The Confidence Man
by Herman Melville · first published 1857
43% recommend57% neutral
Onboard the Fidele, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmopolitan' gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool's Day,
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For a remarkable fictional exposition of this, read The Confidence Man by Herman Melville one of the truly great American novels. Many of the examples described in this article are brought to life, and used to generate a very funny, strange and interesting kind of literary…
on “The 19th Century Confidence Man” ↗This is a great opportunity to remind people to read the first post-modern American novel: The Confidence Man: His Masquerade, by Herman Melville. First published on April 1st and set on the same day.
on “Herman Melville at Home” ↗Wow, further evidence that the most important tech book I ever read was Maurer's The Big Con: http://www.amazon.com/Big-Con-Story-Confidence-Man/dp/038549... I keep waiting for an enterprising Nigerian journalist to write the 419-scammer version of this book.
on “Gizmodo: Psystar's a Hoax” ↗Jeremy Campbell, The liar's tale : a history of falsehood https://www.worldcat.org/title/liars-tale-a-history-of-false... Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man : His Masquerade https://www.worldcat.org/title/confidence-man-his-masquerade...
on “An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy” ↗…commerce, roads ... and thieves and trickery. It was as the first high-spped comms networks (telegraph) and motorised highway system emerged (Mississippi steam-powered river boats) that the idea of the confidence man emerged in Herman Melville's novel of the same name. The elements of distant communications, and speedy entry and exit, create the space required for fraud. A different tack is taken by Kyle Harper's…
on “Google Search is routinely gamed by private blog networks” ↗…and communications almost always directly facilitate fraud. The Greek/Roman gods Hermes/Mercury represented communication, messages, travel, transportation, commerce, trickery, and theives. The term "Confidence Man" arose from Herman Melville's novel of the same name, set on the first great highway of the United States, the steamboat-plied Mississippi. Mail begat mail fraud. Telegraph and telephones begat wire…
on “Massachusetts Steamship Authority hit by ransomware attack; ferries delayed” ↗…provided a direct route from the inland to the East Coast (and luxuriously comfortable travel as compared to coach, wagon, or horseback) in the 1820s. Herman Melville's story of a travelling huckster, The Confidence Man, takes place aboard steamboats on the Mississippi River --- the ur interstate highway. Train travel was the first marked change from this, and I suspect that the rise of "road" in the 1nd half of the…
on “Turn-by-turntables: How drivers got from A to B in the early 1900s (2020)” ↗Additionally, Melville's "Confidence-Man" might best describe the past couple of years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man
on “Books I Recommend” ↗…luck, trickery, and thieves.[2] It's ... as if the ancients over two millennia ago recognised that communications cut multiple ways, and can serve benefit or harm. From a more recent example, the term "confidence man" comes from Herman Melville's novel of the same title, which takes place on the first great motorised superhighway of the United States: steamboats plying the Mississippi River. Again, travel, and the…
on “Privacy Is OK” ↗Grift is nothing new, it's existed throughout human history. See for example Herman Melville, "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade" (1857), which is a catalogue of various kinds of grift common in that era. If anything has changed much recently, it's that grifters have taken control of the entire system of government…
on “A Theory of Grift” ↗Yes, and rely highly on anonymity whether through large populations (cities) or distance (telecommunications and/or transportation). The term "confidence man" came into general usage following publication of a novel by that title by Herman Melville (of Moby Dick fame). It is set on the first great interstate highway of the United States: the steamboat-plied…
on “A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history” ↗…only in trumpeting the pronouncements of the gods, not considering their value or veracity, and that Mercury was the god not only of messengers, but of tricksters and thieves. Herbert Melville's The Confidence Man, from which the modern term derives, was set on the first great superhighway of the United States, the Mississippi River. Improvements in communications technology have much the same effect has handing…
on “Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations” ↗Grifting is about as American as apple pie honestly. Melville is of course know for Moby Dick where he delves into the psyche of the Great American Man but he also wrote The Confidence Man. Mark Twain’s work is full of con men and grifters. Ponzi laid the groundwork for more complex schemes in the 20s. Pyramid schemes were all the rage in the 40/50s, Tupperware parties as an example, and…
on “We are building data breach machines and nobody cares” ↗