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I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

rwwgreene.substack.com

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#41
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

I can’t tell if you’re joking but people do that all the time, every day. It might be alcohol, strippers, or just random stuff they don’t really need. If this sounds surprising to you then probably you have enough money that you don’t need to give all of it away to be less sad.

[deleted]

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you put it like that it doesn't sound like the worst idea.

It sounds terrible. You used to be sad, now you're still sad and you're destitute too

For some people that’s the best they can hope for.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#43
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

I can’t tell if you’re joking but people do that all the time, every day. It might be alcohol, strippers, or just random stuff they don’t really need. If this sounds surprising to you then probably you have enough money that you don’t need to give all of it away to be less sad.

[deleted]

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

I can’t tell if you’re joking but people do that all the time, every day. It might be alcohol, strippers, or just random stuff they don’t really need. If this sounds surprising to you then probably you have enough money that you don’t need to give all of it away to be less sad.

[deleted]

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#45
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

I can’t tell if you’re joking but people do that all the time, every day. It might be alcohol, strippers, or just random stuff they don’t really need. If this sounds surprising to you then probably you have enough money that you don’t need to give all of it away to be less sad.

In this thread we're talking about people who have life savings to be scammed out of. I'd say it's probably not an everyday thing that people empty their life savings and blow it all on Temu and strippers.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#46
post #29

I met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems…

Why not see this as him buying company? Then you'll understand that loneliness is so hard, that most people would pay a lot of money to ease it. Ironically, instead of breaking contact, maybe the solution would have been to be there for him more.

[deleted]

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people live in the world they invented, where they are the protagonist, naturally young girls want to talk to the protagonist, even when he's 70. You'd have to dismantle their whole worldview to disabuse them of the protagonist idea, but by 70 it's often too far gone and requires facing a million mistakes they have conveniently swept under the rug with the fairytale they've told themselves.

I recently saw a screenshot from Facebook of a mattress ad presented inline in a page load that had two conventionally attractive normal looking (fully clothed, not immodest at all) women on a mattress. Below it was somebody's grandpa writing a message basically to the effect of "hello sexy ladies I am (name) please chat with me". It possibly could have been a bot, but I don't think bots commonly use profile pictures…

This reminded me of something that happened to me maybe 15 years ago. I was helping my Grandpa get his first smart phone. The saleswoman was maybe mid twenties and had a kinda hoarse voice. I was a little bit younger than her and I thought it was cute in its own way but of course I wasn't gonna say anything. She apologized for being hard to understand and my grandpa said no, it was fine, her voice was sexy.

Naturally I was mortified.

But I wonder how much of it is just "Fuck it, I'm an old man, I'm gonna let my creep flag fly."

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#48
post #5

> each one arriving within hours despite my repeated, polite “no thank you” responses why anyone would respond to spammers, if they recognize them as spammers? And want them to stop spamming?

Beat me to it. Why isn’t every unsolicited pitch without an unsubscribe link immediately blocked/marked as spam?

Is the presence of an unsubscribe link a useful signal? I presume that just marks your email address as active in the spammer's database.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#49
> Some I’d deleted without recording. Some had been auto-deleted from spam after thirty days. Some I’d forgotten about before I started keeping systematic track.

> I wasn’t being marketed to. I was being carpet-bombed.

Three in a row directly followed by a juxtaposition containing a weird metaphor (shouldn't it be "bombarded" instead of "carpet-bombed"?)

Good luck selling books.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#50
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat me to it. Why isn’t every unsolicited pitch without an unsubscribe link immediately blocked/marked as spam?

Is the presence of an unsubscribe link a useful signal? I presume that just marks your email address as active in the spammer's database.

I think so too and have a funny conunndrum: I frequently get emails from some "Relations management" companies that they are including my contacts in a catalogue to sell to clients. I can opt out by clicking a link.

So either I click and it may delete me, or it will confirm my address is real. I err on the side of not clicking, but I'm sure many less technically minded colleagues make the click.

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