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Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
11–20 of 73 posts
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#12This is so overwritten. tl;dr author was skeptical of a famous story about a writer who got scammed out of $50k cash she withdrew from her bank, because it's actually very hard to get any bank to just hand you $50k of your own money in cash. After months of diligent investigation, author established that writer was well off and was treated differently from regular people because her bank branch is in an upscale neigh…
I felt like I was giving it a second and third chance, and then I realized it was only a third of the way in. Thank you for confirming my suspicion here.
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#13[flagged]
Seriously, I quit any post that begins with a shitty irrelevant AI image. I really wonder what reasoning could possibly lead to one thinking "yeah, this will definitely improve my article".
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#14Jesus CHRIST — this article should be taught in writing classes everywhere, specifically, on why editing is absolutely important. I'd about how this article could be vastly improved if you cut out x% of its 6,500 words, but I can't even make that estimate b/c by the time I reached the end, I was no longer sure what the point of the article was. > A style magazine published an account of a large cash withdrawal that d…
I generally hate long form articles. Something about this one was sufficiently different that I enjoyed reading it from start to end.
I think a big part of it is that there isn't any actual bullshit filler, and a lot of interesting information (even though it may not be critical for the TL;DR of the story). Most long form articles end up describing irrelevant details like the weather on the day of the interview, or the interior decoration of someone's house. Here, it's immediately clear why every piece of information is included, the article shares a lot of background information but tells something interesting with every paragraph.
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patrick's audience (for BAM especially) is 1) people who enjoy or are professionally interested in nitty gritty details of financial regulation, and 2) people who enjoy Patrick's personality and writing style. It's ok to not belong to either group. And the point of the article is basically: Patrick can get obsessive about details, and here is an example of how that plays out in real life.
It's not word-count or details that I'm averse to, but purposeless word count. Patrick spends a huge amount of words alluding to why he thinks The Cut's story is total horseshit — and let's be clear, it was a comically bewildering story by any standards. But all of those details are pointless when the story abruptly concludes with "Well, she said it to the police so I guess it's likely not bullshit". If anything, I w…
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Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patrick's audience (for BAM especially) is 1) people who enjoy or are professionally interested in nitty gritty details of financial regulation, and 2) people who enjoy Patrick's personality and writing style. It's ok to not belong to either group. And the point of the article is basically: Patrick can get obsessive about details, and here is an example of how that plays out in real life.
It's not word-count or details that I'm averse to, but purposeless word count. Patrick spends a huge amount of words alluding to why he thinks The Cut's story is total horseshit — and let's be clear, it was a comically bewildering story by any standards. But all of those details are pointless when the story abruptly concludes with "Well, she said it to the police so I guess it's likely not bullshit". If anything, I w…
The assertion is addressed by:
1. The discovery of new facts that explain why a bank that won't let the average person take out $50k in cash would still plausibly let this person take out $50k in cash
2. The story having (verifiable) details that would be unlikely to exist if someone fabricated it, unless they went through a massive effort to fabricate a perfect story. While it is possible to fabricate a story that would pass thorough scrutiny, most fabricated stories would show inconsistencies or otherwise fall apart if looked at this closely.
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#17Haha patio11 is great but he sometimes does things slowly that I can do fast. I went to Chase and needed to withdraw $50k from my account and they were willing to do it. I had some $115k at the time in it.
In the end I only needed $15k. There’s some stuff you have to fill out explaining why but it’s not something that requires too much work.
In my case, I was paying a wedding vendor and they only took Zelle or cash. I only needed $15k but I wanted to keep more in case other vendors were going to be like this too.
They asked me why, I told them, and then asked them if they’d make me 100 accounts so I could get around the Zelle limit. They said it wouldn’t work but that they wouldn’t do that anyway.
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#18Coming from a fan of the blog/newsletter, and with all due respect for publishing negative results and long-form writing about money as an aesthetic as much as a journalistic/educational endeavor: This would have really benefited from a "tl;dr: I was wrong; that one bank branch really has a teller window on the second floor". Still a worthwhile read if you enjoy the genre, but a small part of me wants my lunch break…
The point was that the mention of the 2nd floor teller window was an inconsequential detail that was enough to identify the branch in question, and a gateway to show off his obsessiveness for researching minutiae. But definitely a "genre" article more than his other, more informative ones.
What's not clear to me is: why the confirmation that the NYMag writer's bank has a 2nd floor teller window is enough to mollify Patrick's intense skepticism that her $50k transaction happened like she asserts. If she was already going to torch her own reputation and journalism career to fabricate this scam story, why wouldn't she have the intrepidness to research what various Brooklyn banks look like? Or actually, why would a purported fabricator even bother to give that specific detail at all, which would make it easier for anyone (as Patrick attempted) to narrow down where the fakery did/didn't happen?
I mean the NYMag story was incredibly dumb and far-fetched, even compared to most scam stories. But the fact that she didn't write it pseudonymously, and gave the specific date that it happened, and also claimed to have called the police, that felt enough for me to give her the benefit of the doubt her story was more or less rooted in reality.
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#19[flagged]
Re: Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50k cash
#20This is so overwritten. tl;dr author was skeptical of a famous story about a writer who got scammed out of $50k cash she withdrew from her bank, because it's actually very hard to get any bank to just hand you $50k of your own money in cash. After months of diligent investigation, author established that writer was well off and was treated differently from regular people because her bank branch is in an upscale neigh…
When I heard about this story I had assumed she kept the money in her home. How did she get all the way through withdrawing the money without at any point thinking something about the story didn't add up? Mystifying.