I give this a strong motion of agreement -
I don't know if it's better in
South America, I've done this mostly in Chile, some in Argentina, Brasil and Colombia, I have never touched any of these projects in the US or elsewhere.
I''ve so far had one truly great experience, where I went and worked for them again and they're people I stay in touch with, then a couple reasonably good ones that I didn't regret, a couple of others with people who were legitimately friendly and appreciative, though the work wasn't exceedingly meaningful - then a few that were basically as you described, shady people lookin to take advantage - seeking "aspiring automotons", you put it more well than I ever could.
It's also interesting that you described so many reviews and comments as 'sycophantic'. These sites really do highlight a lot of the problems of modern people, sometimes it seems people were trying to find something real and just settled halfway.
Now I've called a couple (only, I admit, and somewhat regret that it hasn't been more) of these attitude-heavy hosts on their shit and left amicably because they apologized and in the end were obviously not *trying* to be shitheads, even got, twice, free "final departure" rides into town and even offered fuckin breakfast after confronting someone. Wild, but I would never count on that again, and nobody should ever be in that position to begin with. Although there's something to be said about using your leverage, standing up for what you know is right (when that opportunity comes by....) and being prepared to walk away if things aren't right.
My empathetic side tells me that there's something to be said about people in general not managing their own stress well, being all up in their own shit and losing sight of things, and they "need" a friendly wakeup call. Granted that doesn't always apply, and it's always unacceptable for someone to seek volunteers and then be a fuckin asshat.
Yes, some people are just wack. There was another case where I didn't even want to hear anymore of their nonsense and vanished without a trace in the middle of the night. It had been 3 bad hosts in a row and these were the dumbest. I think some people are just prone to be shit and they think it's alright the way they are because xyz and there ain't much you can do to assaude them to being rational. I could go on about possible reasons why that is the case, but who am I to judge, and even if there'd be a point this isn't the thread.
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I admit that I've never left a bad review and it's exactly for the reason you stated, if I leave one then someone else is inclined to leave one for me. It is what it is, maybe it's cowardly, I just don't think it'll be effective/favorable.
Another issue is, for example, I'd heard from someone - showing up somewhere and the person was particularly audacious, saying they weren't going to feed them but they could stay there, basically misleading/false stuff in their profile, hoping "well they came all this way so they'll deal with it" a bait and lure type scenario.
Well this kid didn't do that, he said "Well the fuck is wrong with you, how do you expect me to want to stay here and work for you now?", leaves, then goes to log on (this was on Workaway) to leave a bad review, and the guy had deleted his shit with which they'd communicated prior - and made a new one that only 'slightly' resembled the previous one - then he couldn't leave a review on their new profile because the system hadn't detected messages between *them* or something like that. So unsurprisingly there are loopholes, and that could then lead to endless bullshit traps for innocent folk.
anyway this isn't my blog so enough now - hopefully there'll be something useful to glean from all that. A neutral ground ought to exist to put particularly bad hosts on blast, and this could be the place.
Have you looked at the "Shady &
Untrustworthy People" section here? It sort of operates on a similar principle, but on much bigger/more dastardly shit.