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The Nigerian prince eager to fork over his inheritance, the family friend stranded unexpectedly in Norway, the lonely Russian beauty looking for love . . . they spam our inboxes with their hapless pleas for help, money, and your social security number. In Dot Con, Veitch finally answers the question: what would happen if you replied?
Suspicious emails pop up in our inboxes and our first instinct is to delete unopened. But what if you responded to the deposed princess begging for money in your Gmail? Veitch dives into the underbelly of our absurd email scam culture, playing the scammers at their own game, and these are the surprising, bizarre, and hilarious results.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 2, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780306874581
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780306874581
- File size: 9764 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 15, 2020
A British comedian dedicates his days to drafting playfully funny conversations with the authors of scam emails. Veitch's penchant for scamming the scammer originated with a comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and continued with a few TED talks. In this collection, first published in the U.K. in 2015, the author describes how he creates a persona tailored to each weird phishing email he gets. "I think of the spam folder not as Pandora's box, but as a costume shop in which you can play and play at being whoever and whatever you wish," he writes. "If only for a time. Last week, I was a bank robber, a pilot and the one-time confidant of a beautiful Arabian princess--and that was just Monday." In the fitfully interesting email exchanges that follow, Veitch tortures the scammers, whether he needs to pose as a hedge fund manager or a "fruit consultant." They vary widely in length, from "The Sheriff and the Vacuum Cleaner," simply twisted to form surreal poetry, to a lengthy conversation with "Winnie Mandela," concerned about her husband's health. "Given that Nelson died three months ago I'd describe his health condition as fairly serious," Veitch retorts. Whether the scammers originate in the Philippines, Dubai, or Nigeria, the comic's ultimate goal is to drive them to profanity-laden rage-quitting, which he does more and more successfully as the exchanges stack up. As the scammers arrive offering gold, fortunes, and even romance, they soon find their own scams turned around on them as Veitch variously demands poems, declarations of love, and a blurb for his illusory book, Sensitive Passion. It's a weird niche, but the author's absurdist approach and enthusiasm for his work make for unpredictably funny reading. An amusing, oddball compilation of email exchanges with princesses, smugglers, and other charlatans.COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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January 1, 2020
Former Apple Store Genius and viral comedian Veitch, whose TED talk "This Is What Happens When You Reply To Scam Email" is the third most viewed TED talk ever (and projected to be the first by October 2020), reveals what happens when you reply to those annoying scams. With a 40,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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