The term "pig butchering" has more than one meaning. Click the link I am providing in this paragraph to read a discussion in the Encyclopedia Britannica about "Stopping Cruel High-Speed Pig Slaughter." The picture I have provided, above, accompanies that article.
Here, though, is another link for you. This one is from the June 9, 2025, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The following link will take you to a story titled as follows in the hard-copy version of the paper: "Online Marketplaces Aid 'Pig Butchering' Scams."
What is a "Pig Butchering Scam"? Well, here is an excerpt from that article in The Wall Street Journal that will give you an outline:
In January 2023, a 67-year-old man in North Carolina received a text message from a woman named Jeanie. She said she lived in Miami and worked in fashion design. Though they never met in person, an online romance quickly blossomed.
By August, Jeanie had disappeared with $3.4 million of the man’s savings—a textbook example of “pig butchering,” in which scammers build victims’ trust and walk away with their money.
Those who read my blog postings on a regular basis may remember my own experience, as described in my blog posting on June 7th. I am happy to report that I have NOT DONE what The Wall Street Journal has been warning us about. I have not been "biting" on the various pitches I am receiving from what appear to be rather attractive women, who tell me that they would really like to be my friend!
There is a principle that can help elderly gentlemen avoid the attractions of a "pig butchering" invitation. This same principle is useful for people of all ages, and all genders, who might become victims of "pig butchering" or similar scams. As a "for instance" of a similar scam, and for a very sad illustration of how such scams can end up, here is a link to a Wall Street Journal article, which also ran in the June 9, 2025, edition of the paper. The headline on that article was: "'Sextortion' Scams Involving Apple Messages End In Tragedy":
Adults, often outside the country, pose as teenage girls and befriend teen boys on social media, then push to move the conversation to Snapchat or get their phone numbers for texting. In the more private, one-on-one chat, the criminals send photos or videos of a nude teen girl or young woman, and encourage the boys to do the same. Apple’s Messages app has become an appealing venue to build trust in such “sextortion” schemes, say law-enforcement officers and child-safety experts.
The "tragedy" alluded to in that Wall Street Journal headline was the suicide of Elijah Heacock who was told he had to come up with $3,000 he didn't have, or find a nude picture of himself posted all over the Internet. Elijah didn't have the money, but he did have access to a gun, and he used it to preempt those who threatened to damage his reputation in a way that he felt was intolerable.
What "principle" can avoid "pig butchering" and similar scams? Here is the principle: Relate to people in "real life." Stop "living" online. Realize that the "Internet" is not "real" in any way. The Internet, which appears to be a "real" space is, in fact, an electronically-generated location owned by, and completely subservient to, one or more of the huge corporations that finance the online spaces which seem so "real" that we come to believe in them. Those corporations that "create" the "Internet," our "online world," are interested in promoting its use because that's how those corporations make their money. Those corporations, however, have exactly ZERO genuine interest in the "real" people who are tricked into believing that their communications and connections are as "real" as they, themselves, actually are.
My name is Gary Patton. I live in Santa Cruz, California. Want to be my friend? Want to get to know me? Send me an "Apple Message," or an email, and set up a time to meet me down in Abbott Square, or invite me to take a walk through the Arana Gulch Park. Invite me to your birthday party - and give me the location. Maybe I'll take you up on such an invitation (though no promises; I'm really not that social, and I'm pretty busy, too). What I am not going to do is to mistake anything on the "Internet" for "reality."
If you think that the "online" world is "real," then you are making a "category mistake." The "Internet," in all its online versions, is NOT "real."
Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can trust the "reality" of what you find online, and you will never be a "pig butchering" victim. That's my advice for today!
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