Anthology of Third-World Email Scams by Michael N. Marcus

The Amazon documentary “LuLaRich” follows how the clothing company LuLaRoe built an multi-level marketing empire on garish leggings.

I figured out that my dissatisfaction came from the way many of the analyses treated these scams as one-offs or individual phenomena when it is obvious that they all follow certain general patterns. A lot of it was entertaining, but none of it satisfied my curiosity. I read and watched a lot about multilevel marketing, confidence games, pyramid schemes and the recent history of scams over the holiday break. But the endemic future is not yet here, and our best bet for minimizing harm until we get there is producing high-quality information spreading that information through public messaging aimed at how people actually behave and mandates, mandates, mandates. We have made significant progress with treatments that will make variants more manageable in the future. At the same time, we should admit that now is not like before. The gist is that we should assume Covid is not yet endemic. The best piece I have read so far on how variants change our experience of Covid is by Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic. Omicron is so much more contagious than the Delta variant that it feels like a different pandemic, with new balances to strike. For two weeks, I have had a Covid notification every other day. I have enough privilege that my close circle has been relatively unscathed in the past two years. By New Year’s Eve, Covid had swept through my networks with a ferocity I had not previously experienced at any point in the pandemic. The cancellation came not a moment too soon. After I initiated “The Talk” about risk factors, we ended up canceling all of our holiday plans. Alas, the Omicron variant made both trips too risky. Giddy from vaccines, we planned to gather in the Blue Ridge Mountains and then head to a celebration in a venue overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. My family’s holiday season was far more muted than planned.

Anthology of Third-World Email Scams by Michael N. Marcus