Understanding the Nigerian Prince Email Scam

And Their Wider Use Within Our Society

Facebook Meme — @demotivation.us

If you have an email address, it is a cast iron guarantee that at some point you will have received at least one email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian Prince, that wants to give you $1m, just to spread the wealth, but first they need your bank account details.

I have never really given this scam any more thought, other than to ask myself, “who the hell would ever fall for something so obvious”, as I send it off to the depths of my spam folder.

However, recently I watched a video on YouTube which explained this ruse in detail and it started a slow burning thought process that has led me to write this article.

While, to most of us these scams are blatantly obvious, this is the trick and it’s a trick which serves two ingenious purposes.

The first is, it removes those of us that they have zero chance of conning. Four years ago I would have estimated this number to be around 99.9% of the population. However, with the events of the last 4 years in mind, I now I believe it to be far lower.

The second, is it automatically allows them to laser focus in on their niche target. I have named it dog whistle marketing as they only wish to gain the attention of those that are likely to fall for such a scam.

I used to work in the sales environment and this type of approach, while rarely used in such a corrupt fashion, is a known tactic. You send out a signal which will attract a specific type of person using keywords such as their, passions, pains, fears, wants or interests and this ensures your pre qualified niche target contacts you to find out more about your services.

After watching the video, I thought this interest would end there. However, while scrolling through the clown show that is social media and reading the various fear porn headlines on the social pages of the corporate press (of which there are many), I had a realisation that this tactic is not only reserved for the Nigerian Prince email scam or clever marketing campaigns.

I now realise it is used in another rather nefarious way by media establishments, corporations and even governments when an agenda needs to be pushed into the zeitgeist.

Generated by Author

By now, I think the majority of intelligent people must be aware of the lock step nature within corporate media, and many governments. You see them peddling out the same narrative as one another, often times, word for word, using a slow repetition of a message that they want to be subliminally heard. And every time, intelligent people say to themselves, ‘Surely no one is stupid enough to fall for that again’. But, like the email scam, that is the trick.