I’ve been doing some thinking over the past few days. I’m retired – got nothin’ else to do.
I thought about the recent posts I’ve written. My first posts are about mutual funds, budgets, credit cards, loans and retirement plans; helping readers understand them so that they can use them to their advantage.
Next I started a series about protecting ourselves from scammers. This had examples of scam calls and emails I had received trying to convince me to hand over money.
I then went on to write a post about a car warranty scam where a company tried to pose as BMW and get me to purchase an extended warranty.
Finally, I got wrapped up in researching media bias. I wrote a series of posts on the reporting differences of left-leaning and right-leaning sources.
Common Theme
Thinking about this over the past few days, I realized the common theme is manipulation.
I started with a goal of educating readers about financial products and how to use them to their advantage. How to budget and save more and then how to invest some of those savings to build wealth and achieve financial independence.
Building wealth is important, but keeping the wealth we’ve built is important too.
And there are far too many people out there trying to get their hands on our wealth.
Let’s take a look at how we’re being manipulated.
Scammers
Scammers have gotten quite sophisticated. Separating people from their money is now a $10 billion per year industry in the US alone. Read more here from the FTC. That’s bigger than some S&P 500 companies.
This is a lucrative business so scammers are creating companies with office space and HR & training departments and the best technology to help them be more effective at fooling us. This pays off so the are growing bigger and more sophisticated.
The result is that if the caller ID says Mass State Police, it may not be. Someone offering us a loan, may not be from a registered financial institution. And the guy calling me to tell me my brother has been in an accident may not even be in the US.
Trust No One
This is a horrible way to go through life. Maybe don’t go as far as trust no one, but be skeptical of every new interaction. How’s that?
In my work as a volunteer fraud specialist, I worked with a gentleman who needed a loan. It was his lucky day. He was contacted on Facebook by a loan company that wanted to offer him financing.
You know where this is going. Here’s what happened. The loan amount showed up in his account. He was asked to get gift cards to pay the finance charges. And then the money disappeared from is account. And the loan company disappeared from facebook and no one answered at the number he had called.
It’s sad, but scammers are really good at getting to know us and know where we are vulnerable. Everything is online. It’s not that hard. And they’ve become quite good at exploiting our vulnerabilities and creating a sense of urgency so that we act quickly and make mistakes that we normally wouldn’t make.
News Media
Most of us agree that scammers are a plague. They are calling us, texting us, emailing us, contacting us on social media, even using the goos old US mail, to separate us from our money. This is clearly wrong.
But I’m starting to discover how far the news media has gone to use our vulnerabilities to manipulate us. I’m a huge fan of the website allsides. For each topic, Allsides shows me what the left leaning news sites are reporting, what the right-leaning sites are reporting and what sites in the center are reporting.
Today’s Example
Check this out. The topic is:
Allsides summarizes the topic
let’s see what the media has to say:
Depending on what you read, this either as zero impact, or the fallout is massive and spreading like wildfire.
Are We Being Manipulated?
What do you think? Seriously, I’d love comments. Please post them below.
The Washington examiner will tell you the joke was not a big deal, and here are the polling numbers to support that. Politico will tell you it’s a huge deal and provides quotes from residents to support their headline.
If I get my news from one source, or even several sources that all lean the same direction, I am likely to develop a completely different opinion on the subject.
My Opinion
If I think about what actually happened
- There was a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in New York
- Tony Hinchcliffe was chosen by the Trump team to speak
- In his act, Tony made the garbage comment
I’m a big fan of comedy. I love Monty Python, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrel, Chris Farley, Mel Brooks… When I was younger I went to see a lot of stand-up. Some great, some horrible.
Some comedy is positive, but some can be hurtful. Not every joke works and comedians have lapses in judgement.
So as a fan of comedy, I understand this and can sympathize with Tony. However, when performing at an event for a candidate for president of the US, I think presenters, even comedians, need to be held to a higher standard.
I understand what happened and I say “ouch”. This is unfortunate and I expect it will anger some voters and may get them to vote for the other candidate. It shows disrespect for a group of people. That’s not appropriate in that forum. If that administration feels that that is OK, maybe at some point they will feel the same way towards a group with which I am associated.
So not cool.
Headlines and Manipulation
I wrote about my thought process and hopefully this is familiar to you. Give me the facts and let me decide how I feel about it.
And while we’d all like to think we make up our own minds, we are influenced by what others think. I may think that this is comedy and people shouldn’t get worked up, but if I read that it happened at a political event, and that it has affected some people and they are hurt by it, I may change my opinion. As humans, we (OK, some of us) have the capability to learn and adapt.
This is why I’m so concerned about media bias. It manipulates us.
Amazon
Another great example came from Amazon. Read my post here.
To summarize, Alexa gives different responses when I ask about voting for Trump v. Harris. From the allsides article:
You can read the allsides article here.
Media
Our favorite information sources, whether it be Facebook, Amazon Alexa, Google, all have been called out for showing bias. And it gets even worse when you look at Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and others.
For me, it wasn’t until I started reading allsides that I began to see how much I was being manipulated by my favorite news sources.
Enough Bad News
Enough examples. Don’t bum me out, man.
The point is that we need to be skeptical. Just as scammers are actively attacking us through our devices, the news media is doing the same thing. Influencing us to think or vote in a particular way is just as wrong.
And while we may think that misleading us to make us vote a certain way is less impactful than getting us to send thousands of dollars in gift cards to a scammer, think about the impacts of our votes. We’re putting people in office to make policy about the economy, border security, inflation, supply chain, airline safety, taxes, the national debt…and many aspects of our daily lives that impact our financial wellness, happiness and safety.
Wrap-Up
Manipulation. Be aware. Be skeptical.
It’s not that hard, but for many of is, it’s not in our nature.
The elderly are most at risk. They grew up in a different era. Read my post YOUR PARENTS NEED YOUR HELP.
But we are all susceptible. Just as scammers are aware of our weaknesses and are adept at exploiting them, the media understands our perspective and leanings and is manipulating us.
And all of this impacts our health our happiness and our financial well-being.
I started out writing about mutual funds, but I’ve learned that there is a lot more we need to do to protect our financial wellness.