PatchWork | Personal

I think what makes these fake Apple Pay scam/prank situations so emotionally volatile is that they combine several nightmare scenarios for the victim into one attack. For starters, you're getting robbed in public. This is embarrassing, especially for a man. Second, you're on camera unexpectedly for a large audience. This should be illegal. It's not, but it should be. Third, you're being played for a fool because you don't really know how the technology of Apple Pay / contactless payments works, and someone is exploiting you over it. So we end up with a scenario where some random guy--in this case, a middle-aged man stocking the frozen pizzas--is getting robbed, humiliated, and made to look foolish by what is likely a teenage mulatto who's exploiting a type of "I'm not touching you" loophole in the social contract, where the pizza guy would go to jail for a long time if he punched the scammer because ultimately the prankster (a) hasn't stolen anything, and (b) hasn't laid a finger on the victim. It creates a real 'naked in front of the whole class' simulation where over 7 billion people will have permanent access to an episode of "This is what the pizza guy would look like if someone were robbing him using a technology he's too old to understand. See, look how mad he is over the IDEA of losing $10! Look how stupid he is! They didn't even take any money!" This is a worst-case scenario for the victim. Most people are not designed for this. Complete public humiliation, absolute demoralization, no rightful recourse in the eyes of the law, no way to take back what has been stolen from you because no money was actually taken; only your dignity and sense of self-worth. This is what happens to actual Americans in 2026 who still try to live by following the rules, working hard, and sticking to the script. They get publicly humiliated by 90 IQ mystery meat ethnics exploiting them for content to earn shitcoins with which to gamble on prediction websites.