I Hate the Scam-tichrist
My cousin is the sweetest person I know. She and I practically grew up together and I like to think of the two of us as siblings. However, in recent years, circumstances I won't get into made it hard for me to be around people, especially those with whom I share such close relationships. Like with many other people in my life, a rift formed between us that began to gradually widen every day. And, like with many other people in my life, I had already accepted that one day it would grow past the point of no return. All that thought could elicit in me by this point was a tired shrug. That was, at least, until I remembered that this kind of thing is exactly why I pay for therapy. So on one of my very expensive sessions that I pay lots of money for, I resisted the urge of trying to appear as God's most normal 'The Office' enjoyer and mentioned my troubles to my therapist. Have you ever been told something so disarming, but also so completely obvious that it makes you feel like a moron that you needed someone else to tell you that? If your answer was yes, then you know exactly how I felt when she looked at me and asked me: "Well, did you try talking to her?"
No. No, I hadn't.
Long story short, all I had to do was text her once, asking her if she wanted to hang out. She enthusiatically accepted, gushing about how glad she was to hear from me, because as it turns out, people don't just wake up one day and start hating you for no reason. Now, dear reader, you must be wondering why an essay titled "I Hate the Scam-tichrist" starts with a touching story about reaching out to your loved ones in times of struggle. Well, you see, my cousin lives in Milan and I live... out in the sticks. The distance isn't a problem: on the worst possible day of traffic it would take me about 90 minutes to reach Milan by car. The problem is me and Milan have a bit of a complicated relationship.
Milan is the Italian international city. It's the modern city, it's the cutting edge. Which means it's also at the cutting edge of all bullshit. So, of course, from what other place could the virus of the American scam economy enter our bloodstream if not from this festering wound in the Po Valley? But I'm getting ahead of myself. First of all, I have to preface this essay by saying I don't actually hate Milan. I think the city as a whole is actually quite the amazing place! The culture in Milan, both ancient and modern, is incredibly hard to find anywhere else in Italy, and the old center of the city is honestly such a jewel. The thing about Milan is that it's also the main economic powerhouse of the nation and that means it's full of things that fill me with the kind of white-hot rage that could power a nuclear reactor.
If you follow me on bluesky, you've probably seen a post I typed almost four hours ago as of the time of writing this. It went something like:
"my cousin, coming out of a sushi restaurant plastered in ai generated naruto posters: theres this place here where you buy mystery boxes with random electronics in them and pay them by weight, we should go buy some!
me, fists clenched and eyes bloodshot: that sounds lovely."
It was also preceded by a post about how living in Milan for two weeks would turn me into the Unabomber, but I'm sure you've already gathered that by now. Since you're one of the maybe three people that actually clicked on the link to this essay on their bluesky feeds, I'm going to tell you a secret: I actually committed a journalistic faux pas there. While, I assure you, the sushi restaurant where every wall is covered in AI-generated Naruto fanart is very much real and I still think about it whenever I need to raise my blood pressure for medical reasons, it was not in Milan and I did not visit it with my cousin (we actually visited a wonderful lamian place I recommended to her). I know. I know. This isn't the kind of high quality journalism you follow me for and I apologize, but stick with me here. The reason I included it is because I thought it was a perfect example of what exactly pisses me off about Milan. Like I said earlier, it's where the money is. So, logically, it's also where scammers and garden variety idea-men flock to in hopes of making a quick buck out of some clueless trend hoppers.
Me and my cousin had a wonderful time. We ate good food, had nice talks and all that jazz. We then decided to go take a walk in Milan's Chinatown. It's one of my favorite parts of the city, because, if nothing else, you can look at the Peking ducks on display in the shop windows and, for a single blissful moment, pretend you're not in Milan. Like most Chinatowns across the globe (I would assume, at least. I'm not that well-traveled.) it's actually more of an East-Asiatown, which means you'll have no trouble finding shops entirely dedicated to Japanese Anime or K-Pop. You'll have even less trouble finding shops that sell a little bit of everything, as long as it's pop culture related. It was in one such shop, while I tried to ignore the siren call of a 1/144 scale Gaplant gunpla (coolest suit in the UC timeline, by the way), that I first laid eyes on what inspired this essay: Italian Brainrot Trading Cards.
