On Internet Scams

For every Nigerian Prince trying to get access to your life's savings, there are 100 YouTubers doing ad-reads for scam products or services.  I'll try to explain the scamishness of the broad categories I can think of at the moment:

GOLD -- gold is not an investment. At best, gold is a hedge -- but only if you actually possess the physical gold.  Far more commonly, gold is a gamble, a speculation, and the more-so when all you have in hand is a piece of paper saying that you own some hypothetical amount of hypothetical gold in some hypothetical vault hypothetically somewhere.  And when do the big boy speculators ever let "the little guy" win at the game of speculation?  The whole point of speculative bubbles is to get you, "the little guy", to voluntarily dump the contents of your pockets into their pockets.

THE INTERNATIONAL ART MARKET -- The international art market is a massive money-laundering scheme.  Perhaps that bubble is about to burst, and so the people running it are trying to entice *you* into being the sucker left holding the (now empty) bag.  Even if those ad-reads to entice you to "invest" in the international art market were legit, at best you would have a speculation, not an investment.

DECLARE YOURSELF A LORD/LAIRD OR LADY -- You, Gentle Reader, are almost certainly a citizen of the  American Republic; thus, the very idea of declaring yourself to be a lord/laird or lady ought to be repugnant to you, even were this ad-read not a scam.  You do not become a laird or lady because someone enticed you to waste good money for a piece of paper claiming that you are the "owner" of a square foot of land in Scotland.

FAMOUS JAPANESE STEEL KNIVES -- With these scams, at least you get something of some value, however under-performing, in return.  Admittedly, the knives are over-hyped and over-priced; but at least the scammy ad-read doesn't claim that they are an investment.

MEN'S SKIN-CARE PRODUCTS -- Again, over-hyped and over-priced, but at least you get something of some sort of value in return.. However, what are you, some sort of sissy?  Are you going to use "foundation" next?  You know, one major reason that women often look older than men of the same age is all that shit which they slather over their faces from the time they are pre-teens.  That, and smoking -- a higher proportion of women than men smoke, and smoking dramatically ages one's skin.  By all means, take care of your health, including of your skin ... but these products will help neither your overall health nor the health of your skin. And, they're wildly expensive to boot.

DOG FOOD ADDITIVES -- Again, over-hyped and over-priced. If, as the ad-read asserts, typical dog-food, such as you are currently feeding you dog, is "dead" and bereft of nutrients, how is it that your dog hasn't already ascended to that Great Kennel In The Sky?

"QUALITY" MEATS and MEAL INGREDIENTS SHIPPED TO YOUR DOOR -- Once again, over-hyped and over-priced, but at least you get something with some degree of value for the money you wasted.  It's just meat, and it's just ingredients such as you can buy at any grocery store ... but with far more packaging to be thrown away and more shipping costs (i.e. a higher "carbon footprint").  You care about the environment, don't you, Hippy?

JOB STACKING -- "Job stacking" is the scam which claims to teach you how to successfully "work" multiple full-time jobs from home without getting "caught by corporate overlords".  Think about this: if you know you are not doing anything wrong, why would you be afraid of being caught by "corporate overlords"? AND, if you are a moral "influencer", why would you lend you name to this sort of scam?

So, what is my over-arching point? It is that to do these ad-read is to lend one's name and reputation to these scams -- it is to attempt to scam one's audience on behalf of these scammers.  "I need to assure a steady income" will no more withstand God's scrutiny than will "I was just following orders".