Money Versus Ethics: Where Do YOU Draw The Line?

I just declined a lucrative offer — because it came from a total lunatic. Am I a jerk or just stupid?

Quick disclaimer: To protect myself, I will of course not disclose any names or organizations within this article. I can only share it by playing dumb.

What happened today still lingers in the back of my head. I still had a few open contracts for copywriting on my (virtual) desk, waiting to be done. Many people need websites and I’m one of those who provide the copy for it. A nice CTA to make customers call the site owner, a wonderful introduction to sell you why that one massage parlor is better than all the others in the vicinity.

All that stuff.

And I don’t know what type of website I’m about to create until I open the brief attached to the email it comes with.

After the third contract was done, I opened what I can only describe as pandora’s box.

The craziest thing that happened to me this year

If you think the dude who wanted to advertise his Agile optimization process and coaching course to companies for a staggering $120.000 (I swear I’m not making this up, but then again, I don’t know what company optimization coaching costs on average and he had other courses like a “usability evaluation for your products” which cost “only” around $3000) was crazy, then you haven’t met the client whose brief I just opened yet.

First of all, the brief itself was kind of a mess. I could not decipher what exactly the client wants to achieve with the website. But she gave me a few .doc files as well, so I hoped I’d find the answers there.

I’m a huge fan of drama, so I often open the ones with the most promising title to feed my lust for crazy thoughts at first. Usually, the documents attached are as “normal” as the clients. After all, most of them are professionals who want to run a successful business. Well, most of them.

I look at the first .doc-file (and again, I’m not making this up) “serious human rights violations”. There were others, labeled “Can hackers get inside your body”, “information activities” and something about magnetrons.

I thought let’s keep the sci-fi for later and start with human rights violations. Who knows, maybe my client was Edward Snowden. (Spoiler alert: he definitely wasn’t)

So I open up the document and immediately the title jumps at me:

“serious human rights violations with energy weapons”

Let that sink in. It gets better, I promise.

Okay, got your mind set to sci-fi thriller? Let’s dive into the best part of it. It’s about 6 pages, and I stopped after the first before turning the job down.

Can remote-controlled energy weapons (EW) cause serious human rights violations? The shocking answer is: Yes, absolutely! E-weapons allow perfect crimes. In the hands of criminals, they pose an uncontrollable, global danger.

Okay, nothing too crazy here, right? I mean, think about it. Raytheon has developed a microwave mount for HMMWVs to use as crowd control and area denial weapons system. But as far as I know, the whole show is still a prototype in the testing phase with limited results. I wouldn't call their microwave HMMWV a global danger. I mean they got nukes. A shit-ton of them.

But from this first paragraph, it only gets crazier with each line.

As a victim, I know first hand what it means to be hunted, chased, and badly injured with the torture device called microwave weapon. But it’s not only about my story. Thousands of people around the world are at the mercy of those who use these weapons, suffering inexplicable torture. The suffering is so great, it’s not possible to find the words for it, it likely supersedes the imagination of those who aren’t involved. Many are being killed after insufferable torture — it’s the cruelest of deaths — many are pushed into suicide because they just can’t keep on living.

Holy hell. What did I just read? Did you see that?

So we got this huge suffering going on, caused by microwave weapons, killing thousands and apparently leading many more to suicide, yet… I never heard of it? Well, my mother always told me I shouldn’t stick to my mobile phone as much as I do, but I’m sure she meant something different.

This whole section was unbelievable for me most of all because it misses any proof of concept. It talks about many people, a grand scale, yet it fails to mention even a single source.

And to remind you: I’m a copywriter. You need a business website, I make it happen. Those who contact me are businesses. They need marketing and they need conversion. So people buy their stuff. But what does the person want who sent me these files? Can you even run a business on conspiracy theories?

However, I admit I was hooked. There’s the drama I’ve been missing all day!

“Range means nothing in our digital world. A perpetrator in Europe can remotely and electronically with the use of high tech weapons torture a person in America or Asia — there exist international cooperative networks for this. I myself am being remotely sexually severely abused and tortured by a criminal in

[I keep countries, places and names out — writing the whole thing is already borderline risky]

, who hired a middle man in [redacted]. More about that at a later point. Most often, these criminals are emotionless to an inhumane level, torturing without remorse but with mocking malice.”

Now the text rambles on about the same stuff for a few lines and throws in more emotionally charged adjectives without adding any value or information. Then it mentions the typical “the justice is blind and hides these mean things and protects the people in charge”, you know the type.

But then it gets interesting again:

I too have reported the perpetrator to the police and justice system — my old neighbor in [redacted] — without success! Instead of investigating and punishing this horrible crime, they claimed there was insufficient evidence, and that they’ve never heard of something like microwave crime! How those criminals must be triumphing, getting a charter for their criminal offenses from the authorities?!

I read on a little, but it wasn’t as interesting and I wouldn’t want to bore you to death with it. This was honestly the best part.

You see, if you think your boss was crazy, you should switch to freelancing. That’s where the fun’s at.

So there I was, my mind literally blown by the whole thing I just read. Do you feel the same?

I could have just gone and written a website to rephrase the whole thing, make it look better, and all that. Easy money. The client gets the website, I get paid, everybody’s happy. But something inside was just twisted.

I hate to say it like that, but I honestly think the client is not right in their head. They don’t need a website, they need medical help. As much as I rely on the money to pay my bills, I just couldn’t do it. This is clearly misinformation, a conspiracy theory none the less. Unfounded claims and exaggerations. I don’t want to be part of that at all.

So I decided to write the client a lengthy email to explain that I decline the offer for personal reasons. And it’s so incredibly difficult to write a neutral letter without coming off as an asshole when you read the stuff above just minutes earlier.

I actually asked my wife what she’d think I should do. Because I know in the end I basically just refuse easy money. But there was something else to it. It just felt wrong.

What would you have done?

Would you have just treated it like a regular job? Get your paycheck and be on your merry way? I mean, someone is going to take the contract at some point, write the whole thing down and be done with it. I just didn’t want to be the one.

I don’t want to be responsible for spreading misinformation. People having crazy thoughts is one thing. But I don’t want to help them by nurturing the ground they stand on, less they start finding each other and driving the whole train against a wall one day, burning and crashing. Maybe even hurting someone innocent in the process.

Am I a jerk? Maybe not. But was it stupid to refuse the money over ethics? Where would you draw the line? I can write a website for Christians though I’m not religious. I could praise the lord himself on their website if they paid me for it. But talking about conspiracy theories that involve human rights violations? That feels like pouring oil into the fire. Even if it’s just a website. A website that may never see any traffic either way.

But I still think about it.

And this really is something that I’d love to hear your honest opinion about. Even if it’s bad. Even if it goes directly against me. Share your thoughts. I think what I need is some sort of closure, or “it’s not your fault” or “you did the right thing” or something like that. I don’t know. What was the craziest experience in your job?