I did a thing in the early '90s that seemed like it was a bullshit scam but turned out to be legitimate. This company mailed you boxes of colored brochures advertising boxes of tupperware (actually Anchor Hocking stuff) for $19.95 plus a $7 delivery fee. There was also a big stack of small sheets of paper with an 800 number to call and a special ID identifying me, and I would staple one of these to each brochure. In the mornings, I would drive around and leave a few copies of these brochures at the front desk of businesses, hospitals, wherever I thought people might see them. People who were interested would call the 800 number and order a box or two. In the evenings I would get a fax with all my orders on it, and in the afternoons I would go to a warehouse with a cashier’s check for $19.95 X however many orders I had and then deliver the stuff. Customers would usually pay with a personal check for $26.95 per box.

The fact that I had to show up at the warehouse each afternoon with a big check for the product before I even delivered it was what made it seem scammy. But the whole thing was totally legitimate – prepaying for the product protected the company from getting scammed by their own employees. Every order was real and the customers always paid. Even though it was always personal checks, in a whole summer of doing this only two checks ever bounced, and both times I went back to the customer and they wrote a new valid check (people were really ashamed of bouncing checks in front of their coworkers).

At the peak of me doing this, I was getting in the neighborhood of 120 orders per day, which means I was making over $4000 a week (and effectively tax-free at that, since this company didn’t report anything to the IRS; in fact they never even had my social security number). Which is fucking CRAZY money for a 23-year-old to be making in 1991 dollars. People were just so happy to be able to shop while at work. This shit really was a precursor to Amazon. I stopped doing it to go be a dirt-poor graduate student, which was possibly the biggest mistake of my life.

Google the older “envelope-stuffing scams” or “work-at-home envelope-stuffing schemes.” It was essentially a chain-letter / pyramid scheme disguised as home employment in the backs of magazines, supermarket tabloids, comic books, classifieds, and alternative newspapers WAAAAAY before the Internet. The classic version went something like you could make money at home, earn $500 a week stuffing envelopes, always stating “No experience necessary!” and tell you all you gotta do is send $1.00 and a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for complete details!

You’d dutifully send your dollar and SASE, expecting instructions from Acme Envelope Stuffing Industries. What came back was basically, “HERE’S HOW. Place an ad saying’ MAKE MONEY AT HOME! Earn $500 a week stuffing envelopes! Send $1.00 and a SASE for details!'” and so on. When people send you a dollar, put these instructions in their SASE. And the loop keeps repeating.

So congratulations: you had just purchased the privilege of becoming the next layer of the scam. There were several names floating around for these, including “envelope stuffing,” “home mailing programs,” “mail order plans,” “money-making opportunities,” and sometimes simply “SASE schemes.” Law-enforcement and consumer-protection literature generally lumped them into work-at-home schemes or work-at-home scams. And they were everywhere before the Internet. The $1 was brilliant in a sleazy sort of way. It was too little money for almost anyone to pursue after discovering they’d been had. You weren’t going to call a lawyer because some bastard in Baltimore stole your dollar. But if 5,000 people mailed the bastard a dollar…

From listening to If Books Could Kill (podcast), I’ve learned that the scam is always to sell “how to scam” books/seminars. I think it works better for longer when they actually deliver their shitty advice, because no legal repercussions.

We used to play assorted games on tabletop simulator and we used a virtual button that just said “bruh” every time you clicked it. After the pandemic when we returned to playing in person I tried to order a bruh button. It never arrived. My credit card had fraudulent charges a week later. Bruh

This might very well be the ugliest meme out there

That’s a suspiciously human looking face on a dinosaur

Lesson 1 complete! Order now for a special discount on Lesson 2! Order within 10 minutes and shipping is free! Hurry, time is running out! Learn how to scam the correct way today

Fair

What is this image from

By: Professor Roger DeSalvo

Step 1: don’t be the one getting scammed

Wild how they made a dino look weirdly handsome.

WTF is this picture? Looks like some ai bullshit.