I thought DCUM dads were looking for prostitutes.