Poor skills

Add pixplzkthnx to Poor skills Plz to be adding some pix now kthnx. Consult the image selection process for help, or just google up some pix. Plz remove this notice once there are plenty of pix.

poor_skills is a LiveJournal community where the internet poor can share tips about screwing over the government and getting stuff for free.

Common stupidity

P_S posts are friends-locked by default, because LJ snark communities loved finding material there. This can make it difficult to find stupidity, but it's there.

• Poor-offs: Arguments about who's the poorest of them all. Yellowsnakepoet is notorious for lecturing people about not qualifying for real poverty, though some would contend that her ability to attend college disqualifies her, too.
• Welfare fraud: Though the community's rules forbid posts about illegal activities, every once in a while some idiot will post asking which lies are the best for getting free government moneys. Those who do qualify for welfare get angry, others accuse them of mooching off the government, and the libertarians come up with brilliant plans like "bring back debtor's prison!"
• Advertisements: People who sign up with those "get paid to read emails/take surveys" scam companies try to get referrals all the time, though that's also against the rules.
• Childfree drama: Whenever someone posts anything about having children, some freetard has to remind everybody that children are expensive and smelly and dumb, and that anyone who earns less than $1 million a year but has kids anyway is abusive. For example, this post documents an incident where a clever freetard lectures a woman for looking for coupons, since clearly that means she's an irresponsible parent. These people also show up in the welfare arguments, complaining that they can't get any free moneys because the stupid breeder government thinks it's more important to keep small children from starving to death than it is to support perfectly healthy young adults.

LJ Spotlight

LiveJournal has a "spotlight" program whereby exceptional communities are posted on the front page of the site for everyone to look at. As any moron could guess, a spotlighted community is immediately flooded with morons and n00bs asking stupid questions. Even though P_S had a better tag system than most LJ communities, none of the new members bothered to read anything.

Common posts in the first week or two of February 2008 included:

• How do I cook?
• Did you know that Freecycle gives away free shit?
• You should buy used things instead of new ones!
• Please tell me how to run my life.
• Where can I earn like $500 really fast? (bitch, if we knew that, we wouldn't be poor)
• Are there recipes on the Internet?
• Did you know that it's a good idea to not spend your money? Trufax!

“	Alright penny-pinchers, I need some help here. Before the year is up I plan to be moved out of my parents' house, attending college, working, and living with my boyfriend. I have been thinking about it lately and I finally realized that regardless of how much we save up before moving out, eventually we will be left with our month to month profit and cost. What all can we do to live as cheap as possible without being completely miserable?	„
—DEAR POOR SKILLS HOW DO WE RUN OUR LIVES THANKS

On being told to LURK MOAR, most of these people got butthurt and whined to the main mod, who ended up changing the community to require membership approval and post reviews. The six co-mods kept deleting or freezing comment threads and posts at random, without any coherent idea except "be nice," and a lot of older members left in a huff.

At the time of this article's writing (March of 2008) the septembering of P_S has calmed down, and stupidity levels are back to normal.

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