Phishing emails have gotten vastly better. Since I first started seeing them way back in the mid-90s, they’ve been largely inept — bedeviled with glaring grammatical gaffes, bad fonts and unlikely scenarios.
Those I had to spend no cognitive effort sussing out their provenance.
Modern phishing emails I actually have to spend a few seconds looking at to determine their illegitimacy.
This is apart from the phishing emails I get at work which are of the spear variety — those are almost certainly corporate or state actors and so well done that I just no longer click on any email link found in my work address’s mailbox at all.
Mechanical Turk isn’t just third world folks any more. The new normal is, dirty deeds, done well, dirt cheap. Another thing that happens when all the wealth pools in the fortunes of the already wealthy, and the many are in a mad scramble over the table scraps. Combine that with the “glass floor” reserving the “honorable professions” for the well-connected, and most of us will do whatever we have to to get our hands on some money. Respectability is a long-forgotten luxury.
Watched the movie Hell or High Water? It explores similar themes, along with some commentary on financial predation.
It makes a natural companion to No Country For Old Men.