The world, at least the mostly nice part that I am lucky enough to inhabit, runs on honesty. This despite the likes of Gene Steinberg. Imagine his reputation in a small village.
There have been claims from psychological studies that humans have an innate sense of fairness or justice (I've certainly noticed it most strongly in people who grew up in multiple child households... but that's another story). I believe I've even seen studies saying some other higher primates seem to react badly to perceived unfairness. None of these claims strike me as implausible, really.
I think the sense of injustice that Gene is able to carry on with his emails and theatrics with no apparent repercussions angers people and that, along with the unbelievability of the whole thing, is one thing that keep people interested in his antics.
And makes it even more appalling to me that J. Randall Murphy cannot see the problems with Gene's everyday standard methods of operating. Is there some Venn diagram that would show people who are likely to stubbornly persist in the belief of something paranormal, such as UFOs, are also more likely to persist in believing in and defending Gene Steinberg? In the center of that of course would sit, proudly, USI Calgary, no doubt confused why he's all alone.
(I mean, to pick some names people may have heard of, David Biedny, Chris O'Brien, Paul Kimball, Jack Brewer, Lance Moody, Aaron Gulyas, Adam Gorightly, Joshua Cutchin, Jeremy Vaeni, Jeff Ritzmann, Carol Rainey, Tyler Kokjohn, Patrick Huyghe, Royce Myers, and Tim Binnall all appear to see serious issues with Gene and his conduct. Several of those folks don't agree on much or even like one another, yet all, I believe, agree it's a bad idea to give Gene Steinberg your cash. Not J. Randall Murphy though. And no disrespect to the dozens of others who feel the same as myself about Gene; I'm just naming publishers, podcasters, authors and so on whose names occur to me, and imagining all of them on one side of a scale and USI Calgary on the other side. Perhaps there's something wrong with Gene and we can expect no better than we've seen from him, but what of J. Randall Murphy?)
The account in comments at the UFO Trail blog of how Gene screwed up "Mike's" attempt to purchase the Paracast as an act of charity is sadly all too believable as a case of Gene being his own worst enemy (and one can imagine him sweating over the question of, is trading the Paracast in for $10,000 now worth never being able to use it as a begging platform again?).
If Gene is sick of what he calls his stalkers, he can stop feeding them. Cut out the emails. Start being honest.
Of course that's "if" Gene actually wants the attention to stop. I think it's noteworthy in his recent "one-time statement" all of the episodes he related from an alleged eight year history of harassment happened in this past year, and several of them are known to be bullshit, or are being wildly misrepresented. Is he more full of shit or more delusional, I don't know. Is he on the sauce or a pill head? Your guess is better than mine. The secret Discordian theory has as much explanatory power as any of the other assessments.