Looking back on it, I think the 90s and the early 00s were a more genteel time, in which people had the courtesy to openly deceive you. I remember this period well; I was living in Harlem (my Jamaican landlord called me his "schwartze grandson") and playing around with Cashflow, the Robert Kiyosaki game in which the objective is to escape the daily grind and live off investments. How naive we were.
As far as investments went, NYC being what it is, the most commonly talked about investment was real estate. One of the louder talkers was a guy from Long Island named Edward. Edward wanted me to go into business with him. There was, of course, the perfect apartment building in Syracuse, or Rochester or some other upstate wasteland. (I visit upstate regularly and speak with authority on that post-apocalyptic hellhole. Saratoga Springs is nice.)
The owners claimed that the building was fully occupied with tenants living off of government cheese. They sent a years worth of bills and rent receipts to prove it. So I sent Edward up there on a scouting mission; he came back to report that the building- the building which was supposedly stocked with tenants paying rent- was actually an abandoned crack house. As was so often the case, I was not sure who was lying to me- Edward or the guys upstate (my bet is the latter because after Edward's return they disconnected their phone.) And if they did lie, it was an elaborate, time consuming deception.
Ah the golden age.
Now, people won't even lie to you anymore. Lying takes effort and human communication and we have evolved beyond both. This occurred to me while I was communicating- and I use that word VERY loosely- with a lawyer. I need a lawyer at the moment and he offered to work for a 2000 dollar retainer. In his offer, he stated that he would send out the retainer agreement within 24 hours. That was Saturday. He is in Manhattan, I'm in Queens. Approximately 136 hours later, I emailed to say that I'm waiting for his retainer agreement. Now, if this was the 90s, he'd get creative. It's in the mail is a good one. I mailed it Sunday night. Give it a couple of days. That sort of thing. But no; instead, he writes...
"whats your address?"
Of course he couldn't have sent anything without knowing my address and in fact never intended to. Of course this means that his claim to be sending out an agreement within 24 hours was bunk and he knew it was bunk when he said it. And no, he wouldn't be building an elaborate ruse to hide it. Instead, we just now accept, as a fact of life, that, as an acquaintance explained to me a few weeks ago, "people lie."
That's just how we roll.