When You Can't Tell the Difference Between Snake Oil and Hair Tonic
We are now in the Golden Age of the Grift.
There's always been grift. Lies told in order to separate cash from the unsuspecting or willfully ignorant have been told since before there was the written word. We're all just suckers waiting to be taken in, the promise of easy solutions to our health problems, money problems, moral problems and the hope of solving them with nothing more than a few bucks skinned across a few palms is just too juicy, too delicious to pass up.
From the religious man promising sins will be forgiven for a small fee to the traveling salesman promising his unique tonic will increase your vitality and inspire hair growth, the grift is simply a part of life. There are the obvious swindles that include a fake IRS audit and fine and you can pay the fine today with seven Visa gift cards and the GoFundMe for unproven hardship and less so that allow you to donate to a cause that makes you feel righteous until you find out the recipients bought party houses and cars with your intended largesse.
Today, however, is the Golden Age. With the internet providing such incredible reach and the rapidly aging Boomers dominating the How does this app work on my cell phone? market, grifters, liars, and snake oil salesmen are now embracing the cheat as a legit side hustle. Even more pervasive is the obvious trade-off between easy and potential horrors like convincing a man that standing on a ledge 1,000 feet above the street will vastly improve his view but the fine print quickly explains that if the wind blows him off the ledge, his view will be obscured by asphalt smashing his gourde into pulp.
Over in Puck magazine, Theodore Schleifer asked Sam Bankman-Fried a pretty simple question:
Schleifer: I have always wanted to understand how you had so much personal liquidity to take a $650 million stake in Robinhood, to invest hundreds of millions in Anthropic, and spend tens of millions on politics and philanthropy. Where did that money come from?
It's money. People gave it to you. Where did it go? What happened to it?
SBF: At the end of the day, dollars are fungible, which means that it's not trivial to answer the question of where $1 in particular came from. But my basic sense is that the bulk of it just came from trading profits from Alameda. Between 2019 and just reaching 2021 or so, all told, Alameda had, I think, a couple billion dollars of trading profits, and then had obviously a whole lot more in market profits, although that all crashed, I think, this year.
WHAT? FTX was a Ponzi scheme. All cryptocurrency is really just gambling with chips (tokens) you buy from the dealer and hope your luck profits you even though you know the House always wins. Those unlucky idiots who bought into SBF's Ponzi scheme are now outraged that they were taken. They want their money back.
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“There’s something wrong!”
She had just lost her money at a Timber Wolf slot machine. She couldn’t understand how she lost her $10 despite the fact that she came into a casino, plopped her ample ass into a chair, slid the bill in the validator, and pressed the buttons. The money was gone and, in her perspective, there was something terribly unfair afoot.
“What can I do to help?”
“I want my money back!”
“Did the machine not credit you with the money?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“When you put your ten dollars in, did it show up on the screen so you could gamble?”
“Yes! And then I spun the thing and it took my money!”
“So...you gambled and lost?”
“Yes. I want my money back. This thing stole my money!”
I explained to her patiently that that is exactly what the machine is designed to do: take your money and let you gamble. If you gamble and lose, it isn’t stealing, it’s gambling and losing. She couldn’t get her mind around it. For fifteen minutes I demonstrated how she could win—the scores of micro-rules, the requirements in the fine print for larger payouts, the reels that would get her bonus games. She listened but still wanted her $10 because, in her mind, she was supposed to win. The concept of losing her money was like hearing someone speak in gibberish to her.
“I’m sorry, darlin’. I wish I could help you understand. You gambled and lost. You don’t get your money back. Now, this is a casino and every dollar you put in is a risk that you might lose it. If you can’t handle losing it, you probably shouldn’t play.”
“That’s not fair,” she responded, her mouth turned into a sneer.
“Welcome to Vegas.”
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Modern pharmaceuticals are a grift like no other in just the size and scope of it. I've been living with my parents for the past four months and they watch television. Sitting down and catching the evening news invites a parade of bizarrely named medications available to them that, if seen in the light of reason, offer a devil's bargain that millions accept.
According to TV, shingles is a real problem. Shingles is a viral infection that causes a painful rash. Shingles can occur anywhere on your body. It typically looks like a single stripe of blisters that wraps around the left side or the right side of your torso. It sucks but isn't life threatening. One of those oddly named cures is Acyclovir.
