Horrible People Prosper; Why Shouldn’t I?

Zach J. Payne
3 min readMar 2, 2019
Photo by Moses Vega on Unsplash

Yesterday, I watched Hank Green’s new Vlogbrothers video about robocalls.

By this year, according to statistics from the FCC, there will be more phone calls made trying to defraud somebody than there will be other calls. Visiting his in-laws down in Florida (in a community that skews older and more affluent), he says they get several fraudulent phone calls a day.

The calls tend to be anything from your typical Nigerian Prince scheme to the IRS is coming to arrest you and take all your money to If you want your computer to work, you need to pay me $50 for this software bundle.

Green says that these scammers make, on average, about $400 per scam.

The message that I got from the video was Wow, I wish I had gotten in on that! I’d make a killing.

Finally, a practical use for a theatre major.

It’s not that I want to hurt other people. Not really.

It’s that, after a lifetime of being kind and helpful and respectful and working hard and trying my best, I have shit to show for it.

Meanwhile, you don’t have to look any further than the White House to see the rewards of being a lying, grifting conman. Surely, I have the brains to do whatever the hell Trump is doing. If I could get over my moral scruples, I…

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