Scammers make no sense at all

On October 10, 2026 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

I always have the weird urge to fuck with people whenever I get a wrong number text message, and this was waiting for me when I got out of the shower earlier today. I almost responded with the literally true “No, I just got out of the shower” to that first message, and then decided I wasn’t in the mood to troll a stranger and just played it straight, expecting either no response or a quick apology and then radio silence. Instead, I got this interaction, which just gets weirder with every message.

Why did you send Emma a selfie of you already at the gym?

Why did you ask me to confirm I wasn’t Emma, when I’d already told you twice? Was there a chance that I was going to turn out to be wrong, and realize I had been Emma all along?

What’s the deal with “work” coming through as “wr ok” both times? And “numbver” twice?

And I made sure to include the timestamps on the rest of the messages, because the timing was so weird. There’s an hour between “How should I address you?” and “You haven’t answered my question,” and then another 40 minutes between that and Emma showing up, nearly two hours after the original message. Nothing about this interaction feels normal at all, which makes me feel like it has to be a prelude to a scam, but this is not the first time that I’ve felt like I was on the path to being scammed by someone and, bewilderingly, never actually got to the part where the scamming happened.

(Follow-up to that story: I did eventually get a response from the real editor on LinkedIn confirming that no, that message was not from her, and I got a whole different message from a different scammer a few weeks later which I replied to with total credulity, hoping something fun would happen. No response to that one either.)

Anyway, I dunno. Maybe Mia’s older than she looks and English isn’t her first language and she’s maybe friendlier than she ought to be and that’s why everything feels so off, but I kept waiting for the part where she hits me up for $500 for a picture of her tits or something, and instead it just sorta trailed off. If anybody has a good idea about what the hell was going on here, or wants to try to convince me that this was a normal interaction that I’m reading too much into, feel free.

FYAC, DIAF

On November 4, 2015November 4, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

giphy-1 Naturally, this happens the week after Searching for Malumba comes out. Consider it a bonus story.

I have a number of former students with whom I am in at least irregular contact. One of them, a former DC student, which is why she has my phone number, reliably texts me three or four days a week about something or another. Today I got a text from her as I was leaving the house. She was griping about her teeth; she’d just been to the dentist and had them (apparently rather thoroughly) cleaned, and they hurt. I reassured her that it was unlikely that her teeth were going to hurt forever and went on my way– which, at that particular time, involved going and getting in my car to go pick up my son. A moment later, I got three more picture texts– I can tell when someone sends me a picture because of the way my watch shows me the notification, but can’t actually get a thumbnail or anything.

I, waiting at a red light, glanced at the pictures a couple of minutes later and realized that she’d sent me three pictures of her new high school, since they just moved. She thinks it looks like a jail. She’s right.

I don’t text while driving often (he said) but when I do, I voice text, and it’s generally pretty damn accurate. I sent her the following message:

It took me a minute before I had a chance to look at those and at first I thought you had sent me pictures of your teeth.

Because, of course, she’d just come from the dentist! Smile a couple of times– hell, point the camera at the filling in your molar, hell if I know– and send off the pictures of your nice freshly cleaned teeth. Not an out-of-context picture of a jail-like school building.

I glanced at my phone before hitting Send. Thank fucking God.

It took me a minute before I had a chance to look at those and at first I thought you had sent me pictures of your titties.

…

WHAT THE FUCK, VOICE TEXT. This is supposed to be an adaptive program, right? It learns your voice and all that shit. Y’all have been reading me for a minute. You know I swear. You have hundreds of thousands of words of my writing to wade through on this site. I dare you to find another place where I said “titties.” Why the fuck would my phone think I said “titties” when I said “teeth”?

I’d have had to drive off a bridge. I’d have had to find a bridge, because hell if I can think of where the closest one is off the top of my head, and then I’d have to drive off of it, because my only options at that point would have been to be arrested or to become an internet meme.

Phones are stupid.

Random question for the olds

On December 29, 2014December 29, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized32 Comments

I’m guessing you’d need to be at least 30-35 for your answer to this question to matter to me– old enough that you spent your life on analog/wired phones, and that you bought *yourself* your first cell phone. Two questions:

1) Do you actually remember getting your first cell phone? Like, was it an Event? Can you describe the phone, or nail down what year it was that you bought it?

2) Can you remember sending or receiving your first text message? (Preferably, for the purposes of this question, these two events did not occur on the same day– in other words, you had a cell phone before text messages were a Thing.)

Just curious. And, for the record, I’m just as interested in the “no” answers as the “Yes, this is when it was” answers, so if you don’t remember one of the two, let me know. Thanks.

In case you ever thought I was smart

On July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

I’d like to point out that Chuck Wendig is a Real Author and this is therefore somewhat more humiliating than it ought to be. I have literally been complaining about “ducking” since I got an iPhone and this is the first time it’s been pointed out to me that ducking actually is a goddamn verb.

I is a writar!