"Who is the biggest troll in history?"
Amazing What Good Pictures Can Do...
"The guy who opened a fake restaurant in London using Google reviews and his back garden and shed with microwave meals."- dirtyaccomplice
Just... Why?!?
"April fools day 1974 when a man burned 70 rubber tires on a dormant volcano in Alaska!"
"This has to be up there."
"He waited 3 years to get a helicopter to fly the tires to the top to get a picture perfect condition."
"He even got the coast guard called out too."- jgpdvs
Team Salieri?
"Mozart didn’t like this singer so much that he wrote a piece for her with high and low notes constantly because he noticed that when she hit low notes her chin went to her chest and when she hit high notes her head would fling back."
"So it was like she was bobbing like a chicken."- danielokane
GiphyCloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs!
"In the 30s-40s BBC did an April fools broadcast where they told people how spaghetti was made, on trees.'
"They literally showed fake spaghetti trees and since not many people in that time knew how spaghetti was made, lots of people believed it."- Voicedtunic
He Made A Mockery Of All Of Them!
"There was a Prussian, I can't remember his name, who managed to make an officer's uniform out of scraps of clothing."
"He used it to convince a few guards on patrol to follow him into a government building, ordered the arrest of the man in charge, confiscated all the money personally, sent the arrested man to Berlin calming it was all on order of the King."
"He then ditched the uniformed, got on a train to Berlin him and managed to beat the guards there."
"He then sat back and watched the absolute confusion happen."
"The guy was eventually arrested but the public turned him into a celebrity and his actions into a play that was performed all over Germany."
"He wasn't incarcerated for long and after his release he lived an easy life from there on."- TheGermanMofo
Outsmarting The Enemy
"Technically this isn't a troll since it was serving a purpose, but Admiral Nelson was escaping a French fleet when a man fell overboard."
"It was Nelson's policy of never leaving anyone behind so he turned his ship around to go pick him up."
"The French saw his ship turn back toward them, assumed he had reinforcements coming beyond the horizon, so they turned and ran."- ScarletCaptain
Episode 18 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphyThat's Quite A Grudge...
"I was thinking more like the mortician who patented the automatic telephone switch 3 years after finding out his rival's wife worked as a telephone operator and would reroute calls asking for his funeral parlor to her husbands."
"The guy put a whole worldwide workforce out of work for one person's actions."- ThrowawayKarensBane
By Hook Or By Crook...
"Theodore Hook."
"The perpetrator of the Berners Street hoax in London in 1810 in which Hook sent thousands of letters summoning all manners of various vendors and service people and physicians and dignitaries and others to all come to one random person’s home."
'Literally shutting down a large part of London as they all descended upon the same address throughout the day, all while Hook and a friend sat watching from a house across the street, presumably laughing their a**es off the whole time."- VictorBlimpmuscle
Reverse Psychology
"In China there was the war of the three kingdoms."
"The Wei, Shu, and Wu."
"Two of their armies met in battle and the smaller was out of arrows."
"They were separated by a river."
"One night, the leader of the smaller army stocked the front of their boats/rafts with straw bales and moved toward the opposing army over the river."
"They were immediately hailed with arrows."
"The men ducked behind the straw while the arrows stuck in the straw, undamaged."
"They then sailed away and yelled."
"''We thank you for the arrows, we will return them shortly!"''
"This may just be a tall tale from Romance of the Three Kingdoms but it may be true."- Mr_Caterpillar
You Got It Animation GIF by SWR KindernetzGiphyGenerally speaking, these were deliberate acts of malice, which served no other purpose than to baffle and infuriate the public.
Although, one can't help but wonder if all of these so-called trolls had an ulterior motive.
Deep down, they must have known that these duplicitous pranks would ensure that people would remember their name, or at the very least their actions, for a very long time.
Redditor Yeetthyself64 wanted to discuss the jobs that don't offer much to the world. They asked everyone out there:
"What job contributes nothing to society?"
Secret shoppers. Betrayal for coin.
Health Thieves
Giphy"In the US: PBMs (Pharmaceutical Benefits Managers). They drive up medical costs while simultaneously telling your doctor what you can’t have."
"They make no contribution to your well-being and produce nothing of value."
rollsyrollsy
Hang Up
"Extended warranty call center."
