Untold Wealth for Dummy Arkansans

Native gold

When it comes to freelancers spreading misinformation, almost no topic appears to be more fertile than get-rich quick schemes. Thanks to a rather stupid TV "reality" show about panning for gold, bazillions of people became convinced that they could wander into the nearest trickle of water with a bowl from the kitchen and pan up fist-sized gold nuggets with just a few minutes' work. Freelancers like lperry (Lisa Perry) over at Seekyt.com were happy to feed gold fever, if only to make a few pennies off someone else's greed. Lisa shared her bit of misinformation in an article she called "Strike It Rich Panning For Gold In Arkansas."¹

In actuality, Lisa doesn't say jack about the process of panning, where you might pan for gold, or how much you might find. In a burst of honesty that seems quite out of character for freelance writers on Seekyt, Lisa says not once but twice that people panning for gold in Arkansas will find flecks of gold the size of a flea's knee instead of massive lumps. 

Here's a hint about what Perry is doing with her tale of Scrooge McDuck-like riches just lying around to be picked up:

"...right now [I should be] writing a keyword-researched article that might actually earn me some real money."

Well, that's pretty much what she was doing! This cleverly-disguised "keyword-researched article," however, does manage to contain all the pertinent keywords – huge, gold nuggets, gold bars, Switzerland, Fort Knox – even though Lisa carefully manages to impart no real, useful information (one of the hallmarks of keyword-researched articles, if you ask our staff here at the Antisocial Network).  In reality, finding any placer gold in Arkansas streams (other than, perhaps, the Arkansas River) is highly unlikely. Experts – the sort of people who share hard-won knowledge and experience instead of dashing off useless (but keyword-researched) articles – tell us that no one has made any money off panning for gold in the state except for a few tourist attractions that let people learn how to pan while using copper BBs and little lumps of lead instead of nuggets. There are good reasons, most of them geological, about why there's no gold in Arkansas streams such as this page written by a geologist for the Arkansas Geological Survey. But Lisa doesn't bother to share that information, perhaps because it might reduce her payout.

It's a safe bet that Lisa Perry made more money off her post on Seekyt (or with her embedded Amazon associate links) than anyone has made panning for gold anywhere in Arkansas. Perhaps she's not a dumbass after all! On second thought, no: for her strenuous efforts to advance the stupidification of the internet, our Dumbass of the Day award is still all hers!

¹ The website (or the author) has deleted this content. You can still find it using the Wayback Machine at archive.org, using the URL  https://www.seekyt.com/strike-it-rich-panning-for-gold-in-arkansas/

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