#5: when people attempt these jaw-droppingly audacious acts of deception, why do they never seem to have the slightest sense of subtlety?
“I found the conversation to be strange and unlike normal confessions,” [...] “He asked if I ever got pulled over for speeding, if I drank alcohol, or if I had stolen anything,” [...] “The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange.”
If they'd played the long game, substituting a fake priest and having them behave believably like a priest so that the fraud was not immediately detected, I could respect their competence even if not in any way their ethics. This way I can't even admire them as a worthy antagonist.
It's understandable in some contexts. Spam, in particular: I remember reading an analysis once that suggested that spammers deliberately make their pitches unsubtle in their dishonesty, on the basis that that way anyone short of 100% gullible will hit delete immediately and only the most likely of suckers will waste the spammer's time by actually responding. But the difference is that spammers are very hard to catch and shut down, so recipients don't generally have any stronger response than the delete key, and that doesn't stop the spammer trying other victims independently. Here, just one victim spotting the scam can blow the whole thing wide open for everyone, as in fact happened.
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“I found the conversation to be strange and unlike normal confessions,” [...] “He asked if I ever got pulled over for speeding, if I drank alcohol, or if I had stolen anything,” [...] “The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange.”
If they'd played the long game, substituting a fake priest and having them behave believably like a priest so that the fraud was not immediately detected, I could respect their competence even if not in any way their ethics. This way I can't even admire them as a worthy antagonist.
It's understandable in some contexts. Spam, in particular: I remember reading an analysis once that suggested that spammers deliberately make their pitches unsubtle in their dishonesty, on the basis that that way anyone short of 100% gullible will hit delete immediately and only the most likely of suckers will waste the spammer's time by actually responding. But the difference is that spammers are very hard to catch and shut down, so recipients don't generally have any stronger response than the delete key, and that doesn't stop the spammer trying other victims independently. Here, just one victim spotting the scam can blow the whole thing wide open for everyone, as in fact happened.