Deception

​I couldn’t help laughing.  Well I probably could have, but I chose not to.  It was something I read.  The laughter was spontaneous.  Apparently, a lady had just graduated as a gourmet cook.  To celebrate and test her skills she threw a party.  At it, she served crackers garnished with bacon, an olive, and cheese - and unbeknown to the guests, a dollop of dog food (disclaimer:  dog food does not kill a person.  Some chose to eat it.).  The appetisers looked real classy.  The guests ate to their hearts content.  Particularly one fellow who could not get enough.  Everything about them looked right.
For some though knowing is not enough.  We have a worm farm.  We keep it moist by pouring water onto the top of it.  It comes out the other end with worm castings.  It is called “worm tea”.  We give it away and sometimes sell it.  It is great for the garden.  We always say, “don’t drink it.”   One fellow was told “don’t drink it.”  The first thing they did was drink it.  If he now has worms, he should be able to fix it as he is a doctor.
Merril and I were watching QI the other night.  One of the comments was what North Korea does better than anyone else in the world.  One item pointed out was that they do counterfeit US dollars better than anyone. 
Elsewhere the point was made that to do a good counterfeit you don’t print on a triangular yellow piece of paper with a three in the corners and a picture of the Lone Ranger in the middle.  The point of counterfeiting is making something look and feel authentic.
A whole industry has arisen around counterfeit paintings.  One show on TV highlights a painting and then visits the experts to determine if an item is real or not.  Is that Van Gogh painting really by him or is it made to look like a painting by him.  Some people are duped into paying thousands of dollars for a look alike item.
It seems to me so much is made to look like the real deal.  It can be a loan or an “investment opportunity.”  When something is obviously fake, it sets alarm bells ringing in me, and I steer clear of it.  But for a lot of things, it is not easy to tell. 
Much internet fraud is apparently scammers who make something look real and it is only designed as a way of making money for the scammers.  That sort of thing has never been easier.  For many things a computer does all the work finding email addresses and sending bogus emails. 
I have a very limited knowledge of such things, but I was told one way to tell is by hovering the curser over the email address an item is purported to be from.  Often what is said is a disguise for something else.   I have been duped before, and now visit a site myself, rather than respond to emails from some organization I may not know.
The point for me is no matter how real something may appear to be, I need to be guided by an inner voice and common sense.   It is not enough for something to look real.  Looks can be deceptive.  The dog food looked great, but it was still dog food.