Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

[IllogicalJake]

So the source of many downtown development rumors, Ryan, has been found on LinkedIn. I'll just post the link and let everyone make their own assumptions:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ryan-nelson/b/382/154

... Oh god that's cringeworthy.

Well at least the drama is getting juicy now.

[EOst]

Someone went through an extraordinary amount of work to make this superficially credible. If this is fake (and it sure smells fake), it's pretty impressive; there are literally hundreds of different accounts, all of them sharing basically only the same endorsements (though not exclusively)--and some of the profiles are exceedingly random.

For example: One "Steven H. Arps" is listed as "Senior Financial Associate" at EIG-Europe, with 118 connections--small, but not out of the question. The only visible non-EIG reference on his page, however, is a reference to "Patel Partners" in Mumbai, whose "Owner" (Harij Patel) endorsed Arps in 2008. Aside from that endorsement, however, I can find no record that a "Patel Partners" exists in Mumbai, nor any record of "Steven H Arps" anywhere.

Or take "Leslie Newton", apparently the CEO of EIG-Europe. She endorsed Arps on the same day she endorsed Ryan, saying "As EIG expands globally, you'll no doubt have the opportunity to lead a foreign corporate office, probably in India." (Can you imagine a boss saying that? Anyway.) According to her LinkedIn page, she has never worked anywhere that isn't EIG... which makes sense, considering I can't find any indication of her existence in the real world, either.

(Side-note: The page for Retired Banker, aka Rick Christenson, is equally untraceable.)

Or look at Rob Hernandez, reportedly Senior Finance Associate here in Minneapolis. Same deal as everyone else (nothing on Google! nothing at all!), but the details are so random: under Honors, he bothers to write that "In college, my economic team took 2nd place honors."

My personal favorite is Olav Lundgren, supposedly the head of an (impossible to find on Google) finance firm in Oslo. His endorsements are identical to others in the Ryannet.

I've never seen anything like this.

[MN Fats]

(Side-note: The page for Rick Christenson, aka Rick Christenson, is equally untraceable.)

I think you meant to put "aka retiredbanker".

But yes this is so baffling to me as well. The only thing I don't get is the motive. Why?

Edit: apparently R etiredBanker written as one word defaults to his name on this board. Speaking of which, if you look back at his posts, they're all the same writing style as texas.

[Tyler]

Sucks we're not going to become the international dance club capitol of the world. Was really looking forward to that.

[Anondson]

Why do catfishers do what they do... If there is a bit of fakery in this you could see similarities. You could even point to events being suspicious if looked at in hindsight, like people being quickly out of the country for extended surprise "negotiations". Various partners having surprise sudden health problems. Upcoming surgery with doctor recommendations to be out of contact from the Internet for weeks. Nearly every promise coming undone at the last because someone else not living up to a handshake.

[addition]All you with LinkedIn access, start making screenshots of some of those pages to see what changes with these reveals.

[Nick]

I've been fishing today, but re: the past six pages of SSC, LMAO sorry.

[IllogicalJake]

*sigh* I feel brilliantly trolled. I never thought someone would be putting that much effort into fake people.

Of course at SSC I'm a step away from being called fake, because something.

[VAStationDude]

How on earth would a supertall convention hotel be viable? Is there some type of unfulfilled market for ultra high end hotel rooms on the very edge of downtown? Is the top Mary Kay sales woman continually skipping over Minneapolis for the next convention because Chicago has the Trump hotel, Miami beach has the Fontainebleau and Manhattan has short term rental pent houses?

This is complete bull from a very bored hoaxster or a not very serious idea.

[IllogicalJake]

How on earth would a supertall convention hotel be viable? Is there some type of unfulfilled market for ultra high end hotel rooms on the very edge of downtown? Is the top Mary Kay sales woman continually skipping over Minneapolis for the next convention because Chicago has the Trump hotel, Miami beach has the Fontainebleau and Manhattan has short term rental pent houses?

This is complete bull from a very bored hoaxster or a not very serious idea.

