The rise of the telephone created an era of robocall scammers who parted people from their money. After enough calls were made, less people were willing to believe that the prince of Nigeria needs their help.
Many of the scams that hit the internet were so transparently stupid that one questioned if anyone was gullible enough to fall for their claims. There was in fact a sucker born every minute and keeping the ideas ludicrous helped filter out those less likely to divulge their credit card information.
On X, there’s pussy in bio. On Reddit there’s “looksmaxing to onlyfans pipeline” and everywhere else that people are willing to pay, people are happy to take their money. Calling someone a grifter is seen as a way of trying to undermine people’s authority.
I think it’s fine that gullible people are parted from their money on the internet because I doubt that money was going to be used wisely. Part of an evolutionary system is the arms race between suckers and scammers. One hopes that as scammers improve us suckers have to up our game.
Isadore Johnson's Website 