Beware of Snakes and Gurus
There was this wall-street “guru” who has this newsletter I subscribed to, and I’ve never unsubscribed for reasons none other than sheer curiosity.
You see, this guy (who I’ll refrain from naming for obvious reasons) keeps sending the same format of emails week in, week out.
In those emails, he assures you that he has an urgent offer for you. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you cannot miss. He tells you that he has found a way to make you filthy rich, and all you have to do, is to click on this link.
The link then redirects you to an overly crafted text format that seems to be written some sort of cross between a sleazy 60s car salesman, and a scammy fortune teller.
You start reading and he’s immediately praying on people’s hopes and dreams while repeatedly telling them stuff like: Why wouldn’t you want to become a millionaire?
No experience needed, no effort, no hardwork… And you become a millionaire overnight, so there’s no need for patience either.
All you need to do is to click on this other link to reveal the secret to “your” eminent wealth.
When you click on that, it redirects you to a page where you have to pay somewhere between $500 and $1000 just to “unlock the secret”.
And on that same page, he “reminds” you: What’s 500 dollars in exchange of X millions?
And by the way, this is a time sensitive offer. After midnight, this once in a lifetime opportunity will cease to exist, so this is your LAST chance to become a millionaire.
Until the next week where he introduces the next one-time-only, once in a lifetime opportunity… For the zillionth time.
It’s perfectly clear that he’s playing on people’s sense of urgency as well. He has all the hallmarks of con artist, if he wasn’t a constant mainstay in podcasts all over YouTube.
Which made even more curious.
I wondered how come nobody tried to distance themselves from him, but above all, how come people keep falling for this crap?
Until one day when I opened my email, and I found one of his overnight wealth-making, life-changing secrets.
As it turns out, there was some technical error where instead of sending the secret email to the select few who had paid that monstrous sum of money… The email went by mistake to all his email list instead.
So I started reading.
At first, he opens by congratulate you on making the important step of changing your life forever, and reminds you that after reading the following text, you’ll end up with a fail-proof way to start making 2000 dollars per hour.
No skill or experience needed.
Oh this is gonna be good! I thought to myself.
The email says: (Paraphrasing)
“Meet John, John is considered as one of the top voice actors in Hollywood. He makes something around $200.000 per movie.
*I’m no dubbing expert, but I know that movies don’t last more than 2, 3 hours so I don’t imagine he’d work more than 100 hours per movie. *
That’s translates to at least $2000 per hour of work.
So there you have it, if you want to make a quick 2 grand per hour, all you have to do is to become a voice actor like John.”
The mind boggled as you can expect. And I wondered, is this what people spend hundreds of Dollars on?
I almost replied:
“I can do you one better.
Meet Brad, Brad is considered as one of the top A-list actors in Hollywood. He makes something around $20 Millions per movie.
So there you have it, if you want to make a quick few million, all you have to do is to become Brad Pitt.”
It's funny, why on Earth he exchange it for money if that's formula make him millions. If he give it free I probably have a little chance believing.
Yeah exactly. I'm shocked that there are still people who fall for that.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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I applied for a job to be Brad Pitt once. I got all the way up to the final interview. Brad Pitt walks in. He goes, "Who the fuck is this guy?" The lady interviewing me is all like, "Brad! You're back! We thought you were dead!" Everyone ignored me after that. They just started talking about their cats and stuff, catching up. Eventually I just left because it felt awkward being in there with them. That sucked too, because I didn't have any money and had to walk all the way back to Canada. Fucking Brad Pitt stole my one and only chance to be Brad Pitt. I'm still kind of bitter about it and that's why I'm kind of an asshole. And this all started because of one of these goddamn guru types you speak of.
Haha that's not something you hear everyday. I mean... Sorry this Brad Pitt thingy didn't work out. :P
I'll survive. Next week I'm set up to audition to be Mr. T. Been working on my tan. Wish me luck!
Haha certainly! Good luck!
maybe try being George Clooney ??
They told me my penis was too big for that role.
I follow the guys at Hedgeye. They are very anti 'old Wall' as they call it.
I might be a little ignorant in these things so I'm googling 'old wall' haha
their way of ripping on the old wall st broker, conflict of interest system of investment bankers taking commissions and selling people horse shit, also all the investing myths and hype, etc.
The audio for a movie usually takes several days, if not a full week to record.
It really should take two hours, but it usually takes 60. (of course its 12 hour days, it took forever to get all of these people in the same room with tons of recording equipment.)
And yeah, you can get mega $s/hour doing that stuff... but you have to make that 60 hours of work last until your next movie.
Now, if you want to make a million dollars, go buy a bitcoin.
Or 5 litecoin, or a veritasium, or a 1000 Theta.
Oh thanks for the insight once again. Yeah when you need to get many people in the same room and organize groups, it always takes longer.
Btw, I was just mentioning what the guy was saying (about the voice over) and I almost replied to him jokingly.. That's all I meant. :)