If you've never heard of Italian Brainrot, it's exactly what it says on the tin. Except the Italian part, I guess, because I couldn't really find anything about it that makes it distinctively Italian. Maybe it's just because it (apparently) started in Italy. Anyway, I'll keep it brief. They're images of objects or animals doing unusual things or just looking weird. You know, stuff like a shark wearing sneakers or a giant baboon covered in trees. There doesn't really seem to be any unifying theme or characteristic other than, you guessed it, every single one of them being visibly AI-generated. I stood there stunned for a moment, like a Neanderthal witnessing cold fusion. I had heard of the concept online, but I dismissed it as one of the countless week-long fads I am constantly made aware of against my will. Yes, the "Italian" part added an uncanny sense of realism to the whole thing, like it could somehow jump out of the screen and harm me in the real world, but no, I told myself, that's silly. That's just some dumb shit a bored teen in Iowa came up with that happened to gain traction online, it's not a real thing. I was steadfast in my conviction, like I didn't already receive a similar shock on that same day, when I saw my cousin's desk had a labubu hanging over it, forcing me to reckon with the reality that labubus were, in fact, a real thing that real people were buying. Yet there it was, right in front of me. A sealed booster pack with the words "Italian Brainrot Trading Cards" on it.
I tapped on my cousin's shoulder. In equal parts incredulous and derisive, I just said to her:
"Italian Brainrot Trading Cards."
With the look she saves for when she really wants to say "Oh God, he's being a yokel again", she just nodded and said "Yeah."
Headstrong, I persevered in my yokelness.
"Ok, so like. Those are obviously AI. Right?"
She took a look at the booster pack for a split second.
"Yeah, looks like it."
"Why would anyone pay for something they can generate for free?!"
I elected not to mention the facts that generative AI is an abomination and that the cards, frankly, looked like total dogshit. I mean, she probably knew. She's the one who went to art school.
"Like, c'mon," I continued, expecting her to join me in my rant, "This is obviously a scam."
She shrugged and went back to browsing the Cinnamoroll sticker sheet section. I half expected her to, given she was always the more easygoing one between us, while I was the one who usually did stuff like driving himself to madness over marketable pieces of cardboard, but it still surprised me a bit. I mean. These trading card people were trying to scam us. They churned out this slop, for lack of a better term, and were like "Yeah, those two idiots over there are probably stupid enough to buy this shit". Did she not feel insulted?
The answer was, of course, no, as she was too busy leading a happy and fulfilling life. But I don't let myself be distracted by such trivial pursuits.
Now, dear reader, let's stop for a second. I don't want you to walk away from this essay thinking I've got some condescending "noble savage" view of my cousin. That's not the case. I believe she's just as keenly aware of these things as I am (in fact, probably more. I mean, she's the one who went to art school). The thing is she chooses not to care. Which makes sense. I mean, why would you spend all your time thinking about stuff that only pisses you off and that you have no hope of ever changing? Why would she do that when that's her cousin's thing?
But no, not this time. For once in my life, I made the executive decision to simply stop caring. Judging by the fact that you're reading this right now, you can guess how well that went in the long term. But in the moment, I was beaming, basking in my newfound ability to give no fucks. I waved the Gaplant goodbye and followed my cousin out of the store. We kept walking around Chinatown and visited several other shops, including one almost entirely dedicated to selling pictures of K-pop boy band members, framed in manners not too dissimilar from holy icons. She browsed them for quite a bit, me watching with intrigue from over her shoulder, and then left, a little miffed about the shop no longer having any products featuring Stray Kids, the only group she really cares about. I was briefly reminded of myself on that time i visited an old game stall at a con in Genova and asked the guy at the counter if they had Digital Devil Saga, only to be told that no, they didn't, but they had Persona 5 if I was interested.
