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Florida man says his wife ‘wants a divorce’ after he lost $45,000 on an AI-generated Elon Musk car scam
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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She's right: she lives with a dumbass.
I've never understood this "old people are vulnerable" thing (not to mention that 69 ain't that old): even if the scam is really good, at some point the mark is asked to make a large amount of money flow out of their bank account: anybody with the good sense the good lord gave to donkeys would have alarm bells ringing loudly between their ears. Everybody I've met in my life reacts like that.
I might understand if the scanner impersonates a close family member really well - although if one of my children started asking me large sums of money, I would get suspicious because... well, they just don't. But Elon Musk? That guy ain't a victim, he's a moron.
You might be surprised about this, but as people age, so do their brains. They do not function as well and sometimes develop serious issues. Stop assuming everyone has the same resources to work with. Protect the vulnerable from bad actors.
You make a great point - not all of us have the same capacities and there need to be protections in place to prevent people falling for scams - but I just don’t know where the line is between personal responsibility and collective responsibility. Like, for society to function, we all need to assume some amount of collective responsibility to protect others but that can’t be at 100%. People need to take some amount of personal responsibility for their actions, otherwise we slide towards a society with no learning and no repercussions which is a recipe for disaster and collapse.
It’s a tenuous relationship, and extremely context-dependent, so I don’t think that there is an objective and quantitative answer to the question. Would make an interesting philosophical/ethical debate though.