To what end? I read most of the article but I can’t understand the goals of these fakers?

Just depends on how it hits. I got a random message like

“It was great seeing you Sally, we should catch up like that more often.”

My name isn’t Sally. But my mom’s is. And my mom is at an age where sometimes I get a TXT via email, if you get me. And she complains about her friend not understanding tech…And this friend was visiting from out of town for the first time in years, one who I had told mom to give my number too in case they needed assistance while visiting.

So I said “Hey, Maureen, this is Sue, you must have pressed the wrong button. I’m sure Mom agrees! How was the restaurant? I’ve been meaning to try it.”

Now… That was not smart. I gave actually checks and changes real name to Sue my real name, my mom’s and a well known restaurant name. If the scammer had have been smart, there’s a million things they could have done with that to trick me, either immediately or by waiting awhile and then acting.

But they were on their pig butchering script, so their next TXT was clunky, and was like “oh! No this is Ally, I must have gotten the wrong number! Silly me.”

And I was like. “Oh ok. No problem, glad you got to catch up with your friend then!”

And then like 2 hours later they txtd “is that restaurant in city? I’ve always wanted to visit.”

And I didn’t reply.

And the next was a hilarious cut and paste from the wiki of the city like “it has 1.9 million people and an economy of 59million annually! How cool!” Do you live there?"

By then I had figured it out.

But they do this all the time, there are alot of them, and it doesn’t take much luck for your guard to go down…

When the walls fell.

I must say I e never played Skyrim, and I didn’t know how beautiful it could be. I might have to have a closer look.

I play a game called “The Long Dark”, and the first screenshot with the aurora made me do a double take. In that game you are alone in a northern Canadian region that has been abandoned both due to economics as well as some in game magic that makes electricity not work. The survival mode is just “live as long as you can, then die.” It’s permadeath and can be incredibly frustrating and cruel, but the beauty in that game is unreal. I’ve ended a 6 day run (nothing to me now, but a big acheivement at the time) because I was watching the Aurora on a clear winter night. The music was somber and I thought I might freeze to death as I crossed this long rope bridge. I should have been looking at the bridge, because staring up into the sky I suddenly was getting further away from it … It was maybe a 3 second fall as I realized I either walked off the bridge or maybe there was a gap or something.

“You have faded into the long dark.” -wasn’t even mad.

I know this goes against the spirit of … Bachelor frog meme?

But that was a very effective way my mom suggested to combat my ache. Every night I’d take my fresh t-shirt for the next day and put it over my pillow case. It meant that my face was always getting a fresh pillowcase without me needing to have 75 pillowcases to wash for every day.

I did also try using the shirt at the end of the day (because when my ache got bad I’d have blood spots and stuff on my shirts and couldn’t wear them) but it didn’t feel as clean and nice, so I’d just occasionally put a shirt on the pillow and then if it was soiled that first night id wear a different shirt and leave that one on the pillow for another day or 2.

Fresh pillow cases and sheets are a magical thing.