It was just minutes later that my belief that I more or less had an idea of how the world operated was shattered for a third time that day. As we were walking down Via Paolo Sarpi, we were accosted by a young man handing out flyers for a shop. I did what I usually do: I shook my head lightly and raised my hand in an apologetic gesture as I kept walking forward. My cousin, however, didn't. She took one of the flyers and read it intently as the guy explained to her what the shop he was advertising was. The business model was as follows: the shop sells electronics, but you don't just walk in, lift your electric pasta strainer off the shelf and pay for it, oh no. What the shop really sells is mystery boxes. The only thing on the shelves are boxes of various sizes and shapes, all wrapped in white plastic to obscure the contents. You're allowed to touch the box to feel through the plastic, but you obviously can't unwrap the boxes before you buy them. You can get as many boxes as you want and, since it's impossible for you to know the content, you pay for it by weight. If my memory serves me, it was something like 3 euros for 100 grams (for the Americans at home, off the top of my head I'd say that's 3.52 dollars for 0.2204623 pounds). The flyer was also extremely insistent (almost as much as the flyer guy was) in letting you know that "THERE IS AN IPHONE 16 AND OTHER APPLE PRODUCTS IN THE ITEM POOL".
Now. I've heard of mystery boxes and shops where you buy things by weight. I'm not that much of a hick. What I had never heard of before was a combination of the two. I tried tracking down that shop again, but all my attempts to comb through Chinatown on Google Street View left me with no leads. I suspect the reason for that is simply that Street View images tend to be a few years old and, like the snake oil salesmen of old, activities like those are short-lived and often relocate. As of the time of writing this, I texted my cousin, asking if she still has the flyer, but I think I remember her throwing it away at some point. I fear the only way to confirm that this was real and not something I dreamed up is to go there in person again, like some bizarro Milanese version of Silent Hill 2. I mean, the fog should be there in this time of the year.
By this point, I was waiting for my cousin to go "Oh, that's neat, but no, thanks!" and walk away, so I could, once we were at a respectful distance from the flyer guy, point my thumb behind me and smugly declare "Heh. What a scam, am I right?". That's not what happened. What happened is she looked at me and said "That sounds fun, wanna go?". I gave her the type of smile Agni gave in that one Fire Punch panel and went "Sure, why not!". I don't say this with pride, but I usually am very much the type of pedant who just loves to piss on people's parades when they propose something like this. Unfortunately for me, if you put a gun to my head and told me to say something rude to my cousin, the only word coming out of my mouth would be "Shoot". I still think about times I was mean to her, back when I was even less well-adjusted, with the type of guilt and regret that should be saved for veterans reminiscing about the war crimes they were forced to commit.
So I followed her into the store, manhandled a few packages (one of which I am almost sure contained a butt plug) and eventually we settled on two modestly sized boxes. She was indecisive about which one to get, so in an attempt to be the cool and hip cousin she knows I'm not, I shrugged and went "Let's just get both!". The sum total was about 20 euro. Cash only, of course. And it was at this point that I started to consider that maybe I was too hasty in my judgement. Like, yeah, your odds of finding an Apple product or anything that could actually be worth your money amidst a sea of cheap Temu garbage are abysmal, but maybe I just didn't understand their business model. Maybe what they were really selling wasn't electronics, it was the thrill of opening the box and, for a single beautiful instant, believe in the impossible. And in that sense, you were getting exactly what you paid for! Not a product, but an experience. Yes, I finally understood.
It was with this stunning revelation still echoing in my mind that we walked out of the store and opened our mystery boxes. For that single beautiful instant, the air around us was filled not just with humidity, but with the smell of miracles. The contents of the box were the following: a handheld battery-powered fan and a cheap-looking hair straightener.
Yeah, nevermind, we totally got scammed.
Like anyone with a pulse, I'm no stranger to buyer's remorse. But somehow, this felt even worse. I saw an obvious scam, knew it was a scam and, for some reason, performed an olympic-level feat of mental gymnastics to convince myself that falling for it was smart, actually. They didn't even have to convince me, I did it all by myself! I couldn't help but let out a dejected "Well, that sucks". My cousin, ever the pragmatist, just shrugged and said she'll make the money back by reselling them on Vinted. Those words struck my mind and made it resound like a church bell, in ways I couldn't even fully understand yet. I don't use the word kafkaesque lightly, mainly because it somehow makes me sound even whiter than I obviously am, but come on. If this isn't kafkaesque then what is?!
