scam likely (& a gig this sunday!)
in which we consider lies, kind of, and I perform on sunday night! (not a lie)
Hey Hartlist,
In the old days, like last month, whenever I saw ‘Scam Likely’ on my phone, I always thought what a great character name that would be. You know, like for an old-timey villain. Or a burlesque performer. ( I CALLED IT IT’S MINE).
Now it just seems like a general statement about… life.
JUST THE GIG SUNDAY NIGHT!!!!
Does anyone read this section? Because it used to be what thisblognewsletter was for
SUNDAY MARCH 3, 7PM - Soho Playhouse - ‘Verse Intro Cabaret’
w/Sean McCabe
GET TICKETSYou guys…
This is going to be a (quietly) epic double bill. DO NOT MISS IT.
Sean & I were grad school classmates and we’ll both be doing short sets.
You may remember when I covered his song “The Lightbulb” at Rockwood last year.
You don’t? well here you go1
FROM THE CHRYSALIS
What was I saying? Oh yeah, I got scammed last month.
I don’t know if I can actually say that, since I figured it out before anyone actually got their Snidely Whiplash hands on my money. And by “figured it out”, I mean, “spent a week ignoring red flags about a contract job I’d just accepted, joking nervously ‘sure hope this isn’t a scam’, and then eventually being informed by a concerned friend that it probably was, RIGHT after I had just given Scam Likely my personal financial information.
Ye gods.
PSA: here’s what you do, because now I know: call all the credit bureaus (who ever thought about them for one second, not me) and freeze your credit. Call your bank and freeze your checking account and open a new one. (You don’t have to change your ATM card unless you gave them that too). Report them to the FTC because… I guess… that … does something? I mean, I can only imagine how many random panicky emails they get per second at this point.
Here’s Brian Lehrer on the subject; here’s John Oliver.
I think what bugs me the most in retrospect is that the red flags now seem so damn obvious. And the thing is - it doesn’t just look shady in retrospect, it did to me at the time.
So what happened?
I’m gonna go ahead and blame a certain pernicious nightclub act known as Denial and Urgency. (Have you seen these guys? They’re great! I mean their solo stuff is good, but together - wow.)
I’m pretty well versed in the former (see many other blog posts) but have only recently come around to understanding the latter for the Harbinger of Disaster that it truly is.
I heard a wise person say once that “What is Urgent is rarely Important, and what is Important is rarely Urgent.” I’m pretty sure there are exceptions to this (quicksand?), but… it kinda holds up. (And actually, as you probably know, the going advice for quicksand is to resist the urge to fight it or act on the urgency ok hahahahahahahaha.)
All scams involve a manufactured sense of urgency. Someone just told me a story about one scammer who insisted her social security number was going to be “canceled” if she didn’t do what he said. We laughed about that one but I bet someone else out there became panicked (ie, easily controlled). It depends on what freaks YOU out.
I have learned to define Urgency for myself as An Almost Intolerable Compulsion to Do Something Right Now Otherwise Something Bad Will Happen That I Have the Power To Prevent If I Just Do Something Right Now.
Of course, whenever I Do That Thing Right Now, out of urgency, the results usually fall on a spectrum from Not Helping to Making Worse. This actually comes up for me almost daily. Countering Urgency has become, in the parlance of our times, A Practice for me. It involves using all my strength to wedge something between myself and It, and that Something is called a Pause. This Pause is a minute/hour/week/month in which I do NOT take the action even as my brain screams that I am responsible for impending destruction and certain death. When, for whatever reason, this feeling finally dissipates, then - and only then - can I do something. And then, and only then, can I usually do a thing that works.
Sometimes I don’t end up doing anything. I’ve watched a lot of things happen in The Pause, and one of them is seeing the situation resolve itself without my “help”. Sometimes new information comes to light. Sometimes the agitation settles and I am able to see the problem in its true perspective; to know it is not Life or Death. Though, again, I’m not sure Life or Death decisions are particularly helped by Urgency. (See: Quicksand.) At this point in my life, I am trying to take Urgency as a red flag.
(I am not talking about Fear here, which can be of course be a real help in situations like Get Away From That Bear/Snake/Sexual Predator.) I could go on about this, and often do.
The other thing that really bugs me is that since this happened, I feel like I can’t trust ANYTHING and don’t know what’s real. Last night my iphone’s Security Recommendations blew up with a bunch of notifications about passwords it wanted me to change because of a data leak, and instead of thinking “oh , thanks” I spent an hour or two on the phone to Apple trying to make sure that the built-in function inside my phone was in fact a built-in function inside my phone. “There’s so many scams going around right now”, the kindly man on the (definitely Apple Customer Service) phone line said, and as he was saying it I was still googling something like Are we sure this is the real number for Apple Customer Service? (It was.) The Credit Bureau People sent me my first credit report as a courtesy, and I took one look at it and panicked that there was an account there I didn’t recognize from 2011. I called it in, then ran to the bank to address it, only to find out that it was a credit card that had been applied for in 2011… by me. The fake job has continued to send me emails every wednesday being like “Welcome to your First Day!” and I have a tiny heart attack every time I have to delete and block an email or phone number… which I really honestly believe has to do with an irrational fear that I will get fired.
Can you blame me, though? As a man once said, it’s not paranoia if someone really is out to get you. I have run into TWO MORE hiring scams since trying to get that first job. (I didn’t engage). That Democratic political consultant used AI to fake Joe Biden’s voice in a robocall… and then claimed it was activism to alert us all to the dangers of AI. Is that true? I have no idea. While I was writing this, a friend sent me a link the story about the scam ‘Willy Wonka Experience’ . (Google it; the saddest part for me is the two jelly beans.) Donald Trump’s Immunity Plea is actually going to be heard by the “Supreme Court”. Scam, in short, is Likely. All Over.
Another friend of mine was a victim of identity theft some years back, and since then has paid for every single thing in cash and in his words “will not do anything with you if I can’t see you” (ie, going into the bank instead of using an app).
Well, guess what: live performance is still happening, and it’s still (for now) as real as it gets. Nobody on my ‘team’ can afford an AI version of my voice, and none of them know half the songs I’m going to do on Sunday anyway. While I’m sure I’ll be tempted to use holograms when they become an option, I know life is better when I get off my couch and go Where I Can See You.
I’d love to see you Sunday, or anywhere, IRL.
Love Anyway,
Rebecca
w/Matt Gelfer, Nick Stephens, Chris Nattrass, Susie Greenebaum, and Mollie McQuarrie