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SEPTEMBER 2004  CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR FREE FLAT-SCREEN IPOD DESKTOP PLAYSTATION!!! it is easy, all you have to do is get gullible internet friends to click on things and enter in their credit card numbers and then you will receive free technology! in three to four weeks they just use the internet to cancel their free subscriptions, and call their credit card company every month to get eighty dollars of mystery charges off of their account for the next nine years. if you are wondering who came up with this ingenious plan, it was not me! i wish i could have come up with this idea. recently there has been a proliferation of advertisements and people i know trying to get me to participate in a scheme wherein they receive free gadgets for the low price of my personal and financial information. it was invented in 1920 by a man named charles ponzi, the grandfather of all awesome schemes to make free money! ponzi had a great idea and the idea was: people are dumb. now, in the 1920s, most people did not know this, because they did not have the internet to remind them. so it worked even better back then! he went from house to house, telling people, HELLO KIND SIR, good evening, would you perchance be interested in a completely free flat-screened radio? of course, since this was the era of the great depression in america, everyone responded, YES! YES, i want a flat-screened radio device, it would be quite lovely! ponzi would then tell them, kind citizen, i ask only ten cents of you, to help start my corporation, and then you will be given a flat-screened radio along with your dime back! the person was skeptical, but thinking that most people who wore a suit and a hat were nice, would give ponzi a dime. thank you kindly sir, i will return with your flat-screened radio in a week! he would tell them. he did this for a small crowd of people in his hometown. just six days later, he returned to all of their homes with radios, and dimes! KIND CITIZEN you have been most helpful, i bring your initial investment along with this high-quality flat-screened radio, he told them. the citizens were impressed and soon told everyone they knew about the kind and benevolent ponzi. soon, crowds were forming at his door, clamoring to give him money! he graciously accepted the hundreds upon hundreds of dollars from the townspeople, some of them giving him several dollars in exchange for promises of free rpods (record pods, a device upon which a record could be placed and listened to) and desktop playstations (a square box containing materials to play six different board games, unheard of in those days!) after a few days, shortly before he was due to provide the goods to the townspeople, he told them: i must leave town to collect your goods from the nearest shipping port, i shall return in due time with your rewards! the citizens cheered him as he rode out of town on the back of a motor coach, waving and blowing kisses to the adoring masses. little did they know he motored straight out of town with his money, never to return! in the next town he set up a similar scheme where he operated a ten-cent booth in the town square inviting anyone to shoot the monkey and win twenty dollars! if anyone won, they were presented with a thick leaflet of survey questions and forms to fill out to claim their prize. ponzi collected thousands in this town as well, before anyone could finish wading through the packet he gave them! ponzi went from town to town collecting money from gullible patrons. his schemes ranged from spring-loaded advertisements that would "pop up" in front of the screens at silent movies, to promises of erotic picture galleries (free pictures were provided, with an option to purchase a membership, of course) all the way to running false rebate plans for businesses, to get customers to purchase expensive items with the promise of having most of their money refunded later. after cleaning out the coffers of several towns, ponzi retired to the bay area, a newly-made millionaire, where he built himself a pyramid, thus coining the term "pyramid scheme". not many people know, but ponzi is still alive today, sequestered deep in his pyramid, creating animated banner ads and java applets to run next to online newspaper articles. i am honored to be able to have the space to teach the world about the history of the internet, and all i ask for this service is that you CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR FREE DIGITAL CAMERA PHONE!!! (back to the writing index page) |