It's quite possible! There was a paper awhile back (which of course I can't find right now) about how scammers intentionally make their pitches comparatively unconvincing, with lots of misspellings and egregious grammar, exactly to weed out people who aren't extremely gullible.
-
-
- End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
This is absolutely a scanner tactic. Selects both for gullibility and people in denial.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
I remember a Microsoft research paper from a while ago, arguing that scam messages are crafted to be a reverse pons asinorum: scammers want truly gullible people, as less gullible people are costly to try to trick. Anyone who sees these email as obviously fake aren't the target.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
Yes, and I don’t think the idea is even new. Have seen simple “Have you been scammed?” messages years ago.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
I've always understood it to be a Fail Fast thing, creating a clean sales pipeline. If someone's very likely to ultimately recognize the scam, you want them to bail out before you've spent too much time/effort on it. So you weed them out early.
-
Like the best case for a scammer is you giving them money, but the worst case is spending hours and hours trying to swindle a guy who refuses to send the money at the last second.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Seems like sending messages to Americans that mention a "barrister" is a red flag unto itself.
-
Well he was in Europe Italy.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
I would totally read a strong, detailed ethnography of all this.
Do they A/B test messages? What is the folk psychology among the scammers about what might work? Do they have their own fads?