FOCUSED INDIGNATION: DAMN SCAMS

It’s a political year, in the U.S., at least. That means daily overexposure to indignant rants and high-fives over personal insults directed to people with different points of view—nowadays, it seems there are only two, all black or white, no room for gray. (Pick a side, dammit. And stay there. For EVERYTHING.) I’m in Canada but the U.S. has always cast a heavy shadow. 

 

Alas, the personal attacks and the my-guy-can-do-nothing-wrong vs. your-guy’s-a-buffoon positioning has crossed over as certain Canadian “leaders” have noticed that stoking division gets followers fired up. The staid standards of the politics of yore led to disinterest by many citizens. Now it’s easy to be political, no depth of understanding required. Soundbites, spectacle, snappy chants and tweets require no more thought or action beyond clicking the like button, maybe retweeting if it’ll draw more likes to your own account. 

 

Good god. November is still so far away. 

 

I tell myself I stay on social media so I can show agents I have what’s called a “platform” to promote a book if and when anyone should finally deem my writing worthy. Partly because of the negativity that’s inescapable when I log on and partly because it’s one of those stereotypes of getting older, I feel a rush of indignation most days. I try as much as I can to steer away from that political version—it’s a packed arena already and I’ve found I feel better remaining several steps removed from it…informed when it seems important enough but content with making up my own mind and feeling no need to share. That used to be the Canadian way. No talk about religion or politics. The weather is variable enough to get through any unwanted banter in the grocery store line. Extolling the extreme tastiness of someone’s homemade dip or cherry pie suffices at a social gathering as long as I keep moving around and say my goodbyes early. (I’m good at early exits, usually sneaking away without those prolonged last bits of conversation.) 

 

Indignation offers distraction. The righteousness feels empowering. (Boy, I’m on a roll!) Being feisty is a welcome bit of counterprogramming to daily chillaxing to Netflix. (Do I really want to give Bridgerton another try? How many Queer Eye makeovers can I watch? I didn’t even shed a tear over the last two.) During COVID, my indignation focused on anti-maskers. It switched to the dudes who drove cars with loud mufflers and backfiring thingamajigs, making laps around my neighborhood every single day. I finally wrote a letter to the Vancouver Police Department—yeah, I’m that guy—and got a lengthy, empathic reply but no change. My Cranky Old Man badge probably got delivered to my last address. I didn’t pay to have things forwarded. Those fees! Now there’s a rant…

 

I’ve shifted once again. My ire is directed at scammers. They have no soul. Literally, in many cases due to the Invasion of Bots, always allegedly from one of several countries that is an indisputable nemesis. Or was. (Seriously, how is the plight of Ukraine cast aside and the power of Putin minimized or even lauded? This seems like side-taking just to be ornery but the stakes are too high. A country’s independence and freedom doesn’t seem to matter when you’re an attention-seeking politician from the state of Georgia.) 

 

Oops, politics. Sorry about that. 

 

Scammers. We can all agree they’re vile, can’t we? Shame! Shame on the people doing it or creating the bots to do the dirty work. 

 

As I type, I’m filled with righteous indignity. Damn, it feels good.

 

It used to be a tweet inviting me to click on a link to learn exactly what “nasty things” someone was saying about me. Honestly, I remember the first time, so long ago. I assumed it was homophobic. I worried it would leak to parents at my school, causing sidewalk protests and my rapid firing. Still, despite my panic spiral, I knew not to click. I’d learn about the “nasty things” once the people showed up with their signs and all the misspellings I’d be tempted to dash out and correct in red pen. (Did I just imply that homophobes are less intelligent or have spelling challenges at the very least? Sorry, not sorry.) 

 

I used to receive emails from African royalty, promising a considerable financial token of appreciation if I’d be so kind as to provide my bank info so the prince’s funds could be held in trust. Tempting but I waited for an irresistible extra enticement—an invitation for a stay at the palace. Never came. 

 

For starters, I'm not American...
(Always start with the easiest point.)

Then there were those invitations to join AARP. I couldn’t figure out the scam angle, but it was outrageous spam at the very least. It was spam, wasn’t it?

 

Scamming has become part of my daily life. To my knowledge, I’ve yet to be duped but the attempts are getting more specific, more nuanced. I’ve received texts notifying me about my accounts being frozen in every bank in Canada and a few American ones. Every so often, my actual financial institution comes up. I’m thinking about withdrawing my hundred dollars and stashing it under the mattress. Ha! Now try to dupe me.

 

I get alerts from phone providers and Netflix. I must respond immediately or have my accounts suspended. This, I think, would sever my ties with Queer Eye once and for all. No more guilt about those t-shirts with holes and stains or about not moisturizing in the morning. It could be freeing.

 

I supposedly have packages from UPS, Amazon and Canada Post deemed undeliverable. WHAT?! Did I online shop in my sleep? I can’t afford to be ordering things. That money under my mattress won’t cover it. If the package doesn’t arrive, I can get the charge removed on my credit card. 

 

Credit card companies are texting me, too. I really need to start taking Nyquil to put me out the whole night. 

 

I can’t answer the phone anymore. My mother is the only exception, of course. Soon, scammers will figure out how to access our phone contacts and use AI to impersonate friends and family who’ve landed in jail and need bail money wired to them. My octogenarian mother in jail? Shame on you, damn scammers.