Think about how this works. The people running the shop order a bunch of shit that's like 3 bucks on Temu. Then customers come in and buy mystery boxes filled with that garbage and, when the inevitable realization that they don't actually need the garbage they bought hits, they are faced with a choice. To accept defeat and resign themselves to their place in the world as a rube or to try to make at least some of their money back. When my cousin announced her intention to do the latter, it suddenly hit me that that's probably what most people do. They hop on Vinted and either sell what they bought at a loss just to get rid of it or they try to find an even bigger mark than them who would buy their junk at a jacked up price. There's probably a hot-potato-like market for electronics that no one really uses (because they suck) and exist for the sole purpose of being offloaded to someone else. These are products real people made. Someone sat down and designed that battery-powered fan, someone assembled it, someone delivered it. But the fan itself was never the purpose. In fact, the small box with "battery-powered fan" written on it could've been filled with gravel for all we knew, and it would've made no difference. I wasn't special for knowing at first glance that that place was a scam. Everyone could tell! But now I finally understood what it was that they were selling: they're selling you the opportunity to BE the scammer. Yes, we are an obvious scam! But if you buy a box, maybe you really will get an iPhone for 10 bucks! You will have scammed the scammer! And failing that, you'll still get the consolation prize of scamming some idiot out of their money on Vinted!
I stood there, fists clenched and eyes bloodshot, in the same state of shock as the protagonist of a Lovecraftian horror story to whom the most horrifying secrets of the universe were just revealed, until my cousin turned to me.
"Hey, it's starting to rain, let's go home and watch some movies."
We watched Predator and Alien Vs. Predator. Man, I love those movies to pieces.
Now, reader, here's a choice. A blue pill and a red pill, if you will. You can stop reading this essay now and walk away with the conclusion of "Local hick sees labubu, immediately loses mind". I won't judge you, because that is admittedly funny as fuck and it is pretty much exactly what happened. But let me offer you another alternative first. The red pill. You can keep reading and nod along to my half-baked rambling about how it's actually a matter of principle.
Wait.
Wait, where are you going.
.
.
.
Ok, now that those icky normies are gone we can start talking about the real stuff. It's just you and me now, different, more discerning reader. So let's get back to business.
My cousin is a stronger person than I could ever hope to be. I spent one day in Milan and I still catch myself clicking pens as I stare into empty space, thinking about labubus and Italian Brainrot. She lives there. She rawdogs that every single day of her life and it doesn't seem to have any effect on her whatsoever. Is it desensitization? Is it mental fortitude? Is it the fact that I must be missing some critical base pair in my DNA that would allow me to look at a pack of trading cards without re-enacting Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'? The world may never know. But what I do know is that in my restless dreams, I see that store.
I've spent more time thinking about it than any sane person ever should. About the concept of a scam predicated on the premise of making you think you're the scammer. I know, I know. The concept of the scam economy is nothing new and you certainly didn't need some smarmy 22-years-old with a superiority complex to tell you about it. I mean, you've probably heard about crypto before, and if you haven't, please tell me what remote asteroid you live on. I want a spot there, too.
What pushed me to write this article essay thing was realizing that the scam economy is, in fact, nothing new. That it had already infiltrated every aspect of my life before I even knew what a bitcoin was. Two days ago I went out to get groceries and when I got home, I got hit with a nasty surprise. I bought some mozzarella (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm Italian, get your heehees and your hahas out of the way now) at the usual discount store. It's a fine store, but the thing about it that irritates me to no end is that they're sly opportunists. Some supermarkets have a section dedicated to food that will expire soon, so that people can buy it at a discount and avoid food waste. That's a great initiative, in my opinion. A bit of a sign of the times, if you ask me, but hey, this is the world we live in. Anyway, the discount store I shop at does not do that.
What they do is they take the food that expires today or tomorrow and they move it to the front of the shelf, hoping some idiot forgets to check the expiration date and buys it at full price. Two days ago, I was that idiot. So I was standing there in my kitchen, fuming about it. That's such a shitty thing to do. Why is it even legal? If they mess up the refrigeration process (and I have bought my fair share of completely melted popsicles from that store so, trust me, it happens) someone could get seriously ill! And for what? Sure, I guess less food gets wasted this way, but I doubt the store does this out of compassion for the starving children of Africa. They do it so the store makes like 0.01% more money this month. So I have to be constantly hypervigilant about expiration dates when I go get groceries unless I feel like running the risk of catching something lethal. So, even if I wasn't hungry, I opened one pack of mozzarella and ate it out of my bare hands over the sink as I breathed a sigh of exasperation. "Man," I thought "what a scam."