A miracle cure! No more painful rash. Images of people playing in parks and enjoying meals with their happy multi-ethnic families. Flying kites and playing catch with children. As if a single dose of this magic will entice you to go out and do things you wouldn't think of doing prior to your rash. I mean, you don't even have kids and you haven't gone out for a walk outside in decades. Sign me up!
Except for the side effects that you trade for eliminating your itchy rash. No more rash but you might have to endure:
Diarrhea
Difficulty sleeping
Dizziness
Fatigue (lacking in energy) or feeling tired Fever
Flushing or skin redness or unusually warm skin
Headache
Itching
Loss of appetite
Menstrual abnormalities
Mild skin pain
Mouth or gum pain (if using an acyclovir buccal tablet)
Mouth ulcers (Canker sores) or other sores in the mouth
Muscle or leg pain
Nausea
Rash
Sleepiness
Sore throat
Stomach pain
Sweating
Taste disturbances
Thirst
Urticaria (hives)
Vomiting
Hmmm. I could get rid of this rash but I risk getting a rash and taste disturbances? Sure. Why not roll those dice. I'll pay for the ridiculously expensive buccal tablets with my cryptocurrency winnings!
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“I have an issue. I trust Jason. He’s the best. But I put $100 on the Raiders and he fucked it up. I should’ve won but he didn’t take the right bet.”
“I’m sorry. Once you walk away with the ticket, that’s your bet. We can’t void it now and allow you to change it after the game.”
“That’s bullshit, man. I need that money. Shouldn’t have bet it because it was for my cable bill but it was a sure bet and Jason didn’t write it down right. It’s his fault, not mine.”
“You ever go to a drive thru at McDonald’s?”
“What? Yeah.”
“They give you your order, you drive home, get inside, and discover that instead of the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese they gave you a Filet-o-Fish?”
“I don’t get this...”
“If you drive back and ask for your actual order, they’re not going to refund your money or give you a different order because you went home and didn’t check it in the drive through. Right? The receipt they gave you was for a fish sandwich, you have a fish sandwich, and it doesn’t matter that practically no one likes those fish sandwiches. It’s yours now.”
“Oh. I get it.”
“That ticket is your fish sandwich.”
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Brian Johnson—the self proclaimed "Liver King"—has made $100 million selling online supplements based on his preaching the virtues of eating raw cow liver and testicles. He has denied for years that his cartoon physique and rutabaga skin color has anything to do with steroids and, despite what is blatantly obvious to anyone with two brain cells firing, millions bought that lie. They also bought supplements instead of cow livers and balls. Why? Because eating gonads is gross but taking a prepackaged supplement is easy.
You wanna know what's easier? Spending $11,000 a month on steroids and lying to everyone that it was the digested genitals that bulked him up.
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According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), people lost $547 million to romance scams in 2021, up 80% compared to 2020 and six times higher than in 2017.
Grifters are turning to peer-to-peer payment apps as a means to steal. The con will email, text or call you pretending to work for your bank or credit union's fraud department. They'll claim that a thief was trying to steal your money and that they have to walk you through "fixing" the issue.
When student loan forgiveness applications opened in 2022, the FBI warned borrowers to watch out for scams targeting applicants. Student loan forgiveness scammers may contact you via phone or create phony application sites aimed at stealing your Social Security number or your bank account information. They may put pressure on their victims with fake urgent messages that encourage you to apply for debt relief before it's too late. Then they'll charge you a hefty application fee.
There are also now countless websites enticing those who have been scammed to sign up for Fraud Prevention. You know, for an annually reoccurring fee. Grift, gang.
My advice for avoiding these opportunists looking to grab your cash is not more law enforcement or being more cautious with your money. No recommendations to research offers better or look for suspicious email tags.
If it's an easier way to solve a problem that would ordinarily require a bit of effort, it's a grift. If you want to support a cause, go out and stand with the protest because sending money is easy and is easily used for personal expenses. That weight loss pill to help you avoid walking and eating a fucking salad? Buyer beware. That amazing love interest who lives in another country and only needs $3,000 to join you in eternal matrimony and unending love? He's making bank luring fifty other lonely hearts from a cubicle farm in India.
If you assume all of capitalism is just like a Las Vegas casino, that you're gambling and all gamblers eventually lose, that the results of your labor have more concrete value than the craps game potential, you'll avoid being sold snake oil. You won't. Easy and convenient is just too enticing. You'll take the bait and looked shocked and outraged when the obvious lie is exposed and you're left holding an empty wallet and suffering from menstrual abnormalities.
It's the American way.
