So my podcast is a scam, but it's fun because you can laugh at scams and you can laugh at scammers for the most part and have a good time. It also learns some stuff about how not to get scammed or how to run a scam if you want to. I didn't even say that legally. Hi, I'm Rachel Hampton. And I'm Madison Malone Kircher. You're listening to I see YMIMI. In case you missed it. Slate's podcast about internet culture.

Today's episode is about one of my favorite topics.

Scams, scammers, the tautology of what constitutes a scam or not.

I never know if I'm actually using the word tautology correctly.

Anyway, we're talking about scammers today.

Rachel, you know I was a one-time teenage scammer myself.

No?

For legal reasons, all of this never happened.

Of course.

Big, heavy, allegedly, before every single word.

So I was in high school, and I'm taking physics, and I was very bad at physics. That part definitely happened. Can't confirm on the record. I was very bad at physics. Not a surprise to me at all. Just scalers, vectors, didn't get it. And I found this tutoring website online that would offer you a free hour of interactive tutoring for every cell phone number and email address you registered. And the emails didn't have to be real. They could be dummies you were making up. So I, of course, did this over and over and over again with my friends

phone numbers. I already seen where this is going. Incredible. Incredible grift. But also, I'm sorry,

for tutoring. You grifted for tutoring? You nerd? Yeah. I am who I am.

It was a great grift, hypothetically.

Right up until again.

Allegedly.

Allegedly.

A very frightening cease and assist letter from a law firm came to my house.

Simply incredible.

They were more concerned that I had created, that I had taught other teens how to do this.

Like I had created some sort of like mega tutoring scam ring.

A multi-level marketing scheme of scammers.

...