this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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[–] ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 43 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I need to come up with my own scam to rinse rich idiots.

[–] Alpha71@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The best scams are either holistic/psychic stuff or Hi-fi Audio.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

A good scam is all about finding a way to bypass bs detectors. Appealing to greed or fear while adding a sense of urgency are the classic ones for good reason. But you've got others like appealing to in group/out group dynamics, distrust of institutions, ego, desired self image, laziness, carelessness so much more. You've also got those selecting to trigger anyone with a bs detector to only spend time on those without one.

[–] BioDriver@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (8 children)

High Fi audio is actually legit to a point. Over $300 (well, $400 now with tariffs) is when the scam begins

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[–] entropiclyclaude@lemmy.wtf 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ok - hear me out.

We get idk 1000 of us poors to buy some cheap land in the Midwest. Up in Appalachia.

We sell “Rapture Survival Communities”

They’re $999/month and you’ll get a hidden bungalow community complete with bunker. We’ll fill it with doctors and pastors and birthing women.

BUT YOU CANT KNOW THE LOCATION UNTIL THE RAPTURE HAPPENS. You don’t want any pesky liberals finding it and gaying up the place with their liberal demonic child sacrifice transness.

We will deliver coordinates via analog radio and Morse code once the rapture has started.

By business plan makes Sam Altman hard in his butt:

  1. Collect money
  2. Don’t build anything.
  3. repeat

When they come screaming for proof and receipts and refunds… Just gaslight them and buy a politician.

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Unfortunately for you you don't have what it takes. You need to be a proper psychopath to scam others.

[–] Canconda@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago

This. The worst thing for any salesman to have is scruples.

[–] tio_bira@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Sometimes i observe so many ways to get easy money and don't have to hard work, than i remember than my parents raised my scruples and moral... Would be so easy if i wasn't

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I'm working on the grift of all gifts, if you want in, you can buy shares of my grift for $100 each.

[–] Canconda@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

Wanna help me convince maga that citrus makes people gay? I think we could solve a lot with that.

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[–] vane@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Add "AI Agent" to something everyone's doing like "Tooth brushing AI Agent."

[–] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 29 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Also worth noting. The Bored Ape Yaht Club NFTs (in the thumbnail) were released by 4chan trolls with Nazi symbolism hidden in some of them. This was the most successful NFT project of them all.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Speculating on the value of an investment based on an asset that doesn't exist is similar to scammers offering to sell certificates of ownership of dogs' souls.

Capitalism tends over time to create increasingly abstract forms of ownership. And what could be more abstract than ownership of something that isn't there at all? They're selling GUIDs that point to nothing.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

They can be used to launder money though.

That's why art is so inflated. It's used as a means to launder, because it's the value is so arbitrary.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Etherium was run out of the offices of JP Morgan Chase and NFTs were a gimmick to boost the deal flow of their then-underperforming crypto offering.

It was, by and large, an enormous investment in sales and marketing on top of a ton of insanely shady business practices. Case in point, the infamous Beeple NFT that sold for $69.3M was purchased with Etherium to showcase Christie’s auction house accepting cryptocurrency for auction bids. The winning bidder for artwork was an early crypto adopter and marketer named Vignesh Sundaresan who was flush with these tokens, but lacked any kind of liquid market to sell them into yet. That's before you get into the Congo Line of largely clueless celebrities going on Late Night comedy shows to plug their online pogs.

It's trite to say that the whole thing was a scam because... duh. But I think people read this as "just dumb people being stupid with their stupid dumb money" and ignore the layer upon layer of market manipulation and con-artistry that went into making cryptocurrencies what they are today.

The fact that Donald Trump is using them to launder bribes from Middle Eastern dictators and East Asian kleptocrats should illustrate how deep these rabbit holes can go. It's so much more than just peddling bad clipart to dumb bros.

[–] merdaverse@lemmy.zip 10 points 6 days ago
[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago

NFT just served as a training opportunity for the people behind it to learn how to get away with legally scamming people, not surprised the Reddit admin was all in on it when it came out.

[–] arc99@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

Digital ownership tokens could work if there legal framework imbuing digital property with the same attributes as physical property, i.e. legal ownership and the right to sell, trade, donate, loan or destroy it just as with a real thing. And tokens would have to be maintained by a single platform with legal weight behind it. If there were such a thing and platforms were compelled to support it, then it could work.

But NFTs were not that. They were a scam from the get go. I truly wonder how anybody could be stupid enough to believe a URL pointing at a machine generated picture would ever be worth something let alone appreciate in value. Or buying content in dogshit NFT based games like Legacy or Earth 2. Or that scam game Logan Paul endorsed. Or buying real plots of land such as on "Satoshi" (Lataroa) Island - a malaria riddled jungle that was sold as libertarian asshole utopia before it flopped. But people did. Because people are stupid.

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 days ago

I would replace "dramatic" with "predictable". Everybody knew it was bullshit. It was like tulip mania, but without actual tulips.

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

That was the most goddamn awful thing ever seen. Where are those shitheads who first sold the fucking idea?

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