Talk about paying it forward. Within days, Amir Massoud Tofangsazan has become famous on the Internet. The story goes that he sold his laptop computer to someone under false pretenses. First of all, the laptop didn’t have the features that were advertised. It took almost two months after payment before Amir shipped it. More importantly, it was broken. Apparently he pissed off the wrong guy. The seller created this blog, which contains the story of the transaction, plus lots of interesting content that the seller was able to retrieve from the laptop’s hard drive. The stuff pulled from Amir’s laptop included all kinds of gay and fetish porn photos, embarassing pics of Amir himself, and clips from Amir’s CV bragging about how punctual and honest he is. The seller says he’ll take down the blog when Amir refunds the £375 that he paid for the laptop. The story was picked up by traditional media outlets in England, and also spread around the Internet like wildfire. Someone had to start a second blog to handle the comments coming in, discussing Amir’s alleged actions.

I don’t know if it’s all true or not. I guess it’s too early to say for sure. The story is now being investigated by the police. But Amir isn’t helping himself out too much. Apparently he’s been posting comments under various fake names attacking the seller and the creator of the comments blog. Amir’s problem is that his threatening, abusive tone and distinctively poor use of the English language make it a dead giveaway that he’s the one writing all of these comments. Anyway, I’ve heard of “buyer beware,” but this story proves that “seller beware” is equally good advice.

I heard a related joke this morning on the radio. A guy dies suddenly, and finds himself at St. Peter’s Gate in heaven. He begs and begs to have his life back, just for five minutes. St. Peter, thinking that the guy just wants to spend some more time with his wife or something, asks what the guy could possibly do in five minutes. The guy said, “Erase my hard drive.”

Yeah.