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| "Praying hands," by Albrecht Dürer (Albertina Museum, Vienna). |
Readers write to me all the time, sometimes sharing various personal developments. Like this on received Friday afternoon:
Newspaper readers do tend to be an older crowd. I was sympathetic, and immediately replied:
The shame is not from the invocation of a deity I don't believe in, but in something revealed the next email.
But he must have sensed he was nailed —they do this all day long —and moved on to bigger dupes than me. And while I did not lose anything material, there was still an odd, visceral sort of violation. I'd dropped my guard. I had prayed for this guy.
No shame there. Still, we human beings, who take things on face value, or try to, are at a disadvantage in this online world. And it's only going to get worse.
Atop blog: "A Dip in the Lake," by John Cage (Museum of Contemporary Art)
Wow. All these years, Mister S, I thought that you were an observant Jew. Was not really cognizant of the fact that you do not believe in a Sky Daddy. I'm not a praying man, either. What made you do it this time?
ReplyDeleteScammers are now ubiquitous. Online, on the phone, everywhere. Voicemail answers all my calls. Almost never do I get any replies from the motherfakers. I don't pick up the phone anymore. Got tired of cussing out multiple fraudsters every day.
And what made you respond to an e-mail from someone whose name you didn't know or recognize? Or to play games with them? Waste of time. The words "shop online" are an immediate red flag. And "gift cards" is an even bigger one. Anyone wanting to deal in gift cards is a piece of shit. Why are so many people still so dumb? Why ask why? Scammers are all too aware that there's another sucker online every second. It's what they do. It's all they do. And they steal zillions.
I never take anything at face value anymore. I don't trust anybody I don't know. Nor do I play head games with charlatans. Voicemail tells them to get bent, and I set the e-mail font size to "huge" and reply with a " GO FUCK YOURSELF, SCAMMER" and let them know that I'm on to their shenanigans.
Phone calls and e-mails from scammers are, at least to me, a violation of my personal space. And that sort of violation is something I won't tolerate.
Really griz you thought it Neil was a observant Jew?
DeleteYeah, I was going to say ... there have been hints.
DeleteWrong word choice? Apparently so. In the context of Jewish practices, 'observant' appears to refer to individuals who actively adhere to the commandments and traditions of Judaism, engaging in rituals, dietary laws, and ethical behaviors, as prescribed in the Torah and other Jewish texts.
DeleteTo me, the word incorrectly meant "observing" the holidays and the other important calendar days...or at least knowing when they occur...keeping kosher, fasting on Yom Kippur, lighting Shabbos candles, etc.
Does merely having a big Passover seder every year make one observant? How about lighting the Menorah at Hanukkah? That is the ONLY thing I still do. On the holiest of days, I eat sardines and say "Yum...kippers." Started out as a joke, but now it's a yearly tradition.
For decades, I have been nothing more than a cultural Jew...a JINO...Jew In Name only. Come for the food and stay for the klezmer music. The women in my life have been two Scandinavians and a German. Don't "observe" the important days. Doesn't that make me non-observant? What is the correct word for the middle ground between observant and non-observant? Non-practicing, maybe? I'm not a very cunning linguist.
Won't get into believing (or not believing) in a Higher Power, or the power and the value of prayer. Haven't prayed in a long time. As somebody once said: "Nothing fails like prayer."
Who knows what useful information he/she/it was able to scrub just from the interaction, but we're all being scrubbed and data mined everyday by government, business and criminals. All of this exchange is data-tized by multiple actors. Aka jerk assholes.
ReplyDeleteI learned criminal syndicates will imprison unfortunates in scam call centers, etc in yet another form of human trafficking . So, if they prompt prayer, i peay aloud, while on the scam call, that they escape their captors to live a healthy and happier life. Sanctimonious. Useless. But like daddy used to say, "If that's the worst thing you do today..."?
There was a time I would replay in writing or via phone. “I know where you live. It’s over!” But I stopped that. Because I do believe in a higher power, and IT knows where I LIVE!😜
ReplyDeleteUseful post. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThe bad apples are everywhere. The bunches are too though.
