This one starts with a sad story. Not about someone I know personally, but a friend of a friend of a friend. But it could happen to anyone these days.

So, basically, there was this middle-aged guy, divorced, no kids, no girlfriend, lonely. His life was just work-home-work-home.

Then he met this cute Asian girl on social media. Mostly they exchanged messages and pictures, but they even had a voice call once or twice. She lived in another country far away but wanted to move to the West. Everything was going well, they had great chemistry. They talked for months. Finally he said he had saved some money and could travel, they were supposed to meet in person, when suddenly tragedy struck. She had an accident. Her mother became very ill. Or maybe it was her father. Anyway, the travel had to be postponed. Then she needed money for the hospital or some other emergency. First one thousand. Then two thousand. Then some more.

Yeah, I know, you can already see where this is going. But he didn’t. Or it took him a longer time that it would take you and me. At the end of it all, he gave her over 20,000 euros, before she suddenly disappeared, never to be seen again. Driven to depression and alcoholism, the man then also lost his job and his health insurance and now his life is basically in shambles because of this woman.

I say “woman” because that’s what he believed, or wanted to believe, but, well, let’s be honest. It was probably a bunch of guys in Lagos or Hyderabad. The pictures were all fake, the voice, probably fake too (it can be done these days, you know).

There are entire businesses specialized in such sort of scam. Most of them operating from India and other places in the third world. Even I almost fell into one, not about relationships, but something about taxes, which sounded serious until I realized there was something fishy about the IRS wanting to be paid by PayPal.

But back to relationships, I find it interesting that most of those relationship scams for men involve Asian women. I suppose it’s because trust in the West is so low these days that no middle-aged guy would believe a twenty-something Western woman would be interested in him. But an Asian woman is still in the realm of possibilities, at least in theory.

Such scams exist for women too, of course, but in those cases they involve supposedly famous or rich men, because if men mostly desire youth, sex appeal and beauty, women desire status, money and fame. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Bradley Cooper. Or just some random billionaire. I remember a recent case in which the guy pretended to be a billionaire, but then came up with some story about having been persecuted by gangsters and losing his suitcase with all his bank cards and documents and needing money that he would pay back very soon. So even though he was supposedly a billionaire, this woman ended up giving him I don’t know how many thousands of dollars.

Humans are very stupid creatures.

But such scams happen because people want to believe. They are lonely and they want to be loved. Perhaps deep down they know it can’t be true. But they pay for the dream to continue just a little bit longer.

And of course, with AI and all the current tools of deception this type of scam will only grow. Voices can be cloned and even video can be realistically faked today.

But the main problem is that loneliness is also growing, because social trust is being eroded. Paradoxically, the less trust there is between people, the more people fall for such scams, because there is no longer any measure of what is trustworthy. No one knows who to believe anymore.

Politicians? Forget it. They have less credibility than street whores. They have proven again and again to be just actors, and not even very good ones.

Journalists? Come on, man. They have a lower reputation than drug addicts and criminals. No one believes a word they say.

But even doctors and scientists, who had the trust of most of the public until recently, suffered a huge setback with the Covid stuff. “Trust the Science” has become an enormous own-goal for scientists and the medical industry.

Universities have also been heavily hit by their support of censorship and of extreme leftist stuff.

The arts, publishing and the entertainment industry have been for years little more than a propaganda operation, in many cases run directly by the CIA.

And the police? Back the blue? You must be kidding. Paid goons for the regime, that’s all.

The church, too, with all the scandals and the changes that took place since Vatican II, has lost a lot of credibility and public trust, even among religious people. Many people are still wondering if the new Pope is catholic or not.

Not even “Artificial Intelligence” and technology are being trusted by most people, despite the huge amount of propaganda being used to sell this stuff to us.

A recent poll called “2025 Trust Barometer” investigated the status of trust in institutions in 26 countries, both Western and non-Western, both first-world and third-world (whatever happened to the “second world”, by the way?).

They found that there has been a huge erosion of trust, which has been going on for more than twenty years, but really accelerated in the last five. Among other findings, they discovered that:

69% of people in 26 countries believe that their leaders are constantly lying to them.

68% of people in 26 countries believe that rich businessmen are constantly lying to them.

70% of people in 26 countries believe that the media are constantly lying to them.

After that, there is only one question remaining that is indeed quite puzzling: what the hell is wrong with the remaining 30%?

But even trust in families, in partners, is going down. In my grandparents’ generation, divorce was unheard of and everyone stayed together. Even in my parents generation, most couples stayed together. My parents did. But from my generation and younger generations, I don’t think I know a single person who has not been divorced or separated at least once. Most separated more than once, or are single mothers or single fathers, and many never even married at all. There is today a huge distrust between males and females.

I don’t know if there was a time when things were much better. Perhaps things always sucked. But it seems that years ago at least there was still a certain sense of community. I remember that the parents of our generation let us play in the street alone with other kids for hours, something that you rarely see these days. Of course, children don’t even play outdoors these days, they are just glued to screens, but you know what I mean.

I suppose a certain dose of skepticism is healthy, you don’t want to fall into scams, which have always existed one way or another, but you also need at least a minimum amount of trust to be able to live in a society. And this basically doesn’t exist today anymore. It’s one against all, and all against one.

And you? Who do you trust?