My God, that scam happened to me! I got a phone call of my daughter screaming and then some scumbag got on the phone and told me they'd kill her if I didn't pay them. I was pretty sure it was a scam but not "bet your daughter's life" sure. I raced home to see her while stalling. I told them I didn't have money but I'd quick rob a bank. It would have been comical, under other circumstances, the way the scammer tried to talk me out of bank robbery. After I saw my daughter, I stalled while I drove to the police station. I really expected they could do something about this. They couldn't. The cop got on the phone and yelled at the scammer until they hung up. I really wanted that guy caught but the cops are impotent when it comes to scams. It was so terrifying. Afterwards, I was a bit traumatized and nobody seemed to understand why I was so upset.
Okay I seriously applaud your ability to think on your feet. I don't think I would have had the wherewithal in that situation to stall the scammer by claiming you were gonna rob a bank for the money...
My FB feed has been slowly and unpleasantly swamped with pleas for people to go see Sound Of Freedom "because people are finally caring about human trafficking and we can start conversations" and I don't know how to tell people that trafficking is both a) a real problem that a lot of people have cared about for years and b) a surefire sign of a moral panic when it comes up in The Discourse. Thanks for this article, Robert, it really helps explain both!
I live in Milwaukee, which is a city reported to have a high amount of human trafficking (I've never met anyone who's experienced it, but I do see a lot of missing teen posts circulating). I can promise you that it's never suburban moms and daughters in a target parking lot that get picked up. When it does happen it's through grooming of people who don't have much to lose. Either run aways, unhoused people, sex workers, or otherwise troubled teens. I have no problem letting my 17 year old ride the bus, or go places by herself. She's been taught to be aware, not use headphones in public, like basic common sense stuff. She's more at risk of getting mugged or God forbid run over by a reckless driver. I hate that these (mostly) white women are so convinced someone wants to kidnap them that it takes away from the actual (at least in my area) mostly black and brown women this is happening to.
Good, if depressing as always article Robert. I think you’re missing one aspect of why people who believe in this stuff believe it.
Simply put, framing it this way lets a lot of people feel like the focus of reality is on them. Not only are they embattled, but they’re desirable and valuable enough to be the target of some vague other. If we discuss trafficking as it actually happens, largely to already vulnerable people by their own friends and family, then not only does it not justify armed paranoia, but it’s also fundamentally a story about somebody else.
You can see hints of this not just in the people who believe this stuff, but in those that share it too. The need to be viral, to be the focus of attention is a huge driver of this stuff. And it’s not just a social media thing either, lying about this to get on local news is certainly not a new trend.
I genuinely mean this when I say thank you for writing this article & recording a podcast about this. I am a survivor of sex trafficking. My story is the same as many other victims, a queer teenager just trying to escape an abusive home & instead falling victim to a person I thought I could trust. However, because my story doesn't find the narrative that people have come to believe about this crime I have struggled for years to get my voice heard or get access to the resources I need. People either refuse to believe me or want to treat my trauma like the latest episode of a true crime podcast with no regard for the very real pain I still live with. All because I wasn't snached out of a Cosco parking lot & thrown into the back of a van. Seriously, thank you. Debunking misinformation helps victims far more than any shitty Jim Caviezel movie ever will.
I'm sorry that you've been through this and more so, that no one believes you. I used to work with immigrant trafficking survivors, and your experience is spot on for what I know of citizen survivors. With immigrants, they are overwhelming trafficked for labor (restaurants, domestic labor, servile marriages, agriculture and more) which gets zero attention compared to sex.
Two non-creepy resources for you or anyone else: Freedom Network USA is a network of legal and social service providers across the country who take a human rights (ie NOT trying to rescue people) approach, and they're phenomenal. Also, national trafficking resource center: 888-3737-888. Hopefully between these two, you can get connected with better resources for more support in your area. Take care.
As a 90’s kid I absolutely remember family breathlessly telling me and my sisters to check under a car every time you get in so someone can’t slash your achilles tendon as you’re getting in. We lived in a town of 200 people 😂
Why on earth would a potential kidnapper put something like a twist tie on your car to mark it - couldn't they just remember the blue ford right over there? I'm similarly irritated by the breathless accounts of being followed in Target or Walmart, as if other people do not also shop in those stores and also need socks and milk.