ReplyDeleteI get few scam calls or texts on my cell, maybe because I don't give out the number .. I just say, when asked, that I don't have a cellphone. My landline gets many calls from Unavailable, which I never pick up and they never leave a message. I've "missed out" on many scams. But I have been burned a couple of times on Facebook ads that looked legit but weren't. I am constantly amazed at the people, of all ages, who fall for even the most obvious cons.
ReplyDeleteIt’s good to know we all still have a caring part in our soul that will respond with compassion to a stranger despite the invasion of a monster scammer.
ReplyDeleteAll these many years the only time I remember having been contacted by a scammer was through my friends hacked email.
ReplyDeleteI woke up to a plea for me to send him money he had lost his wallet and passport while traveling in Europe it's got to be 15 years ago I don't know why I'm so lucky but I never have been contacted by an African king
What I see on the Facebook all the time and just on my YouTube feed our AI generated videos things like people's dogs chasing bears away I don't know why people go to the trouble to make these silly things but for the most part it's easy to tell which ones are fakes it doesn't seem to make any difference did these videos exist nobody's trying to scare me out of any money
My favorites are the ones who claim to be from the sheriff's office, and there's a warrant out for my arrest and I need to pony up $xxx or else. I always reply, "sorry, I work for the sheriff's office. Could I have your name and number?" They hang up every time.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of telling people that I'll pray for them as I don't think that such interventions are forthcoming. Telling the afflicted that I'll keep my fingers crossed seems juvenile. I wish there was a way to show both my concern and willingness to do a slight something that would get me out of these social situations.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, the request doesn't come up too often. Grizz notwithstanding, most people know I'm an agnostic though, not being an atheist, I don't mind adopting the trappings of faith when convenient.
DeleteOf course we know. Neil, would you consider yourself a secular humanist Jew like so many of us?
DeleteIt's neck-and-neck whether I'm more surprised that you responded to this guy's original email in that fashion, given your longstanding insistence that you never believed in the Jewish G-d for a single minute, or that Grizz has been a student of, and participant in EGD for as long as he has and was not aware of your agnosticism.
DeleteRegardless of the details of the interaction noted here, it's just remarkably considerate of you to monitor your email and various social media channels so religiously. (So to speak!) That you respond to so many folks seeking your attention, given all you've got going on, is admirable, indeed. Of course, every once in a while some guy like this is going to be the temporary beneficiary.
Aside from that, I much appreciate your identification of the artwork atop the blog today. It's certainly eye-catching and interesting and I wondered what it was and meant. Now having looked it up hasn't make it a whole lot clearer, but then John Cage's oeuvre is not really for the likes of me, alas.
I feel fairly confident that I'm not going to fall for a scam where I'm sending off my hard earned money to a man who professes his love for me from some call center somewhere across the world. My issues are more with the unreliable, sometimes scammers, called handymen and contractors that screw you over. Like when you have them set up to build you new front stairs on probably the last good weather weekend we're going to have. And then they literally stop replying to your calls and texts and you end up having to start from scratch, only your so angry you barely have the motivation to do it. And then a week later, the guy actually texts with a story about how he's sorry, but his phone was hacked for a week, blah, blah, but he could start tomorrow morning. Uh, no thanks, I don't think you're trustworthy. I posed this dilemma on nextdoor, and it seems to be an epidemic of homegrown "professionals" out there taking advantage of people who need help, especially women
ReplyDeleteIf you hired handymen and contractors through Nextdoor, it's not surprising you got screwed over. Nextdoor has become Scam City. All kinds of flim-flam men and kid charlatans and royal scammers on that platform. Phony painters and landscapers and clean-up guys...all of whom have fake credentials and are unlicensed and who post bogus images of a friend's house or backyard. More fakers than workers. It's a sad situation.
DeleteThey take the money and run...often to their dealer for their next fix. Ask the man who knows. I have been burned THREE times--by tree guys and snow removal guys. Nextdoor used to be a good place to find a person to fix your steps or your sidewalk, or to replace a roof or to do electrical work. But it's now mostly the chumpsters and the chumps. A whine and jeeze party. Happens every goddamn day.
Oh, please. "Do you often shop on-line?" Heck of a segue there, pal. You must be in a real hurry.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I am a little surprised that you uttered a prayer for that guy. I might have responded to him by saying, "Prayer complete. You can expect to get better in 6-8 weeks. Hey, you're welcome."
