My first job out of college ended being for a married grifter couple. It was almost immediately obvious and only became more so as I learned they were not paying the employees, the server lease company, their auto leases or their home lease. Despite all of this, after 5 minutes talking with them it felt like a spell of confusion had been cast on you. What they said about the future made sense. The road map was all there. Gonna be a founder. GONNA BE RICH! Ah shit they did it again. lol. It was surreal the web they could weave. I’ve dealt with scammers and chronic liers and this was something other. For any one that has done acid or shrooms, talking with them felt like when the drug just starts to kick in and everything familiar looks the same but feels alien. It was a weird chapter in my life.
I don’t know if Trump has the same grifter skills as the people I knew. Based on the number of people that continue to jump feet first into his wood chipper I suspect he does. I don’t pity the marks, ultimately each person has to choose to face some hard reality and let go of imagined future gains to walk away. I was pretty pleased that I finished my 30 day contract with the grifter couple and managed to out maneuver them into paying me. No one else had been paid in 6 months.
If you are ever interacting with someone and you start to feel confused like that, it is usually a good idea to run away. If you are talking to a police officer and you feel that way, immediately demand to have your lawyer present.
I think that might apply depending on how you define honest. Setting aside their weirding like voices they ultimately offered each mark an unreasonable sweet reward later, if the person could just make some type of sacrifice now. Anyone being honest with themselves would see that all of the promises were too good to be true. Keep in mind this was in 1998, and start-ups were going public and making other people rich. So the desire to be part of the next big IPO and never have to worry about money again felt so close you could almost just grab it out of the air. The couple milked this fantasy day and night. Of course anyone can walk away but they are going to be kicking themselves when they miss out on the sudden easy money. FOMO! Don’t miss out on the chance of a lifetime.
After this I moved to Portland Oregon to work for 5 years. Then moved to Seattle. I’d probably been in Seattle for about 3 years when a guy approached me at a bar. He had worked for the couple after me. I forget how he explained he recognized me. It seemed a bit odd. But he said that the couple had fled to California at some point. He said they were being extradited back to Oregon for some type of trial the following month. He said he was driving down to testify along with many other ex employees. I declined the offer so I have no idea what happened. The timing that this guy just happened to see me in a bar 8ish years after I worked at the company, and just a month before a trial seemed super damn suspicious. Sometimes the only solution is to run away as fast as possible.
Yes I agree. I’m older now and more confident in my judgement and less polite when faced with BS. My big life lesson was don’t stay and try and win on their terms, their turf. Don’t think you are smart enough to win. Just get away, get outside of the vortex people like this generate and don’t look back.
Good point. I was thinking about this more later and recalled an odd time in my young-ish life (late teens, early twenties) when I was on my own, homeless, and kind of got sucked into some really weird social situations. I won’t say cult, but cult-adjacent. I am an honest person with a strong sense of justice, but I got “conned” in the spiritual/emotional sense. Maybe the saying should be that you can’t con an emotionally healthy honest person?
I believe that everyone has their vulnerable points. Maybe emotionally healthy honest people have fewer; few enough that most grifters won’t bother.
It’s like bike locks. There’s no theft-proof lock, but if your lock is stronger than the bike next to you, and your bike looks less expensive, you won’t be a target.
Yes, I am guessing that most/all con people / cult leader types excel at finding a person’s weakness and leveraging it. An emotionally healthy honest person offers them less buttons to push or strings to pull. Most of the people at the company joked that the wife must have something in her perfume to cast the fugue and at the same time still believed they were going to be rich and there was even a trip on the calendar, because they promised to take every to Amsterdam. When I left on my last day one of the other employees ran out to the parking lot and grabbed my arm. He pleaded with me not to go: “We are going to Amsterdam man. Don’t give up on the dream now. We are so close!” I wished him well and didn’t look back.
ETA: When I left that last day with a months pay in cash I had an appointment to go put a down payment on a rental. As I was sitting at the property mangers desk I realized my whole body was shaking and I felt like I might pass out. It was bad enough I had to explain briefly what had just happened. His reply was to ask if it was the couple by name. Ended up they had leased a giant house from him and then skipped out mid lease owing him for many months of unpaid rent. I was like, I can’t get away from these people and their stink.
One of the best parts about Trump publicly stiffing Rudy is that it’s going to mean there are even fewer lawyers willing to represent Trump at the time when he needs legal representation more than ever (and he was clearly scraping the bottom of the legal barrel already).
Not to mention that the Trump brand has become toxic as fuck. Only the diehards will be renting his hotel rooms, and there aren’t really enough of them to go around, despite what they might think.
A con artist can come at an honest person who is legit upright and wants to help, with a con like “I’m in trouble and I need money.” A person like that (me?) will often feel that the possibility of being conned is not as much of a consideration against the possibility that someone is actually in trouble and can be helped. I don’t think that is mentally unhealthy.
take your points for using the Learning to Flinch version. That whole album is just perfection end to end. I’ve never heard anyone else make a 12-string growl like that.
While a common con plays on peoples greed I think another common con is on a person’s need to feel needed. To be the hero. It feels good to be that person. So while the mark might not be corrupt or trying to get nothing for free, in retrospect they might not have been honest with themselves when evaluating the con persons claims of needing help because of a weakness of needing to be needed.
I’ve seen some older people get sucked into this type of scam. Their adult kids never visit and here is the sweet young person giving them a lot of attention and now something bad has happened and they have plenty of money in the retirement account. Now they can rescue someone and feel needed again.
