The unofficial NANAE Kook Kollektion

Brad Jesness

"Taylor is Jared, there is no proof of the contrary."

Who is Brad Jesness?

Bradley L. Jesness is a longtime and very well known Usenet kook, so well known in fact that he has his own FAQ. He earned this by his antics on a psychology newsgroup, sci.psychology.psychotherapy. This FAQ has been a sore point for Brad ever since. He now stalks the current FAQ maintainer "Just" Taylor Jiménez, and the host for Taylor's site, Rich Tietjens aka Morely Dotes. The only result is that more and more mirrors of the FAQ are popping up as Brad manages to piss off many people with his irrational and abusive behaviour.

Brad's postings

Brad usually posts anonymously, pretending to be a third party who supports him. Brad so frequently speaks about himself in the third person that he sometimes slips up and does so even in a rare non-anonymous post. These "supporters of Brad" always show one or more of the following traits:

Other tell-tale signs, like certain misspellings and capitalization of random words, are also present, and experienced Brad-spotters can usually identify his posts at first glance.
The Joe Jared connection

One of Brad's most often repeated claims is that Taylor Jiménez does not really exist and is merely an alias for someone else. Brad has for years claimed that Taylor was truly Sanford Wallace, a well-known spammer, revealed by his "world-reknowed forensic skills". Brad was finally forced to drop this claim when Sanford Wallace was shown to be in a whole other city and facing charges because of a spyware incident. Brad himself claims that Taylor misled his research purposefully, but prefers not to speak of this incident at all.

Brad's latest claim is that Taylor is truly Joe Jared, owner of Osirusoft and a well-known antispammer. Brad's new claim came around the time that Joe hit the news after being sued over a blocklist issue. Brad's current posts are usually vicious personal attacks against Joe Jared and Morely Dotes, with links to pages where Brad presents his rambling "evidence". This doesn't gain him any sympathy, as both Joe and Morely are well-respected NANAE regulars.

Moris and the SPEWS connection

Brad occasionally gets some support from other kooks, like Moris. This is because Brad also claims to have evidence that Joe and Morely are behind SPEWS, a controversial and often discussed blocklist. Because of this, Brad frequently attacks SPEWS in his postings as well. This gained him the support of Moris, a fervent SPEWS hater. Moris supported Brad for a while, which only resulting in reducing his own already diminished credibility even further. Moris has not supported Brad recently.

Brad the stalker

Brad often claims that his victims are stalking him, but a little observation shows that the reverse is true; it's Brad who follows them around to other newsgroups, trying to discredit them there with his rambling attacks. Brad has even tried to take things to real life; he has snail mailed Taylor (and threw a tantrum when Taylor stated he would not accept any further mail from Brad) and tried to call Joe Jared. Some suspect that Brad's wild accusations towards Taylor are just ploys to get more information about Taylor in real life.

Brad the scientist?

Brad claims to have proof that Taylor is Joe Jared, but his "evidence" is shaky at best and laughable at worst. A few examples of his more outrageous claims:

"Taylor is Jared, there is no proof of the contrary."

This is a logical fallacy known as "negative proof". Lack of evidence that A != B does not prove that A == B. It also introduces another logical fallacy known as "burden of proof": this statement releases Brad from having to prove that Taylor is Jared and leaves it up to Taylor and Jared to prove that they are not the same person. Since Brad is making the claim, it's Brad who has to prove he is right, not the other way round.

"Taylor does not accept my certified mail because he can't."

This one fails under Occam's razor, because it assumes too much. Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. This one assumes that there is only one reason why Taylor does not accept certified mail from Brad Jesness, which is a very big assumption since there could be (and are) many.

"Certain people have identified Taylor's voice as Jared's."

Of course the identity of these people and what their relation to Jared is is never stated by Brad. This could be considered an "appeal to authority" (possibly another logical fallacy) but actually isn't evidence at all because it cannot be verified. Some NANAE regulars have stated that Taylor and Jared do not even sound remotely alike.

Brad considers himself a scientist, but as the above examples show his methods are anything but scientific. A real scientist would also try very hard to prove his own theories wrong, but Brad doesn't.

Is Brad Jesness insane?

This is a conclusion best left to professionals, but Brad certainly does appear to be rather unstable. Some regulars in the sci.psychology.* groups, several of whom are actual psychologists, believe Brad to be suffering from acute narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Indeed, Brad does show some of the traits that are associated with this disorder, such as a grandiose sense of self-importance, fantasies of unlimited success and envy of others (especially succesful women in Brad's case). Put rather bluntly, it means that Brad is full of himself.

This author does not claim to have any skill or education in psychology, but my layman's impression is that Brad is indeed insane and should be hospitalized for both his own good and everyone else's.

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