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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27275 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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There was a wild post on r/RealEstate yesterday. It's already been deleted.

Hello,

I'm a young owner of a few rentals - I got lucky young starting a marketing business that worked.

We've been having some wind here lately and it partly ripped off some siding on the side of my house that's way to high for me to reach with a ladder. I look online and call a dude with good reviews - I think he's a solo gig. He pulls up within an hour of calling him and he's like "Oh, no big deal!". I watch him get out his ladder, get up there, screw these screws into the siding that are literally going into nothing (i think he did it so it looked like he was doing something), he pushed the siding back into the trim, and got down. Literally up there for 2 minutes. He said "Okay I'll go to my truck and get a quote"

He ends up coming back to my door like a half hour later and he claims his service call is $3000 and the screws were $5.

I kind of just look at him and I'm like "hahaha how much do I owe ya?"

Him: "$3005. I accept all forms of payment"

Me: "You're joking right? You told me on the phone your service call was $75."

Him: "We never talked sir. You must have talked to some other siding guy"

Me: "If I talked to someone else, how would you have known to come over right away and do my siding?"

Him: "Uhhh.. I mean.. Like I use a contracting app that gave me this job. My rate is $3000"

Me: "I'll give you $100 just to leave. I'm not doing this, that's crazy"

Him: "Maybe I should call the police. Should we do that?"

Me: "Go right ahead but it's a civil manner"

Him: "This is theft of services. If you don't pay, I'm pressing charges and you're going to jail"

Me: "I can promise you if you keep up this immoral scam like behavior you're going to end up in jail"

Him: "I just got out of prison, no sweat off my brow"

Me: "Doesn't surprise me with that prison tat on your neck"

Him: "Look kid you gonna pay me or not"

Me: "No"

Him: "You'll be hearing from my lawyer kid. Hope mommy and daddy can pay for it"

Me: See ya later!

I'm 25 but look 20. I've had people try to charge me crazy prices for things or take advantage of me but this was nuts and criminal (not literally but you know what i mean - just not right). Why are there people out there like this?

There's obviously a good chance that it's a totally fake story. I'd basically assume that it is. I don't even really care if there's even a 0.1% chance that it's actually true; it doesn't really matter.

Part of the reason why people likely believe that it's fake is that it sounds like absolutely outrageous behavior by the contractor. Something that no one would put up with. Something that would shock the conscience if it actually happened and there was a recording of the interaction or something.

So what's weird is that this is the standard modus operandi in the medical industry. It's just the way things are done. Yes, if you have insurance, then instead of telling you to your face that they're charging a ridiculous made up number after the fact, they tell your insurance provider the same thing. But the basic fact pattern is absolutely the same.

I'm definitely not going to go all Kulak and say that since this routinized obscenity shocks the conscious, everyone needs to start going around murderin'. But it absolutely is a routinized obscenity that should shock the conscience. Perhaps my crazy pills are significantly less potent than his, but they appear to still be crazy pills.

Lawyers can debate the legalese of "consent to treat" forms and what they do and do not allow, but it simply cannot be plausible that we will have a functional medical industry when it is the one and only industry that is allowed to simply refuse to provide you a price prior to authorizing work and then go on to just make up whatever the hell inflated price they want after the fact.

This being reddit, I'm guessing that contractor/landlord interaction was completely made up as a parable to illustrate some point about landlords being parasitic/rent being too high.

It's pretty clearly a troll post.

It has a couple nice features that make it well-calibrated for engagement.

#1) It gives off a #thathappened vibe. It's just so obviously fake. People can feel smart when they expose it.

#2) It buries the lede. Wait, this guy is 25 and has several properties. He got "lucky" in marketing? So this means he's either a scammer or has money from daddy. Again, this allows internet sleuths something to latch onto and post about.

My favorite form of burying the lede is posts that start with "Me (30m) and my girlfriend (22f)" and then, later on, reveal "when we first started dating 7 years ago...".

I hope you enjoy these helpful hints for getting engagement on your own short fiction on Reddit. I've been considering doing it myself lately. Not sure why. Seems fun.

I've been considering doing it myself lately. Not sure why. Seems fun.

It may be fun for some but if it's not obviously fake then it gratuitously damages social trust by adding to readers' expectations of bad behavior from others. I wish people wouldn't write these.

Damaging people's social trust in Reddit would be doing them a huge favor.

Damaging people's social trust in Reddit would be doing them a huge favor.

It would, but @Incanto's point is not that it's social trust in Reddit that's being damaged, but social trust in people in general. People read a fake story about a cruel or unjust landlord on reddit and slowly grow to believe that landlords are more likely than not to do them wrong, that all landlords are bad, that landlording is evil, that private property should be banned, that the means of production should be redistributed...

The point has also been made about those radio shows (i.e. "Ryan's Roses") where people are caught cheating on their partners, who call in -- they're fake but did damage to the public's trust in relationship fidelity and therefore in relationships in general. The same is true for /r/relationshipadvice and /r/aita.

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