Tag: how to find an instagram scam

It is the day of our Lord (Buckethead) May 30th, 2021. And we find ourselves at war. Why? Why the fuck not. So, here’s an update from our “friends” at smoothmyballs. I’m really happy to say, we’ve made it, we are their archnemeses now. We are the one pube between testicles and arsehole even their trimmer cannot remove.

If you’re new to the whole situation and just wanna know what the fuck is going on, here’s some recommended reading:

We have a whole podcast episode dedicated to Smooth My Balls. Click the link or find How Do I Rob This? whereever you listen to podcasts and listen to episode #31. That’s number 31, not hashtag 31.

You can also read more about Smooth My Balls here: Previously on Smooth My Balls vs. How Do I Rob This?

So, without further ado, let’s dive right in, shall we?

Smoothmyballs on Instagram – Bots, Followers, and “Brand Ambassadors”

First things first: For a “brand” that has gathered 470k followers within a few weeks and only 12 posts, they had surprisingly little growth in the past month. And they even have three new posts. But, who are we to judge with our modest following over at @howdoirobthis on all socials *wink*

Let’s take a closer look at one of their new posts:

This is something that has always been the case, they just didn’t want it to go really public. But technically even last month, you could’ve simply gotten your affiliate code without going through the hassle of ordering their 70$ test kit.

But it’s not shared to over 400k people, it’s over 400k bots. But these AIs are getting better, so we probably shouldn’t be judgy. Sooner or later some of them will pass the Turing test and shave your balls or labia so smooth, you’ll see your own reflection in them.

Update JUNE 1st:

They’ve actually lost followers and are now on 469k. Did people unfollow? Did their bots get reported, did they expire, are they preparing the robo apocalypse?

Smoothmyballs is Planting Trees, Because of Course They Are

But there’s more, they are now like every other dumb start up on this dying planet:

They’re even planting trees now, are we all of a sudden anti-planet? Here’s the thing: If you buy their products at regular retail prices or buy from cheaper (and potentially better) competitors, even major brands like Philips or Manscaped or smaller brands like SmoothNutz or whatever no-name brand name you can find on Amazon, you’ll save money.

And that’s money you won’t feed those grifters. Money that you can then in turn use to plant trees yourselves. With https://onetreeplanted.org e.g. or any other charity, because – fun fact – companies don’t use these charities out of the goodness of their balls.

They are deductibles. So for every cheaply manufactured Chinese trimmer you buy via Smoothmyballs.com, they then get a tax deductible. If you however donate the money directly, YOU get the deductible. Win-Fucking-Win-Situation.

You find flexible tree donations right here (we’re not sponsored, but it’s the same charity SMB collaborates with): https://onetreeplanted.org/products/plant-trees?variant=31367539589182

Oh, and we checked.

Because of course we checked. Initially we found it a bit suspicious that they didn’t tage OnePlantedTree, but at least their collaboration seems legit-ish.

Content Marketing and Warfare Below the Waistline

They’ve also stepped up their content marketing game, they really want to win out over us via search engine optimisation.

So, how does this work? If you type “smooth my balls” into google, you’ll find their site and a few reviews, videos, etc. Scroll a bit and you’ll find our podcast and a few scam alerts, but they have to bank on most people not scrolling that far.

But what if you do get suspicious and you want to know, if they are a scam? So you type something like “Smoothmyballs scam” into google, which they know, right? So, they are trying to position the word “scam” wherever they can in their content marketing.

It’s in their URLs:

In their YouTube channel description:

And now even in blogs that review their products:

You can find this absolute banger on a website called geeksaroundglobe.com – it’s one of those websites with loads of clickbait, fringe right wing content your boomer uncle shares on WhatsApp, and purchased blog entries to optimise google content searches.

This was cleary paid for content, probably done by a freelance copywriter on a crowdworking platform. Their 3D product mock up of the trimmer comes from a similar crowdworking platform, artstation.com

Tracing the Untraceable: Who Are Luke durghouse and SmoothMyBalls Trimmer?

But here’s something new,  a contact and a company address. Let’s check who (or what)’s behind Luke durghouse.

hmm… suspicious. Then again, that’s Ecosia, cause we’re so in love with planting fucking trees. Let’s see how the big G handles it:

similarly just 1 result. Okay, but maybe there’s something at their company address to found, yeah? Let’s see who’s squatting at *checks notes* 8 ballhouse road, UK

Okay, so the road is fake. On brand, but fake. There’s a few more content marketing attempts, all by one Mr. Smoothmyballs Trimmer. He must be busy as a b(all).

