The fact that the right-wing media industrial complex is one big scam has been obvious since Rick Perlstein wrote 'The Long Con' for The Baffler in 2012. Right-wingers seem especially vulnerable to grifters because they are told not to trust the 'lamestream media', by which they mean any media sources not run by righties.
The latest mass grift to be exposed is a 'subscription trap' scam fueled by Facebook ads. Naturally, this scam was started by a young Republican booster. Like many right-wing scam artists, from Alex Jones to Dana Loesch to Ben Shapiro, much of the products hawked in this scam are bogus 'supplements':
As for the products, a current employee described the diet and male enhancement offerings as “the worst of the worst … China-made sawdust in a capsule.”
The Buzzfeed article, like 'The Long Con', is required reading... it points out how non-social media savvy individuals can get sucked into these scams, which come across as a blend of multilevel marketing and social media trolling. The real lesson, though, is that the only way to win the Facebook game is not to play at all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I still like the print versions — for example, a 24-pages-or-so brochure selling nutritional supplements that mixes nutty politics with life-or-death medical implications. Sample (I made this one up, but it's qualitatively accurate):
Why Hillary Clinton Doesn't Want You
To Know About This Life-Saving Cure!
Yes, evil Hillary and others around her somehow want to corner all the chalk-and-baking-soda pills, even if honest, hard-working people die, to control the price for their own greedy ends.
Or something. Plus something something.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
And even more nothing.
No scam quite like an affinity scam! The bleach-drinkers are the worst, because they are actively harming children with their snake oil.
It’s almost like there’s some kind of correlation between the people who fall for right wing scammers and the ones who fall for evangelical Christian scammers.
Loesch and her self-proclaimed 'nazi hunter' husband really take the cake. I think Big Boppa might be on to something there with his comment.
Post a Comment