Spam-Scammers are Not Sending their Best

Fisking the Scam-Spam Bots

The day my Kickstarter launched, I became very popular. Not with potential backers, mind you, but with the usual online vultures who interrupt your own hustle with their dogged attempts to turn you into their sucker customer.

Here was the first message forwarded to me:

I’ve been working very hard at containing my cynicism for years now. Every time I successfully overcome it, I find out I was not nearly cynical enough.

The compliments in that message were pretty generic, but the confusion about how shipping would work is believable enough. Since this came to me via email (and to this day I still don’t see any comments on my campaign page to reply to) I took a chance and replied to the email, wherein I said:

Does anyone…

A) find my response unintelligible?

B) not see my response at all, as if I typed it with disappearing cyber-ink?

I ask because I received this reply(?) to my reply (note the middle line):

The questions asked in that first paragraph can all be answered by reading the campaign page. But these grifter-bots apparently don’t bother reading the text on the campaign page. Or bother reading replies to their messages. I assume they automatically spam you not knowing or caring anything about your project, just because they notice a campaign was launched.

But I’m touched that he hopes I’m doing well.

Here’s another one. See if you detect a pattern so far:

“John” is not really active on Kickstarter, you see. He has to communicate via email because he just can’t figure out how to send a message via the platform, see.

Around the time I got this one, I noticed something weird happening. Backers were canceling their pledges, but the total pledge amount wasn’t dropping much when they did. Why would they cancel a pledge within hours of pledging? I’m fairly talented at pissing people off, but it usually takes me a little more time than that.

Upon further observation, I decided the spam-scammers were making $1 pledges just so they could send me these messages, asking me to email them, then cancelling the pledge a few hours later—probably contingent upon me failing to take the bait.

This next one was a genius:

“I’m really interested in your campaign and I’d love to understand more about the story behind the project what inspired it and how the idea first started.”

Well, shucks. I never would have guessed it was this easy to find superfans so deeply interested in my inspiration.

“I’m also curious about the product itself and how it’s meant to work or be used in practice.“

It’s a book. You read it. Usually by turning pages. It’s even got pictures to help highly-intelligent not-bots like you follow the story.

“It would help me get a clearer picture before asking friends to supporting it.“

Golly-Gee! Let me rushing right out and giving you my email address, then.

“I may also share it with a few friends who could find it interesting as well.“

That’s great—maybe you could also share it with some friends! Maybe even ask some friends to support it. And then you could share it with some friends. You know what? It would be just awesome if you also asked some friends to supporting it, too.

“Also I’m not always active on here because of my schedule so I’m usually easier to reach via Gmail If that’s more convenient we can continue the conversation there.“

How lucky am I? I mean, my campaign went live just exactly at one of those rare instants when you happened to be active on here. It’s an omen! I should give you all my credit card information ASAP! But yes, since you’re so inactive here and could only remember how to send a message this one time, and since Kickstarter forwarding this message to my email proves that it would be impossible to communicate via the platform, we have no choice but to email each other directly. Or maybe you’d like me to meet you on Snapchat or Whatsapp?

“My Gmail is the same as my display name so you can reach me that way“

Dang—it would really suck if some Internet vulture were to see your email address and started spamming you. I better keep it a secret.

I also got this flavor of message:

Interesting. Kickstarter verified my banking info months ago, and according to the info in the financial section, it’s still all good. But maybe I should give Moder access to my bank account just in case.

I dunno, though: “Moder” just doesn’t sound like an official Kickstarter representative. Maybe if somebody with a more legit-sounding name were to email me…

Well, there ya go, folks—this must be why my project wasn’t completely funded by the end of the first day: my profile and projects are hidden from public view. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

For those of you curious about the project itself and how to use it:

Tales of the Earthbound is a planned series of graphic novels set on an alternate reality with superheroes. Threat Quotient is the first in the series—a 108 page full-color ensemble superhero epic designed to treat readers to all the thrills and dopamine hits fictional stories have tried to illicit since time immemorial. The Kickstarter is live right now—go reserve your copy now.