Relatedly, I saw a tweet the other day from someone claiming half a million kids are kidnapped per year. For reference that’s about 1/7th of the kids born this year.
At that scale, you’d personally know multiple people who’d had this happen to them. You’d think more people would notice this incongruity and doubt the veracity of the claim, and yet…
One thing that strikes me is that this sort of scare used to be an equal opportunity scare. Right now it so happens that Republican Media seems to be the magnet for fear-mongering. So much so that before Trump was elected I worried that people were figuratively running from every boogieman until they were too exhausted to do something about real monsters.
And in the meantime authority figures have been undermined such that trying to interject some reason into these narratives often is seen as political.The fears ar grown out of some figment of reality. For a while though during the pandemic it seemed all news was fear news. It wore me out. I had to stop listening to it. Anyone who's being consistently fed bad news and fear is likely to make bad decisions.
If you're seeing a lot of this sort of media as part of your investigations I hope that you take some time to chill and allow yourself to normalize yourself.
I've seen this kind of stuff target more liberal women as well. A lot of true crime aimed at women has a sort of proto-feminist or carceral feminist lens to it. The creators of this content will stress how prevalent sexual assault is (true) and how men as a group don't seem to care about rape culture (also true). Then they'll tell gruesome and lurid stories about women being kidnapped, raped, and murdered, while peppering in legitimate critiques of how the patriarchy ignores women who come forward about sexual abuse and harassment.
Juxtaposing these feminist critique that the audience understands from their lived experience against weekly stories of murders lurking behind every tree to kill strangers can be very dangerous. Most of these true crime podcasts don't make a point of how rare stranger murder is. They prime the audience to fall for trafficking scams the same way 24/7 Fox News does for Republicans.
I've just listened to the first part of the associated podcast, and found it very interesting and enlightening. I remember the chain letters from the 1970s, and suddenly realized that they didn't die off, but that they migrated to the internet. I think that there are multiple reasons for the fear of kidnapping, some mentioned in the article and in the podcast. I think there's another one (maybe it will be in the second half of the podcast) that was illustrated by the rise of the I-swear-to-God-it's-true stories of childcare sex rings in the 1990s that destroyed the lives of many innocent people. That, and some kidnapping stories, I think are part of a moral panic over changes in American society that are coming faster and faster. One of these changes is the fact that white Americans are projected to be in the minority sometime in the 2040s, and that scares a lot of people. The fire-hose of mis- and disinformation available on the internet and social media exposes them to attitudes, "facts" and rumors that they don't have the time or know-how to check. This is especially true for people who are led by their emotional reactions to what the encounter and have no real way to stop those reactions and engage a rational thought process. Their understanding is based on their emotional reaction, rather than a healthier mix of emotion, self-awareness, insight, and rational thought. They are overcome or overrun by fear of a country they no longer recognize, and they get caught in a loop that they can't get out of.
He actually went into detail about this on the related behind the bastards episode. I don't understand how anyone could try and put anyone in prison just for a little fame.
I was thinking about your Behind the Bastards episode about this and looked up the substance. This week, a local Facebook page posted about an attempted kidnapping by an Uber driver. The Uber driver was not from the US. Many comments were about how people should carry a gun all the time and xenophobic things about not letting people in the US. All I could think about was that ask those people saying that stuff are just the next Phoebe Copas.
Hey I don't know where else to send this message but you, Cody, and Katy need to get the band back together to cover 2024 WYE style, it is going to be awful.
I shared this episode with a friend who is a singer and has a significant online footprint in order to let her parents know about the fake kidnapping scams that use AI voices. She said her family already knew about this scam and have a safe word just in case. Thought that was smart and wanted to share in case anyone else wanted to have a conversation with their parents about these scams. Hopefully this tip gets out there and this type of scam dies a quick and painful death.
