Every April Fool's Day I love to mess with family members. A (hypothetically) good effort:effect ratio I have found is Craigslist: Go into some large city's section (NYC, Austin, Sf, etc) and put up a listing for a 'free xbone' or a 'free PSS1', or something similarly typo'd. Explain that you are giving your kids' Xbone away because of a failing grade, you are moving overseas, your boyfriend cheated on you, etc. Then put down the number of the person to be pranked as the contact info. Now, here is the magic part: Specify that the callers for the free stuff must open the call with a Wookie sound, must text back in only haikus about salmon, must only refer to the xbox-one as a sausage, etc. It'll take the prank-ee a few hours to clear that mess up. This works wonders for April 1st day jokes, is fairly harmless, and generates a lot of fun stories.
The thing I am trying to say to the dear NYT reporter, is that you don't necessarily need bots to do this work for you, and not really even money either, just the promise of something for the low price of the time it takes to make a phone call is usually enough. Greed, I guess, works for a very low commission.
As the son of one who's in fact gotten even more abusive this year, as my father got early stage Alzheimer's, which to date is still a minor disability, to more comprehensively take out 57 years worth of grudges against him, to the point of the unforgivable, to the point I'm almost certain she wants him dead if she can arrange it through sins of omission....
Yes, there are people who you're technically that close to, who you are obliged to "honor", to whom you (eventually) owe nothing, and like in this case, who fully deserve to die alone, and most decidedly unloved.
Although I'll draw one distinction here, it's the sins against another that crossed the final line for me, the one where I've sworn to never speak to her again (modulo someone else's life being in danger). Sin against me, that can be not just understood but forgiven, but against an innocent (enough) 3rd party is somehow different.
(And for a bit more pathos, by her order in 20 days I'll be completely out of the loop and living in the house built in 1910 I recently bought and have been remodeling, seeing as I'm the only sibling who's in the same town, have been living with him for the last 5 years on land she alone owns, and is the one most strongly objecting to her treatment of him.)
Every April Fool's Day I love to mess with family members. A (hypothetically) good effort:effect ratio I have found is Craigslist: Go into some large city's section (NYC, Austin, Sf, etc) and put up a listing for a 'free xbone' or a 'free PSS1', or something similarly typo'd. Explain that you are giving your kids' Xbone away because of a failing grade, you are moving overseas, your boyfriend cheated on you, etc. Then put down the number of the person to be pranked as the contact info. Now, here is the magic part: Specify that the callers for the free stuff must open the call with a Wookie sound, must text back in only haikus about salmon, must only refer to the xbox-one as a sausage, etc. It'll take the prank-ee a few hours to clear that mess up. This works wonders for April 1st day jokes, is fairly harmless, and generates a lot of fun stories.
The thing I am trying to say to the dear NYT reporter, is that you don't necessarily need bots to do this work for you, and not really even money either, just the promise of something for the low price of the time it takes to make a phone call is usually enough. Greed, I guess, works for a very low commission.