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

i also tapped out quickly. how many times can you describe the same thing?

Claude: "Hold my beer."

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.

So wait, what was the trap?

It's interesting how we seem to go through a cycle.

a) There's a gate-keeper who picks winners, and charges money. Maybe book publising, maybe academic papers, maybe music - whatever.

b) producers complain - these parasites are sucking all the money out the ecosystem, and adding no value. We need to bypass the gate-keepers. Go to market directly.

c) The "indie" scene becomes legit. Barriers to entry drop. Consumers can find creators directly. There's no middle man.

d) The indie scene bcomes popular. Everyone can publish an academc paper, or record a song, or write a book. (Of course 99% of it is rubbish, because, well, most of everything we create is rubbish)

e) along come the "guides" - folks who'll teach, or promote, or review or whatever. Most of that is of (let's be generous) "marginal quality" - assuming it's not just an outright scam (which it probably is.)

Turns out those gatekeepers were indeed providing something of value. But because they rejected almost everyone, and because they charged real money, they were disliked by creator and consumer alike. ah well...

Ultimately of course, for the 99% of us, the fun is in the creation not the result. There's no money in creating (and for the 99% never has been). Enjoy the process - if someone likes it, great. Will you make our living doing this? Almost certainly not.

I of course don't know the person but are you sure he didn't have some mental problem and not just refusing to believe he was being played?

I knew a man and a woman who were in a couple and they were like this, they would believe anything that people told them because they were significantly mentally impaired and had some sort of psychological problem that was unclear. They could be taken advantage of by anyone.

It was pretty sad, in fact the best thing for them was if they were only slightly taken advantage of by people who then had an interest in taking care of them to keep the advantage taking going.

Like if someone drained this guy's back account halfway, but made sure no one else drained it, and came to see him every now and then sent him a nice greeting card. I know that sounds pretty weird to claim but I saw it with this couple, they were essentially protected and controlled by the people who took a little long term advantage, basically because the American system just lets you lose everything and go live on the streets and die if you can't take care of yourself, but if people who need a place to stay come stay with you and make sure your money gets spent on food for everyone they're actually better off. It was sad to see but also the best possible outcome given the miserable situation for them.

Anyway, these people were not fixable by being talked to, and it wasn't because they had spent so many years deluding themselves. It was because they had real problems that meant they could never understand some things.