James Kwack wrote about telecom “innovation” on Simon Johnson’s “Baseline Scenario” blog…
“NewYork Times technology columnist David Pogue is mounting a campaign against those canned messages that cellular carriers play after the greeting on your mobile phone voicemail… – you know, the ones that say “to leave a voice message, wait for the beep,” only they take 30 seconds doing so, for th sole purpose of chewing up the mobile phone minutes of the person calling you.”
James Kwack’s post made me think about how the best cons are the ones in which the Marks don’t even know they have been had. How I long for the days when you knew you had been suckered.
Take for example, my experience many years ago when I was just an 18 year old lad.
Shell Game (borrowed from http://ttoes.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/stimulus-shell-game/)
As I was leaving the bank in Long Beach with a dear $50.00 cash, there were a number of people gathered on the sidewalk and a tremendous excitement was about. I stepped over to see what was causing the commotion and saw a man running a shell game complete with walnut shells and a dried pea. I knew what I was looking at and immediately assured myself that I would stay clear. Out of curiosity though, I stayed, but only to observe.
As I stood there and watched, a fellow was playing busily and winning over and over again. This fellow’s success in no way whetted my appetite for the game so that what followed remains a wonder to me to this day.1
This player kept shouting, “I got this guy good, ’cause he doesn’t do the game right.” He was so busy he never even looked up. Each time the man shuffled the walnuts, quick as a wink, the player would pick one shell up to reveal the little green pea. Then everybody would scream with delight as the shell-shuffler counted more green backs into the player’s hand and shook his head in apparent frustration over the player’s adeptness.
And then it happened.
The player took a 100 dollar bill and shoved it at the guy shuffling shells. Then the shuffler said that he couldn’t cover any more big bets. The player suddenly turned and shoved the 100 dollar bill into my hand and said, “Hey kid, you take this hundred and give me 50 dollars so this guy will let me play. When I win you just keep the hundred and I’ll pocket another couple hundered of this guy’s dollars for myself.”
In the retelling, it hard to communicate just how fast this all happened. It was like a lightening strike. In retrospect, how could I have thought that the 100 dollar bill in my hand was insurance? But there you have it. I felt like someone doing a small favor with the possible added benefit of doubling my money. Lickity-split, I thrust my right hand into my pocket and delivered a couple of twenties and a ten into the hands of the player, all the while clutching the 100 dollar bill in my left hand.
The shuffler’s hands flew and the player, as confident as ever, grabbed the walnut shell that would have the pea beneath it. And then the unthinkable happened. A great groan emanated from the crowd, and there, under the walnut shell, was a cavernous emptiness.
For a moment, time stood still as my mind rushed to some conclusions about what this all might mean. In my hand I had a 100 dollar bill, but my 50 dollars, the 50 dollars I had given the player, was sitting on the table next to the shells. Just as I looked for those 50 dollars the man’s hand whooshed them away to some secret place.
Then the player looked back at me, “tough luck kid”, he said, “I had the guy, you saw that, but he got good all of a sudden”. He grabbed the $100 bill from my left hand and, shaking his head, said, “I’ve had enough of this”, and was gone.
The crowd was already shouting again, and the play was on once more, but for me there was only the shock of realization that I had been taken with my eyes wide open by a man running a shell game and his shill.
Even now, as I retell the tale, the pain and embarrassment of that moment returns to me as fresh as that first awful moment of awareness. At least I knew I’d been had.
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- The con artist relies on “what we know” by using it against us. We know that our cell phone voice mail is a “free” benefit that is paid not by us, the receivers of calls, but by us, invisibly, as the callers. The shell game artists know that we know enough not to play, so they take us as a third party in their game. ↩