My God, that scam happened to me! I got a phone call of my daughter screaming and then some scumbag got on the phone and told me they'd kill her if I didn't pay them. I was pretty sure it was a scam but not "bet your daughter's life" sure. I raced home to see her while stalling. I told them I didn't have money but I'd quick rob a bank. It would have been comical, under other circumstances, the way the scammer tried to talk me out of bank robbery. After I saw my daughter, I stalled while I drove to the police station. I really expected they could do something about this. They couldn't. The cop got on the phone and yelled at the scammer until they hung up. I really wanted that guy caught but the cops are impotent when it comes to scams. It was so terrifying. Afterwards, I was a bit traumatized and nobody seemed to understand why I was so upset.
Okay I seriously applaud your ability to think on your feet. I don't think I would have had the wherewithal in that situation to stall the scammer by claiming you were gonna rob a bank for the money...
As usual, Robert, your complex, succinct, and pertinent perspective is a breath of fresh air in a pressure cooker. Thank you for all you do.
My FB feed has been slowly and unpleasantly swamped with pleas for people to go see Sound Of Freedom "because people are finally caring about human trafficking and we can start conversations" and I don't know how to tell people that trafficking is both a) a real problem that a lot of people have cared about for years and b) a surefire sign of a moral panic when it comes up in The Discourse. Thanks for this article, Robert, it really helps explain both!
I live in Milwaukee, which is a city reported to have a high amount of human trafficking (I've never met anyone who's experienced it, but I do see a lot of missing teen posts circulating). I can promise you that it's never suburban moms and daughters in a target parking lot that get picked up. When it does happen it's through grooming of people who don't have much to lose. Either run aways, unhoused people, sex workers, or otherwise troubled teens. I have no problem letting my 17 year old ride the bus, or go places by herself. She's been taught to be aware, not use headphones in public, like basic common sense stuff. She's more at risk of getting mugged or God forbid run over by a reckless driver. I hate that these (mostly) white women are so convinced someone wants to kidnap them that it takes away from the actual (at least in my area) mostly black and brown women this is happening to.
Good, if depressing as always article Robert. I think you’re missing one aspect of why people who believe in this stuff believe it.
Simply put, framing it this way lets a lot of people feel like the focus of reality is on them. Not only are they embattled, but they’re desirable and valuable enough to be the target of some vague other. If we discuss trafficking as it actually happens, largely to already vulnerable people by their own friends and family, then not only does it not justify armed paranoia, but it’s also fundamentally a story about somebody else.
You can see hints of this not just in the people who believe this stuff, but in those that share it too. The need to be viral, to be the focus of attention is a huge driver of this stuff. And it’s not just a social media thing either, lying about this to get on local news is certainly not a new trend.
It's called "main character syndrome"
I genuinely mean this when I say thank you for writing this article & recording a podcast about this. I am a survivor of sex trafficking. My story is the same as many other victims, a queer teenager just trying to escape an abusive home & instead falling victim to a person I thought I could trust. However, because my story doesn't find the narrative that people have come to believe about this crime I have struggled for years to get my voice heard or get access to the resources I need. People either refuse to believe me or want to treat my trauma like the latest episode of a true crime podcast with no regard for the very real pain I still live with. All because I wasn't snached out of a Cosco parking lot & thrown into the back of a van. Seriously, thank you. Debunking misinformation helps victims far more than any shitty Jim Caviezel movie ever will.
I'm sorry that you've been through this and more so, that no one believes you. I used to work with immigrant trafficking survivors, and your experience is spot on for what I know of citizen survivors. With immigrants, they are overwhelming trafficked for labor (restaurants, domestic labor, servile marriages, agriculture and more) which gets zero attention compared to sex.
Two non-creepy resources for you or anyone else: Freedom Network USA is a network of legal and social service providers across the country who take a human rights (ie NOT trying to rescue people) approach, and they're phenomenal. Also, national trafficking resource center: 888-3737-888. Hopefully between these two, you can get connected with better resources for more support in your area. Take care.
As a 90’s kid I absolutely remember family breathlessly telling me and my sisters to check under a car every time you get in so someone can’t slash your achilles tendon as you’re getting in. We lived in a town of 200 people 😂
Why on earth would a potential kidnapper put something like a twist tie on your car to mark it - couldn't they just remember the blue ford right over there? I'm similarly irritated by the breathless accounts of being followed in Target or Walmart, as if other people do not also shop in those stores and also need socks and milk.
