Virily; Too Many Tricks

Over the decades the number of online publishing sites has decreased.

With little choice, a writer joins a site they wouldn't have glanced at if there were choices. Such was Virily.

The owners seem to know every scam and trick and then some. Taking a broad view, the purpose of the site seems to direct you to read and comment on articles written by the Admin's Duals.

These Duals are 'verified' writers. Most have pathetic English skills. As the site is located in Estonia, and despite some duals using English names, the questionable nature of this site is evident..

Here's how Virily plays it.

The first trick Virily plays is to claim that every article is moderated. As the site is in Estonia I assume that the word is a synonym for 'delay' in Estonian.

If you read anything on the site, from an article to a quiz you will be stunned by the poor spelling, grammatical and factual errors.

Clearly no one is reading the work, not even an A.I. application.

The point of 'moderation' is to prevent writers from publishing. If you can't publish you can't earn, if you can't earn you won't reach the threshold.

It is as simple as that.

A writer posts, and the work may fester for two days or longer.

Usually, nothing you write will be posted from about 3 pm GMT on Friday until about 6 am GMT on Monday morning.

The delays are juggled so that there is no 'set' pattern which lulls the writer into distraction.

Sometimes a writer might be published on a Saturday. Sometimes not from Thursday to Tuesday.

Often an article is rejected for no real reason. Those who know this trick wait two days, resubmit, and the same article is published.

It doesn't take long for those who write on Virily to appreciate this trick.

On Virily, writers are NOT treated equally.

There are a number of 'writers' who are 'verified' so do not need to be moderated. It is not that they are not the best or that they write interesting prose. Some are 'Duals' of the Owner and his friends..

What this means is that the Owner, and his people, can post every minute on the minute. Their work is always on the front page.

Other writers, regardless of their ability, are not immediately published.

This means the Owner and his pals earn the most from the Ads.

A few 'verified' user are real people and given the 'verified' title to distract from the truth that the majority are Duals.

They betray themselves by praising the site on various other venues. These 'users' know more about the site than possible for the average user.

The true give away is that the front page is jammed with items of very poor quality, again evidence they are written by those who are unfamiliar with the English language.

One of the nefarious practices of Virily is segregation of users. Those from the 3rd World or who are not white are treated differently from those from the 1st World.

Many of the most active writers are from the 3rd world because $10 U.S. in their country is enough to buy groceries for a week or two.

Most put up with the various tricks because they could earn.

A few months ago Virily decided to reroute Third World users to Wordpress. When these users log on, they have no 'authority' to post on Virily.

They can not log on to Virily directly.

The only way for these users to log on is to create another account using another browser under a different user name and email address.

Those who tried this go to the original front page and can post.

Here is where it gets clever.

The Admins Duals create posts which speak to the problem other users have faced. These posts get more hits and comments.

The comments are from users who can not post articles but can comment on the 'verified' users posts.

Thus, the Owner and his Duals earn money by exploiting the average user who can not post, but comment.

As comments earn nothing for the commentator, it's a win/win for the Owner.

Now comes one of the most obvious tricks ever played.

Unlike honest sites which post your earnings in $ this site has created a fake currency called Virils. These "Virils" are manipulated so that the writer never knows how many equal 1c.

Those who were on Triond will recall that different topics went to different sub sites and one subsite paid 1c per 6 views, another paid 1c for 25 views; this was all spelled out to the user.

On Virily it depends on the greed of the Owners how much a Viril is today as to how much it is tomorrow.

In short you have no idea what a Viril is worth as it is constantly being changed.

There is a difference between an actual Glitch and a manufactured one.

Virily has many manufactured ones.

Besides the inability of a writer to be published until the work is moderated, (the Estonian word for delay) there are tricks to prevent specific writers from posting.

Before the 'segregation' to Wordpress trick, (its latest scam), there was the frequent 'down time'. This is when non 'verified' users can not log in or can not post articles.

They can, of course, leave comments on the articles posted by the 'Verfied' users.

Secondly, there's the inability to post unless you have an image. The image has to be such a size. One might write a story of ten chapters and the same image is used on all ten.

The same image that was fine for Chapters 1 to 5, is suddenly too small for Chapter 6. Five posted articles, all available to be read, all using the same image, which is suddenly 'too small'.

Thirdly, there's the permanent $0 in the Dashboard of average users. This $0 changes at payment time so the writer will see s/he has not earned the threshold.

Some time aback one could see their 'Virils' translated into human money. This was a problem for the Owners because it made stealing difficult.

If a writer logged off last night with $5.63 and logged on this morning with $4.87 it was obvious and made stealing difficult for the owners. It was hard for Admin to think of clever lies as to why this happened, so resorted to keeping a writers earnings secret

If one uses Pay Pal the threshold is $10.00. Seems doable. So people join.

People join, write and await moderation. And wait. Finally, they are published.

This false sense of stability is destroyed when suddenly, one can not publish because an image can not be uploaded.

The prose is there, but because of this 'glitch' it can not be posted. The writer seeks to save the item in the draft tray, but can not,without an image.

Clearly, one can not earn on an unpublished item.

After a few months, if the writer remains, they might suddenly find something like $12.07 in their Pay Pal account.

Oh! It pays. The writer thinks. But Does it?

How much money have the Owners collected from the Ads around the article, and what percent accrued to the writer?

No Answer.

Attempts to Contact Admin invariably fails. If Admin does respond, it is in straight lies;

"We have been having difficulty publishing articles..."
"There has been difficulty in uploading images..."

No.

Verified users have been publishing non-stop during the period segregated writers can not.

Due to the lack of response from the Admin various Duals of Admin post articles about the glitches. Writers who can not get an answer from Admin respond.

Dozens of responses, each earning money for that Verified User; that is, the Admin.

After a few years, the Owners decided to leave the site up, let verified users post, but not pay them.

End any idea of moderation, and let them post what they please.

Normal people abandoned the site.

It was taken over by rabid anti-Semites who post items that would get them banned anywhere else.

They don't care that they aren't being paid, they want to spread the hate.