My fist clenched around the mozzarella, instantly turning it into mush, which by the way, is something that doesn't happen if it's still fresh. It is a scam. That's exactly what it is! A scam!!! And what's the only way to avoid it? To go fetch stuff from the back of the shelf on purpose! In other words, scamming the scammer! It was so normalized that until now I never even gave it a second thought, but it's the guiding principle behind so much shit that everyone hates!!!
Want to answer a phone call from an unknown number? Sure, go ahead! Uh-oh! Your voice has been stolen by AI and your grandma gave the Albanian mafia 10k euros because she thought you required urgent medical care! But don't worry! Your phone service provider offers this neat service that tells you if the unknown number calling you is a known scammer! And it's free(asterisk)! Oh, what's that? Ohhh, you thought I said it's free? Oh, no, no, you silly goose! I said it's free(asterisk), which is a legal term that actually means it costs 10 euros a month. No, you can't just "deactivate it", it says that in the terms of your contract. Yeah, the contract they intentionally made to be dozens of pages long and full of opaque technical terms so you'd just sign it without reading it. You're saying you're gonna block the payments? Ohhh, scamming the scammer! That's clever! Yeah, you can do that. They're gonna sue you, though. Yeah, they'll sue you. Yeah, over 10 euros. Is any of this legal? Who knows! It's not like anyone's even gonna bother checking, anyway!
This isn't some shit I made up, by the way. This happened to my dad. Almost word for word. Wanna know how he solved it? You'll never guess. He said that he didn't care if it was illegal, he would keep the payments blocked and if they wanted to sue him over it, then so be it. You know what I'm about to say. Say it with me. He scammed the scammer. It's a scam or be scammed world!
So here I am, once again, fists clenched, eyes bloodshot, mozzarella juices running down my forearm, thinking about how much I hate what the world has come to. Feeling simultaneously deranged and like the last bastion of sanity in the world. I am briefly reminded of those stupid trollface memes from 2020, in particular the one where he's holding a shotgun and yelling "I HATE THE ANTICHRIST!" over and over again, as he hides from people with blue U.N. helmets, beckoning him to come outside and "drink his corn syrup". I am briefly shaken out of my rage when I realize how horribly those comics have aged in the current political climate. But there is a grain of truth in there! I DO hate the antichrist, as long as by antichrist you mean the capitalistic instinct to squeeze everything, down to the last drop of blood, out of everyone by any means necessary! Which, to be honest, probably wasn't the original intent of the comic. Let's be real, it was probably about gay people or something. God, maybe I should change the title of this essay. Can you do it on this site? If you can, I can't find the button. Well, if I did, I'd have to rewrite this paragraph and that's a thousand times worse than having randoms on bluesky call me problematic or whatever.
So, yeah, if you were wondering where the mediocre portmanteau that titles this post came from, I guess you have your answer now. And on that note, congratulations! You picked the red pill and followed- wait, shit. That's another problematic reference. Listen, I'm tired and my caffeine-induced high is coming to an end, so you're just gonna have to take my word that I'm not some manosphere nazi, because may God smite me if I'm lying, I refuse to rewrite any part of this post at this point.
Anyway.
You followed me to the end of this... thing! Congratulations! I'm sure it wasn't easy. So, now you must be expecting a prize, a final life-changing conclusion to walk away with!
I don't-
I don't got one.
I'm going to be honest with you, the reason I'm writing this is because yesterday night, at 2:28 AM (I know because the website tells me that), I was lying awake in bed after consuming an inordinate amount of energy drinks, giving the ceiling the Kubrick stare as I once again thought about that damn store. It's now 4:30 PM on the next day, and hitting Publish on this post seems more and more like a bad idea with every passing second. But I'm going to do it anyway, because I'm hoping against hope that sharing this will exorcise the spirit haunting me. The spirit of Italian Brainrot Trading Cards.
So, I guess all I can offer you as a conclusion is this:
Have you ever been fuming with rage about something that's obviously wrong and terrible, but that no one seems to really care about? Yeah, me too, buddy. And I'm sure we're not the only ones. So if you also share the mysterious genomic mutation that fills you with incandescent rage when some person or system tries to get one over you, please hold on to that rage. Will it change the world? Ehhh. I can't promise you that. But I can promise you that it will remind me that if I'm insane, at least it's not some novel type of insanity they'd have to give my name to. Thank you for reading.