 

The calls are usually in Chinese. The area codes vary. Sometimes—okay, full disclosure, always—I think it’s an agent calling me. He/She loves my manuscript. It’ll be a New York Times bestseller, an Oprah pick, there’s Pulitzer potential. I’m so tempted to answer. They’ll leave a message won’t they if it goes to voicemail? They won’t be miffed just because I’m screening. We have to do that nowadays. If it’s sure to be an Oprah pick, I’ll call right back. Even if it all sounds like a bot scam. 

 

Oprah! 

 

I think I’ve just identified a new potential scam targeting everyone who identifies as a writer on Twitter. Don’t trace it back to this post. I’m not the one who programmed the bot.

 

The fact they stole my purely hypothetical ideas makes me even more indignant.

 

 

 

NEXT UP: How scamming is affecting my “dating” life…

  

THE SHADOW THAT HATE CASTS

Strange time to be in northern Colorado. I made it through the whole Meet the Parents week which included an open house and a Thanksgiving dinner. I could feel the scrutiny, every move and non-move being analyzed. Most of the time, I think I passed muster; a few times, I came off as disinterested or passive. Although Americans and Canadians are similar, there are subtle differences and my classically Canadian reserved nature, mixed with neither wanting to intrude nor being able to shake bouts of introversion, seemed a potent recipe for baffling friends and family who so love my boyfriend. Evan has no problem filling a room with his sense of style and his ability to keep people engaged. So what could he possibly see in me? They may never get it. Still, Evan loves me and that’s what matters.

 

I was in my head a lot, not so much trying to figure out Evan’s upbringing, but instead trying to make sense of the current state of being gay in America once drifting beyond the Left/West Coast. As Evan’s parents drove us from the Denver airport to Fort Collins, I saw a sign for Laramie, a town in Wyoming, only known to me as the place a young, gay man, Matthew Shepard, was beaten and left tied to a fence outside of town. He died six days later at a hospital in Fort Collins. This was a notorious hate crime before anti-gay attacks could be designated as such under federal legislation or Wyoming state law. That was long ago, I told myself. 1998. So much has changed. 

 

Two days later, however, news broke of the shootings at Club Q in Colorado Springs, another town not so far from where we were staying. In an instant, it felt like not much had changed at all. Queer people remain the object of hate for, not the majority of Americans, but still for millions of them. Politicians and news personalities play up hate, fueling fear with misinformation comprised of vial lies and cheap shots. 

 

I wanted to go to a vigil. I wanted queer people in Colorado Springs to feel supported and loved. Selfishly, I suppose I also wanted to feed off that communal love to push me to call out hate and shake the complacency I’d fallen into, holding hands so freely with Evan when we’re in Seattle and Vancouver. Our obligations didn’t allow time to attend. We hadn’t left space on the social calendar for events following a mass shooting. Go figure.

 

After a couple more days, we took a break from Evan’s family and friends, staying at a place in rural Wyoming, not far out of Cheyenne but, under the circumstances, feeling too remote. During a morning jog, the cold wind whipping my face as I headed along a road leading to a hamlet, I wondered who was in the pickup trucks that passed me. Was my stride too gay? Maybe my blond highlights were a dead giveaway. Rather than peer into the trucks, I glanced at tumbleweeds caught in wire fencing that paralleled the road. This wasn’t Laramie, but it was the same state. Matthew came to mind again.

 

When we left Wyoming and pulled back into the driveway at Evan’s parents’ home in Fort Collins, I noticed a sign in the front yard. Had it been there before? Had I grown too accustomed to the message so it hadn’t registered? 

More EQUALITY

More HOPE

More HUMANITY

More PRIDE

More ACCEPTANCE

More LOVE

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

            --MLK

 

The next day, I did another run, this time noticing a more common sign, one that I’ve seen in Bellingham, Seattle and Portland over the past several years. While initially heartened by its display in windows and on lawns of homes and shops, I’d gotten to a point of taking it for granted just as I do a security sign sticking out of someone’s front garden, a rainbow sticker on a store’s door or a going out of business banner dangling below a rug store’s awning. When something nears the point of being omnipresent, it becomes meaningless.

 

Until its meaning feels urgently important once again. These were positive signs in Fort Collins.

 

I suppose I’m an alarmist. There was reason to be more aware of my surroundings, but I’d been too infected by the culture of hate that plays in the news and on social media from the state that turned away from Liz Cheney and the land of gunslinging Lauren Boebert. Colorado was fine, Wyoming was fine. In fact, everything was better than fine. While Evan and I walked the relatively empty streets of downtown Cheyenne, we stopped for a selfie under a shop sign that depicted cowboys riding horses. As I stretched and strained, holding out the camera to get everything in the frame, a real cowboy rushed toward us. “Do you want me to take your photo?” he said. It was a simple gesture, offered in the friendliest tone. Kindness trumps, well…Trumpism. If anything, people I came across during my stay were more openly warm than in either Vancouver or Seattle.

 

In Canada, we rarely talk politics and certainly not with acquaintances. I don’t know who my friends and relatives voted for in the last municipal, provincial or federal election. We stick to other mundane topics like traffic, weather and where to get a good cup of coffee. (We mostly agree that it’s not Tim Hortons.) I feel things would be better in the U.S. if people’s political views were kept more private as well. At present, it’s a reflex action to shun and even ridicule people who align with The Other Party. Humanity takes a back seat to the blood sport of political potshots.  

 

Unfortunately, there is no sign of Americans turning down the volume on politics. As long as anti-gay rhetoric is spewed, it must be challenged and refuted. Hopefully, we can forgo responding to hate with our own hate. Queers coined Love Is Love. Let’s spread the sentiment beyond marriage equality. We can be thoughtful and strategic in working to make hate crimes a thing of the past, once and for all.