Candy from Strangers

The snake-oil-salesman, the scammer, the con artist, the used-car dealer, the door-to-door Jehovah Witnesses, the hustler. These people have always been with us. They make for interesting characters in films—The Music Man, Paper Moon, The Sting, Tin Men, Catch Me If You Can, The Wolf of Wall Street and more and we even find ourselves rooting for them. Until they show up at our door. 

 

And now they’ve arrived in droves, armed with the nuclear arsenal of e-mails, texts, AI generated letters and images and yet more. Every day our inbox is swamped with baited hooks awaiting our bite and the sophistication needed to detect them is every day more difficult to understand. Just last week, I went to renew my passport with the first thing that showed up online and almost-too-late realized it was a mild scam ready to double the price of what it costs when I actually do it with the government office. The fine print is smaller and smaller and this is nothing compared to the story I heard yesterday of someone’s friend scammed out of $500,000 because she was a widowed woman seduce online by such a caring man who kept promising to meet her soon, but meanwhile…

 

My first thought is, “What the hell is wrong with you people?!!!! How can you sleep at night knowing your job entails preying on vulnerable, lonely people? Or capitalizing on people’s fantasies for getting rich quick? Are you proud of yourselves? What would your mother say? Or your first-grade teacher?”

 

Of course, this has been going on forever and far beyond simply selling defective goods or tricking people into signing up for something against their own best interest. Witness religious missionaries, TV evangelists, even New Age spiritual leaders or motivational speakers like Deeprak Chopra now revealed as complicit with Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, the biggest scam artist of all time, our current not-to-be-named President. The sheer volume of con artists, the increased vulnerability of gullible people looking for quick ways to earn money, protect their privilege, shape an identity based on the illusion that they’re in the club, alongside the tsunami of electronic bombardment, is so much harder to deal with then politely telling the vacuum salesman at your door that you’re not interested, thank you very much.

 

One of the most maddening things about the phenomena is the cynical (but increasingly real) message that you shouldn’t assume goodwill in the people you meet and treat everyone as if they’re out to get you. Which self-fulfills its own prophecy and drags us down into the worst versions of ourselves. Is there another possibility?

 

Every workshop I give, there’s a moment in my opening shtick in which we are all connected in a circle, arms grasped behind our back and leaning back and held together by this human chain. It’s a typical exercise physically showing the need for trust. Hard to describe, but the next step in my shtick involves slapping my neighbors’ hand, who quickly realizes that they have to pull their hand away when they see it coming. So now the message is, “Trust…but not too much. Be alert and know when to pull your hand away.” 

 

Alongside creating a culture of kindness and character, we need to train the children and ourselves to cultivate a kind of radar, a crap detector that can sniff out the real from the fake. To begin in good faith in every encounter, but keep that radar turned on and notice the signs. This is increasingly difficult as the electronic disguises get more sophisticated, but after you get fooled a few times (hopefully not with the Nigerian princes or friends robbed on vacation in the Philippines who need you to send money), it’s worth learning how to spot these things. Certain signs in e-mail addresses, being asked to share dubious information, a reliable tech person who you can ask to help you spot what’s real or fake. The simple truth of warning children to “not take candy from strangers” now has a thousand new faces, but at root is the same. 

 

Meanwhile, two unprintable words to all you scammers and con artists who have refused kindness, character and an authentic life. One syllable each and the second one is “you.” If you can’t guess it and want to know, send me $500,000 in bitcoin and the secret is yours.