Agile_Ad_4114
"I got a job at one of these places, not really realizing what it was. My job was to essentially pass around existing customers who would not really get any help, and pass potential new customer to the sales people."
"On my 2nd day a frustrated customer called just asking for help I felt terrible and told her I couldn't help her. She made a comment about feeling like she was being scammed, I told her she was correct, and just left at lunch without saying anything."
hotstickywaffle
Solicitation
"Admissions Counselor for unaccredited schools."
enTernamehereonce
"I worked in an admission office for a traditional private, accredited college just outside Boston, after I finished grad school. I was mostly doing the email marketing for the office, but occasionally filled for in-person college fairs when someone was sick, or we double-booked."
"Most colleges are not-for-profit, meaning all of the money from tuition had to go back into the college. As an admission counselor, we were legally not allowed to get things like commission or bonuses based on enrollment numbers. I got a salary, and that was it."
"The other for-profit schools, which were unaccredited and for-profit, were basically sales reps. I talked to one of them (who tried to poach me), and he specifically mentioned how much he earned each year from recruiting students. Just, completely disingenuous and not in the best interest of the students."
Blanketsburg
Oh Lord
"Megachurch scam pastors."
Awkward-Channel-268
"Churches, period."
"I think the biggest problem with religion in general is that basically anyone with some charisma can become a priest, imam or whatever, and people tend to take their word as if it's directly out of their God's mouth and blindly follow it, which in turn drives a lot of people with certain characteristics to wanna become one."
"Like people who wanna assert dominance, impose their own twisted beliefs and interpretations of religious texts upon others, and greedy people. That's how you get megachurches, crusades, religious terrorism, persecution of gay people and women killed for not wearing a hijab, etc, etc."
GodIsGud
Poor Swifties Know the Pain
Sorry Taylor Swift GIFGiphy"Ticket scalper."
sinisjecht
"I'm always flabergasted when scalpers try to claim they are doing a service."
mousicle
"The whole ticket sale system has to go. I got to see some bands I like for free because I got tickets from a radio station. Price on the ticket was like 40 bucks, but the only way to buy them was through Ticketmaster for 100 plus fees and bull. LiveNation and all the people responsible for this nonsense should be publicly executed."
Oh Ticketmaster... evil minions of a the devil.
Legal But Awful
homer simpson episode 10 GIFGiphy"Patent Trolls. 100% legal. 0 contribution to society, just a person who has their hands out asking for money along the way."
n0oo7
Promises, promises...
"Those people who make long-winded facebook videos which promise a lot but where nothing happens."
Lopsided-Change-7983
"With this one simple trick, you can be rid of your problem. But before I show you the trick, I'm going to talk for 45 minutes and show you fake chalkboard drawings and then tell you you need to pay for the trick, but it isn't a trick at all. It's just common knowledge but now you're out $59.95 and I've made a bunch of money off of people's hopes."
AmazingJames
Bad Mom
"Mommy bloggers that put an uncomfortable amount of personal information about their kids on the internet."
xPostmasterGeneralx
"I knew a group of mommy bloggers and not a single one was a mother. They had been hired by another company to write content which they most took from other bloggers and then amped it up with fabricated stories."
Mixedstereotype
Sales
Giphy"Multilevel marketing."
imlilyhi
"I felt so foolish to have been convinced it wasn't 'pyramid selling.' Yes. Yes it is. Didn't cost me a lot, thankfully, but the fact I tried to get others involved was shameful."
prophylaxitive
Marketing always seems like a mess.
I tried and cried and left.
Redditor wa8808 wanted to discuss all the ways we're being bamboozled by asking how to spot the signs:
"What's a scam that people think isn't a scam?"
It's always good to know how to the scammers.
BBB
Wall Street Friends GIF by Imagine DragonsGiphy"That the Better Business Bureau is part of the government and doesn't have any power to resolve fraud and other issues, rather than what it is. Which is a private marketing firm."
boofaceleemz
Ingredients
"Supplements or drinks that remove 'toxins' from your body. Your body already does that."
urbexcemetery
"Especially the ones with stuff like activated charcoal, which can mess with your ability to absorb a myriad of actual prescription medicines."
smollest_snek
"My relatives got super into MLM cleanses that remove toxins. They kept pushing really hard for me to try them."