He’s even taken the time to write a review about his own — well, purchased in China — product!

SmoothMyBalls Trimmer, if that’s his real name, also has a profile on LinkedIn competitor XING. Under this name, I shit thee nay:

Are SmoothMyBalls Located in India not Canada?

Did we screw up? Are Smoothmyballs located in India, after all? Chances are good, one of their videos on vimeo is narrated by a speaker with a strong accent… Even though it sounds like it’s narrated by Tommy Wiseau.

https://vimeo.com/user130751613

For comparison, here’s the cheap Morgan Freeman:

Now these two geniuses here who ordered the Turf Chopper 3.0 test kit for 70$ (again 8$ product) talk about the one negative and that’s the shipping time, perhaps indicating a delivery from India. Could still be that SmoothMyBalls are shipping from Canada and simply had to order new product from China. It’s hard to tell, but we’ll stay on it. 

Mr SmoothMyBalls Trimmer – Brand Loyalty

But that’s all that XING would spit out, no further information on SmoothMyBalls Trimmer. If that’s his real name. Gotta commend him for his loyalty though, he’s been toiling away at SmoothMyBalls for more than 20 years now. Even though the company didn’t exist till November 2020. Marvellous.

They’re also on TheDots, which looks like yet another LinkedIn. It’s fine, we’ve already got LinkedIn and that’s bad enough, isn’t it?

There’s more fun content like this post on phenomenal. Which… cool. Most of the products don’t exist, but cool.

They’re also on Reddit now, where we regularly harrass them.

SmoothMyBalls on Twitter 

And stepped up their twitter game also with more than 400 followers now.

The usual suspects though:

So, mostly bots and podcasters that didn’t do their research properly. We’ll try and mess with them as much as possible on Twitter and maybe Instagram in the future, so if you see comments from us. A like or heart is much appreciated to boost our reach and ball punch them out of the water.

For the moment we’ve given up on reaching out to their brand ambassadors and affiliates, simply because they – for the most part – aren’t helpful. Either unwilling to talk or in denial about having been scammed out of too much money for cheaply manufactured products.

But we’re still open for input, if you have worked with them! Just get in touch.

Why Do We Bother with SmoothMyBalls at All? 

And that’s it for now. But you, dear reader, if you are still following this wild tantrum might be asking yourselves, why? Why, why, why go to all these lengths to get on the balls of an instagram scam only the dumb, the gullible, the self important fall for? Why on Gaia’s green earth?

Maybe it’s even you, Nick, reading this. Or Tom. Or SmoothMyBalls Trimmer or whoever you pretend to be today and maybe you’re wondering why two gentleman thieves on the far side of the world are giving you guys such a hard time.

Because we can. Because we don’t like scams, grifters or multilevel marketing schemes. Because they’re giving criminals the world over a bad name. And mostly (!) because they got in touch with us and they tried to mess with us. And honeys of Smooth My Balls! You don’t play a player!

With the ballsiest regards,

S+O

your champions and cojones of justice

Update – The Return of the Bot Network

June 10th and this is where we’re at: We were wondering, if maybe Smoothmyballs have changed their targeting practices. We were actually fairly certain they hadn’t, because our site is still getting a lot of hits, mostly from google traffic. So obviosly people are searching for smoothmyballs, but what is science without evidence? 

So we actually thought about reaching out and checking, if people were still being targeted by the bots on Instagram. Low and behold:

Same message, same targeting practice. 0 followers, 0 following, 0 posts, good stuff. 

Update 22/06/21: Mr. Smoothmyballs Trimmer Is on WordPress!

Okay, so… YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Botstagram… it’s just not enough, is it? It’s never enough. Now Smoothmyballs have a blog. The world’s most generic and random blog and they didn’t even bother paying for the bloody wordpress domain or the premium package.

So this is the domain:

THIS?! Holy ballz! And this is what the smoothmyballs blog on wordpress looks like:

You can reach How Do I Rob This on Twitter: @HowDoIRobThis

Or find out more about our heist plans on Instagram: @HowDoIRobThis

Or follow our two mastermind criminals @theoskarbrown and @smweissbach

New episodes on the 7th of every month. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube – and please feel free to leave us a sweet, sweet review!