Relatedly, I saw a tweet the other day from someone claiming half a million kids are kidnapped per year. For reference that’s about 1/7th of the kids born this year.
At that scale, you’d personally know multiple people who’d had this happen to them. You’d think more people would notice this incongruity and doubt the veracity of the claim, and yet…
One thing that strikes me is that this sort of scare used to be an equal opportunity scare. Right now it so happens that Republican Media seems to be the magnet for fear-mongering. So much so that before Trump was elected I worried that people were figuratively running from every boogieman until they were too exhausted to do something about real monsters.
And in the meantime authority figures have been undermined such that trying to interject some reason into these narratives often is seen as political.The fears ar grown out of some figment of reality. For a while though during the pandemic it seemed all news was fear news. It wore me out. I had to stop listening to it. Anyone who's being consistently fed bad news and fear is likely to make bad decisions.
If you're seeing a lot of this sort of media as part of your investigations I hope that you take some time to chill and allow yourself to normalize yourself.
I've seen this kind of stuff target more liberal women as well. A lot of true crime aimed at women has a sort of proto-feminist or carceral feminist lens to it. The creators of this content will stress how prevalent sexual assault is (true) and how men as a group don't seem to care about rape culture (also true). Then they'll tell gruesome and lurid stories about women being kidnapped, raped, and murdered, while peppering in legitimate critiques of how the patriarchy ignores women who come forward about sexual abuse and harassment.
Juxtaposing these feminist critique that the audience understands from their lived experience against weekly stories of murders lurking behind every tree to kill strangers can be very dangerous. Most of these true crime podcasts don't make a point of how rare stranger murder is. They prime the audience to fall for trafficking scams the same way 24/7 Fox News does for Republicans.
I've just listened to the first part of the associated podcast, and found it very interesting and enlightening. I remember the chain letters from the 1970s, and suddenly realized that they didn't die off, but that they migrated to the internet. I think that there are multiple reasons for the fear of kidnapping, some mentioned in the article and in the podcast. I think there's another one (maybe it will be in the second half of the podcast) that was illustrated by the rise of the I-swear-to-God-it's-true stories of childcare sex rings in the 1990s that destroyed the lives of many innocent people. That, and some kidnapping stories, I think are part of a moral panic over changes in American society that are coming faster and faster. One of these changes is the fact that white Americans are projected to be in the minority sometime in the 2040s, and that scares a lot of people. The fire-hose of mis- and disinformation available on the internet and social media exposes them to attitudes, "facts" and rumors that they don't have the time or know-how to check. This is especially true for people who are led by their emotional reactions to what the encounter and have no real way to stop those reactions and engage a rational thought process. Their understanding is based on their emotional reaction, rather than a healthier mix of emotion, self-awareness, insight, and rational thought. They are overcome or overrun by fear of a country they no longer recognize, and they get caught in a loop that they can't get out of.
Made me think of the influencer who claimed that a Latino couple was trying to kidnap her children in a store: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mom-influencer-sentenced-90-days-fake-claim-latino-couple-tried-kidnap-rcna92066
He actually went into detail about this on the related behind the bastards episode. I don't understand how anyone could try and put anyone in prison just for a little fame.
Robert, just so you know, Daniel VanArsdale's chain letter research page is not gone, he simply moved to his own domain at https://carryiton.net/
I love SHATTERZONE!
I was thinking about your Behind the Bastards episode about this and looked up the substance. This week, a local Facebook page posted about an attempted kidnapping by an Uber driver. The Uber driver was not from the US. Many comments were about how people should carry a gun all the time and xenophobic things about not letting people in the US. All I could think about was that ask those people saying that stuff are just the next Phoebe Copas.
Hey I don't know where else to send this message but you, Cody, and Katy need to get the band back together to cover 2024 WYE style, it is going to be awful.
I shared this episode with a friend who is a singer and has a significant online footprint in order to let her parents know about the fake kidnapping scams that use AI voices. She said her family already knew about this scam and have a safe word just in case. Thought that was smart and wanted to share in case anyone else wanted to have a conversation with their parents about these scams. Hopefully this tip gets out there and this type of scam dies a quick and painful death.