"I looked up the ingredients and 1/3 were known carcinogens. The best part is they kept saying how I was full of toxins. To give you context, at that point I was drinking filtered water, growing almost all my food in my organic permaculture food forest, avoiding driving and cities when possible, etc. They were doing: alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, prescription painkillers recreationally, etc."
BaylisAscaris
Playing with coins...
"The auction websites where items apparently sell for WAY under market value. Like a PS5 going for $5. The thing is, you do actually pay $5 for a PS5 if you win, that's not the scam."
"The scam is that you have to pay for bids. You'll buy a set of bids for say $50. Then you'll just never win a bidding war or it'll take way more bids than you thought it would."
"I'm sure the websites themselves have fake users that are guaranteed to win, as well, so it's just farming bids, which is farming your money."
"If you get hooked, just like any other type of gambling, they will ring you for thousands and thousands of dollars in bids, while you 'win' nowhere near that value of the bids."
Patsfan618
Gauge it...
"High end speaker cables. To be able to afford to put silver in them, they make the gauge really small. Wire gauge is the biggest decider of how much signal gets to the speaker (resistance in ohms) and how different the signal is from the original (distortion). The truth is that going from 22 gauge (what a lot of snake oil cable companies use) to 16 gauge."
"Which isn't even that thick, but definitely enough for most in home cable runs) is going to have waaaaay more of an effect on resistance, and as a result distortion, than going from a really conductive (copper) to a slightly more really conductive (silver) material inside the cables."
clyspe
Make you money
Curb Your Enthusiasm Bingo GIF by Jason ClarkeGiphy"Those bingo games that supposedly 'make you money.' When I worked at Taco Bell, two of my managers would always play those kind of games. In order to win you have to pay for currency to use in order to play bingo… they were paying $20 to win $5."
GuideSad2361
I'll never stop playing Bingo! Scam or not.
Pay it Forward
Schitts Creek Do Not Want GIF by CBCGiphy"Send me 50 bucks and I will send you a list of all the scams out there."
Good_Swordfish_3736
"Sorry, I can't send money now, because the bank needs 500 dollars to unlock the 500,000 dollars I inherited. If you send me 500 dollars, I can pay you!"
Batavijf
Look Up Doc
"Vision Insurance. It is an eye doctor coupon you pay for in advance to get your one discount to use each year to bring inflated prices back to normal."
shazwazzle
"So random trick we do at the eye doctor. We tell them we don’t have insurance, they then give you store discounts. Then I just submit the receipt for reimbursement to my insurance."
"My daughters contacts and appointment this year I was only out of pocket $17 after I got the insurance check. Only catch is you have to be able to pay the cost up front, and wait 4-6 weeks for reimbursement. If I would have used my insurance in the store my total was like $120 after insurance. Super weird."
Awkward-Train1584
Used Data
"Any guarantee or purchase that ends with 'unlimited.'"
"As Scotty would say in Star Trek 'you canna break the laws of physics.'"
karo_scene
"Found this one out with my unlimited 4G turns out when I used over 2TB of data I got an angry message to knock it off. (To be fair I was using my phone as a hotspot for like 5 people for a month long while we were on vacation... lol)."
CMDR-Serenitie
Fortune
"Plenty of these 'super investment guru' ads in the Internet (if not all)."
GabThePretto"
"I have here the key to that treasure chest, inside is a vast fortune, but I could open it myself, but instead I'm going to sell the key to you for but a pittance."
"This scam hasn't changed since the dawn of money, yet people fall for it in every epoch dressed up in a different dollar store Halloween costume."
McCheeseTruther
"When the gold rush hit, the vast majority of people digging for gold didn’t make the money. The people selling the shovels did."
HeyYoPaul
Love Search
Sad Talk To Me GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"Those 'courses' that are meant to teach sad lonely dudes to pick up women."
anxiousjellybean
Beware the scam. They're everywhere!
"What is a Scam that everybody should know about?"
Always Go Back To The Source
"If you every get an email about account activity that you aren't expecting, I.E password changes, sus logins, etc., NEVER click the link that was sent to you."
"Instead open a new window or tab and go to the website contacting you and use their proper support line."- DrPepster
Praying On The Elderly And Vulnerable
"Scams I've warned my parents about:"
"NEVER get onto a computer if a 'customer service' rep who called them tells them to."
"I will never take a trip overseas without telling them, find myself stranded and need money wired to me."- dougiebgood
When You Have To Pay To Pay...