A broken bone is essentially just a mechanical repair that the body can take care of all by itself. If I was attempting a scam involving a health scare, I'd definitely make it a disease of some kind with an uncertain outcome. I would also string out the dialogue with my victim a whole lot longer than two go-rounds. Your "James Murray" sounds like he's rushing to catch a bus.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. When I was growing up, the scams my grandmother used to warn about at least involved victims who could be assumed to be greedy, or so the tales went. Trading on your compassion is just loathsome.
ReplyDeleteYou have nothing to feel ashamed about, btw.
Yeah, people fall for this shit. Some people send money to starving dogs shivering in cages, others vote for Trump.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction to receiving a call from an unknown number is to let it go to voicemail, but I think, "Maybe a nurse is confirming or changing an appointment and she/he is calling from home." Most of the time, I'm right. Next thing I'll be getting calls from undertakers. Which has actually happened, although it was initiated by my responding to a notice on a local funeral home to call concerning interest in a prepaid funeral. When the salesman called, wanting to discuss my interest on the phone, I asked for literature, which was promised and never delivered.
ReplyDeletetate
If Dante was living today then I suspect that he would dedicate a special section of the circle for liars to internet scammers.
ReplyDeleteOK, fess-up time. Did you REALLY pray for this guy or were you just “sending thoughts and prayers,” of the kind no longer reserved just to public officials for mass shootings.
ReplyDeleteHonest and truly —there's a witness, my wife, who immediately was aghast that I put my hands together in the manner of the illustration above. "Jews don't do that," she chided.
DeleteOne has to also watch for scams where they say is this so and so, you say yes, and they use the recording to apply for something or sign you for something.
Delete… or had you figured it was a scam from the get-go?
ReplyDeleteWhen I get a call from "Unavailable" (or "Illinois"), I pick up the phone and, depending on my mood at the time, either
ReplyDelete1) say absolutely nothing, listening to the complete silence of the bot waiting for a response (it usually goes 'click-click' and hangs up after about 15 seconds)
2) answer it in a foreign language ("moshi moshi!" is the Japanese for "hello"), or perhaps, in tongues. When it connects me to the boiler room (you can tell because of the background noise of everyone else talking on other phones), I either continue in tongues, or say "who calls, pleeze?" Unless it's a doctor's office, I say "Put us on your 'do not call' list" and hang up. Perhaps we'll get on the DNC list, or maybe not. There are always more.
The Do Not Call list began in the summer of 2003. I signed up for that ORIGINAL list and also put my mother-in-law on it. She continued to get calls until the day she went into the nursing home. So did we.
DeleteLater on, I heard that you had to reapply every five years. I just found other ways of handling scammers and robocalls. Played games with them for a while. Got heartily sick of that. Just stopped answering the phone and let voicemail deal with their nonsense.
The DNC appears to be not much more than a joke. And the scammers just laugh at the DNC and keep on calling. It's a way of making pissed-off Americans feel that Uncle is doing something about the problem. Sure, they're breaking U.S. law. but who's going hunt them down and make them pay for their crimes when they're in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh?
You wanna get on a DNC list? Try the Democratic National Committee list instead. They need all the help they can get, and you'll be doing your country a patriotic service.
I'm with Brunan and Joyce on this.... not only is there no shame in responding kindly, its also a good philosophy to live by. When in doubt, choose kindness.
ReplyDelete(of course, you're to free to whatever once the situation is clarified!)
A good example for explaining how soo many have fallen under the spell of the Ultimate Grifter-n-Chief all this past divided decade.
ReplyDeleteThere was an offer of a Play Station on a Face Book group site that I'm a member of. I I was interested in it for one of my grandchildren. I sent a DM to the person who offered it regarding payment & when the Play Station would be sent.
ReplyDeleteWhen he told me en he told me he wanted the money sent via a money order to a PO box. It raised a red flag.
I asked him why he was was trying to do this to members of his group, he never responded.
I reported it to an administrator of the group. The guy was banned from the group, his membership was removed, a notice about it as posted on the top of the site & FB was notified.
It makes me wonder how many other FB groups he has posted the offer and how many people he has actually scammed. I bet that FB hasn't looked for him to ban him from the platform .