![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRZFKpsTZMDavMkHDv3Lvy8d924pCrY2CByBSykLRxkkL/image.png)

**DISCLAIMER**: I don't read Jerry's posts, I've had a look through them to study this one case, I find his posts to not have the substance that I require for my own reading, I have no reason to want to defend him nor am I defending him, I'm just a bystander who is new to steemit, who witnessed some severe bullying on the steemit network and decided to cover it in this article.

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTmC7r5qkQJLNGDu441Vkh3sWWjiUgDENkDn1cAHnCa4o/image.png)
This one is an interesting story on steemit, Jerry Banfield.

When I first saw the video with the silly hat pop up on SteemSpeak, I imagined it to be some tutorial or something, I knew it was click bait from the hat but I checked it out anyway because it was shared and I was bored.

I soon learned about the growing disapproval for Jerry Banfield because of this post that charges $50 to delegate $30 or so to whoever pays to manually create an account using a steem wallet app, he was very open in the video that there are easier and free ways and his service is only available of you are stuck, he made it very very clear with several repetitions that people can get what he was offering for free and he was only willing to help should they want to pay him the fee for helping do it this specific way.

People accused him of scamming folk because there were other services that were cheaper. I immediately smelled a rat, what I was asking at the time was: since when is being expensive, or even delivering sub standard service or using an inferior technique scamming?

I had to ask myself if I am witnessing rational or people getting carried away in a torrent of zealousness, bullying someone because of their convictions, and not based on fact.

He was later accused of knowing about the cheaper services at anonsteem because one of his writers mentioned it in an article some time ago. He was torn a new one in the comments and people even created funded bots, one named @veryscamfield has been particularly active and boosted heavily with votes. He changed most of his post after being pressured by users of steemit, he mentioned anonsteem in his changes and removed most of his original content.

I have since looked around and investigated the aftermath of this very personal attack, and found spam being used against him, people creating accounts just to bad mouth him so that their main accounts don't get hurt, bots being used against him, him being accused of being a scammer on each and every one of his (from what I could tell completely legitimate) blog posts about crypto and his daily life. People have been accusing him all over the place in a type of impromptu campaign, even though he changed the post people didn't like, and closed his website steemfail.com where the service that would handle steemit registrations manually when steemit would fail in this regard, was run. 

I have yet to find any evidence at all, and I've looked very far and wide and hard, that he was in fact scamming anyone, he was charging $50 for delegating $30 to a stranger, which is fine in my mind, albeit maybe expensive. He compliantly closed this service, which to my mind was not a scam in the first place, and he is still to this day being constantly accused of scamming people, which as far as I know he never did.

Was he naively producing click bait to try and win the steemit **popularity contest** and get followers? sure, the way he seems to have learnt to do over the years on youtube (he seems to be a successful youtuber with 200 000+ subscribers) 

I leave everyone with a quote here an excerpt from one of Jerry's recent posts:

> Yesterday @laurabanfield made her first post which @veryscamfield (an account of @berniesanders and @nextgencrypto) discovered today and went to work on. At first I was assuming negative intent by default and I got angry. I wanted to make a post to complain and be a victim. Fortunately I have learned that only brings more of the same about which must be here already because of what I have already done.

> Instead what I did is stepped away from the computer after plotting a post to fight back for 30 minutes and giving up on it. I opted instead to face the pain by laying on the couch, thinking only of it, and then crying for a few minutes. While I am used to taking what might look like a beating from criticism every day online, I felt especially vulnerable with @laurabanfield joining Steem and it hurt a lot to see the same thing done to me done to her also on her first post. Yes if you judge on manly points you can take some away there. Yes I realize other people are starving to death today and having much worse things than this happen.

> @jerrybanfield
Source: https://steemit.com/happierpeople/@jerrybanfield/assuming-positive-intent-178

**Was his service unneccesary? probably.**
**Was it a scam?** well it wasn't anything anyone needed, he perhaps overcharged and people didn't like his domain name, but was it a scam? not as far as I can tell

What I interpret this as is cyber bullying, and this time done by adults with money and reputation at stake, and it exposes the dark cliquey underbelly of steemit's community, instead of handling competition to their friends services in a mature fashion people get attacked and their livelihoods and reputations get put in jeopardy.

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmcK4XFC6LJ8LAz6Mwm8iusGVuD4y55EaiFKtRXsVfhisk/image.png)

**Harassment is wrong**. even if you tell yourself its for the right reasons, and when people are unnecessarily bullied it hurts the value of the network and undermines the work that's been put into it, much more than any perceived 'scam'. 

I may be completely wrong, because I am still very new to steemit, and I welcome, invite and encourage anyone to enlighten me if I missed something crucial in my research which would cause me to miss the scam I didn't see, everyone is fail able and **I may have missed the point completely**, if this is the case, comment and let me know. 

I wish Jerry luck, I initially didn't like him very much first time I saw his video, and it is perhaps this stylistic constraint that caused his attackers to act so openly, but I don't see this as a valid excuse for whats been happening.

Talk to us on steempunks discord: https://discord.gg/hGJnpJu