Mr Bad Example lives a life of plunder and scams, impersonating people, ripping off his workers, and changing identities whenever the heat rises too much. -- Anon Guest
[AN: I've been informed that there's a song called Mr Bad Example by Warren Zevon, so I can't use exactly that name for this piece.]
Alan Nemor had a gift. Primarily, he had the gift of being nondescript, but with a lot of charisma. He could change his hat and his coat and become a completely different person in three steps. Though it certainly helped to be out of view from any surveillance.
He had a thousand names, with ID to match. With a laptop and an internet connection, at least twenty of them were running scams at any given time.
Hell, one of his aliases had just published a book about his scams. It was headed up the best-seller list, and still people fell for it.
Top of the latest little earners was 'disruption'. Phase one, select an established industry and figure out how to crowdsource the same thing. Step two: hype it as a way for regular folks to earn a little extra money on the side, and convince thousands to sign up for it. Step three: Enshittify, enshittify, enshittify.
And when it was on the correct upward slope, go public on the market, sell to some True Believer, and get out of there before the whole thing collapsed under its own weight.
His last endeavour had been amazing. Tover, the solution to food waste through leftovers. You may not be in the mood for your half-eaten meals, but someone, somewhere, might be hungry for that. Just sign up for your first five hundred official Tover containers and flash-freezing shipping system and get ready for the money to roll in.
By the time Tover was collecting controversy, Alan was onto his next scam. By the time it caused the collapse of the economy in several debilitated districts, he was running an online casino that promised grand things and never actually delivered.
It was a hobby, really.
Alan ran little gambling apps between other schemes. Wandering through the internet to work out what the next new-wave ground-breaking advance thing that nobody had done before. The next angle to wring money out of people who believed in the shortcut to success.
Hm. There were an awful lot of people not-writing books these days, and others not-making art. This generative AI thing had too many people with their fingers in the pie. What they needed was... a matchmaker. Slop for slop... not the best catchy name. It needed something snappy. Something that appealed to them.
A way for them to co-operate, corroborate, and collaborate. Something that included AI in its name. Something... oh yes. Something weeaboo.
Co-wAI. Yes. Stir liberally with the existing marketing advice scam and make it the one-stop shop for matching the talentless with the unmotivated. Including the services of those who claimed they could smack together a viral marketing plan with their own AI... they would eat each other and he would skim the profits off the top.
Good gracious god, there were a lot of them. This had the potential to go on forever.
He might finally have his retirement plan.
[Photo by COPPERTIST WU on Unsplash]
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