What I Learned From the Most Unhinged Scam Email I’ve Ever Received

And the Strange, Religious History of Shame-Based Clickbait

📍Read more like this:
→ The Ocean Is Not Empty
→ What If We’re the Amnesia?

The Book of Spam, Chapter 1

I don’t usually check my spam folder.
But some mornings, the void calls.

There it was, glowing like divine malware:
Subject: Hi5there,

I clicked.

And was immediately greeted with this paragraph:

“I2want5to4inform6you2about8a4very8bad6situation8for2you.8However,9you3can8benefit8from9it,3if8you8will8act3wisely.9”

It had everything:

• Random numbers
• Weird spacing
• A prophet’s tone
• And the vibe of a cyberpunk AI who just discovered morality

This wasn’t spam.
This was scripture.

The Gospel According to Pegasus

The email was over 800 words long.
It followed a disturbingly coherent structure.

Here’s the short version:

I installed Pegasus on all your devices months ago because you clicked the wrong thing.
I now have videos of you… enjoying some extremely questionable adult content.
I will send these videos to your family, friends, co-workers, and possibly the Pope.
Unless you send me $2,000 in Litecoin to this wallet address: ltc1q...
I am some kind of God who sees everything. But my mercy is not free.

You know.
The usual Tuesday energy.

🪙 Why Crypto Is the Perfect Scam Currency

There’s a reason these emails always end with a string of letters and numbers that look like someone sneezed into a password manager:
ltc1q7x9...39hke8h4k

That’s a crypto wallet.

Usually Bitcoin, sometimes Ethereum.
But mine asked for Litecoin, which is like demanding ransom in Tesco Clubcard Points.

Still, it makes sense.

Crypto is the scammer’s dream payment system:

• It’s fast. No banks. No friction. No flags.
• It’s irreversible. You pay. They win. That’s it.
• It’s anonymous enough. No name, no account. Just a silent ledger in the sky.
• It scales. One million emails, one panic attack per hundred — and you’ve paid your rent.

Crypto didn’t invent shame transactions.
It just made them frictionless.