Relative Something

Scanning headlines yesterday, I saw the following from NBC News: “Fake Joe Biden robocall tells New Hampshire Democrats not to vote on Tuesday.” My first thought was to personalize it and wonder if I would fall for a fake robocall telling me to do, or not do, anything. Who goes through the effort to create such a scam and do they think it will succeed in whatever it is they are hoping to accomplish?

Foreign rabble-rousers probably hoping to sow seeds of doubt in U.S. elections. Good-for-nothing troublemakers, whoever they are.

Now, I’m not entirely innocent when it comes to clever shenanigans. There was a time when I took great pleasure in using the lowest-tech of kluges to pull off my own –I think harmless– ruses.

My siblings may remember when I made a copy of a legitimate news article on the subject of Frito-Lay products and altered the wording to claim Frito corn chips smell like dirty socks. We were on a road trip together and the subject had come up in one of our conversations. Don’t ask. I don’t even remember the details, anyway.

Everyone knows it’s true, that is what Fritos smell like. Especially if you’re not the one eating them. But it’s not something you expect to read in the Business section of a newspaper. That’s why I thought it would be hilarious to tweak the article by altering one sentence and creating believable evidence supporting the assertions I posed in that road trip conversation.

They didn’t buy it. None of them fell for my keenly crafted perfection in matching the font.

Didn’t change the truth, though. Dirty socks. Go ahead, try to eat some Fritos without thinking of that now.

For some reason, a different font-matching ruse from my past is the first memory that came up after thinking about the robocalls yesterday. The company I worked for in the 1980s and 90s came up with a contest for the employees. It was a treasure hunt of sorts with a series of clues provided over time. I don’t recall the reason for the “adventure-tainment,” but it could easily have been an HR idea for team-building or a morale boost of some sort.

Doesn’t matter. I was eager to solve the puzzle for my group of Engineers and we gobbled up the clues to combine our analytical skills and beat everyone to the prize. Our critical sleuthing led us to a cover over an air vent but there was no new clue there. I figured other treasure hunters might come to a similar conclusion and look in that same place.

I knew where the gold paper used for clues was stored so I decided we should make a fake clue and leave it for others to find in hopes of leading them astray. Once again I used my novice font-matching skills in hopes of making the game more interesting.

Except that the game didn’t get interesting. As far as we knew, nobody ever looked for that fake clue. I was so entertained by messing with the game that I think I lost interest in the real clues. Somebody else found the treasure. We went back to thinking about what we were supposed to be working on.

A fun memory. At least my mischief wasn’t aimed at destroying democracies. Don’t fall for fake Biden robocalls!

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