“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” ~ Charles Spurgeon.

Back in the day, many years ago, before we had personal computers or smart phones, before the Internet, we used to communicate by sending handwritten (or typed, if you were fancy or in business) letters.  These would be placed in envelopes, with the mailing address of the recipient on the front, and once a licked stamp had been placed in the corner, would be placed in the mailbox and off they would go.  At the time (all those years ago), there was the chain letter.  You would receive it from a friend (this was questionable, why would a friend make you go through this?), with instructions to copy the letter (again, by hand, no scanning or snapping a pic) and send it to seven friends.  The letter would contain the warning that failing to do so would result in bad luck, some example of which would be included (usually some terrible accident or severe misfortune).  However, if the recipient did as instructed, good luck would follow.  Again, a specific example would be included.  Someone had followed the instructions carefully, and seven days later they received an inheritance of thousands of pounds! (This was back in the day in Jamaica, when British pounds, shillings and pence were the denomination of choice.)

I must have done this at least once.  It was a pain in the neck, trying to think of seven friends (you would have to know their mailing addresses) that you could torture in this way.  It was hard to say which was more persuasive: the threat of bad luck affecting you or your family, or the promise of a windfall.  But who wants to tempt bad luck?  It is easy to be confident and brave, but would you really want to risk it?

When my father first was settling into his role as minister and chaplain in rural Jamaica, transplanting his family from Manchester, England, he had to get to know not just his congregation, but the local community.  Early in his time there, he was approached by a gentleman with a hard luck story.  His wife was pregnant.  They had no bed.  She was sleeping on sheets on the floor of their wooden house.  He had seen the mattress he wanted to buy for her in the furniture store in town.  If Parson could give him the money, he would be able to buy it and his wife could ease her aching back.  Some weeks later my father ran into the man’s wife, and he inquired after the new sleeping arrangements.  What bed? asked the wife. My father learned his lesson.  Next time he was told a similar tale, he told the requestor to go to the furniture store, select the mattress of choice (or other essential need) and my father would go to the store and pay for it.  It saved him a lot of money!

Whether we are superstitious kids or trusting adults, we tend to be sympathetic to the plight of others.  We donate to charity, lend money to a needy friend, contribute to worthy causes.  Many years ago, I was given the advice ‘never lend what you can’t afford to lose’.  That adage helped to protect me from going too far out of my way to help another to the detriment of my own family.  When money was tight, most of my income was promised to the expenses of day-to-day living.  My daughter remembers well once, she was maybe twelve, when I had explained to her the realities of income versus expenditure, when I didn’t have the extra she was asking for.  She was so concerned that we wouldn’t have enough money to live, it kept her awake at night. 

Before I was given the advice about lending, we had been approached by a close friend.  He had an emergency, knew that we had just refinanced our house and had some extra cash, could we possible lend him a sum to catch up on his mortgage.  He would pay it back (he never did).  We ended up losing the money and losing the friend.  But how can you say no when someone’s plight is worse than yours?

We are now way past the age of innocence.  With AI and ChatGPT we are at the mercy of the most innovative scam artists.  As I scroll through my social media feed I dismiss many of the videos as fabricated.  Did Jasmine Crockett really take on the Supreme Court and school them on some topic or another? (No, she has never argued in front of the Supreme Court).  You can color me skeptical on many of the stories.  Or I don’t have the time to read the story which is interspersed (every sentence it seems) with ads or photos or other misleading information.  There are times when I go to the internet to check the veracity of some historical story.  But how can I trust the verification, when the internet is powered by AI?

Given my high sense of cynicism, I was highly suspicious some months ago when I got into an online conversation with a famous author.  I had responded to a request on her Facebook page to contact her.  She had responded (not immediately) through Messenger, and we started a dialogue.  I was immediately suspicious, and shared it with a few people to get their impression.  Was this a scam, or could it really be this famous, award winning author?  But her writing sounded like her.  It was lyrical, full of beautiful metaphors, and she was so complimentary of my own writing (I shared a link to this blog). We shared stories of our childhood (nothing I hadn’t already shared on-line), and although it would take quite a while before she responded, we had a nice friendship.  Underneath, I still wondered whether it could really be the author, or was I being groomed? We were like sisters, she told me, she looked forward to reading my responses.  For me it was like having a one-on-one tutorial with someone so gifted, so experienced.  Or was I being deftly handled by some ChatGPT expert?

There were occasional comments about her charitable work.  What did I know about the Sudan?  She and some of her friends contributed to an orphanage there.  To be honest, I had to look up what was going on in the Sudan (and yes, it is bad there).  This charity was mentioned again, would I be interested in participating? But since retiring from a full-time paycheck, I have to be careful about my charitable contributions, I responded. It was some weeks before, interspersed within a few beautifully composed paragraphs, there was a break, a slip in the façade.  A badly written paragraph, with typos and grammatical errors.  There is no way that author could ever have written it. Further investigation proved it could not be her, she supported a couple of local charities, but nothing in the Sudan.  And on her official website, she apologized that she could not accept manuscripts to review, or enter into correspondence with individuals.  It was as I had feared, I had been played, groomed by the slickest.  Fortunately, I got out without committing money or too much of my pride. 

Funnily enough, I was not confident enough to call out the person (people) who created the fake account, just in case.  That is how good they are!  A (young enough but old enough to know better) nephew recently fell for some message, clicked on a link and just like that his WhatsApp account was hijacked, and his contacts were receiving requests to send money (for cancer treatment) to a friend of his.  He would repay the loan the next day!  Fortunately, most (not all) contacted him first, and we avoided losing money to the scam artists.

It is easy to become untrusting of everyone, believing the worst, or not believing anything.  We are at the mercy of the manipulators of the media, people with skills to manufacture videos, to incite violence, to justify the strong-arm tactics that are out in full force.  It is up to us to do our ‘due diligence’, to help each other sort out the facts from the fiction and to retain faith in our common humanity.  We must not lose sight of the fact that most people are compassionate, kind, and accepting of a diverse society.  It is important to search for the evidence of this and amplify it wherever we can. 

Have a wonderful weekend, Family! Don’t feel bad if you fall for a talented scam artist, but hold on to your purse!  Only give what you can afford to lose!

One Love!

Namaste.