War is the path of deception. "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.
Once, a friend called me asking for help to win a contest. She was struggling for the first place in a beauty pageant, but it just wasn't happening. Her competitor was always ahead.
The contest rules were as follows: you had to upload your photo to the group's album and ask friends to comment on that photo in sequential order by adding numbers, like: 1, 2, 3, and so on. Her competitor was always outpacing her. Meanwhile, the competitor's photo was just terrible and taken on an outdated phone. The competition was played dirty; she easily skipped several numbers and was overall quite provocative. She had three times fewer friends. How could she be winning? My friend's investigation revealed that the opponent had a sister who sold Avon cosmetics and had over a thousand friends. So my friend was fighting an entire army.
I agreed to help, although I wasn't sure how. The first thing I told her was to stop competing as it was a futile effort. It was foolish to fight head-on when the odds weren't equal. At that moment, she was in second place. I advised her to take a break and distract herself. I left to think. The first idea was simple and banal: to buy a couple of thousand fake accounts in bulk online and use them to overwhelm the opponent. A quick search online and messaging didnāt yield results. It turned out that VKontakte had introduced registration by phone number, and now getting accounts wasn't that easy.
Well, moving on to plan B. If we can't win by strength, we'll use cunning. I went through various shops and found the cheapest SIM cards, which turned out to be from MegaFon. Just 60 rubles each. Plus, they all had money on the account. I immediately asked the female manager if I could take a lot of SIM cards at once. She replied: of course! I ordered 20 units. The girl didnāt even seem surprised. Out of curiosity, I asked: so itās fine that Iām taking so many SIM cards? But the girl responded that it was normal, saying it's common for people from the village to come and take them for all their relatives at once. Okay then. The hardest part for me, as a techie, was signing contracts for all these SIM cards in duplicate. Paperwork, ugh!
When I got home, I started registering accounts on these SIM cards for Vkontakte. I spent the whole day doing it. There was no automation, which is not rational for such a quantity. For quick SIM swapping, I used a modem, which made it easy to change them. By evening, everything was ready. My elite squad of 20 zombie fighters. All trained and waiting for their command in ambush (they were added to the group and were waiting for their moment). The plan was simple. My friend would start competing with her rival again, trying to catch up with her, and in the final minutes, when there was almost no time left in the contest, vote quickly with my zombie fighters to snatch victory at the finish line. But my plan was not meant to come true.
About an hour before the end of the contest, we began to take action. My friend was pulling in her friends and asking them to join the group and place their votes. I was at another computer, waiting for my moment. We were quickly closing in on our rival. At that time, we were still 30 votes behind her. Surprisingly, she did not react at all to our activity. Moreover, it turned out she wasnāt even online. She was so confident in her victory that she didnāt bother to show up for the contest's conclusion! By the end of the hour, my friend managed to gather the needed number of votes and even overtook her. But we still added my zombies. My super-duper elite squad, which was supposed to cause chaos and panic among the enemy, turned into just a bunch of cutthroats, taking out sleeping soldiers under the cover of night.
A few days later, the contest victory was confirmed. Somewhere in the comments, they were writing about my zombies, claiming they were fake. Yes, it was somewhat unreasonable to take the first random photos from the search. But winners are not judged, right?
By the way, the rival posted a joyful message on her wall about taking second place in the contest. She accepted her defeat gracefully. That's commendable.
Well, what did I do? I went to the official salon and blocked all the SIM cards, transferring the money from them to my number. The wolves are fed, the sheep are safe, and the shepherd is eternally remembered.
Source: habr.com
