The Kinds of People Who Get Scammed

The age of the scammer is upon us. Also light spoilers for Anora and Severance.

Best Picture, Anora.

Waking up everyday to the horrors™️ has not been great for any of our mental health. But one thing that I think has helped me zoom out has been watching the slow realization, that, for many, they got scammed. Whether they thought not voting was some sort of progressive action or they actually thought Donald Trump was going to improve their lives, the acceptance phase of being sold a lemon has started to set in.

I started asking myself, “Why do people get scammed in this way?” Feeling somehow morally superior for being part of the 92% of Black women who voted for an alternative to this. But everyone is capable of being scammed. Everyone. For like two weeks in 2009 I was in a MLM because the economy was trash and as a new college graduate, I needed money desperately. An opportunity that seemed too good to be true was just one 45-minute meeting about supplements away.

The people most vulnerable to scamming are those who are distracted, and those who are desperate. The desperation can be for many things, for me it was money, but for others it can be a desperation to be right, a desperation for someone else to be wrong, a desperation for privacy or shelter, or safety, or a desperation to escape bad feelings.

Recently a phone scammer tried two weeks in a row to hack my Twitter account. Because I don’t particularly value the platform anymore, it was harder to scam me. It went like this: A guy called me from an Atlanta number and said someone in Madagascar had tried to login to my account. I was on my way to lunch (distracted), but I had the clarity of mind to ask some questions:

“Oh really? How come I didn’t get a notification in my email about someone trying to login?” which is an obvious question. Every site now basically will alert you if there’s a suspicious login, and a phone call in 2025 is egregious.

“Well if you check your email now you’ll see we sent you an email with a login code, so if you can verify that code we can protect your account.”

That is fishy as hell. If someone was really hacking my account, couldn’t I just login on my own with whatever code ON MY OWN and have it verify my identity? For this reason I changed the subject.

“Yes, I see the code. I’m not going to give it to you though. You see, I requested my archive a week ago and you sent me all of the photos and videos I had ever posted, but not the tweets, can we get that resent?”

“Sure, I can walk you how to get your archive.”

“No, I already did the steps, the problem is on your end, I emailed about it. You should see the email about it.”

“Well if you could just give us that code, we can verify it’s you and look into it.”

Then I decided to trip him up.

“What’s your name?”

“My name is gonna be Michael.”

There’s always a tell.

“Okay, ‘Gonna Be Michael,’ why does this say you’re calling from Atlanta? Isn’t ‘X’ famously headquartered in San Francisco?”

“We moved our headquarters to Atlanta.”

“Oh, okay. Well thank you for that information. I’m late for lunch and you’re obviously scamming…”

*click*

Days later several prominent journalists had their accounts hacked. I can’t verify this is how it happened, but imagine if I had actually cared about someone hacking my Twitter account? I probably would’ve unwittingly given my precious email code directly to this stranger from an unlisted phone number.

—

Anora to me is a movie about a woman who strips for money, who desperately needs it, falling for a Russian scammer. Maybe “Vanya” isn’t explicitly scamming, he asks her to marry him so he can stay in the country, and oh he’s fabulously wealthy and they can just party forever. But isn’t that the scam? An easy out, freedom for a small fee that alleviates all the troubles? If Anora had opportunity, a high paying career, benefits, would she be so willing to give up her current life for the simple promise of a life with a guy she doesn’t know?

The hilarious circle of hell where you have to write endless Christmas cards til your hand aches.

In last week’s episode of Severance we got a deep dive into Gemma/Ms. Casey, Mark S. (Adam Scott’s) “deceased” wife in the show. In the (absolutely beautifully shot) episode, we learn about Gemma’s fertility struggles, and the toll it took on her relationship with Mark. Because they simply couldn’t connect on the trauma of their struggles to get and stay pregnant, Gemma started looking to Lumon, not knowing that it’s clearly some sort of cult corporation who would enslave her in endless severed scenarios while making Mark believe she was actually dead.

We live in a nation of deeply desperate people. Economically, spiritually, opportunistically. The American Dream in 2025 is to wake up with an unannounced gifted wad of millions of dollars with none of the inescapable problems not having that money has created. And we have billionaire scammers telling the most desperate among us that if we just let them do whatever they want to our democracy, we can have what they have.

Between Anora and Severance, the only way out of the scam was to suffer the consequences of falling for it. There’s no telling where Severance will go with this storyline now that we are all up to speed, but I like to think there is a moment for heroic people who see clearly to act. In Anora, not everything promised came true, but at least she got an expensive ring back in the end.

Maybe there’s hope for us before it’s too late.

-A

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