olivermoss | 'Bout to get my hand bit

The exact same money scam that fleeced a lot of people in r/portland is currently being used in r/oregon. I gave few of the people who already sent money a heads up, even though I know for certain they are going to be angry with me. People who are happy they did a good thing don't like being told they've been taken advantage of.

I can't count how often I've proved that medical Go Fund Mes or missing kid info posted to communities posted to forums I've modded were fraudulent. It got to the point that I didn't even need to google reverse image search, I literally recognized some of the images that it's popular for scammers to use. I even knew the real story behind one picture, and that the family was fully and painfully aware of the way that image was being used online.

Sorry, venting here because I can't believe that literally the same copy-pasta is being used to scam people again. Also, based on all my years of internetting and sometimes being in charge of checking posts to see if they are scams, if I check that reddit account again it will be full of people shooting the messenger. Or I could just not... I could ditch that account and get a new one.

Covid has been good for grifters. The stress and people not feeling connected enough has made people easier targets. Now it's the holidays with a new variant taking hold and honestly I am so far beyond what I thought my breaking point was.

Anyway, a community I am in just got scammed for a lot of money and I am going to have everyone yelling at me for pointing it out because that is how life works. Maybe I should keep my mouth just and let people get taken for a ride.

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Ugh, that's a terrible situation all around. I absolutely hate how many people ARE out there taking advantage, and it sucks that people want to shoot the messenger rather than truly getting angry about the scam. (I'm sure because they want to protect their own feelings, and don't like having to confront the fact that they fell for something.)

I'd domain-blocked reddit for now.

People take such comfort in feeling that they helped a wronged person, a specific wronged person. It's easy to exploit that. It's less satisfying to give to food bank or something, but way more effective, less scammy and you don't need to be the sort of person social media likes to get help.

Sorry, I have a lot of opinions about this.

Helping someone "in need" (especially when it's a particular kind of need, and a particular kind of victim being helped) gets very wrapped up in people's self-conception, so I get psychologically why people do it, and keep falling for these types of scam, and are so resistant to having it pointed out. It's also why those scams proliferate and are sometimes so successful.

I know that there are legitimate gofundmes and stuff out there for people in need.

But it's SO much more effective to donate to a food bank or a local organization that helps with whatever cause you're most passionate about.

I see so many donation requests across tumblr and across facebook. And I'm sure some of them are very real and for people in bad situations, but...

I took a peek and some other people were speaking up and saying they remembered the original scam post as well. They also got shouted down. Especially with the state of the world, people want to feel like they had an impact and made things less dim. And yeah, sadly that is easy to take advantage of.

Even when people just upvoted or reblogged something for visibility, they want they feeling of like... the world working as it should. But sometimes it's literally a 10 year old repost.

They are real ones, but every single one posted to the 3 highest volume forums I ran was a scam. I did see a real one in my twitter feed today, but that's because they are related to the community manager of a game I play, so, lots of visibility.

Actually, have I ever seen a real one in a community space I'd been admin or mod of? For two I had to log each deletion with proof which was why keeping track was easy.

I get wanting to help individuals, or people you see as part of your community. But, yeah, lotta grifters out there and they are going to be more effective at pulling the heartstrings.

Honestly, I don't feel at all comfortable with donating directly to an individual unless I know them, or maybe if someone I know well knows and vouches for them.

But it doesn't surprise me that the ratio of scam to legitimate is a bad one.

I do understand the desire to help. And when that help is individual, it can feel like more - donating to a food bank, you may help more people in small ways, but usually you don't see how and who YOUR donation helped specifically. Donating to an individual feels like you make a more tangible difference. Mutual aid is great! I do get it!

But unfortunately, an awful lot of the scammers are savvy enough to find exactly the right heartstrings to tug on for their target community. Is this on behalf of a sick kid? A down-on-their-luck veteran? A trans teen just kicked out of their abusive home? Someone with just the right blend of intersectional marginalizations to make you feel extra good about donating?

All of those can be perfectly legitimate causes, and people who need help! And people I want to help! But scammers know that very, very well.

That's the problem with real people, they are less sympathetic and perfectly appealing than fiction.

Earlier in the pandemic, there was a huge rash of race-faking. There was a good article on people faking being Native Americans that talked about how if you don't have the traumas an baggage of actually being Native, you can easily mold yourself into exactly what white people want to see.

Oh yeah, a perfectly crafted "ideal fantasy victim" is always going to be more sympathetic than a real actual person.

Oh geez, I remember warnings about a few of the race-faking ones. And I can absolutely see that being a thing - the ability to play on the "ideal noble Native" tropes that white people want to see and then feel super good about themselves for supporting.

'Bout to get my hand bit

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