"Being charged a 'convenience fee' for the 'honor' of being able to pay a bill by phone or online."
"Uhm - really? "
"I have to PAY you to PAY you?"- Senior_Morng4210
Read The Fine Print
"The Biden Administration is not personally contacting you about insurance or student loan debt."- 1Strict-Succotash-405
Be Careful What You Do On Camera
"I've seen a ton of this scam happening:"
"Dude meets 'hot girl' online somehow, whether from a dating site, or forum somewhere, instagram, etc."
'Hot girl' asks to snapchat / facetime / whatever, for sexy stuff."
"Dude jerks off on video for 'her'."
"'Hot girl' turns out to not be a hot girl, and is instead a scammer who now threatens to send that video to all of his instagram, twitter, facebook, etc. followers unless he sends money."
"This crazily seems to happen ALL THE TIME and people still fall for it."- Top-Royal6249
"See The Pyramids Along The Nile..." Or Online...
"Every single MLM out there."
"There is not a single 'good' one."
"It has nothing to do with products and everything to do with the business model."
"You are set up to fail 100 percent of the time."- PumpkinPure5643
Be Selective With Online Shopping
"I'm a postal worker."
"A problem I've uncovered a couple of times are on-line sellers giving you a tracking number for a small inexpensive item that is going to the same zip code as the item that you have ordered."
"When that item is scanned 'delivered', 99% of the time to another postal customer, you will think that your nice expensive item that you have ordered is lost or mis-delivered when in reality it was never sent at all."
"Or your PayPal account is hacked with the same scenario--the expensive item that you have ordered is diverted to another party and the tracking number that you had issued to you is for an inexpensive item going to the same zip code."
"I had that happen just yesterday in fact."
"A lady came in screaming at me because 'I' lost her package that she said was delivered to a parcel locker, according to her tracking number, but it wasn't there."
"That package was indeed still there at the post office and I pulled it out to show her."
"It was addressed to another customer and it had been delivered to them in the parcel locker, as the tracking number indicated."
"So, be careful when you shop on-line."
"Thieves find ways to capitalize on anything."- touristspleasegoaway
Get A Good Realtor...
"HoA charging a fee to sell your house."
"Especially when it's a % of the cost of the house."- MMOAddict
When A Job Seems To Good To Be True
"Fake job scams are becoming increasingly common now that WFH jobs are becoming popular, here is how it works.
"An 'employer' contacts you for an interview, the pay is usually very good, too good to refuse especially for people who are down bad."
"You 'pass' the interview and you're sent the generic hiring paperwork, this is really bad as it is sometimes almost impossible at this stage to tell it's a scam, but there are ways to tell which I'll explain later."
"Forms like a W2, I9 and Direct Deposit forms, stuff you would normally fill out for a legit job but it gives them all of your very personal information such as your SSN.
"This is where the scam becomes obvious, they tell you that you need to purchase the equipment, such as a laptop, printer, software, etc."
"They will tell you that they will cover it and they send you a check."
"Then you're supposed to buy the stuff, usually through sketchy means like wire transfer or gift cards."
"Since the check is fake, once you spend this money the check will inevitably bounce and now you're down the hole by the thousands, your 'employer' now dips out and you're scammed."
"There might be easier ways to tell, but my advice is to always ask how you will be receiving your supplies before filing any paperwork and sending it to them."
"If they refuse to tell you how it will work, or they tell you anything involving having you purchase the equipment, it's a scam and you can just dip out, or mess with them if you have the time to do so :)."
"I nearly fell for one of these scams a few months ago."
"I never sent them the money because it was obvious, but at that stage I already sent them my SSN and other information."
"I had to freeze all of my credit, which there are guides on how to do so that are easily found."
"If you get caught in a scam like this, I would recommend getting a new bank account(s), freezing all your credit, filing a fraud report for your credit."
"This will prevent any scammers from opening any loans or credit lines in your name."
"File a report for a stolen SSN and contact the FTC and file a report with them as well with as much detail as you can."- team-tree-syndicate
GiphyScams have come a long way from snake oils and miracle cures.
And sadly, technology has made it even easier for scammers to access our personal and financial information.
With this in mind, should you ever receive a text message or an email which seems unusual, or delivering good news which seems too good to be true, always err on the side of caution.