Scams take from people; BTC-U gives the entire a world the Bitcoin they want and asks nothing in return. Jokes parody reality; Bitshares is real, has the best track record in crypto and is very capable of running Bitcoin with 3s tx and 10,000 + tx/s.
BTC-U is neither scam nor joke - it is the real deal and 99% of people using BTC would be 100% happy using BTC-U.