I mean socially demented levels of bored, depending how many of the LinkedIn profiles could be made by the same person, recommendations, cross-posts and all...

[VAStationDude]

I saw it three months ago. *patsownback*

[bapster2006]

It's been entertaining for sure

[VAStationDude]

This site's favorite gun humper and defender of the plutocrat dominated American social order is accusing someone from this site of creating LinkedIn accounts to discredit mama June, Ryan and rb. Hee

[IllogicalJake]

Accusations are being thrown around every direction at this point. But I can't look away.

[Silophant]

This site's favorite gun humper and defender of the plutocrat dominated American social order is accusing someone from this site of creating LinkedIn accounts to discredit mama June, Ryan and rb. Hee

Well, everyone knows that if you want to find someone who's against Minneapolis growing and developing, you need to look no further than this angry boi's club.

[widin007]

Just spent the last hour reading through SSC. Wow, but makes for an entertaining Sunday night at least.

[Nick]

If it helps any, RB was posting under the email [email protected]. His IP was from southern Minnesota--I was able to find a Rick Christenson in southern Minnesota, and I'm pretty sure this is a match:

http://www.albertleatribune.com/2013/08 ... lbert-lea/

That was the only thing I was able to dig up in the whole wide Internet about him. Notably, "June" at one point claimed that Richard Davis (of US Bank), Carl Polhad, and Rick were like the three main finance people in the Twin Cities. The other two have, uh, a lot more Google search results.

Many things in the world are possible. My general sense of things is that it is absolutely possible is that there's some retired financier in southern Minnesota who knows lots of things about development. A little over a year ago we crossed over into some more arguably absurd territory, with Rick's friend June and apprentice Ryan posting about "angrybois" [sic] at UrbanMSP and about how hundreds of international companies were about to move to Minneapolis and how all the nightclubs we were about to get would lead to us getting lots of new international airline connections and how all these people on the forum applied for jobs at Rick's companies and didn't get jobs and all these new supertall boutique towers. I mean, this shit was obvious years ago, but whatever.

I would say that in the past six months or so, we've done a pretty good job strategically moving all that insanity elsewhere. The Internet is an extremely bizarre place full of very odd things where the person talking to themselves on the bus or screaming at a cashier at a grocery store can, I guess, pass for normal. Someone clearly clicks banner ads with dancing grandmas telling you you can refinance your mortgage.

http://grantland.com/features/a-mysteri ... club-dr-v/

http://deadspin.com/manti-teos-dead-gir ... an-5976517

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_%28film%29

[Anondson]

If there is any reality, then maybe the easiest would be for the ads from their alleged international Internet ad campaign promoting Minneapolis to be shown. CEO/sidekick "Ryan" said those ads have been run for more than a year now. Show 'em. Screenshots.

[David Greene]

So the source of many downtown development rumors, Ryan, has been found on LinkedIn. I'll just post the link and let everyone make their own assumptions:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ryan-nelson/b/382/154

Oh man, couldn't you have waited a few months? I was really looking forward to R etiredBanker's obituary and the subsequent wailing and grinding of teeth.

[David Greene]

Well, everyone knows that if you want to find someone who's against Minneapolis growing and developing, you need to look no further than this angry boi's club.

The dying one.

[Unity77]

So the source of many downtown development rumors, Ryan, has been found on LinkedIn. I'll just post the link and let everyone make their own assumptions:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ryan-nelson/b/382/154

... Oh god that's cringeworthy.

Well at least the drama is getting juicy now.

I found his LinkedIn page months ago and thought it was suspicious when I couldn't find ANY information on EIG. It also seemed a bit obnoxious for a CEO's profile.

Of course I found these two as well:
Rick Christenson
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickchristenson

June
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/june-l/88/20b/926

Someone REALLY has it out for Minneapolis (and St. Paul) and its urban development / skyscraper geeks. It's actually kinda sick. Honestly, for someone to take the time to create all the profiles and write up all the summaries. Truly sadistic.